More than 100 alumni and friends gathered in December 2022 for a Virginia Tech basketball game in Blacksburg. It wasn’t all about sports. Most fans in the crowd were old friends and classmates of VT head men’s basketball coach and Emory & Henry alumnus Mike Young, ’86.
This tradition started years ago when Mike was at Wofford University. Mike’s friend Gary Jones, ’83, organized an event called “Waspers for Wofford”; when Mike took the head job at Tech, Gary focused on Hokies instead of Terriers. Gary even leads the crew in an altered version of a favorite old Virginia Tech chant: “Hokie Wasper Hokie Hy! EHC and VPI!”
Everyone gathered before the game for refreshments at Blacksburg’s Bull and Bones and then headed to Cassell Coliseum to watch VT beat Grambling State 74-48.
Tickets for the event sold out fast. Suzanne Crockett Hauschner, ’86, and BJ Humphreys Graham, ’86 (above), with their Mike Young “fans.” Mike took time after the game to speak to everyone who attended, including Greg Griffin, ’87 (below right). Alumni Jerry Reed, ’85, Mary Sue Harris Caplinger, ’83, and Curtis Burchett, ’85 (below middle), gathered at Bull and Bones.
Throughout April, the College celebrated National Poetry Month by hosting the Catherine Burns Larmore Visiting Poet Series with ecopoet Sherwin Bitsui and the Daniel Leidig Lectureship in Poetry with Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips. Both Bitsui and Phillips are nationally renowned and award-winning poets. Each poet visited an English class taught by Professor Matthew Kelley, gave a poetry reading and signed broadside poems for attendees.
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