Emery, Nicholson, Prioleau, Gaines headline Black Athlete Alumni PanelEmery, Nicholson, Prioleau, Gaines headline Black Athlete Alumni Panel

Emery, Nicholson, Prioleau, Gaines headline Black Athlete Alumni Panel

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The Hokies Black Athlete Alumni Network hosted a virtual Black Athlete Alumni Panel in honor of Black History Month on Monday, February 21, 2022. The inaugural event featured a panel of four black Hokie alumni who were all student-athletes at Virginia Tech.

  • Taylor Emery '19: former women's basketball standout who holds the school record for 11th most points in school history and fastest player to score 1,000 points, and current veterinary student at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
  • Jacqueline Nicholson '07: former track and field member who still holds the third-fastest time in school history in the 200m, two-time Tech grad (Human Development (2005) and Masters in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2007)), named Director of Athletics for Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY in 2021.
  • Pierson Prioleau '11: selected in the 1999 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers, 12-year NFL veteran, Super Bowl XLIV champion and current safeties coach for Virginia Tech Football.
  • Jerry Gaines '71: a former track and field and football athlete who became the first African American scholarship student-athlete in Virginia Tech history in 1967, 1990 Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame inductee and 2022 ACC Unite Award recipient.


The panelists reflected on how they navigated their experiences as student-athletes, many of whom had never considered attending Virginia Tech, prior to arriving on campus. Emery shared that she was attracted to Tech because there were coaches who looked like her and emphasized diversity. Gaines disclosed his feelings of extreme loneliness, being the first African American athlete on the track and field team at the time. "Being the first carries a lot of weight that people don't see," said Gaines. "I didn't learn to appreciate why I was here until about 30-35 years later at a Black Alumni Reunion, where I could see the results of my having stayed the course and staying focused on what I had to do."
 
The Black Athlete Alumni Network was launched in the fall of 2021, as a way to provide comprehensive opportunities for Black & African American athlete alumni to engage with each other, current Hokie student-athletes, Virginia Tech Athletics, and the campus community. This initiative has been in the works for quite some time and is supported by several members of the black Hokie alumni community.

You may watch the full panel by clicking the video below.