Perspective 2: where college football mirrors life

16 months ago I published on here about missing the Marshall game because why I loved football I was going to meet my future daughters.

There was a lot of angst in the program, can pry turn it around? Are we ever going to a bowl game again? 13 wins and 13 losses later, we are still at a period of angst. We've learned a lot more about the "family" and there is a lot to love and a lot we would like to work on and need to have hard conversations with ourselves and the rest of the family to make sure that we are all are doing our best. Whether we need to improve our clock management skills or remember to wear our glasses or do the dishes or just remember to teach and not critize.

But now as we've learned more about ourselves we have realized that we can't just sit back, changes are coming, and with that new life. We have no idea what will happen, we have no clue if we should be excited or scared, or just numb.

My wife and I had a struggle with the adoption process as it took longer than anyone thought. Covid really destroyed infant adoption. We made the decision to abandon infant adoption and focus on the older kid program. We have to amazing daughters who are smart, and funny and overall just great girls. We threw out all the baby stuff friends have offloaded on us and moved on.

But like VT changes come. On a day where most of us were preparing to watch the bowl game and the future of VT my wife, kids, and I were meeting my daughter's sister who is 2.5 months old. Excited, scared, overwhelmed we are preparing for change, we are preparing to sue a state for custody of this girl. We had no idea she existing until a month after she was born and abandoned in the hospital. We spent most of December calling everyone we knew, seeing who could find out anything and with the help of the same amazing people that assisted us with our two daughters we located her and got in contact with the foster parents. They amazingly were driving down 81 back from their xmas vacation and we met for lunch. It was nerve racking not telling the gorls until the day of because we didn't want to disappoint if something came up or some one for sick. There are lots of cobflicting emotions especially as we said goodbye. And we, like VT, are going into a period of uncertainty. Some how the law is not on our side and our daughters are not related to their sister because they are minors. Their birth mother's husband, who has not fathered any children with her and hasn't seen her in 5 years has to give up custody. If I havent said it before I will say it now, nothing about adoption in the US isn't fucked up. We have to rush through paper work to get licensed again so we can foster. We have to work through our daughters emotions as this is difficult for them.

But to tie this back in, we don't know what's going to happen, we still don't know things about the girl, medical and otherwise, we have what we leaned from the foster family over the hour we spent together and that's about it. As fans we still don't know our DC or S&C coach, we still don't know who's on our roster next year. But that doesn't matter, we are going to fight for this girl, we are going to do every thing to bring her to her home, with her sisters. We are going to fight like hell, and I hope Brent Pry is saying the same thing to everyone in the program, because we need to fight like hell for our hokie family. As a parent I know i need to be better for my kids, Pry needs to be better for the kids in the program, Beamer taught a lot of kids about how to work as a team to win and they have life lessons that are irreplaceable, and one of those lessons to my kids is that we fight for what is right and that is for their sister. As the program has mirror my life, as adopting two teenage girls isn't easy, all I can be is hopefully for the future and work hard to make the best future happen for my girls. I hope Pry feels like he'll do the same for his boys because we love our Hokies and want the best for them.