Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 1 | August 2019

38 Inside Hokie Sports Before the game or after , Preston’s Restaurant is a delicious place for a new game-day tradition. Start with our fresh breakfast buffet. Order lunch or dinner from our mouth-watering a la carte menu of seasonal cuisine. And don’t forget the Valley’s best brunch, every Sunday at Preston’s. Make Preston’s Restaurant your game-day tradition. @PrestonsRestaurant @PrestonsIVTSCC 540.231.0120 | www.InnatVirginiaTech.com 901 Prices Fork Rd, Blacksburg, VA 24061 (inside The Inn at Virginia Tech) Reservations recommended. A delicious game-day tradition. But there was a problem—her mom couldn’t afford to pay for that. NCAA rules prohibit schools from offsetting expenses for unofficial visits. Her grandfather solved the dilemma, coming forward and paying for both the airfare and the hotel room. He also tagged along, not wanting Raffety, then 15, to make a cross-country venture by herself. That trip impacted her more than she imagined. “He was the one who walked me around this campus for the first time,” Raffety said. “Seeing the smile on his face and me being as happy as I was really sealed the deal. Everything was amazing, all the support in all aspects. I couldn’t have passed up any of that.” She committed to Tech, but interestingly, her final two options came down to Columbia, an Ivy League school, and Tech—an odd combination, particularly for a California kid. Yet both presented the same road block of forcing her to leave home and her mom. On her official visit to Tech in the fall of her senior season at Marin Catholic, Raffety brought her mom—NCAA rules allow schools to pay the expenses for an official visit. She needed her mom to validate a decision this big. Like her daughter, Vanny Raffety fell in love with Virginia Tech. “She was like, ‘You have to come here,’” Carol said. “She loved it. Now she tries to come out one weekend when we play two volleyball games and there’s a football game. She loved it when she came here, and she still does.” That reaffirmed Raffety’s decision to accept a scholarship to Tech. The combination of the beauty of the campus, the academics, the ACC, and truthfully, the free education overrode everything else. “I think it takes a lot of guts to travel that far away from your family when your family can’t come here that often,” Wilson said. “But Carol’s got an inner strength.” In July of 2016, a month after her high school graduation and only 17 years old, she flew with her mom to Boston to visit with her aunts in Rhode Island. One of her aunts and her uncle then drove her and her mom to Blacksburg to move her into the dormitory. After moving her in and getting her settled, they said good-byes and departed for Rhode Island. For the first time, Carol Raffety was alone. “That was a really sad day,” she said. SUCCESS AT TECH Raffety gradually immersed herself into college life, with time spent focusing on classes and volleyball. She worked her way into immediate playing time and broke the Tech freshman record for digs with 481—a record that had lasted for more than a decade. Yet she never took her focus away from her mom and still hasn’t. She essentially checks in daily, either through a text or by calling. Absence has actually strengthened their bond. “I was her whole world, and volleyball was her whole world,” Raffety said. “My sister was growing up and doing her own thing, but she [her mom] had me, the baby. Once I took off, that’s when she was like, ‘What am I going to do?’ “I worried about her for a while. Now she’s back home. I told her, ‘This is the time to focus on you for the first time in your life. You’ve been carrying us on your back and shoulders for 20-plus years, so this is a good thing.’ I was just reassuring her. She’s happy now. It’s all good.” Everything has turned out well for Raffety, too. A coaching change after her freshman season resulted in Wilson’s arrival, and that created some uncertainty when looking toward the future. But Raffety credits Wilson for turning her into a more confident and stronger player, student, and woman. That became evident when Raffety and former teammate Jaila Tolbert tried out for the U.S. National Team in Colorado Springs, Colorado in February. She hesitated to accept the invitation, but at O PPORTUNITIES DIGGING HER Continued from page 37