VT heptathlete Katie Ollendick is one of the most remarkable student athletes to ever go through Virginia Tech.  Heck, she's one of the most remarkable students to go through Tech.

Ollendick, as they say, is the true student athlete.  Not only is she good at what she does athletically, placing 8th in the heptathlon at the NCAA outdoor track championships, but she's flawless at what she does academically, graduating last month from Tech with a perfect 4.0 in a dual major.

Last week, The Hokie Huddler named Ollendick its Athlete of the Year, and this week, she received a much, much higher honor:  she was named the GTE Female Academic All-American of the Year, an award that The Richmond Times-Dispatch calls "the highest academic honor for a female student-athlete."

For someone who usually doesn't pay attention to non-rev sports, I have to admit that I can't even grasp the magnitude of what Katie has achieved, but it appears to be huge.   To give some perspective, it's probably on par with receiving the Heisman Trophy in football, or maybe even bigger.

The accomplishment gets even bigger when you consider that she was given the top honor from a field that included female athletes from every single NCAA women's sport, from what I can tell.

As Wayne and Garth would say, "We're not worthy!  We're not worthy!"

For more details, check out the articles yourself in The RoanokeTimes and The Richmond Times-Dispatch on-line:

Ollendick is in Class by Herself - RT, 6/19/98
Ollendick wins student-athlete's highest award - R-TD, 6/23/98

Did anybody notice that in the Roanoke Times article, they mention that Katie is the second Tech athlete to win this honor in the 1990's (Lisa Pikalek was the first)?

Congrats to Katie, and thanks for gracing us with your presence.  Are you sure you have to go?

The Roanoke Times weighed in with its article on the recent hiring of Danny Pearman (see Wednesday's News and Notes), and RT writer Randy King took the angle of concentrating on Terry Strock's reassignment as head of the "Monogram Club" and what it means in the larger context of the athletic department:

Hokies Shuffle Continues in Athletic Department - Roanoke Times, 6/24/98

I spoke with someone in the athletic department who told me that although the Monogram Club has always existed, it previously didn't have the emphasis that Jim Weaver is now placing on it by assigning Terry Strock directly to it.  I got the feeling that until now, the Monogram Club was kind of meandering around under its own inertia, but now with Strock bringing focus to it, it will hopefully bloom.

This can only be a good thing.  First of all, all of those Hokies in the NFL have a lot of money.  But beyond the fund-raising aspect, keeping former Hokie athletes involved in the program will keep them coming back to Blacksburg for appearances at camps, and hopefully, local and state high schools.

For example, UVa's former athletes are very active in their communities, evidenced by the summer camps that their former football and basketball players hold throughout the state.  This kind of activity creates good will and positive press for the school, and if Tech can bring the same focus, the VT athletic programs will profit from it.   So good luck to Terry.

Jim Weaver is reorganizing the athletic department in other ways that will have a much larger impact.  As an outsider, my knowledge is fuzzy, so I won't go into speculation and half-remembered details, but suffice to say that there is a lot of shifting around of responsibilities going on right now.

There's a lot of activity around the reorganization, and some of the old staff doesn't fit well into the new structure, so many of them are re-evaluating their situations and moving on to other jobs or retiring (we've already seen some of this in the recent retirements, and there will be more of it going on in the near future).  There's not necessarily anything sinister related to that, or any "housecleaning" going on, just a shakeup.

So those of you who were looking for Jim Weaver to rattle the cage a little are getting your wish.  He's a smart man - he came in, rode the tide for almost one full academic year to see how things worked, and now he's reshaping it to his liking.

Recently, former Hokie running back Roscoe Coles, Tech's #2 all-time leading rusher behind Cyrus Lawerence, was named the new head football coach at Kecoughtan High School in Hampton (Screaming Lizard's page tells me it's in Hampton, anyway, but then again, I put Micheal Vick's Warwick High School there once, too).

This doesn't necessarily mean that Kecoughtan will now be more Hokie-friendly.   The only knowledgeable opinion I read on the subject seemed to feel that Roscoe will not steer his prospects toward Tech more than any other coach would.  He will play it even-handedly, which is the way it should be.

For the record, Kecoughtan has been plenty Hokie-friendly in the past.  That's where defensive lineman Marlan Hicks, a 1998 Hokie recruit, hails from.  Speaking of Marlan, I have been told that his enrollment into Hargrave Military next year (see Wednesday's News and Notes) isn't necessarily a done deal.  Marlan took the SAT's again about two weeks ago and is still waiting for scores, so he may yet qualify, after all.  This was supposedly reported in the Newport News Daily Press recently.

But back to Roscoe Coles.  A HokieCentral reader reports to me "My son is trying out (for Kecoughtan) and says the guys (players) really like him (Coles) so far. He is working them hard, but is working out right along side of them. He is no 'beer gut' high school coach."

Yeah, he was no "beer gut" running back, either.

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