Collegiate Times

 Grab a Playstation controller or a deck of cards. Welcome to the Virginia Tech baseball team.

Video games and five card draw isn’t what comes to mind when you think of baseball practice, but random competition is just one of many changes made by the Hokies’ new head coach Pete Hughes.

In the team locker room is a chart listing every player’s name along with three blocks. Each week, each player on the roster challenges three teammates and tries to win something, anything.

“I actually played Scrabble, played pool and went bowling,” said senior pitcher Adam Redd. “It has nothing to do with baseball. It’s just going out and competing and trying to win.”

After every match, the result is posted on the board.

“It’s in the locker room for all of your teammates to see,” Hughes said. “That drills home the idea of what it takes to be a competitor.”

Hughes is instilling a drive to win in any type of contest, which he hopes in turn will make the team want to win on the field. Since moving to Blacksburg in June, the 39-year-old coach from Brockton, Mass. has hit the ground running.

The players still on the team were evaluated from academics to weight room performance to baseball skills. Every player was on a level playing field, which meant each individual had to prove himself for the first time in front of a new set of eyes.

“When a new philosophy comes in, it doesn’t mean the old philosophy was bad, it’s just new,” Hughes said. “There’s been an adjustment period, but I really like the guys in our program. They showed me that they can be resilient, that they can change and they want to win. They love baseball. Our work ethic is unbelievable.”

That ethic instilled in the program is embraced by every player on the roster. The bar was set high only a few days ago, when the weather outside last Friday was a brisk 25 degrees.

“I expected the guys to feel sorry for themselves on Friday night, but they were out on the field 45 minutes before practice started,” Hughes said. “Everyone was playing catch and moving around outside the dugout.”

Despite the frigid weather conditions, the Hokies had their best practice of pre-season, both on the field and at the plate.

“The practices are hard from start to finish,” said senior shortstop Warren Schaeffer. “Every practice is outside, as opposed to being out only three times before last season. We’re working hard to prepare for the games. He demands a lot out of us, which is a good thing.”

Hughes was proud to see his team hard at work, knowing his program was buying into his intensity.

“These guys were oblivious of the fact that it was snowing,” Hughes continued. “They just knew that we had two-and-a-half hours to get better as a team— and that was when I knew we changed the mindset. These guys have made the move to being major college baseball players now, just by what I saw that night.”

Practice in cold weather is nothing new for Hughes, who was the head coach of Boston College for the past eight seasons. He built up a major program from averaging 13 wins a season to 31 victories a year. Staying in the Atlantic Coast Conference was important, even though he was transferring to a team that lost eight more games than his Eagle team from a season ago.

“I don’t see it as a lateral move,” Hughes said. “I just think this place has the recipe for a baseball program in which you can really win big. This thing can take off. I would have never made this move and uprooted my family if I didn’t think we could win and be the best.”

One main reason for the migration south is the ability to lure some of the best talent in the country, something that was not easy to do in Beantown.

“We had three scholarships at Boston College. Three. Everybody else had 11.7,” Hughes said. “So, I would build such great relationships with these families that they would believe in the investment that they weren’t getting with the scholarship. They spent another $20,000 a year to go to Boston College, but you know what? I want my son to play for that staff and be around those people. That takes a lot of work.”

That work will pay off if he can land big talent at Virginia Tech, a school not known for a recent baseball tradition. Still, Hughes believes that his recruiting and coaching ability will help the Hokies excel this season and down the road.

“I think I can win bigger here than I could at Boston College,” he said. “I can recruit with academics. I can recruit south of the Mason-Dixon line in the ACC, which is huge. There’s a lot more variety at a state university for the students. It’s a great product to sell. Any time you move south, it’s great for recruiting.”

His chance to move south still leaves him in the toughest baseball conference in the country, a league that filled half the field in the 2006 College World Series. One way to have success is having a tradition of fans in the stands.

“We were recruiting with zero baseball tradition at BC,” he said. “Here, we have an amazing baseball tradition to work with and an unbelievable university, academically. Football gameday is like nothing I’ve ever been around. Nothing was like Virginia Tech-Northeastern. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

His goals may be lofty, but Hughes wants every seat at English Field filled by season’s end. In the future, he plans to build a concourse above the hill and include a student section near the leftfield foul pole.

Creating a student-friendly atmosphere is nothing new for baseball. In years past, students have parked at the top of the hill and held tailgate parties. Recent construction has eliminated the chance for a drive-in baseball game, but that doesn’t mean students can’t have fun watching the Hokies.

“At BC, nobody would show up at those games,” he said. “Then we started getting people on campus and then when we played Notre Dame there were 2,000 people there with no place to sit.”

Hughes is speaking all over campus and the community to help people identify with the new program. Baseball season starts in less than a week. It’s now time to see if the hard work instilled in the Hokies will calculate to a program that has not had a winning season since 2004.

“Coach always says, ‘Every day you work for your job,’” Schaeffer said. “Everybody has a job to win. Everybody is more competitive, which has made me more competitive. It will provide more wins for us this year. When you win, you have fun.”

Maybe that fun comes from a quick game of Scrabble.