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Good morning, Blacksburg.
Tonight Lane Stadium gets its glow-up: brand-new LED lights, illuminated railings, and fireworks, all for a 4-0 vs 4-0 Friday night showdown on ESPN. How’s that for Friday night lights?
In today’s Blacksburg Connect:
🏈 Gameday: 4-0 Hokies host 4-0 Pitt under the lights
🍽️ Radford Restaurant Week starts
🏭 Updates on $4.2M grant aims to grow local manufacturing
Let’s get to it.
Correction: Yesterday's edition ran a news item about The Adams at Peppers Ferry landing $23.5M in construction financing. That story was actually a very old press release from June 2017. I try to google for press releases to find news, but I dropped the ball with that one. In case you were wondering, the project did get built: the 168-unit apartment community at 375 Continental Cir in Christiansburg opened in 2019 and is leasing today.
Friday, October 2
Hokie Village Fan Festival
3:30-6:15pm, turf field along Beamer Way. Free pregame fan fest with country duo Crawford & Power, food trucks, autographs from Hokie athletes, and Coca-Cola samples. Follows the Josh Pate and Bussin' With The Boys broadcast.
VT vs Pitt — 7pm, Lane Stadium, ESPN (sold out)
4-0 Hokies vs 4-0 Pitt under the lights. It's the Stripe Effect and the Hall of Fame Game, and a win would be Tech's first 5-0 start since 2005. Rain is in the forecast, so pack the poncho.
Bussin' With The Boys / Josh Pate live from Hokie Village
2-3pm ET. The national spotlight sets up camp on campus ahead of the 7pm kickoff.
VT Fall Family Weekend — Oct 2-4
Family socials, info sessions, and tours across the weekend. Registration through the Hokie Family Hub; football tickets are sold out.
VT swim & dive home opener — Oct 2-3
The Hokies host Penn State, Liberty, and West Virginia at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center.
Listening Room Concert Series: John Hildreth + Kat Mills
Doors 5pm, music 6-8pm, Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley, 21 W Main St, Pulaski. Free, $5 suggested donation, cash bar.
Sinkland Farms 35th Annual Pumpkin Festival
Friday hours; weekends run Friday through Sunday through November 1.
Saturday, October 3
Halloween Kickoff
12-5pm, 1035 Cambria St NE suite a, Christiansburg. A spooky good time at Jungle Gem, Mountain View Mercantile, and Cambria Station Antiques: vendors, activities, food, drinks, and music up and down the strip, plus a Halloween costume contest voted on by attendees, with a special prize for the winner. Special guest: Animal Alliance hosts a cat adoption event inside the shop.
Family Fun Run
1pm, Creed Field Park, 4390 Riffe St, Elliston. Free event: a family fun run at Creed Field Park.
"Eureka Day" — final performances
2pm and 7:30pm, Squires Studio Theatre, Virginia Tech. Last chance to catch Jonathan Spector's Tony Award-winning comedy about a progressive school board undone by a mumps outbreak. $15 general, $12 students and seniors.
2nd Annual Rocktober Fest
4-8pm, First & Main, 1490 S Main St, Blacksburg. Free community festival at the Hokie-owned gathering spot: live music all evening, local shops with outdoor tables and giveaways, a movie or bowling at B&B Theaters, beer, wine, and spirits from Bull & Bones, El Rodeo, and The Hatch (21+, ID required), Hokie Bird appearances, and on-site giveaways. RSVP for a free spot.
VT women's soccer vs Louisville
7pm, Thompson Field. Regular-season admission is free.
Wind Ensemble and Symphony Band
7:30-9:30pm, Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, 190 Alumni Mall, Blacksburg. The Virginia Tech Wind Ensemble (Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall) and Symphony Band perform an evening concert of traditional wind band classics and contemporary works. Hosted by the VT School of Performing Arts; tickets at artscenter.vt.edu.
🏈 Gameday: 4-0 Hokies host 4-0 Pitt under the lights
Tonight is the big one. Two unbeaten teams walk into a sold-out Lane Stadium at 7pm on ESPN, and the history books say this exact matchup has never happened before: per The Key Play, it is the first meeting of two unranked 4-0 major-conference teams in modern college football history.
