Virginia Tech Will Honor Sandy Hook Victims In Russell Athletic Bowl

Virginia Tech Will Honor Sandy Hook In Russell Athletic Bowl
A ribbon-shaped decal is shown on a Virginia Tech helmet at NCAA college football practice, Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012, in Orlando, Fla. The Hokies are wearing the decal that includes the number 58, a nod to the 32 murdered by a gunman at the university in 2007 and the 26 murdered in Newtown, Conn., this month. The Hokies take on Rutgers in the the Russell Athletic Bowl on Friday. (AP Photo/Kyle Hightower)
A ribbon-shaped decal is shown on a Virginia Tech helmet at NCAA college football practice, Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012, in Orlando, Fla. The Hokies are wearing the decal that includes the number 58, a nod to the 32 murdered by a gunman at the university in 2007 and the 26 murdered in Newtown, Conn., this month. The Hokies take on Rutgers in the the Russell Athletic Bowl on Friday. (AP Photo/Kyle Hightower)

Virginia Tech will honor the memories of student and staff killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre with a special helmet decal during the Russell Athletic Bowl on Friday, according to Fox News.

Its campus in Blacksburg, Va. was the scene of deadliest school shooting in U.S. history when 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people over two hours on April 16, 2007. Cho had been diagnosed with mental illness.

The decal is a folded ribbon, and opposite sides are colored to represent Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. The number 58, symbolizing the total number of people killed, is over the ribbon’s center, and “Prevail” is written over that.

Hokies Head Coach Frank Beamer told The Olympian,

It’s just one of those things where we’ve been through what those people up in Sandy Hook are going through. We got 58 on the helmet there – the number of guys between us and them that (were) needlessly killed. We prevailed in Blacksburg (Va.), and I think, if anything, it brought us closer and more determined. The same thing is going to happen there. I can just tell that community is coming together.

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