The Virginia girls’s basketball crew will obtain $776,000 from Alexis Ohanian in every of the subsequent 4 years, based on a supply with information of what quantities to be the biggest donation in program historical past. The annual determine is a nod to enterprise capital agency Seven Seven Six, which Ohanian based in 2020.
Ohanian, a graduate of the college, is seeking to assist the Cavaliers restore their place close to the highest of the ladies’s school basketball world. They had been a pressure within the Nineties, by no means dropping greater than eight video games in a season from 1989-90 via 1996-97. Daybreak Staley, now a legendary coach at South Carolina, starred for Virginia at its peak and infrequently speaks fondly of her time there.
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This system has not posted a profitable document since 2016-17—a skid head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton is making an attempt to finish this yr. Virginia will try to meet up with ACC rivals North Carolina and Duke through the use of Ohanian’s funding as a possible springboard.
The tech entrepreneur, who co-founded the social media platform Reddit, declined to remark. “I’m proud to assist the ladies’s program at my alma mater with this donation,” Ohanian stated in an earlier assertion from the college asserting his pledge. “It’s time to convey the nation’s finest hoops expertise to Charlottesville and win some championships within the subsequent 4 years.”
Ohanian additionally wrote on X that with out Virginia, he would by no means have co-founded Reddit.
Virginia, which declined to remark past its press launch, quoted athletic director Carla Williams as saying the donation “will assist appeal to championship expertise to the College of Virginia and particularly, to UVA Ladies’s Basketball.”
Williams added: “I’m extraordinarily grateful for his foresight and dedication to the way forward for girls’s athletics on the College of Virginia.”
Ohanian is married to tennis legend Serena Williams and has for fairness in sports activities. He was an early investor within the NWSL’s Angel Metropolis FC and nonetheless holds stakes within the membership after its . He additionally the Athlos girls’s observe competitors.
In April, 776 made an funding within the Sports activities Bra, a Portland, Ore. sports activities bar centered on elevating girls’s occasions, to finance their growth franchises. The identify of his 776 agency is impressed by 776 B.C.E., the yr the Olympics began.
(This story has been up to date to notice that Virginia and Ohanian declined remark.)
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