The Virginia Tech club baseball team recently celebrated its first-ever national championship by unveiling its national champions banner in a pre-game ceremony at the Old Blacksburg High School.
Before the team members warmed up in the early morning for their game against Coastal Carolina, they gathered with family, friends, and members of the Hokie community for the celebration. They reflected on the euphoric moment when the team won the National Club Baseball Association’s World Series in Pittsburg, Kansas, defeating Iowa State 6-0 behind pitcher Braden Huebsch’s perfect game. Huebsch and Skylar Petry were named Co-MVPs of the tournament.
T-shirts were passed around to the first 50 students in attendance from a table where the team’s three-tier trophy stood, a display of the club’s teamwork and dedication over the year. Guests waited to watch the club baseball team members unveil their 2021 national champions banner and reminisce on the moments that led them here.
“To have the support of family and friends, it’s everything,” said previous club baseball president and Virginia Tech graduate student Jonathan Spaulding. “We’re a good ball club filled with great baseball players. It means a lot to the guys that play on this team. Whether those people who support us know it or not, it really validates all the hard work we’ve done.”
Sport club teams represent Virginia Tech and play against other colleges and universities, but are not part of the university’s National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) athletics program. There are currently 29 sport club teams that are supported by Recreational Sports.
What makes this team’s accomplishments more impressive is that sport club teams at Virginia Tech are run by student club officers and supported by Recreational Sports. Team members took it upon themselves to raise the money to afford the trip to Pittsburg. With the help of family, friends, their marketing team, and fellow athletes, the team slowly accumulated the necessary funds.
“Our marketing guy set up a bingo board that we posted on Instagram. I know a lot of my high school friends pitched in to help us out,” said senior finance major Kyle Eagle, last year’s treasurer and current president. “Everybody was sending us five dollars or so, and it added up. I don’t remember how much we raised, but it was pretty awesome to see the support from different communities so that we could go out and play a club baseball game,”
The support for the team didn’t end there. Spaulding’s lifelong friend and recent Virginia Tech graduate Evan Hughes volunteered to announce at the Coastal Carolina game. Spaulding and Hughes’s friendship began when they were 9 years old. Hughes, who recently received his degree in multimedia journalism, mentioned that Jonathan’s love for baseball sparked his own passion for announcing.
“I was beyond ecstatic to hear about the team’s national championship, because I know just how much work that everybody puts into this,” Hughes said. “The amount of fundraising and the amount of travel they had to do last year, plus the commitment during COVID when there were a lot of restrictions, shows that they were willing to go and do whatever they needed to do. I have this distinct image in my head of Jonathan and me being 10-year-old kids in elementary school, and I remember watching him play baseball, and now he’s a national champion.”
At the celebration, members noted that they’re a competitive group who play club baseball, not for a coach or a title, but for themselves.
Written by Tayten Allison
