Marty Gordon
NRVsports@ourvalley.org
Max Preps has an-nounced its final spring national boys’ soccer rankings, and Blacksburg High School is ranked #1 in the entire country.
Blacksburg is coming off winning the Class 4 state title this past week and finished with a 24-0 record. John’s Creek (Ga.) was number 2.
Coincidentally, the Class 3 champ Christians-burg was ranked #13 in the same poll.
BHS alum All-American
Auburn University freshman Jake Albert was tabbed as a PING Honor-able Mention All-Ameri-can last week by the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA).
In his first season of college golf, the Blacks-burg native Albert earned three top fives and seven top 20s in his 14 starts in the Orange & Blue. He averaged 70.67 strokes per round with 155 bird- ies and a team-leading six eagles.
The freshman was an-other dominant force in match play for the Tigers this season as he went 4-1 for the year, including an undefeated 3-0 streak at the NCAA Champion-ship. He made waves with a commanding 6&5 de-feat of Stanford’s Ethan Gao in the quarterfinals and followed it up with a 1-up win over the Cow-boys’ Gaven Lane in the semis later that day.
In the championship match, Albert made quick work of Tyler Loree, win-ning 5&3 to secure Au-burn’s first of four match-winning points.
Tech baseball addition Bolstering its com-petitive edge within its developmental pitching program, Virginia Tech baseball head coach John Szefc has welcomed Josh Reynolds as the Hokies’ new director of pitching performance, baseball analytics.
An established mind in the game with a pleth-ora of power conference coaching experience, Reynolds joins Virginia Tech after spending the previous two seasons at Tennessee where he served as assistant coach (2026) as well as director of base-ball operations and pitch-ing performance (2025). Reynolds – who coached alongside Szefc on Brad Hill’s 2011 and 2012 staffs at Kansas State – was the associate head coach (2016-21) and interim head coach (2021-22) at Northwestern prior to syncing with Cincinnati as assistant coach in 2024.
CC championships to Blacksburg The Atlantic Coast Conference has an-nounced the dates and locations for its 27 ACC Championship events for the upcoming 2026-27 academic year.
“We are looking for-ward to another incred-ible year in the ACC and are dedicated to provid- ing firstclass champion-ship events for student-athletes, coaches, pro-grams, alumni and fans,” said ACC Com-missioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D. “We appreci-ate our schools that will serve as hosts for ACC Championships in 2026-27 as well as the ter-rific neutral site partners that will create unfor-gettable championship moments for schools.” The 2026-27 ACC Championships sched-ule begins on Frida, Oct. 30th, eith Virginia Tech hosting the 2026 ACC Women’s and Men’s Cross Country Championships.
