Committing on the spot wasn’t part of the plan.

Virginia was the first Power 5 program to offer Will Bettridge a scholarship and had long been one of his top schools. But the heavily-recruited kicker had seen his stock rise in the weeks since in-person recruiting had opened back up in June, and as a result, Bettridge was in no rush to make a college decision.

But during an official visit to UVa over the last weekend of June, Bettridge found himself in a meeting with Bronco Mendenhall and a few other of the Cavaliers’ coaches.

“I’d say I didn’t even know until right in that moment,” Bettridge told CavsCorner. “I just felt so good in that moment and I just told them that I committed right there. My parents didn’t even know that I was doing it. I did it and I surprised them. I thought in that moment was the best time.”

With that commitment, Bettridge became the 10th member of UVa’s 2022 recruiting class. He sat on the news for a few weeks before publicly announcing the decision on July 8th, choosing the Wahoos over a list of almost a dozen offers that included other finalists Michigan and LSU.

UVa had offered Bettridge in early March, but the kicker had been on the Cavaliers’ recruiting radar for years. They saw him kick as a freshman, then watched another game as a sophomore before they could contact him. Bettridge first heard from the Hoos when Drew Meyer, now in his second season as an analyst for special teams on the UVa staff, sent a text at “12 o’clock on the dot September 1st.” Bettridge would get texts from Meyer on a daily basis, while special teams coordinator Ricky Brumfield would check in a few times a week.

“Both of them definitely did the job right,” Bettridge said.

With the return dead period finally in the rear view, Bettridge went on visits to all three of the schools that ultimately ended up his finalists, plus Georgia Tech and Florida State. He wanted to be thorough with his recruitment and not make a decision without seeing what each school had to offer.

As he performed well for those schools, he began picking up more interest. Some programs offered Bettridge spots as a preferred walk-on that would become a scholarship after his first year, but as he said, “coming into this whole process I knew I was a scholarship-worthy kicker.”

It stood out to Bettridge that the UVa staff liked him enough to offer a full ride while the COVID-19 pandemic still loomed over his recruitment, relying mostly on film after not seeing him kick in person as a junior.

“A lot of the other schools were like, ‘Hey, come kick in person in June and we’ll see where things go from there,’” he said. “But UVa was like, ‘No, we don’t need you to kick. You’re our dude.’”

Bettridge was also attracted to the culture at Virginia. He compared Mendenhall to his head coach at Gulliver Prep in Miami, former UVa linebacker Earl Sims, saying both coaches share the same values. The three other Gulliver Prep products on the Cavaliers’ current roster—fifth-year defensive lineman Mandy Alonso and a pair of sophomores, linebacker D’Sean Perry and defensive back Sean Moore—helped Bettridge feel at home during his official visit. His father has family not far from Charlottesville, and the ability for them to see him play regularly also played a big role in his decision.

Bettridge says his goal once he arrives on Grounds is to earn a starting spot as a freshman. He doesn’t intend to enroll early, however, because he wants to play his senior seasons on the basketball and baseball teams and, as Bettridge pointed out, kickers don’t necessarily have an extensive playbook to master. So his focus is on enjoying his senior year at Gulliver Prep.

“It is a lot of pressure off me, just to know that now is just the time to get better,” he said. “I definitely think my decision was the best time you could make it at. You saw everything, now you get to make a decision, why wait any longer?”

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