A Season Like No Other

THE VOICE is vibrant, strong, full of life. On Nov. 12, 2005, Jackson Collins left a message on the cellphone of his son Coleman, a standout junior forward for Virginia Tech. Last Thursday, three days after his father had succumbed to lung cancer at age 56, two days before returning to the court in honor of his dad's memory, Coleman sat in his Blacksburg apartment and listened once more to a recording he may never erase: "Hey, Coleman, this is Dad. Right now it's 11:45 a.m., and I'm getting ready to go home. I'm leaving the hospital in about 15 minutes, but I just wanted to wish you good luck tonight. See if you could get about 25 and 10, O.K.? I just wanted to let you know that I'm very proud that you're my son. And you take good care of yourself, O.K.? Love, Dad." � Collins paused, took a deep breath and exhaled. "That's what I've got to go on," he said finally. "I've got memories and whatnot, but they're not really tangible." � Voices, as distinct as fingerprints, can trigger a flood of emotions. Long before Coleman came to treasure a saved phone message from his dad, Jackson delighted in Coleman's lively voice on the printed page--the sometimes provocative, decidedly non-sports-centric op-ed pieces he writes for the Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's student newspaper. "Our father took as much joy from reading Coleman's columns," says Coleman's brother, Jackson Jr., "as he did from watching him play basketball."

My father and I have fought. We've wrestled. We've cursed each other out. Isn't it funny how men can curse at the top of their lungs, and they whisper, "I love you"? ... Even when he says it, and I say it back, it's awkward. I always sound like I've got a mouth full of Skittles.

-- Coleman Collins, Collegiate Times, Oct. 12, 2004

For Virginia Tech the pain this season goes deeper than its 13-12 record, deeper than its faded NCAA tournament hopes, deeper even than seeing its shot at a win at No. 1 Duke dashed by a 43-foot heave at the buzzer by the Blue Devils' Sean Dockery.

One of Collins's roommates, senior forward Allen Calloway, hasn't played since November because he has a rare form of inoperable soft-tissue cancer. His other roommate, senior guard Shawn Harris, lost the woman who raised him, his grandmother Madeline Gill, who died on Jan. 24. Sophomore forward Wynton Witherspoon's mother, Carolyn, is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and the high school host mother of Puerto Rican freshman swingman A.D. Vassallo, Becky Carwile, lost her battle with breast cancer last month.

With alarming regularity, Virginia Tech's season has alternated between playing at Wake Forest one day and attending a wake the next. "Nothing that I've learned in all my years of coaching prepares you for this," Hokies coach Seth Greenberg said last week, his voice hoarse. "Coleman's family wants me to challenge him, but when I do I feel terrible afterward, and I call him six times to make sure he's all right."

Though he's the Hokies' leading scorer and rebounder, Collins admits he's had a hard time concentrating on basketball. He missed four games to visit his father at a Stone Mountain, Ga., hospice, at Greenberg's urging. The coach regrets not spending time with his father, Ralph, also a lung cancer victim, in the days before he died.

Coleman's mother, Carolyn Brooks-Collins, says writing is "cathartic" for her son, a dean's list student who will graduate with a degree in film and media theory in May at age 19. Collins sums up his intellectual tastes in one word: eclectic. His DVD collection ranges from Rashomon to Caddyshack to An American in Paris, and he says things such as, "I like the stuff Truffaut wrote on Hitchcock." Take a ride in his old Lincoln Town Car, and you'll hear a mix of Ella Fitzgerald, the rap group Goodie Mob and Rat Pack standards by Frank Sinatra.

I can't say I blame my father for starting to smoke. ... Clark Gable smoked all the time. ... The Flintstones appeared in an ad for Winston. Smoking was, and still is, a part of our culture. The major difference is now we know what it does to us. In the immortal words of those Virginia Slims people, we've come a long way.

-- Coleman Collins, Collegiate Times, June 24, 2004