The University of Virginia's sports teams are called the Cavaliers. The mascot is a mounted swordsman referring to the time
when Virginia earned its nickname, the "Old Dominion." The Commonwealth was a hotbed for royalists to the crown, called cavaliers in the days
of the English Civil War. An unofficial moniker, the Wahoos (or Hoos for short), is also commonly used. Though originally only used by the student
body, both terms (Wahoos and Hoos) have come into use by the media.Since joining in 1953, UVa's teams have participated in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Its men's basketball team has
twice been to the Final Four, and its football team has twice been honored as
ACC Champions. In recent years, the University's strongest sports have been Soccer and
Lacrosse, both winning numerous NCAA
championships in the past fifteen years. The men's soccer team won four consecutive national titles (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994) and men's lacrosse added national championships in 1999 and 2003. The women's lacrosse team added the University's most recent NCAA championship in 2004.Scott Stadium sits across from the first-year dorms along Alderman
Road, and it is home to the University of Virginia's most popular sport: football. The University's team shares the "Oldest Rivalry in the South" with the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill ("UNC") and the schools have played 110 times, including every year since 1919. In what has become an even more heated rivalry, the team faces off with in-state foe Virginia
Tech each Thanksgiving Saturday for the Commonwealth Cup, annually given to the winner of this game played 85 times
and every year since 1970.Basketball is also very popular at the University. At its recent height in
the 1980s, the men's basketball team was better than perennial power Duke and second only to UNC in that decade's
cumulative ACC standings. The 1990s and 2000s have seen a bit of a slide for the
program to the middle of the pack in the conference, but UVa is currently building a new facility, John Paul Jones Arena, to replace University Hall. The new arena is
scheduled to open in the Fall of 2006.