Champion Virginia Tech baseball club team ready for new season

Championship teams are typically some of the most competitive and Virginia Tech’s Club Baseball team is an example of just that.

“After the dogpile, Skylar [Petry] came and found me immediately and I might’ve rubbed in just a little bit that I threw a perfect game right after his no-hitter,” Junior pitcher Braden Huebsch laughed.

Huebsch pitched a perfect game against Iowa State in the National Club Baseball Association World Series championship, securing the 6-0 victory to bring home the title. The perfect game earned him Co-MVP honors and bragging rights over fellow MVP pitcher Skylar Petry.

“I’m there hugging this kid, so hype for him; like we just won the national championship and he should be on top of the world and he just looks at me and says ‘screw you,’” Senior pitcher Skylar Petry joked. “Are you kidding me right now?”

The combination of competitiveness and comradery fueled the Hokies’ championship run, earning the school its first national title. Missing out on a chance to compete for the title the year before added some extra motivation.

“Before the season started, we always talked about how if COVID-19 hadn’t cut our season short last year we would’ve [won the national championship],” Petry said. “We were confident in the group of guys we had. Everyone on that team is an absolute stud. We just kept saying that and we were just hoping we had a season. To actually back it up and not just be all talk and just get back to what we said we were going to do was pretty insane.”

Huebsch echoed the same sentiment, acknowledging the amount of effort put in to make the 2021 season happen.

“I know, especially [senior catcher Kyle] Eagle and [graduate midfielder Jonathan] Spaulding had to jump through a ton of hoops to get us playing and Julie [Rhoads] and all of the club sports office people,” Huebsch said. “It was really awesome to get that chance and then go out and make the most of it; to bring back the championship was awesome.”

The Hokies faced one more obstacle in their championship season, once again threatening their chance to play for a national title: raising money for the trip to Kansas for the World Series. The club needed to raise $8,000 to make the 900-mile trip and received enough money through donations to do it.

“Obviously the donations to get us there in the first place were huge,” Huebsch said. “Without that, I don’t know if we would have been able to go.”

In addition to funding the trip to Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech’s fanbase managed to show its support during the tournament, cheering on the Hokies in person and online.

“Once we got there, having all the people cheering for us in the stands and if you go back and look at the Facebook videos of it, there were a ton of our fans watching and commenting on all of our games,” Huebsch said. “I’ve gone back and looked at some of those and it’s really cool to see.”

Even some of the Hokies’ former opponents started to rally around the team.

“When we were down there we played Salisbury first, and then we ended up being good friends with them, so they would come to our games and cheer us on also,” Huebsch said. “That was really cool.”

Although Virginia Tech came out on top of the eight-team bracket, the Hokies didn’t come into the tournament as the favorite to win it all. Virginia Tech entered the championship series as the six-seed, the lowest of any region champion.

“Personally, I felt like we were disrespected,” Petry said. “Against ECU, arguably, in my opinion, the second-best team in the country behind us, beating them in the regionals, then coming in as only a six-seed—we talked about it in our group chat, we were pissed about it.”

While the initial seeding wasn’t what the Hokies felt they deserved, Petry thinks it might’ve fit the squad’s identity.

“Honestly I kind of think it was good for us though,” Petry said. “For me, I liked it. It matched us. We were the group of idiots with no coach who had one of our best friends acting as a coach. Just knowing that we were there for a reason and we proved them wrong, it was so much fun.”

Virginia Tech more than proved the doubters wrong, going 5-1 in the championship series and out-scoring its opponents 34-10. Three of the Hokies victories came in shutout fashion, including a no-hitter thrown by Petry.

“Obviously, it felt really good,” Petry said. “It’s one of those things where you feel like you can do it, and actually seeing yourself do it is pretty dope.”

The no-hitter was quite the feat for the third-year pitcher, but he says he couldn’t have done it without the rest of the team’s help.

“I know for a lot of that season my arm wasn’t feeling too hot, so I did what I had done all year and just trust your guys,” Petry said. “Our team is full of just dudes. Every single one of those players is one of the best players I’ve ever played with. I just let them do all the work and it worked out very well, for both Braden and I.”

Saying it worked out for the two pitchers would be an understatement. Over the final two games of the series, the Hokies held their opponents to zero runs and only five hits. The latter of the two was Huebsch’s perfect game to bring home the national championship.

In the championship game, Huebsch sat down 21 straight Cyclone batters, including a pair of strikeouts. In addition to starting the club’s final game, Huebsch also got the privilege of throwing the final out to secure the title.

“I got to that point and I couldn’t believe that I was in that moment in the first place,” Huebsch said. “I saw the ground ball and I saw [senior Jack] Quinn going over to get it and I was like ‘Oh yeah, he’s got that all day.’ That was probably like the eighth ground ball he had gotten and seeing [senior Donovan] Murphy catch it over there and [senior catcher Kyle] Eagle running at me from behind the plate; that was awesome.”

While Huebsch threw the perfect game, it couldn’t have been possible without the help of senior catcher Kyle Eagle.

“From the fifth inning on, in the back of my mind I knew Braden had a perfect game, so I was more thinking about that than the actual game because I was catching,” Senior catcher Kyle Eagle said. “I was just trying to call a game to keep that alive. It was a pretty sweet thing to do. After the game, I feel like the perfect game got thrown out a little bit. It got watered down because we won it all, but it was just a pretty great feeling.”

The final out was followed by a huge celebration from the team that included a dogpile as players soaked in their first moments as national champions.

“There was a dogpile and we were all just really happy because of all the things we went through,” Eagle said. “We didn’t know if we were going to play and within two weeks we had a season. That four-month stand was pretty surreal, for how much things had changed for us.”

The celebration didn’t stop there for the Hokies. The team held a banner unveiling ceremony before its game against Coastal Carolina in November. Fans and family of players were invited to the ceremony to celebrate the team’s national championship.

“It was nice to be recognized,” Eagle said. “The VT club office did a great job with the banner and the marketing department as well. It was just great to see old players and old parents. We had kids’ parents who graduated last year who came back into town for the [unveiling] and it was just great to celebrate that one more time with everybody who maybe couldn’t make it out to Kansas or who was involved in last year’s [team].

“We wouldn’t have been able to get out there if it wasn’t for the parents, so it was nice to kind of have that moment for the players and the parents, to give back a little bit.”

The Hokies may have to put aside some room for more banners to come as they’ve started to establish a winning culture in Blacksburg.

“[We’re just] making sure that everyone knows that this is not a one off,” Petry said. “This is going to be what we’re going for every year now.”

With many players from last year’s squad returning, Virginia Tech looks in position to compete for a second-straight title.

“I definitely feel like we’re very competitive and we’ve got that competitive culture,” Huebsch said. “We’re competitive with each other, but we love competing with each other and with other teams. I think this year, again, the goal is another national championship.”

An abbreviated version of this piece was published in the Roanoke Times, but the article above was the full article I wrote on VT’s club baseball team: https://roanoke.com/sports/local/champion-virginia-tech-baseball-club-team-ready-for-new-season/article_14ebe2c8-8081-11ec-858c-e7947c505cc2.html