Woolfolk a full-time baseball player at UVa - for the moment
Players on the Virginia baseball team got their first look at first-year pitcher Jay Woolfolk in a live practice setting on Monday.
The reviews were glowing.
“I caught Jay for the first time the other day,” said UVa sophomore catcher Kyle Teel, “and I was really impressed by what he’s got. He’s gonna be really big help for our staff this year.”
“Definitely impressed me a lot,” agreed third-year pitcher Matt Wyatt. “The arm strength’s there. The body’s there; he’s a big, strong kid. And the ball just releases out of his hand. It’s pretty electric.”
“He has a very lively arm,” said fifth-year infielder Devin Ortiz, who stepped into the batter’s box to face Woolfolk. “Really excited to see him throw this year and just be a big help for us.
Woolfolk isn’t just the latest big-time recruit trying to earn a role on the UVa staff as a freshman. He’s attempting to become the rare two-sport athlete who plays both baseball and football at the university.
Woolfolk appeared in five games at quarterback last fall, becoming the first true freshman to start a game at quarterback for UVa since 1977 when he replaced an injured Brennan Armstrong against Notre Dame in November. He enters his first spring at UVa second behind Armstrong on the depth chart, but with a new football coaching staff in place.
The plan had always been for Woolfolk, the 2019 Virginia Gatorade Player of the Year for baseball as a sophomore at Benedictine, to play both sports at college. He was the No 5 player and the No. 2 right-handed pitcher in the state in the class of 2021, according to Perfect Game. On the football field, the dual-threat QB was a three-star prospect ranked the No. 15 player in Virginia. He arrived at UVa last summer after going unselected in the MLB Draft, and spent the fall semester focused solely on football.
New football coach Tony Elliott—who once dreamed of being “Darryl Strawberry 2.0” (despite playing catcher) while growing up in California—said this week that the two-sport plan remains fully in place despite the change in leadership at the McCue Center.
“I actually love it,” Elliott said. “The biggest thing is if a guy can help one of the other teams in the athletic department, then I'm all for it.”
So Woolfolk was across the street on Tuesday afternoon, the first time Disharoon Park had been cleared of enough snow to allow the baseball team to conduct a full team practice. Woolfolk will be a full-time baseball player for the next month, head coach Brian O’Connor said. Once the football team begins spring practices in early March, the plan will be reevaluated to allow the right-hander to juggle his schedules with both sports.
Most of the pitchers on the UVa staff began throwing programs in December in the build-up to the season opener on February 18th. Woolfolk was still with the football team at that point, preparing for a Fenway Bowl appearance that would eventually be canceled. As a result, the first-year is about three weeks behind his fellow pitchers, with no set role yet on the staff.
But O’Connor was watching as Woolfolk held his own against the No. 7 team in the country last November, when he overcame seven sacks to throw for 196 yards and run for 49 more. The head baseball coach saw the kind of poise that a pitcher needs when brought into a tight situation with a game at stake in ACC play.
“He proved this year with his opportunities under center in football that he can handle the moment,” O’Connor said. “And so I'm just impressed with him. He's an even keel, highly competitive kid that I think is going to do some really good things.”
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