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A Somber Start To The Season

September 02, 2007

By Bob Lipper

BLACKSBURG, Va. — The mourners filed slowly past the 32 stones, engraved and garnished with flowers and arranged in a semicircle on the Drillfield near Burruss Hall. This was 2½ hours before kickoff yesterday, and there was no whoop-de-do in the air. The mood was somber and reverential. Tears were shed. A scalper moved forward and blurted, "Anyone have extra tickets.

And you wanted to tell him to please go away.

Moving together along the line, outfitted in Virginia Tech gear, George Jamerson and Randy Grubbs paused frequently, then reached the last marker and glanced at one another. They're Class of '71 grads who call Chesapeake home and tailgating a pleasure. On this occasion, what they had was food for thought.

"The number of people those stones are for, it hurts," Jamerson said, his voice beginning to crack. "Looking at that old building and seeing this, it's tough, it's really tough. My hurt is partly for the school's loss. But I know how those families feel. Walking across that field, you can tell things will never be the same."

This wasn't your ordinary football Saturday. Oh, sure, there were fired-up grills and kids tossing footballs in the parking lots and good cheer and two teams blocking and tackling and a game — a humdrum game Tech won 17-7 over East Carolina with a performance that will frighten no one in Baton Rouge.

Otherwise, this was football as memorial service for the likes of Matt Gwaltney, Waleed Shaalan, Rachael Hill, Daniel Cueva, Kevin Granata and Liviu Librescu — a melting pot of backgrounds and dreams.

Dreams that were snuffed out April 16 on as monumentally awful a day as any college campus has ever experienced. The spring game, scheduled for five days later, was canceled, meaning this was the first time since the shootings so many Tech people had gathered together.

Normally, Hokie rooters do raucous well.

But not on this afternoon.

Yeah, they roared approval when Sean Glennon found Sam Wheeler for a game-over TD and when the defense squelched ECU's last threat. But to a large degree, this was a more muted audience than Tech usually performs before. If you'd wandered through the parking lots before everyone flocked to the stadium, you would've sensed the vibe.

"Conflicting emotions," Randy Grubbs observed. "They're going to emerge, particularly inside that stadium. That's where the awkwardness is really going to set in."

There were moments of aching silence in the tribute that formed a preamble to shoulder pads clacking against one another. Standing in the tunnel before the team's traditional "Enter Sandman" arrival, Glennon was struck by how little noise he heard. No buzz. No chants. No groundswell.

Inside the building, you wondered if people might feel a touch guilty to explode when Branden Ore burst off-tackle for 15 yards — except there were no such highlights from the running game. Nor, except for Macho Harris' interception return for Tech's first TD, did the defense provide much in the way of show-stoppers. Look, they're college guys, not pros. They're human. Maybe they were a tad subdued themselves.

"There's been so much riding on this game outside the game itself," said Glennon. "We should be mentally tough enough not to let that affect us, but it might've. It'll be nice after this game that most of our attention will be on the football game."

Not that anyone would've had yesterday any other way, of course.

"I think there certainly were a lot of things going on," coach Frank Beamer said. "I don't think there was any question they needed to go on. I think today was needed. I think today was a good day. But nothing's going to change what happened in April. Nothing."

Next week will be different. As Glennon suggested, it'll be a more just-a-game.

This?

This was renewal. This was remembrance. This was a step on the road to recovery.

Contact Bob Lipper at (804) 649-6555 or blipper@timesdispatch.com.