Hokie Club
BLACKSBURG – Redshirt senior Rhegan Mitchell and senior Jaila Tolbert of Virginia Tech's volleyball team will be partnering with the Women's Research Center of the New River Valley this season for the pair's senior project.
Meeting unique needs of battered women, the organization specializes in housing families with domestic violence history, providing prevention programming and much more. The two Hokies have linked up with the group to collect different items for the families during home volleyball matches.
The two seniors will have a donation box next to portal eight on the west concourse at the marketing table inside Cassell Coliseum, available for fans to bring the following items to the table – click here. For more info on the organization's website, click here.
"A couple years back, I volunteered there," Tolbert said. "And unfortunately, we couldn't really interact with families because we weren't properly trained for that. But we did a lot of donation collecting and organization, as well as moving families into new homes.
"It was kind of a hard experience seeing the kids wait for a new place to be sheltered. It was also very impactful with realizing that I was doing something to help impact a family escape a bad situation."
Last season, the seniors started the inaugural senior project, consisting of fans bringing in toys over the fall season and concluding with the players giving the toys to kids at the Carilion Clinic holiday party in Roanoke in December.
"Last year's project went really well," Mitchell noted. "All of the kids were really excited and super thankful for all of the donations. Obviously, the fans did a lot and we were happy with how they helped out. Hopefully, that makes them want to help even more in the coming years."
When asked on how they felt about how this year's project would go, the two captains were hopeful.
"I would say that the NRV does a super good job facilitating their services and helping out women, children and families who are in really tough situations," Tolbert said. "I'm excited to extend whatever hand that we can with getting the Virginia Tech community a little more involved with that. I think they are based mainly in Radford, so we are happy to bring awareness and bridge that gap."
"If the fans could donate a lot, that would be awesome and very impactful," Mitchell said. "Whenever you donate for a cause, you always feel good because you are helping someone out who needs it."
The Hokies will begin having the donation box at the marketing table this weekend when they take on North Carolina (4-7, 0-2 ACC) at 6 p.m. ET on Friday and NC State (7-5, 1-1 ACC) at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Carilion Clinic Court at Cassell Coliseum.