A native of LaMott, PA, Craig Littlepage began his sports journey at Cheltenham High School, outside of Philadelphia. Later he attended the University of Pennsylvania where he played as a center in basketball on three Ivy League and Philadelphia’s Big-Five Championship teams in the early 1970’s. Following college, he transitioned to coaching, holding assistant coach roles with Villanova University (1973-75), Yale University (1975-76), and the University of Virginia (1976-82 & 1988-90), as well as head coach at the University of Pennsylvania (1982-85) and Rutgers (1985-88). After eighteen years in coaching, Littlepage would transition to Athletics Administration, beginning as Assistant Athletic Director for UVA in 1990. Over the next 27 years, holding various administrative positions, Littlepage would be instrumental in Virginia’s growth as a top ten overall athletics program in Division-I athletics. Littlepage served as Director of Athletics from 2001 until his retirement in 2017. At the time of his appointment as UVA’s Director of Athletics, Littlepage was the first African American Athletics Director in ACC history. During his seventeen years leading the Cavaliers’ program, UVA won 13 NCAA National Championships along 76 Atlantic Coast Conference titles. The 76 ACC Championships were the most of any member school during that time. In addition to his work at UVA, Littlepage served as the chair of the Men’s Division-I Basketball Selection Committee (2005-06), was a member of the USA Basketball Board of Directors from (2005-08), the Executive Committee of the National Association of the Collegiate Athletics Directors (2006-10), and also served as a member of the NCAA Infractions Committee and the NCAA Academics, Eligibility and Compliance Cabinet, and chaired numerous ACC Committees. For his outstanding work, he was named the Black Coaches Association’s Athletics Administrator of the Year in both 2003 and 2006. He has previously been inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame (2014), the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Hall of Fame (2021) and presented the Montgomery County (PA) Coaches’ Hall of Fame Lifetime Award (2016). In 2023 Littlepage was named the International Trailblazers Sports awardee.
