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Goad puts the tech in Virginia Tech [The Carroll News, Hillsville, Va.](Carroll News, The (Hillsville, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 06--Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium has often been referred to as The House That Frank Built. And while you may not know it, when you watch or listen to a Virginia Tech football game, there is a Carroll County native besides Frank Beamer that has a lot to do with your game day experience. Garry Goad of Woodlawn has been a network engineer with Virginia Tech since 1988. He is one of two network engineers always roaming the press box area at Hokies' home games. His main focus is making sure all the phone lines are hooked up and working properly for television and radio stations prior to taking to the airwaves for a Virginia Tech football game. "We just got through with a Spanish radio station, assisting them in getting their phone lines to work. They were having a problem dialing a number in Florida," Goad said Oct. 23 prior to the Hokies' home game with Miami. "During the game, all the phone lines or anything that is happening here with communications and it is tore up, they will holler at us and we are supposed to be able to fix it. Anything here with the internet, telephone or video, if it is not working, that's what we do." Goad, of Woodlawn, generally gets to each home game about three hours prior to kickoff. The first thing he typically does is check to make sure the needs are met of the visiting team's radio crew. From there, he will check to make sure the visiting coaches' headsets are working properly. "We work with the television people, too. ESPN was here yesterday (the day before the Miami game), so I checked with them and they only had one question that was easily answered," Goad said. "For the most part everything is done before the game, making sure if TV or radio people aren't familiar with our system that they don't have any problems. Once the game starts we basically sit around until somebody has a telecommunications problem. Then they call us." If you see something related to communications in Lane Stadium, it's a good bet Goad had some hand in it. The phone lines that connect the Virginia Tech coaches from the sideline to the coaches' box were hardwired by Goad and his crew. The massive new scoreboard in the north end zone is communicated through fiber optics that Goad's team has had a hand in. All the wireless networking, the wired network and the phones in the stadium were all done in part by the 1974 Carroll County High School graduate. "The Virginia Tech campus here basically has its own phone system. It's essentially its own phone company," Goad said. "Tech has its own fiber optics between the buildings. All of it is tied together." The auxiliary Goad works for takes care of all the telephones, video and internet used on the Blacksburg campus. Things have changed greatly since he started working there 26 years ago when Verizon was taken off campus and Virginia Tech decided to venture out with its own company. "I came in here on the ground floor back in 1988 and we put in our phone system. We had to do everything from scratch from the cable going to all the buildings and even the outlets to the walls, even the phones themselves, we pretty much rewired this entire campus and it has went through several generations," Goad said. "On our internet we're probably up to the third or fourth generation we have upgraded since I have been here. And we are on our second generation phone system now. And you could not ask for a better place to work." Back in 1988, the telecommunications in Lane Stadium basically consisted of just phone lines, Goad said. The old scoreboard in the north end zone basically just had "lightbulbs screwed into it." Now almost everything is connected. Goad said changes had to be made a few years ago due to the smart phone craze that caused the network to bog down every time the Hokies scored or made a big play. "Now this place has cell phone antennas and access points all over the place," Goad said. "This whole place is like one big cell tower. They are all around us on every floor. When I came here all we had was phone lines and video lines. Now there is fiber optics run to every floor of this building (Lane Stadium) and category six Ethernet wiring on ever floor. This place is so heavily dependent on multimedia now." Goad does the same type of work in Cassell Coliseum during basketball season, but due to the amount of games, the work is divvied up between more network engineers. His work in Lane Stadium begins weeks before the first football game when he comes in to start testing all the systems in the building. "I will walk through and test what I think needs to be tested and so the day the game happens I really don't have to do anything I hope," he said. "The only thing I am going to have to do is if somebody steps on something or breaks something or somebody has a special request." Allen Worrell can be reached at (276) 779-4062 or on Twitter@AWorrellTCN. ___ (c)2014 The Carroll News (Hillsville, Va.) Visit The Carroll News (Hillsville, Va.) at www.thecarrollnews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |