Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 5 | May 2020

24 Inside Hokie Sports Bitter at the time, Hoffman has moved past all of it, focusing now on the future. “Through the whole process, once I find out about the waiver and the requirements and stuff, the whole time I thought it was pretty much an open and shut case,” he said. “I thought it would be a perfect case and would just go through. I thought it fit the waiver, and there was never a doubt in my mind that I wasn’t going to play this season. “As time has gone, I’ve looked past it. When it first happened, I was definitely very bitter. I was confused and angry about the whole thing, but I’ve kind of controlled that and used it as motivation. I don’t look back and get all worked up over it. That happened to me, and I just use it as motivation. Fuel to the fire.” Now, like the rest of Tech’s players, Hoffman hopes to get back to work soon and get ready for an upcoming season. Tech returns its entire offensive line from 2019, but the staff believes in competition, and quite honestly, Hoffman might have been a starter this past fall if not for the NCAA decision. He started all 24 of his games at Coastal Carolina, so he certainly brings experience. He accepted his fate in the fall when the NCAA decided to deny his appeal and he quickly concentrated on making Tech’s defense better while serving as a member of the scout team. Tech’s staff raved about how he brought the scout-team offense together for a bigger purpose. “Last season was very humbling,” Hoffman said. “My previous institution, I was one of the only true freshmen and true sophomores to play every game. I started 24 straight games there. Didn’t come out a single play. Playing all the time, and you get here and you’re preparing to be the starter, and then three days before the first game, they tell you that you have to sit the year. It definitely humbled me, running the scout team and doing the developmental lifts. “But I looked at it like I was just going to attack it and be the best that I could be. The toughest part of the season were Saturdays, watching your teammates play and knowing that you’re not out there. That was the roughest part. During the week, I told the defense that I was going to push them as hard as I can because I wanted to make practice 10 times harder than the game. I believe in my abilities and my skills, and I believe that they’re facing better competition than they would in that game. I said that from the beginning, that I was going to push them and work them. It was very rewarding building that relationship with guys across the ball.” Hoffman has more of an appreciation for his sport than most of the Hokies’ football players. For starters, he knows how quickly things change, considering his mother’s health situation, and of course, the current COVID-19 pandemic. No one anticipated the current situation four months ago. Plus, he came from a Sun Belt school, and while those programs feature good players and occasionally beat Power-5 schools, they lack the resources of those schools. Hoffman found that out quickly after arriving at Tech. “When I first got to Tech, I saw little things, whether it was the amount of protein shakes, the snacks, different gear, all that stuff some people may take for granted,” he said. “But me, I appreciated it a lot because, where I came from, I didn’t get that kind of stuff. I kind of have that same feeling. With the game taken away from me for a year, people don’t usually miss stuff until it’s gone, and having that taken away from me definitely gives me greater appreciation for it. I cherish the time I’m playing, for sure.” No one knows what the future holds from a scheduling standpoint, but most agree that a football season will take place at some point HOFFMAN FINALLY FREE Continued from page 23