Grant Misch Providing Leadership for Virginia Ahead of Sixth Season

Sixth-year senior tight end Grant Misch is looking to end his lengthy UVA football career on a high note in 2023

Grant Misch recorded his first-career touchdown reception as a redshirt freshman in 2019, a pivotal six-yard pass from Bryce Perkins that helped Virginia take down North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Nearly four years later, Misch is now an elder statesman in the UVA locker room and is providing much-needed veteran leadership for the Cavaliers as he enters his sixth and final college football season. 

Misch has seen it all in his time at Virginia, experiencing the heights of an ACC Coastal title and trips to the ACC Championship Game and the Orange Bowl, as well as the lows of a coaching change midway through his career and an unspeakable tragedy that claimed the lives of three of his teammates last November. 

As Virginia looks to turn the page to the challenge of a new season, offensive coordinator Des Kitchings used the phrase "extremely ecstatic" to describe how he felt that Misch and Sackett Wood Jr., a senior tight end, decided to return this season. 

"I am extremely ecstatic that Misch and Sackett came back because they obviously had an option that they could have just graduated and been done with college football. They brought a lot of leadership and experience," said Kitchings, who also noted that Misch lost some weight this offseason and is healthier and "moving better." 

Now standing at 6'5", 240 pounds, Misch is in great shape and also feels that his team is in great shape too because of a scheduling change that allowed the team to spend significantly more time together during fall camp than in years past. 

"I would say it's been different because of how much time we've spent together as a team," Misch said after practice on Thursday. "We hang out in the locker room all the time. It used to be - get wherever you could and take a nap. Now, guys are hanging out, doing things all day together. So, I think building team camaraderie has really helped us on the field during this camp." 

Misch says there are still some heated and intense moments during practice, but he says those things don't carry over into the locker room. "We have some good competition out on the field, but it's nice to see that it never translates over to the locker room, where we've kinda seen that happen before." 

Misch began his career catching passes from Bryce Perkins and then developed some solid chemistry with Brennan Armstrong over the last three years. Now, Misch is starting over again with a new tandem of quarterbacks, headlined by Monmouth transfer Tony Muskett and true freshman Anthony Colandrea. 

"Tony, the first day he walked in here, he's kind of like a natural-born leader," Misch said of Muskett. "Very vocal, wants to do the right thing, wants everyone else to do the right thing with him. He's an easy guy to follow along and get behind. On the field, he's obviously a very talented quarterback. He's got a nice arm and is very accurate."

While Muskett is in line to be Virginia's starter this season, Tony Elliott has yet to officially make that call because Colandrea has been so consistently impressive from the moment he set foot on Grounds in January. Grant Misch agrees. 

"Colandrea, he's a stud. He's a young gunslinger," Misch said. "His arm is very impressive and he got the system very quickly. For never being in a system like this, never being in college like Tony has, he picked up on it very quickly and he's done a pretty good job." 

Acknowledging that the Virginia offense was far from ideal in 2022, Misch thinks that things will be different this season because the Cavaliers are more "bought in" to the system. "I think it's a couple of things. I think buy-in is one of them in year 2. People are more bought in," Misch said. 

With many new faces on the roster, especially on the offensive side of the ball, Virginia has a lot to prove this season. As expected, media experts have largely prognosticated that the Cavaliers will finish at the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference. With just a couple of weeks remaining until the season begins, Grant Misch said the most important thing for the Hoos to do is to focus on themselves and not pay attention to any of that "outside noise."

"This point in the year is where you hear a lot of outside noise," Misch said. "I think us just being able to focus on ourselves and on our mission, not worrying about whatever else is being said about us is our best goal to have success." 

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