Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 9 No. 6 | June 2017

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10 Inside Hokie Sports
I used to a take a fairly simplistic approach
toward reviewing a season. What worked?
What didn’t? What needs to change? What
should stay the same? All valid questions,
but the older I get, the more I find myself
adding to that list of questions. What did I
learn? Did I grow personally? Did I get better?
That last one I stole from a certain basketball
coach who, I stand fairly certain, asks similar
questions of himself and those around him.
My greatest blessing is to be around people
who challenge me and help me learn. Justin
Fuente and BuzzWilliams, two unique leaders,
each provide me with that opportunity.
Sometimes directly, sometimes forcing me
to interpret, but they both provide consistent
wisdom and direction.
I find it difficult to summarize all the
experiences of the past year, so I want to
illustrate the over-arching theme in a couple
of stories that stuck with me and resonated for
the duration of the past 365 days.
At this time last year, I had only passing
interaction with Fuente. He found himself
experiencing the blender effect that I
experienced a year earlier. From what I knew,
I felt fairly certain of his understanding in our
desire to expand our efforts and access, but
until you experience a person in an adverse
situation, you find it hard to say with certainty
of their reactions.
I went into the season with a touch of
that uncertainty. However, I got all the
answers I needed following the Hokies’ loss
to Tennessee. It had been a trying week.
Bristol Motor Speedway officials pulled off a
phenomenal job with the event, but it came
with strain. We experienced technical and
logistical challenges. For Fuente and his
staff, the challenges went immensely beyond
that, not the least of which was the national
spotlight shining down on a developing team.
Thus, there seemed to be an added layer
of fatigue beyond the normal after the game.
Fuente speaks with the media from the
podium first, and then joins Mike Burnop on
the radio side before going with me to film
television segments. While walking with him
to the radio location, I felt he was a man about
to burst from internal frustration. However,
he remained stoic during the first two phases
of his media obligations.
But I was apprehensive, as Fuente and I
rode in a golf cart to the other end of the field
where our camera crew waited. It started
raining, both actual precipitation and confetti
from the Tennessee celebration. I found out
quickly that I shouldn’t have been worried.
When we arrived at our camera position,
our longtime producer, TimWright, said, “I’m
sorry about this rain, Coach.”
Fuente politely responded, “I don’t see how
that is your fault.”
“Well, I’m sorry about the game also,”
Wright added.
A wry smile appeared on Fuente’s face and
then he said something that stuck with me all
throughout the season.
“I think that’s even less your fault,” he said.
The exchange was brief, but told me
everything I needed to know about what to
expect going forward—grace. We knocked
out that interview and then experienced just
about every emotion in the weeks to follow.
We pushed through a wind tunnel to
film the interview at the Carrier Dome and
shivered in short sleeves on the field at Lane
Stadium a few weeks later. Then there were
two of my coolest sports experiences—being
close by Fuente at Kenan Stadium in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina while he celebrated with
members of Hokie Nation and doing the same
at Notre Dame Stadium.
There is a freeing feeling when you know
what to expect from somebody, and after
Bristol, I never worried again about our
postgame interviews. That remained true
through frustration in Orlando, Florida and
elation in Charlotte, North Carolina. I learned
a lot about consistency from Fuente during his
first season and remain grateful for it.
As for Williams, he has been pushing
me from the moment I met him during the
interview process for my current role. Entry
into his basketball family isn’t easily gained,
and going into year No. 2, I desperately
wanted to continue working toward it.
I wrote previously about the trip that
Burnop and I made to Anaheim, California
with
Jon
Laaser
Year Two in Review