Blacksburg, Va. — Signs of normalcy are emerging on the Virginia Tech campus this weekend, with many students returning this afternoon in preparation for classes that are to resume Monday morning.
One of the most important rituals on this campus — intercollegiate athletics — resumed over the weekend as the university was host to several intercollegiate games, which had been suspended after last Monday’s mass shooting. The baseball team played the first sporting event on the campus on Friday night, opening a three-game series with the University of Miami. Although the home team was swept in the weekend series, the stadium and surrounding grass were packed with fans, who cheered “Let’s go, Hokies!” during the games.
“We won before we got to the field today. The scoreboard was insignificant,” Virginia Tech’s coach, Pete Hughes, told the Associated Press on Friday night.
A record number of fans — 3,132 — turned out for the first game, about five times the typical attendance number. They observed a 32-second moment of silence (one for each victim) at the game, before which Miami’s coach had announced a $10,000 donation to a memorial fund for victims. Fans also heard a recording of “We Are Virginia Tech,” a poem read on Tuesday by Nikki Giovanni, a poet and distinguished professor at Tech.
On Sunday fans rooted for both the baseball team and the women’s lacrosse team, which lost, 21-17, to the University of Maryland at College Park. Lacrosse players ran to the bleachers after the game and gave high-fives to a row of cheering fans. And on Saturday, a record number of fans watched the Tech softball team sweep a doubleheader from Maryland.
The sports teams seemed to give the campus a lift, but the big planned event for the weekend — the football team’s spring game — was a noticeable cancellation. The annual game between Tech’s first-team offense and defense is a scrimmage in name only, and can draw as many as 45,000 fans to the 66,000-seat Lane Stadium.
In addition to giving fans an early look at the fall prospects for the football team, which has become a national title contender in recent years, the spring game is a chance for Tech’s coaches to woo high-school recruits. At least one newspaper columnist fretted over whether the team would be hurt by the recruiting event’s cancellation. —Paul Fain
