Hokie Pride

I realize this is a difficult thing to rationalize, considering the amount of blood spilled and dreams ended and lives forever altered this week.

But Virginia Tech should consider itself quite lucky.

Having lived in the D.C. area for well over a decade, there isn't a more vibrant, dedicated, or prideful collegiate community than that of Virginia Tech University. They crowd Hokie-friendly bars on football Sundays, mingling with old friends as they watch their team battle geographic rivals. They have more bumper stickers in circulation than the Obama campaign. On more than one home here in Northern Virginia — roughly a four-hour drive to the Blacksburg campus — I've witnessed displays of flags and logos that go beyond admiration and into absolute devotion; hell, I've even seen an entire barn wall painted with the maroon-and-orange "VT" logo.

Virginia Tech is lucky to have this support system in place at its darkest hour. Had a massacre like this happened on the campus of my alma mater, the University of Maryland, that alumni community would have come together quickly in a show of Terrapin pride. But the Hokies didn't have to come together — they already had these bonds established.

Other schools have alumni; Va. Tech has, with no exaggeration, an extended family.

Leslie Sherman was a member of that family. Sherman was a sophomore at Virginia Tech who lost her life when Cho Seung-Hui turned his twisted attention to her classroom inside Norris Hall.

She had turned 20 this week, two years removed from the halls of West Springfield High School in Springfield, VA. Sherman ran cross-country at West Springfield when I was a sports reporter covering the high-school beat. I wish I could say I recalled watching her run or speaking to her after a race, but the focus was always on the more successful male Spartan runners. Having covered that track program, I know it shares many of the attributes of the Virginia Tech community — tight-knit, supportive, and generational. That many of her teammates are now compassionately commenting on her tragic death is no surprise.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see coverage of Leslie Sherman's life in the pages of local sports sections, because that's how I would have handled it, too. Her life as an athlete is part of her life, which makes it a sports story.

I mention this example because, since Monday, I've been treated to yet another week of the sports media desperately trying to shoehorn coverage of a national tragedy into what amounts to entertainment news. It reminds me of the time when, in the hours after the attacks of 9/11, ESPN managed to get the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies on a cell phone and was able to confirm that, indeed, the Phillies were safe on their team bus while New York crumbled.

Or like now, in the hours after the massacre at Virginia Tech (cue the slow piano music all those pathetic cable news networks pipe in when those words are mentioned), when a local sports anchor here in D.C. asked two Georgetown Hoya players that are headed to the NBA Draft what they thought of the tragedy. Why? Because they attend a city college that looks nothing like Virginia Tech? Because a friend-of-a-friend went there? Or because the sports media is so desperate to transcend its diversionary place in our culture that it will play any angle it can as it seeks validation from the other side of the newsroom?

There's a right way and a wrong way to bring sports into the conversation in the moments following a national tragedy. Both 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina had immediate and immense implications for its local sports franchises and for the national sports organizations of which they were members. There will always be human-interest angles to play, like remembering the fallen through discussions with old teammates and coaches.

The Virginia Tech shooting has some immediate sports news (the cancellation of events) and long-range angles (how the tragedy could affect recruiting, how the Hokies sports community will undoubtedly contribute to the school's healing process). But some of the coverage rang artificial. Talking to Hokies football coach Frank Beamer about the safety of his athletes on Monday afternoon is one thing; talking to him as the de facto spokesman of the university hours after the killings was ill-conceived, considering the breaking nature of the story. ESPN did both on Monday.

Sometimes sports coverage of a tragedy can seem a little forced — you don't see the weatherman on the local news suddenly begin giving the dew point for wherever the latest catastrophe occurred — but it has its place, especially in the Virginia Tech tragedy. That Beamer is the public face for a university that has produced so much more than a few NFL-quality players troubles me, but the fact is that the Hokies faithful wouldn't have it any other way.

Their athletic programs don't define them, but they do bind them; in those bars filled with orange and maroon during fall weekends, in those bleachers filled with old friends at home games. The value of sports for this amazing community was never more evident than inside Cassell Coliseum on Tuesday afternoon, at the end of a heart-breaking yet inspiring campus convocation. Three words rang through the rafters, shouted by students and faculty and alumni and honored guests. Three words, used to inspire countless athletes in countless games, now chanted in order to encourage the most formidable rally in the school's history.

Three words: "Let's Go Hokies."

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].