Craig Littlepage, a 1969 Cheltenham High School graduate and former University of Virginia athletics director, was recently honored by the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) as a recipient of the 2023 UNITE Award.

The UNITE Award is an initiative of the ACC’s Committee for Racial and Social Justice (CORE – Champions of Racial Equity). The former Cheltenham High basketball star was named Virginia’s athletics director in 2001, becoming the first African-American athletics director in both ACC and school history.

Through his leadership, student-athletes saw success in their sport, in the classroom and in the community. Virginia teams won 13 national championships and 76 ACC titles during his tenure.

 “Craig is one of the most highly respected individuals within the ACC, among his peers, and across the overall landscape of collegiate athletics,” Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford said. “Even more impressive is how remarkable he is as a person, which is why I’ve always described him as one of the true gentlemen in our profession.”

At Cheltenham, Littlepage led the Panthers to the state championship game in 1968, earning All-American, All-Region, and All-State honors. He went on to play for the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from Penn’s Wharton School in 1973 with a degree in economics. 

Littlepage served as the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania from 1982 to 1985 and at Rutgers University from 1985 to 1988. He was inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame in 2016.

For more on his career, you can click here.

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