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LONGTIME ASSISTANT BRIAN SHARP IS SET TO
SUCCEED JAY HARDWICK AS VIRGINIA TECH’S
HEAD MEN’S GOLF COACH // by CHRIS LANG
B
RIAN SHARP NEVER WANTED TO LEAVE.
Though born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Blacksburg had
become home for Sharp. He was a four-year letterwinner
for Virginia Tech’s men’s golf team, a run that included a
Metro Conference individual title in 1995. Upon his return,
he worked as a graduate assistant for Jay Hardwick before being elevated
to full-time assistant coach. He met his wife, Margaret, in Blacksburg.
He was inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
“I just stayed,” Sharp said. “I never really wanted to leave just to leave,
basically, just to be a head coach somewhere else.”
That patience was rewarded on Jan. 25, when Hokies athletics director
Whit Babcock announced Sharp would succeed Hardwick, who will retire
at the end of this season after 36 years as Tech’s head coach.
“This is a hire that just makes sense,” Babcock said in announcing the
move. “Brian Sharp has established himself as one of the best coaches in
collegiate golf and is a Hokie, through and through. Having been able to
observe Brian’s skill set firsthand during the last several years, it became
clear to me that the best candidate for this job was right here all along.”
The fact that Sharp was even in position to assume the position was a bit
of a happy coincidence. After graduation, Sharp turned professional and
played on several mini-tours before earning a spot on the Buy.com Tour
(now Web.com). An injury and the reality that a long career on the PGA Tour
probably wasn’t in the cards forced Sharp to reevaluate his career plans.
He returned to Blacksburg in 2003 and enrolled in Tech’s Master’s
in Business Administration program.
“I talked to coach Hardwick about possibly coming back to get my
MBA, really with the idea that I would go work for a Titleist or a Tay-
lorMade, or one of the equipment companies,” said Sharp, a four-year
letterwinner at Tech in the mid 1990s. “That was kind of the goal.”
But he quickly caught the coaching bug.
While he worked on his Master’s degree, Sharp helped Hardwick as a
graduate assistant coach while working at Pete Dye River Course. “As
you can imagine, I had pretty much zero life outside of that,” Sharp said.
“But I just enjoyed it,” he continued. “I ended up meeting Margaret,
my wife, in 2006, a few months before I graduated from the MBA pro-
gram. … We liked being here in Blacksburg, and I enjoyed coaching.”
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