Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 4 | March 2020

H is career-altering moment took place on a baseball diamond, and Ian Seymour remembers every detail with the utmost clarity. An 11-year-old boy at the time and arguably the top pitcher on his travel team from Westborough, Massachusetts—just an hour west of Boston along the Massachusetts Turnpike—Seymour uncharacteristically got roughed up during his outing. His coach, Paul Brown, made a change before the first inning had expired, and Seymour made the painfully embarrassing walk to the bench. Before he even reached said bench, he threw his glove, and once he arrived, he started yelling—at himself. This particular scene is not uncommon on ballfields across America, where competitive urges flow rampantly and mature ones often don’t. Brown patiently waited until after the game to address the situation. He knew Seymour well because his son, Parker, and Seymour were best buds, but he could not tolerate a poor reflection on his team or the game. So he pulled Seymour aside and delivered some stern words. “You’re never going to act that way again,” he said. Adecade later, thatmessage and theway it was delivered still resonates. “He told me to watch Major League Baseball players and players older than me,” Seymour said. “Watch how they act. “From that perspective, just building a mentality that I’m going to be tough in every moment during this game no matter what happens. He was really the one that started that in me.” That mindset certainly has propelled him during his college career, as the Virginia Tech ace ranks as one of the best pitchers in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He probably ranks as one of the smartest as well. Not many know how to balance all that his sport demands, while pursuing a degree in biology at the same time. Some might try to persuade athletes from taking on such arduous academic endeavors, but Seymour has grown up as the oldest son of two parents who work for a genetics company. Obviously, they’re smart, but more importantly, they love what they do, and their passion rubbed off on their son. Seymour loves what he does—both on the diamond and off. “Definitely from a life perspective just teaching me how to pursue something that I love, that would be my parents, for sure,” Seymour said when asked who mentored him. “But they weren’t like those crazy parents that got mad when I didn’t do well in a game. They were like, ‘We support you if you love this. We love watching you do it. We love watching you grow and doing that.’ So just from a perspective that, PITCHING I had a couple of other visits, but I just fell in love with this place. It was that weekend they had the Brad Paisley concert, and they were playing Ohio State on opening night for football. They were building the new [baseball] stadium, and it [Virginia Tech] had so many options from a science and technical standpoint that I was just like, ‘This is the place I want to be.’ It felt like home. It’s the motto, but it felt like home from that visit. Ian Seymour on his committing to Virginia Tech “ ” 32 Inside Hokie Sports