Derrick Hopkins Playing Soccer Is Today's Best Picture

OH HAI!

/looks at picture
//SMILES SO HARD

It's mostly because of the look on Skip's face; kid in a candy shop. Also, I'm picturing the girl as Tajh Boyd. Skip haters-gonna-hate-strutting his way towards wrapping her up for a sack.

There's more to it though. Derrick is one of ten students who traveled to the Dominican Republic to study abroad and help lead a youth camp this summer. As best as I can tell after reading through the Ut Prosim: Self-Motivation and Leadership Discovery class blog, the camp hosts about 64 kids and the goal is to use sports as a means to teach health education.

The first game was "pasa la palota" translating to "pass the ball." In this game we split into two separate teams, stood in a straight line, and passed a tennis ball behind our backs making sure the other team couldn't see who was holding the ball when we were instructed to stop. Each team would try to guess which player was holding the tennis ball. You could not tell who was holding the ball just by looking at the other team, demonstrating that you cannot tell if a person has HIV or AIDS just by looking at them since there are no physical symptoms of an infected person. Each one of the games that followed related back to a lesson learned at the beginning of the day.

Skip wasn't the only Tech student athlete there. Zack McCray (football), Devin Carter (wrestling), Meaghan Holloway (swimming), Liz Trinchere (volleyball), Nick Smirniotopoulos (soccer), Katie DeTuro (soccer), Carol Kahoun (tennis), and Cara Baarendse (volleyball) went as well. Given that first entry of their blog was by Danny White, Director of Student-Athlete Affairs, my guess is all the students are Hokie athletes.

Either way, I'm happy I was able to read about their trip. It's a welcomed change from all the college sports stories about scandals, crimes, and politicking that usually grab headlines. Awesome work y'all, and thank you for making this alumnus proud.

H/T @MechE_Hokie