Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 9 No. 5

baseball spotlight

jack owens

would never let him win at anything. We would be playing Ping-Pong, and if he would beat me, I would not be

happy.”

Jack, a two-sport athlete growing up, finally decided to specialize in baseball when he headed into high school.

“I played basketball up until about eighth grade. In ninth grade, I decided I really wanted to focus on baseball,”

he said.

Owens grew up in Burke, Virginia, which sits just south of the nation’s Capitol. There, he attended Lake Braddock

High School, and under head coach Jody Rutherford, his career began to take off. He was a four-year member of the

varsity team.

“He’s always been an athletic player,” Rutherford said. “He’s got good speed and good quickness. He’s a smart ball

player. I think I coached him for five or six years. He has the tools to play at the next level.”

As a freshman on the varsity team, Owens hit .300 and helped the Bruins to the state tournament while playing in the

outfield. He took over the shortstop position the next season, hitting .369 as a sophomore, as the team won the program’s

first state title.

The next year, Owens earned second-team all-region honors, while batting .468. He even hit .375 during a senior season

in which he battled injuries.

“I still say to this day that Coach Rutherford could be a Division I baseball coach,” Owens said. “He was very thorough in his

coaching, and he taught me all of the skills that I use today. He was a very good high school coach.”

Owens decided to attend East Carolina University once he graduated from Lake Braddock. The decision came after he got to

know Billy Godwin, the coach at ECU at the time.

“I visited UNC and UCF and some other schools, but Billy Godwin recruited me at ECU, and I fell in love with the program and

the coach,” Owens said. “Out of high school, I had the mindset that I didn’t want to play college baseball in-state. I wanted to expand

my horizons.”

Things changed in the summer before Owens was to start college when East Carolina decided to let Godwin go. The coach who had

recruited Owens departed before Owens even got there.

Owens didn’t play much his freshman year and felt something missing. Thus came the decision to transfer and to a school a little closer

to home. Virginia Tech came calling again after trying to recruit him out of high school, and Owens refused to pass up the opportunity

this time.

“Obviously, it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to [at ECU], but I still love the program and my brothers there,” Owens said. “I hope

to see them succeed. It just didn’t feel like home like this place does. After the whole thing at ECU, I understand what it’s like to be closer to

home and in your own state.”

Virginia Tech hitting coach Ryan Connolly helped bring Owens to Blacksburg.

“When Coach Connolly called me, and once I got my release, I knew it was the right fit academically,” Owens said. “My mother went here, and

everything clicked.”

Owens sat out a year, as required by NCAA rules governing transfers. That didn’t sit too well for a player used to being in the middle of the action,

and it hurt even more that Virginia Tech struggled in 2016. For Owens, the season was pure torture.

Continued on page 36