By Marty Gordon
I interviewed Jaquan Yulee during his recruitment to play football at Virginia Tech.
Instead, the Suffolk High Schooler attended Marshall. This past week, the promising linebacker died in a Tidewater car crash.
Across three seasons at Marshall, Yulee registered 48 tackles in 20 games. He played only one game during the 2019 season due to a broken neck and spinal injury, which caused him to miss the 2020 season. He recently opted to transfer from Marshall after the school declared him medically ineligible, thwarting a potential return.
He reportedly was deciding between Virginia State University, Central State University, and Virginia Union University.
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Meanwhile, Tech is taking advantage of the transfer portal to land a baseball player. After four years playing at James Madison, Connor Hartigan is bringing his game to Blacksburg where he will be a graduate student this spring.
At JMU this past year, Hartigan had career-highs in games played (28), starts (27), at-bats (118), hits (43), batting average (.364), home runs (5), RBIs (24), slugging percentage (.576) and on-base percentage (.414).
Virginia Tech and Kansas State are now the only two Power 5 schools to have never won a team sport national championship.
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Members of the Radford University men’s golf program had a strong showing at the 2021 State Open of Virginia this past weekend as four players finished in the top 15 in a field consisting of both pros and amateurs.
The championship was highlighted by Bryce Corbett’s third round that set a course record and propelled him into a third-place finish. His historic round included birdies on seven holes and an eagle on the 17th hole. Corbett was recently named to the Big South all-freshman team and is looking to continue to lead the Highlanders into the quickly approaching fall season.
Nicholas Taliaferro also had an incredible finish to his championship run, shooting a Highlander single-round high eight birdies. His third round tied with his first-round finish and helped him finish among the top-5 competitors. Taliaferro was also the first Highlander to record an eagle on the weekend, doing so on the 17th hole in the first round.
Rounding out the top-finishing Highlanders were Hunter Duncan (Blacksburg) and Patrick Gareiss. Duncan, who was a consistent top finisher for the Highlanders this past spring, kept up the pace with two strong rounds to start the weekend. Duncan did not shoot over par once through the first round while posting four birdies. Gareiss also had a strong first round and finished the weekend strong, posting 14 birdies across all three rounds of competition.
