Black Coaches Association To Honor Craig Littlepage

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May 21, 2003

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – University of Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage will receive the Black Coaches Association’s Athletics Administrator of the Year award during the association’s annual awards banquet on June 7 at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis.

Eddie Robinson, retired head football coach at Grambling State University; Clarence “Big House” Gaines, retired head men’s basketball coach at Winston-Salem State University; and Marian Washington, current head women’s basketball coach at the University of Kansas, are scheduled to receive Lifetime Achievement awards at the banquet. Also being honored are Tyrone Willingham, head football coach at Notre Dame, as the Male Coach of the Year; Sonya Locke, head women’s volleyball coach at Southern Illinois University, as Female Coach of the Year; and Robert Hughes, head boys’ basketball coach at Dunbar (Texas) High School, as High School Coach of the Year.

Littlepage is in his second year as Virginia’s athletic director. He is the first African-American athletic director in Atlantic Coast Conference history and recently was listed 46th on Sports Illustrated’s list of the 101 most influential minorities in sports.

Littlepage has been a member of UVa’s athletic administration since 1990. He served six years (1995-2001) as senior associate director of athletics at Virginia, managing all aspects of the athletic department’s day-to-day operations. Before that, he spent four years as associate director of athletics for programs. He originally joined Virginia’s athletic administrative staff in 1990 as an assistant athletic director.

In February of 2002, he was appointed to the 10-member Division I men’s basketball tournament committee by the NCAA Championship/Competition Cabinet. Previously, Littlepage was a member of the NCAA Division I Infractions Committee and the NCAA Academics, Eligibility and Compliance Cabinet, serving on the Recruiting and Student-Athlete Reinstatement Subcommittees. He chaired the Reinstatement Subcommittee in 1999-2000.

Prior to beginning his career in athletic administration, Littlepage served two stints as an assistant coach with the Virginia men’s basketball program, from 1976 to 1982 and from 1988 to 1990. He held head coaching positions at Pennsylvania (1982-85) and at Rutgers (1985-88). He was also an assistant coach at Villanova for two years and at Yale for one year before joining the UVa men’s basketball program as an assistant coach in 1976.

The LaMott, Pa., native earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. He was a member of three Ivy League basketball championship teams at Penn and was instrumental in the Quakers’ drive to three consecutive NCAA Eastern Regional playoff appearances.