After the last couple of days, I thought it would be hard for today to top what we experienced so far. And as always, I was wrong - Saturday was the crown jewel in one of the greatest father son(s) weekend abroad.

We got to campus at 11:30am and started roaming around. TSP was mostly deserted, except for Chip (yeah we saw you as we walked past).

We watched the players board the bus to go to their pregame meal and we got a PERSONAL meet and greet with Coach Marve! We were camped out by the Merryman sign by ourselves, right near the door to the last bus. He shook our hands, was very fired up and chatted us up for a minute before boarding the bus. This guy gets it for sure. You could tell he was SO excited about the whole experience. Obviously he has had to make the rounds with the big donors I would assume, but he was just a normal guy who finally got the job he's been shooting for just chatting up peon fans. Just an average guy that could get 11 men (or more) to run through a wall for him. I will warn everyone now...come Fall, I will be a HUGE Coach Marve apologist if the D is less than desirable.

We then went to TSP an hour early and got some cool seats at the top next to the pressbox. Met some great folks as the park filled and chuckled at all the latecomers that were baffled the park was at capacity (literally standing room only) 40 minutes before the first pitch. We lasted through 3 innings before realizing that NO, we were NOT good luck charms, and we should change things up and walk around a bit. Sure enough, the ladies tied things up the following two innings. Funny how those things work.

Then we made our way into Lane, walked around a bit giving my youngster his first exposure inside of a stadium of that size. He was more interested in what snacks they had. What can I say, he's my son. We had great seats, and he got to jump to Enter Sandman for his first time. It was a few minutes later he realized, in his own words, "wait...we are playing each other? what the heck kinda game is this?" I will just leave that and move on...

Shout out at this point to our NEW SOFTBALL BOARD!! I was able to folllow the Live Stats link to see the 7th, and top of the 8th to go down by 1, and then Slaw's solo HR to tie it up. THEN Live Stats said "nah...you don't get to know what happens next...." (either coverage or phone/app issue) Fortunately, all I had to do is pound on the refresh button on the TSL SB board until I saw our fearless board champion tweet the words we all so covet: "HOKIES WIN!! HOKIES WIN!! HOKIES WIN!!"

The final bit of family fireworks - Ryan got his gloves from Da'wain Lofton. Those two have been chatting other up for a while now. They play the same position, but Ryan is only a rising Sr. in HS, and Da'wain, for those that may not know, is a true sophmore that will likely be the Y position WR starter (we hope) this year. Lofton told him to text him after the game so they could meet AND Da'wain kept his word! I HOPE the pic below works this time in the post....crossed fingers...