Former Virginia Tech sports information director Dave Smith getting his turn in spotlight (2024)

BLACKSBURG — A number of the Virginia Tech coaches and athletes that Dave Smith worked with over the years were so good that they made the commonwealth’s sports hall of fame.

Now it’s Smith’s turn.

Smith, who worked in Tech’s sports information office for 40 years, will be inducted Saturday into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” Smith said this week in an interview at his Blacksburg home.

The William Fleming High School and Virginia Tech graduate retired as Tech’s associate athletic director for communications in 2015.

“My big thing was making my people realize we have to do the best possible job we can to let the media that we work with get what they need to write about us,” Smith, 75, said. “If you get mad at a story somebody writes, you can’t let that bother you.”

Smith said he wouldn’t trade those 40 years at Tech for anything.

And what kept him at Tech all those years?

“The people — both the players and the coaches. And my stats crews,” he said.

Falling in love twice

Smith was in the marching band at Fleming.

“I started out playing the clarinet and hoping I might graduate to the saxophone so I could maybe play in a … rock band,” Smith said.

Smith met his wife, Debbie, when they were high school students — him at Fleming and her at Roanoke Catholic. They were at a dance that was held at the tennis courts at Preston Park. Smith asked a mutual friend to make the introductions.

The Smiths have been married since 1973.

Smith also became enamored with Tech when he was in high school. He was a Fleming junior when he visited the campus for the first time.

“The first thing I saw was the Drillfield, with War Memorial at the end,” Smith said. “I said, “Gosh, that’s beautiful. I love this place. I’ve got to come to school here.’

“I fell in love with the place that first time I saw it and I’ve never stopped.”

Smith graduated from Tech in 1970.

His first job in media relations was not at Tech but at Ferrum, which was then a junior college. Smith became Ferrum’s first sports information director. The Panthers’ football coach was the late Hank Norton, who is in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

“He was great,” Smith said.

Smith left Ferrum to become a sports writer for the Franklin News-Post. He left the newspaper to become an assistant sports information director at Virginia Tech in 1975.

He was promoted to sports information director in 1998. He later was promoted to assistant athletic director for communications, then associate athletic director.

“We tried to make all our players as accessible as possible,” Smith said. “Some of the athletes, they were just naturals to sit down and talk to somebody. And some of them were scared to death. And some of the ones that were scared to death were really good and in demand.

“For me, the main thing was being able to get a writer or a TV person or a radio person what they requested.

“We were there to service the media, … if you like them or not.

“By doing that, it’s a benefit to the school and a benefit for the fans.”

Smith not only dealt with local media members but famous names from ESPN, too.

“He was really big on helping the media as much as possible, whether that be the local beat writer or the national TV people,” said ex-Tech associate director of strategic communications Bill Dyer, who is now the director of university communications at Averett. “He didn’t differentiate the way he treated … the local guys [and] … when ESPN brought their top football crew in.”

Former Tech director of content strategy Bryan Johnston said he tries to emulate the way Smith treated people.

“Coaches, media, players, … he treated everybody with class at all times, whether it was a good day or a bad day for him or a win or loss for a coach,” said Johnston, now the senior associate athletic director for communications at Georgia Southern. “He was the steady, calming influence.”

Worked with Beamer, Hartman, Moir

For some of his years at Tech, Smith handled media relations for the men’s basketball program.

For his entire time at Tech, Smith handled media relations for the baseball program. He also usually handled the scorebook during games.

“Baseball players are a different breed,” Smith said. “They wanted to change everything [in the scorebook]. They questioned every call. When you’re in my position, you’re the guy deciding if it’s a hit or an error.”

Smith was involved with football throughout his time at Tech. But in 1998, he became the primary media contact for the football program.

Smith worked with former football coach Frank Beamer, who is in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

“Coach Beamer was the absolute best person in the world to work with,” Smith said. “We had a really good relationship. Sometimes I talked him into doing an interview that he might not want to do.

“One way to deal with the media is make yourself accessible. Deal with them. And that is going to benefit our program to no end. And he did that. … Everybody gets mad at somebody sometimes. But he realized he had to do things and he went out of his way sometimes to do stuff.”

Smith also worked with the late Tech baseball coach Chuck Hartman, who also is in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.

“Coach Hartman’s wife, Ellen, kept a scorebook every game,” Smith said. “I checked to see how she did hers. She showed me a way to keep the scorebook so you could recreate the game easily for a story. … I taught a bunch of people that system over the years.”

Smith also worked with the late Tech men’s basketball coach Charles Moir, another Virginia Sports Hall of Fame inductee.

“He was great to work with,” Smith said. “The coaches that I worked with were … pretty good with the media. Coach Moir was personable, and Coach Beamer, too.”

Smith dealt with many athletes during his decades at Tech, including football players and Virginia Sports Hall of Fame members Bruce Smith, Cornell Brown, Antonio Freeman and DeAngelo Hall and basketball players and Virginia Sports Hall of Fame inductees Dell Curry and Bimbo Coles.

“As an assistant and then when I got to be the head guy, there were great players all through that period,” Smith said.

“The thing I worked on the most was making sure the kids would do their interviews. Sometimes a kid would tell me, ‘I just don’t want to do it.’ And I would say, ‘OK, I understand,’ and I wouldn’t make them available.

“But for the most part, I could … make them see the benefits and make them understand, ‘Even if you had a bad game, … if you’re willing to talk to them, you can earn their respect.’”

This year’s hall of fame induction ceremony will be held Saturday at the Henrico County Sports & Events Center.

The new class was announced in November. In addition to Smith, it includes Patrick Henry graduate and former Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Paul Woody; former Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage; former UVa football star Chris Long; former UVa basketball star Monica Wright Rogers; Olympic sprinter LaShawn Merritt; former U.S. women’s soccer coach Jill Ellis; the late Randolph-Macon men’s basketball coach Hal Nunnally; and former Special Olympics Virginia president Rick Jeffrey.