Every Virginia recruit had to ride a horse. It was a mandate from former coach Bronco Mendenhall. Cavalier prospects couldn’t become Cavalier players until they completed a riding path cut out of the coach’s 30-acre ranch outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Parents would watch from a distance. Athletes would get quick instruction, and they were off.
It was different. It might have been quirky. It was bonding for the coach known sometimes for his different and quirky tactics.
“It was not only [bonding], but it was a great way to assess who someone really was,” said Mendenhall, who resigned last December after six seasons at Virginia. “It was really a compelling way to get to know each other. It was, quite frankly, the greatest gift I could give any of them. They were being asked to make a decision about a place and people in a relatively short period of time.”
Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis, Jr. and D’Sean Perry all made that ride on the ranch dubbed “HB3” by its owner. (That label represents his wife Holly, Bronco himself and their three sons.) That equine tradition was one of the immediate reflections Mendenhall had when he learned Saturday that three of his former players had been fatally shot.
Mendenhall recruited them all. He sat in their living rooms making the usual promises coaches make to prospects and their parents.
No one signed up for this.
A campus, a sport and once again a nation has been ripped apart by senseless gun violence. Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a former UVA walk-on player, is in custody for the killings. He was expected to make his first court appearance Wednesday after allegedly shooting the players on a bus returning from a field trip in Washington, D.C.
Jones was also briefly on the roster under Mendenhall. However, he was only with the team for only a short period of time before injuries forced him to the sidelines. “A very limited fashion” is how Mendenhall described Jones’ stay with the program.
Reached Wednesday, Mendenhall was more than willing to remember Chandler (the wide receiver he recruited out of Huntersville, North Carolina), Davis (the receiver from Dorchester, South Carolina) and Perry (the linebacker from Miami). Look at their media guide headshots. They’re all smiling — beaming, in fact. Like a lot of 20 somethings, you could tell this was the time of their lives.
“Lavel Davis was very contemplative and introspective and humble and unique and genuine and sincere…
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