CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – While its own lacrosse program was thrust into turmoil by an unexpected coaching change, the University of Virginia will host the sport’s Final Four weekend Saturday, Sunday and Monday at Scott Stadium.

UVA expects between 30,000 and 35,000 fans a day for the event, which starts with the Division I semifinals on Saturday, continues with the Division II and III championship games Sunday and concludes with the Division I title game Monday.

It will be the first time the sport’s final weekend unfolds on a college campus since Rutgers played host to the Final Four in 2002.

“The NCAA has hosted this event in professional stadiums,” UVA director of events and facilities Ana D’Ambrogi told Cville Right Now. “It hasn’t been on a campus like this in a very long time. A lot of people are really excited to be bringing back a college championship to a college campus.”

Saturday’s first semifinal, at noon, pits top-seed Princeton against unseeded Duke. Then, at 2:30 p.m., second-seeded Notre Dame faces six-seed Syracuse.

On Sunday, Tufts plays Rochester Institute of Technology for the Division III national championship. Then, at 4 p.m., Adelphi plays Tampa for the D-II title.

This year’s Final Four had been set to be played at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. But when the World Cup named that venue as a host site in 2023, the NCAA found itself in the market for a new home for the lacrosse championship.

D’Ambrogi said former UVA coach Lars Tiffany, who the school announced this week would not be returning to the program after 10 seasons and two national championships, approached the administration with the idea of hosting the event. The NCAA had recently found out its Gillette would not be available.

After consulting with the NCAA, UVA and D’Ambrogi decided to pursue hosting. They put in a bid and were selected as the Final Four’s site.

D’Ambrogi said UVA will split ticket revenue from the tournament with the NCAA, and split concession and alcohol sales with Aramark, the stadium vendor. The school will make all the money off parking.

She said when it’s all said and done, UVA hopes to make “a couple hundred thousand dollars” from hosting the Final Four.

D’Ambrogi said the actual game-day operation will be similar to hosting a football game at Scott Stadium. She said one of the biggest challenges will be that for many of the fans who turn out for the lacrosse Final Four, this will be their first visit to Scott Stadium, if not Charlottesville.

“Our general event operation is the same. We’re going to set up gates. We going to have metal detectors, ticket scanners, RMC, nothing in that sense changes,” she said. “We have parking lots and whatnot. The biggest thing is that when you have a football game, 80% of those fans have been here before, they’ve been coming to every game for the last 30 years. People are familiar. They know their path. They know where they’re going. They know the policies, the expectations and everything. When you have an event like this, similar to a concert, 95% of people have never been here before.”
D’Ambrogi said her staff also studied and learned from the recent Luke Combs concert at Scott Stadium. While that event was largely run by the John Paul Jones Arena staff, D’Ambrogi said her group learned some important things about parking and traffic flow.

During the regular season, UVA’s men’s and women’s teams hosted a double-header at Scott. On March 21, the men downed Utah 16-11, and the women lost to Syracuse, 6-5. That event gave D’Ambrogi’s team a dry-run to test out the venue as a lacrosse site.

“It wasn’t the event that we were worried about. It was the game,” she said. “Does the field fit? Does do the benches align? Do they make sense how we flow from the locker room out of the field? You know, having both teams on the same side is very different than football. Football, you’re on opposite sides of the field. So, making sure that as they come out of the locker rooms. They’re not crossing each other in any way. Where are the officials coming from? And so we got that experience, which we learned a lot from.”

The event is expected to have a financial impact beyond UVA’s grounds.

Anna Whitlow, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau, told Cville Right Now that area hotels are seeing an uptick in reservations for the weekend, likely because of the event.

“It’s really great to be able to showcase our amazing sports facilities at UVA to showcase that is a really nice opportunity,” Whitlow said. “It also is a really good business opportunity for our hotels. We have hotels that are filled this weekend with guests, both who are working with the championship, the teams that are visiting, as well as attendees and visitors who are spectators for it.”

Whitlow said last year, the area had a 76.5% hotel occupancy rate for Memorial Weekend, with an average daily rate of $210.71. Data for this weekend won’t be available until next week.

Whitlow added the event should also help keep area restaurants and shopping outlets busy over the long weekend. She said local businesses are running Final Four-themed promotions that can be found at the CACVB’s website.