Continuing to heal on the playing field
Hokies help campus cope with tragedy
Four days after the tranquility of Virginia Tech's bucolic campus in Blacksburg, Va., was shattered by the crackle of gunfire from a student assassin, it was left to the school's baseball team to help a grieving student body soldier through the sorrow and pain of the worst shooting massacre in United States history.
After a game against William & Mary April 18 was canceled because of the tragedy, Virginia Tech baseball coach Pete Hughes and his team stepped up to the plate to help the Hokies' community get back on its collective feet by hosting the University of Miami in a three-game series last weekend at English Field.
Emotionally spent, the Hokies were swept by the Hurricanes, 11-9, 4-3, and 9-5.
"We were the first team to play a sporting event on campus," said Hughes by telephone Monday from Blacksburg. "It was something not a lot of us were looking forward to, but we knew we were playing for a lot of people here at Virginia Tech. But I don't know if any of us really wanted to play. The emotions were still so raw."
The emotions are likely to remain unchanged for Hughes, the former Boston College coach, when he brings his Hokies to Chestnut Hill for a three-game weekend set against the Eagles at Shea Field, beginning tomorrow at 2:30. It will be the first time Hughes, a 39-year-old Brockton native who went 250-181-2 in eight seasons at The Heights, has been back to Boston since Oct. 4, when he joined his two brothers at the bedside of their dying 69-year-old father, Thomas.
"It's going to be good [to get back] on so many different levels," Hughes said. "In the end, this weekend is going to be good. I just wish it happened before last weekend. I'm looking forward to it, as far as going back and seeing all the friendly faces and all the people I worked with for eight years at BC."
The Eagles, winners of five straight games before yesterday's 2-0 loss to Northeastern in the Beanpot championship at Fenway Park, will be eager to reunite with their old coach, as well as Hokies assistant coaches Dave Turgeon and Mike Gambino, and volunteer coach Tom Mackor, all of whom have BC ties.
"Our players will have a little emotional baggage with Pete coming back," said BC coach Mik Aoki, who served as an assistant under Hughes before succeeding him. "But it pales in comparison to what Pete, those players, and his staff have gone through."
BC plans a subdued observance of the Virginia Tech tragedy before tomorrow's game. "We want to do something that's appropriate, but at the same time we want to do something that is respectful," said Chris Cameron, BC's sports information director.
"I just hope our guys can focus on playing a baseball game and not worry about having so much on their shoulders," Hughes said. "I just want them to get into that mind-set. Our 10 seniors deserve it. I don't want their senior year to be defined by that horrific event."
And yet, as much as he is determined to not allow the tragedy to taint his team's season, it is difficult for Hughes not to be reminded of it daily. "I look out the window of my office and I can see the dorm [Ambler Johnston Hall] where the first shootings took place," he said. "And the killer's dorm [Harper Hall], I drive by it every day."
Hughes said his team had just been swept at Florida State and had returned to campus at 3 on the morning of the killings. When the shootings began, Hughes said he was at home, relaxing on his day off, when he got a call from his wife, Debby, who found herself locked in at a local gym near campus with the two youngest of their five children: Grace 4, and PJ, 2.
"My three older boys [Thomas, 10; Hal, 8; and Dominic, 6] were in school when she called me to say that there was a gunman on the loose," Hughes recalled. "I turned on the TV and saw the news and the number they were reporting at the time was 20 victims."
It was then, Hughes said, he became paralyzed with fright. "I immediately got on the phone to my assistants and told them to have everyone on the team check in with us," he said. "Twenty minutes later, everyone had checked in, but those were the longest 20 minutes of my life."
Hughes said one of his players, senior pitcher Greg Fryman of Gibsonia, Pa., had a 10 a.m. class scheduled at Norris Hall, where 30 of the 32 people were killed by Seung-Hui Cho . "He would have been there, but he got e-mailed the night before by his professor that the class had been canceled," Hughes said.
The only victim Hughes said he had any familiarity with was Mike Pohle, a student who worked as a bartender at a local eatery Hughes and his wife frequented.
"Seeing how this school dealt with the tragedy, and how everyone in this tight-knit community came together and supported one another and bonded like a family, it just reinforced my feeling about this place and made me feel like I made the right decision [to come here] ," said Hughes.
"But it just goes to show you that no place is completely insulated from a lunatic."
Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com. 