Hokie Village: the free fan fest on the turf field along Beamer Way runs 3:30-6:15pm, with live music from Crawford & Power, food trucks (Good Dog Vending, Sweet Surrender Ice Cream, Star City Burger Co., Playa Bowls Blacksburg), and autograph sessions with women's soccer (4:30-5), lacrosse (5-5:30), and women's basketball (5:30-6). The Marching Virginians' March to Victory parade starts about 5:30pm from the MV Center and rolls through Lot 2 into the stadium's south side. The Army ROTC Cadet Contracting Ceremony takes the field before kickoff, and tonight brings new LED railing lights plus custom fireworks throughout the game.
Hall of Fame Class of 2026: at halftime, Virginia Tech welcomes seven new inductees onto the field. Logan Thomas (football) is the program's career leader in total offense, passing yards, and passing touchdowns, and led the Hokies to the 2011 ACC Championship Game and Sugar Bowl before a fourth-round NFL draft pick and a run at tight end. Jerry Cheynet served Tech from 1974 to 2025, coaching wrestling, men's soccer, women's soccer, and men's golf, and remains the winningest coach in school history in both wrestling and men's soccer. The class also includes wrestler Chris Martin (126-25 career record), softball's Kylie McGoldrick (.318, 30 HR, three-time All-ACC), seven-time All-American pole vaulter Yavgeniy Olhovsky, five-time ACC champion pole vaulter Martina Schultze, and women's soccer's Murielle Tiernan, the program's all-time leader in goals and points. They are formally inducted Saturday at The Inn at Virginia Tech. Preview / Gameday promotions / Hall of Fame class
🍽️ Radford Restaurant Week starts
Running through October 11, Radford Restaurant Week brings deals, specials, and limited releases to participating restaurants around Radford, including Brick House Pizza (est. 2017). Diners can round up their checks to support the Radford ACCE program, which covers community college tuition for local students. Details are at the linktree for radfordrestaurantweek, shared in local groups this morning. FB post
🏭 Updates on $4.2M grant aims to grow local manufacturing
Check out a new write up from The News Feed on how the New River Valley Regional Commission is leading AM2, a $4.2 million GO Virginia grant awarded in May 2026 to expand advanced manufacturing across the New River Valley and Southern Virginia. AM2 stands for additive manufacturing and advanced materials, a fast-evolving field with applications in aerospace and energy. The effort follows a 2023-25 planning phase funded by a $500,000 U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, which produced a 10-year roadmap from Virginia Tech's Center for Economic and Community Engagement. The roadmap's headline target is 100 jobs, drawn from the region's own engineering pipeline, plus 25 paid internships, four new apprenticeships, 40 businesses served, and $2 million in outside funding raised for local companies. Manufacturing already supports 65,000 jobs at 1,330 firms across AM2's full service area; in the core region, manufacturing employment has grown 12% since 2020, nearly double the national rate. Virginia Tech
📰 News Around the NRV
Virginia Credit Union gives Radford University $2.5M. The gift funds the new Virginia Credit Union Financial Success Center in the Davis College of Business and Economics at $250,000 a year for 10 years. Opening in the 2026-27 academic year, the center will offer financial education, one-on-one coaching, and community programming across the New River and Roanoke valleys. vacu.org
Tartan Transfer network now complete. Radford University's transfer alliance is now 10 schools strong with CVCC as the final partner, making it the largest two-year-to-four-year public transfer network in Virginia. radford.edu
Blacksburg Transit goes solar. An 866.71-kW rooftop solar system at 2800 Commerce St is projected to save $2.2M in energy costs with no upfront cost to the town, through a 25-year power purchase agreement.
📌 Community Board
VT shelter cat adoption event
11:30am-12:30pm, 102 Plantation Rd NW, Blacksburg. New shelter cats brought to Blacksburg with help from the Lynchburg Humane Society and trained by VT students; browse the cattery online and apply through the Virginia Tech form.
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