It seemed fishy. Or if not fishy, at least a little confusing.
Specifications? Manifests? Projected costs for a range of things? For what?
“Oh, nothing,” Ana D’Ambrogi said. “It’s just for a side project. We’re just looking at something.”
But D’Ambrogi, Virginia Athletics’ event management director, was putting together a bid to host the 2026 Men’s Lacrosse Championships. For a few weeks early in 2025, she was figuring out what it might take to host Championship Weekend at Scott Stadium. That’s how she and a small team ended up skulking around asking questions without revealing why.
The NCAA, for more than two decades, has almost invariably commandeered professional stadiums for Championship Weekend — Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, back to Baltimore, Philadelphia again. This year it is in Charlottesville, its first time at a campus site since 2002, at Rutgers. The last time the event appeared on a campus not named Maryland or Rutgers came in 1992.
“This was the [bid] that we thought would be really great,” Matt Colagiovanni, the chair of the Division I Men’s Lacrosse Oversight Committee, said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily. “Bringing it back to a college campus, and then also just the excitement of being in that area.”
In December 2024, at the Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Association coaches’ convention, the NCAA told the gathered coaches it was searching for a new site for Championship Weekend 2026.
Gillette Stadium, the home of the NFL’s New England Patriots, had been slated in 2020 to host Championship Weekend in 2025 and 2026. But the stadium had another bid floating in the ether, waiting on the whims of ever-efficient FIFA.
In June 2022, FIFA announced its World Cup host cities. Boston, and Gillette, numbered among the 16. The NCAA knew this was a possibility. It pivoted toward finding a new site for 2026.
The obvious options? Other NFL stadiums. The event has ferried between three edifices — M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Gillette Stadium in Boston — since 2002, with a two-year diversion to Connecticut’s Rentschler Field.
But none of the professional stadiums could host, D’Ambrogi said. So try again. College campuses. Think Delaware, Maryland and Navy. Those are everyone’s first three thoughts, D’Ambrogi said.
Delaware and Navy? Graduation this weekend. Maryland? A practice site for the World Cup.
Keep looking. The NCAA, at that coaches’ convention, asked the gathered coaches if anyone thought their school might be interested. Virginia’s coaches thought theirs could be. They brought it to D’Ambrogi.
She thought it was a fantasy.
“When he first came to me, I was like, ‘There's no way, we can't do this,’” D’Ambrogi said. “Or they're never going to pick us. Or this is a waste of time.”
D’Ambrogi knew the issues with a potential bid. The scarcity of hotels, for one. Smaller back-of-house space than many stadiums. Scott Stadium is a goliath in Charlottesville, a 61,500-seater that has stacked upward over the years. But its infrastructure is not that extensive compared to other stadiums.
So D’Ambrogi sat down with the NCAA. She ran through all the things Virginia was worried about, and asked if they took Scott off the table. No, came the answer.
So they submitted the bid.
Kip Turner, a Virginia assistant coach until he left coaching last offseason, served at the time on the Division I Men’s Lacrosse Oversight Committee. He was able to help the bid, D’Ambrogi said.
So was Colagiovanni, a little bit. His day job is as a deputy athletic director at Rutgers. In 2021, Virginia’s Klöckner Stadium hosted Rutgers’ first-round game against Lehigh. Colagiovanni was impressed, and four years later he mentioned it in bid discussions.
“I really loved the campus,” Colagiovanni said. “It’s good to speak on that behalf, just kind of seeing the area, just a lot of good things for us to see down there.”
But Virginia waited a while for the bid decision. The NCAA gave a deadline. The deadline passed. D’Ambrogi pinged for updates. The NCAA responded it was still talking to other people, persons unknown.
Finally, a response.
Colagiovanni called hosting on a college campus an “exciting opportunity.”
Virginia got the news about a week before it went public. The public found out during the Saturday of 2025 Championship Weekend.
On the broadcast, a video flicked on, narrated by “the Voice of the Cavaliers,” John Freeman. A camera roamed across Grounds, past the Rotunda, a statue of Thomas Jefferson, flicking into grainy film of players scoring goals and clearer clips of big hits and confetti, all before the camera crests some trees and reveals Scott Stadium.
“In the year to come,” Freeman says as the stadium comes into sight, “Our game’s grandest stage returns to these hallowed Grounds. This place that we call home is built for champions.”
Then comes a soft thud as the screen is replaced by “coming May 2026” and the Championship Weekend logo.
D’Ambrogi, the tournament director, has been working tirelessly for over a year and a half with her team and Patrick Boling, the men’s lacrosse sports information director. They talk daily. There is a lot of ground to cover.
When Championship Weekend is hosted at Gillette, it’s co-hosted by Harvard, and when it’s at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, it’s co-hosted by Drexel. When it’s at Scott Stadium, it’s hosted solely by Virginia.
No NFL staff. Just a college athletic department, and the NCAA people parachuting in.
“They're like, ‘Okay, well, who's the contact for this?’” D’Ambrogi said. “And I'm like, ‘That's me. Still me.’ And they're like, ‘Oh, okay. Normally there's like seven people on this call.’”
Virginia did a test run at Scott Stadium in March, for a game against Utah. D’Ambrogi said it was helpful. But only to an extent.
Reported attendance that day numbered 3,358. It was roughly eight times that number Saturday, when No. 1 seed Princeton hammered Duke and No. 2 seed Notre Dame sprinted away from No. 6 seed Syracuse. D’Ambrogi said 12,000 tickets exited the market before the matchups even got finalized.
Hotels nearly sold out around the same time. Hotels.com, on a search for hotels in Charlottesville on Thursday, warned in thin red letters of the scarcity. Three rooms left at Virginia Guesthouse Hotel, four at Kimpton the Forum, one at the Graduate.
One thing could have multiplied the event’s power. Virginia entered the tournament on possibly the most torrid streak in the country. But the fifth-seeded Cavaliers lost in the first round against Georgetown, ending what former Virginia Coach Lars Tiffany called a “hair-raising, death-defying, rollercoaster journey.”
Like in 1977 and 1982, when the championship game was also held at Scott, Virginia failed to complete the circular route back to its own stadium.
Even still, the event’s alighting on home turf brings tremendous visibility to Virginia — and, of course, revenue. It is an opportunity other schools may get in the future.
Lincoln Financial Field will host in 2027, and Gillette Stadium will host in 2028. But Colagiovanni said the committee is open to returning to a college stadium.
“Everything will be on the table as they look, and they'll see who puts in the best bid, and what makes the most sense for the sport,” Colagiovanni said. “I’m sure there will be a lot of interest from both pro and college.”
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