Accolades: Williams cited among nation’s top athletic directors

Cavalier athletic teams have won 12 national championships and 26 Atlantic Coast Conference titles during Williams’ nine-year tenure.

Under Williams’ leadership, Virginia Athletics developed a master plan that included both the $90 million, 90,000-square-foot Molly and Robert Hardie Football Operations Center, which opened in June 2024, and the Harrison Family Olympic Sports Center, which opened its doors in the fall of 2025.

Williams speaks at graduation. Under her watch, UVA student-athletes have set records for placement on the ACC Honor Roll and achieved the highest grade-point average in program history. (University Communications photo)

The final phase of the master plan includes a permanent location for the Center for Citizen Leaders and Sports Ethics to help student-athletes benefit from UVA’s network of alumni and supporters while being exposed to learning opportunities focused on leadership, career and personal development and community engagement.

UVA launched a groundbreaking Pathways program to assist in those ventures. Pathways uses University, community and alumni resources to connect student-athletes with areas of interest to help jumpstart career goals, enhance valuable skills and accelerate their leadership abilities.

In the classroom, UVA student-athletes have set records for placement on the ACC Honor Roll, achieved the highest grade-point average in program history, and been recognized by the NCAA for outstanding academic progress reports.

Williams’ appointment at Virginia in October 2017 made her the first female African American athletics director at a Power Five conference institution.

Williams was selected to work on the NCAA’s NIL Legislation Solutions Group to examine student-athlete name, image and likeness rights and was also selected for the NCAA Federal and State Legislation Working Group.

In 2021, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips appointed Williams to the newly formed ACC Football Subcommittee, which allows the league’s head football coaches to be involved in the development and growth of the sport within the conference.

In 2024, she was appointed to a three-year term on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee. She became the first African American female athletic director named to the committee.

To the victors go the spoils

The UVA men’s golf team spent the entire season ranked in the top four nationally, including 11 weeks at No. 1, and won a program-record seven tournaments while finishing second in three others. The Cavaliers claimed a second straight Atlantic Coast Conference championship, shared the NCAA Winston-Salem Regional title and reached the final stroke-play stage of the NCAA Championships.

Dustin Groves, left, and Bowen Sargent pose at UVA’s Birdwood Golf Course. Both received national coaching honors after leading the Cavaliers to their second consecutive Atlantic Coast Conference men’s golf championship. (UVA Athletics photo)

Now, the postseason honors are rolling in. On June 9, Tony Markel Family Men’s Golf Head Coach Bowen Sargent was named the 2026 Dave Williams National Coach of the Year. After being a finalist in 2025, Sargent became the first from UVA to win it.

Recent UVA graduate Ben James, a four-time, first-team All-American, is the newest member of the PGA Tour. He tees off at the U.S. Open this week. (UVA Athletics photo)

Sargent will serve as an assistant for Team USA at the 2026 Arnold Palmer Cup, scheduled for July 3-5 at Tralee Golf Links in West Barrow, Ireland.

The honor came a month after associate head coach Dustin Groves won the 2026 Jan Strickland Outstanding Assistant Coach Award, the first Cavalier assistant to win the honor.

The Strickland Award is presented annually to the NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA or NJCAA assistant coach who has excelled in working with student-athletes both on the course and in the classroom. Groves will receive his award in December during the Golf Coaches Association of America national convention in Las Vegas.

Sargent won the Strickland Award as an assistant at Tennessee in 2004, making UVA the nation’s only program with two Strickland Award winners on staff.

Four Cavaliers earned PING All-East Region honors, including Ben James, the fifth Division I golfer since 1958 to be a four-time, first-team All-American. James turned professional at the end of the season and joined the PGA Tour, recently qualifying for the U.S. Open.

Law professor wins John Hope Franklin Prize

School of Law professor Alice Abrokwa has won the 2026 John Hope Franklin Prize for her article examining the disproportionate application of the label “noncompliant” to Black patients in healthcare settings.

Awarded by the Law and Society Association, the prize honors “exceptional scholarship in the field of Race, Racism and the Law.” Recipients were recognized May 28 at the association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Law professor Alice Abrokwa is an expert in disability, health and antidiscrimination law. She recently won the 2026 John Hope Franklin Prize. (UVA School of Law photo)

“Too Stubborn to Care for: The Impacts of Discrimination on Patient Noncompliance,” published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, calls for reforms to address medical providers’ unconscious biases and structural barriers to treatment.

Abrokwa, a former federal attorney and civil rights litigator, is an expert in disability, health and antidiscrimination law.

Her research was inspired by stories such as Elijah McClain, a Black man in Colorado who was given a fatal dose of ketamine in 2019 after police told responding paramedics he was “noncompliant.”

Abrokwa said both scholarship and public discourse often focus on police action, but it was the medical providers, “whose job it is to provide care and not do harm,” who took a lethal course of action in response to the perception that McClain was “noncompliant.” A police officer and two paramedics were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in McClain’s death.

“I was surprised to learn just how extensive the legal consequences are of being labeled a ‘noncompliant’ patient,” she said. “I don’t believe most people realize that how your medical providers perceive you and describe you in your medical records can lead to you being denied Social Security benefits or having those benefits terminated, losing a medical malpractice lawsuit or even being considered a less credible witness regarding what your own body is experiencing.”

To address the problem, Abrokwa proposed shifting how healthcare institutions and medical providers modify treatment given to patients before labeling them as “noncompliant” in their medical records. These steps could include adopting protocols to ensure providers effectively communicate with patients about the recommended treatment and to address any barriers patients may face in following that plan.

Work on educational disparities earns rare honor

Kimberly Jenkins Robinson is a Distinguished Scholar Award winner, according to the American Educational Research Association, for her decades of work in the field of education law. (UVA School of Law photo)

Law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson won a Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association.

The Law and Education Special Interest Group presented the award in April at the association’s annual meeting in Los Angeles. Bestowed for the first time in 10 years, the recognition honors “an individual with an established record of scholarship and service to the field of education law.”

“For two decades, my scholarship has been critiquing how law and policy cause harmful disparities in educational opportunities,” Robinson said. “I consistently propose novel reforms for how our nation could remedy these harms.”

Robinson is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs, and Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law. She is the inaugural director of the school’s Education Rights Institute and directs the Center for the Study of Race and Law. She is also a professor of education at the School of Education and Human Development and a professor of law, education and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.