Two future Virginia Tech athletes, football recruit Jeff King from Pulaski County High School and basketball recruit Erin Gibson from Carroll County High School, were named last Saturday as the male and female Timesland Athletes of the Year by the Roanoke Times.

King, listed as 6-7, 240 by the Roanoke Times, will play football at Tech, but he is also a phenomenal basketball player and all-around athlete. He finished the basketball season averaging 24.8 points, 13.8 rebounds, and 3.2 assists despite being constantly double- and triple-teamed while playing for 6-15 Pulaski. King completed his basketball career with an incredible 49 straight double-doubles (10+ points and 10+ rebounds in the same game).

King was all-group AAA in football as a tight end and second team all-group AAA in basketball. He played baseball for the Cougars and managed to find enough time to win the RVD shot put title this past spring, as well. He is also a 3.7 student.

Gibson, who stands 6-3, was named the Group AA girls basketball player of the year by the AP and the VA High School Coaches Association. She averaged 19.2 points and 12.8 rebounds this past season while shooting 56.5 percent. She committed to Tech early in her junior year, so she has known for a long time that Blacksburg was her college destination.

Like King, Gibson is an all-around athlete, making second-team All-Timesland in volleyball and leading Timesland in the shot put (42 feet, 2.5 inches, plus a second-place finish in the group AA state track meet).

Things have been quiet since last week's news that Virginia Tech and LSU were working on a home-and-home series in football for 2002 and 2004 (see News and Notes from June 21).

A follow-up article in The Advocate on June 22nd detailed that both games, if they were to happen, would be televised on ESPN. The article also speculated that the 2002 game might be played on August 31st instead of September 14th (Sep. 14th is the date of the BYU/LSU game that BYU is seeking to get out of).

If the game was played on August 31st, the Hokies would not have to move any home games in 2002. (Note that TSL's Future Schedules Page shows Marshall as visiting on Sep. 2, 2002 -- that date was taken from a newspaper article but is most certainly an error, because that's a Monday. The proper date is probably Sep. 7th.)

LSU also has open dates in 2002 on 9/14, 9/21, and 11/2. The Hokies are currently scheduled to play at Western Michigan on 9/14 and at Texas A&M on 9/21. The most attractive date for fans is probably the Aug. 31st date, because it would be the first home game played in Virginia Tech's newly expanded 65,000-seat Lane Stadium.

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