Augie Conte and Adam Taraschke have been on a similar path to Blacksburg.  Both offensive line prospects attended Virginia Tech’s one-day camp last July.  Virginia Tech offered Conte and Taraschke shortly after the camp, and both players committed to Frank Beamer and company later that month.  The two promising offensive tackles originally were going to take the grayshirt route and enroll at Tech in January of 2013, but on April 21 they learned the path to Blacksburg would be shorter than expected.

“Originally, they wanted me to go to Fork Union to get another year of football,” said Conte, who will graduate from Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot (Powhatan, VA) on June 2.  “Going through spring practice, they realized they wanted to develop more depth at the tackle spot.  Me and Adam (Taraschke), they wanted us to come up to Tech in the fall.  We’re still going to red-shirt, but we’ll be able to go to all the meetings, and they’ve even talked about us going to some away games.”

Tech’s Spring Depth Chart featured rising senior Nick Becton as the starting left tackle and rising senior Vinston Painter as the starter on the right side.  Rising sophomore Mark Shuman and rising sophomore Nick Acree are the scholarship backups at left tackle, while rising red-shirt freshman Jake Goins is the lone scholarship backup at right tackle.

“[Coach Frank Beamer] told me the backup tackles weren’t coming along like they needed, so they wanted to bring us in to add a little more depth,” said Taraschke, a product of Riverbend High School in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

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