​CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Release via UVA Athletics) — When quarterback Beau Pribula was considering his options after entering the transfer portal, he looked at Virginia and saw a program that finished atop the ACC’s regular-season standings and won 11 games, including the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, in 2025.Pribula wasn’t familiar with the struggles that preceded the Cavaliers’ breakthrough season. He knows more now. As they killed time Wednesday morning waiting for the start of ACC Football Kickoff, offensive tackle McKale Boley and linebacker Kam Robinson shared stories with their new teammate of painful defeats they experienced early in their UVA careers.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHearing that, Pribula said later, was a little jarring, “because of all the success that they had last year.”That success was especially meaningful for the UVA players, like Boley, who’d suffered through a string of losing campaigns. In 2022, the Wahoos’ first season under head coach Tony Elliott, they finished 3-7 and dealt with a tramautic shooting that took the lives of three players. Virginia went 3-9 in 2023 and 5-7 in ’24, and that made its acomplishments in ’25 that much more special.“I definitely have a huge appreciation,” said Boley, who entered the program as a freshman in 2022.In the spring, UVA’s returning players received their Gator Bowl rings during a team event at a Charlottesville bowling alley. Sitting next to offensive guard Noah Josey, who arrived at Virginia in 2021, “I almost had tears coming to my eyes,” Boley recalled.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWith so much player movement in today’s game—UVA has 46 newcomers this year, for example—“not a lot of guys know what we had to go through just to get to this point,” Boley said, “the losing seasons, the getting blown out, the being beat, all those different things. Just seeing that all the work we’ve done has paid off and the culture that Coach E was trying to build when he first got here is finally being fully set in place, it’s just really good to see.”Representing UVA at the ACC’s annual preseason media gathering were Elliott, Robinson, Pribula and Boley. Training camp begins in a couple weeks for the Cavaliers, and that will end what Elliot called a “really, really fun offseason.”What made that possible, he added, were “things that have taken place years in advance. I want to thank all of our supporters, fans and donors for all that they’ve done investing in this program. I think that everybody knows the road that we been on at the University of Virginia since taking over as the head coach with our new staff. I’m grateful for all of the adversity that we went through in the early stages of building the program. But I’m more thankful for just the commitment, the commitment of the staff, commitment of the players, to the vision. What we were able to experience last year was just that vision coming to life.”Elliott, wh