There are a lot of variables that a collegiate coach has to account for, but the death of a player is a variable that no coach will ever be able to prepare for.
It’s now the tragic reality that Tony Elliott and the Virginia football team are going through together after three UVA football players were fatally shot late Sunday night in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry were allegedly shot and killed by former Virginia walk-on football player Christopher Jones Jr., who has since been apprehended by the police, Sunday night. All thoughts of the football game played between Pitt and Virginia a day prior now feel irrelevant.
“I’m shocked obviously, don’t even care to talk about the game, we just kinda put it aside,” Narduzzi said Monday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.Â
“Our hearts and our prayers go out to the city of Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, coach Tony Elliot and his football team. They’ve gotta be going through it right now — I can’t imagine losing three guys in the room. Can’t even imagine what’s going on down there.”
It was a situation that could happen to any football team in the country. Narduzzi said that Pitt met as a team Sunday night, for about an hour and a half and left around 8:30 p.m. It could’ve been Virginia’s coaching staff that scheduled a 7 p.m. meeting before letting the players enjoy the rest of their Sunday night, Narduzzi said.
It’s a tragic act of violence that puts everything into perspective for Narduzzi. Three young men lost their lives in a senseless shooting. Football is irrelevant when compared to the heartbreak and grief felt in the community, near and far. It’s hard to think about football following such a tragedy.
“I think that’s — we talk about it all the time, it’s more than just football,” Narduzzi said. “It’s faith and family and football — football being last. And when you see something like that happen, we know it happens a lot more, school shootings wherever it is in Texas or Florida, right here at the Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and then you just got done playing a football team. Davis, a big, tall wideout who didn’t play, I remember seeing him right after the game and shaking his hand and saying, ‘Hey, get healthy.’ It puts things in perspective.”
When Narduzzi was the linebackers coach at Northern Illinois in 2001, Jawan Jackson — who was trying out as a freshman football player — collapsed during spring conditioning and was later pronounced dead at the hospital in DeKalb, Illinois. A rarity in college athletics. Narduzzi lost his father in 1988, another traumatic moment in his life.
“And then you think about what the Virginia football team is going through, that’s a brother in that room,” Narduzzi said.
Narduzzi hasn’t spoken to his team as a whole, since Monday is a day designated day off each week, but he did talk to a few of his players who were around the facility Monday morning. He isn’t sure what he’ll tell the team at this point either.
“It’s just hard, just can’t even fathom what those kids are going through,” Narduzzi said. “So, it’s tough.”
