As it turns out, no one is immune from predatory towing in Blacksburg — not even Division I athletes.
During one of Trinity Martin’s first weekends at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2022, she went to an off-campus townhouse to sing karaoke with her teammates. When she walked into the house, her truck was in the parking space. When she left, it was not.
“[Rachel Castine] told me that at 10:45 [p.m.] they start towing,” Martin said. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ll go out there before then.’ We were singing, then I looked at my phone and it said 10:50, I swear, and then I walked outside and it was gone. And they didn’t believe me.”
At least she didn’t walk there. As freshmen a year before Martin, the team’s then-sophomores invited Castine, Emma Lemley and Bre Peck to their house. Their cars were in the lot by Lane Stadium, so they decided to walk the two-and-a-half miles down Main Street in the heat.
“We were too nervous to ask anybody for a ride, and so we were like, ‘Well, it can’t be that far of a walk, right?’” Lemley said. “… We walked all the way there. … We were like, ‘Can we borrow clothes?’ — because it was August and we were all drenched in sweat. We had fun, but that was the first thing we all did together.”
Years later, as upperclassmen now living in those same houses, Virginia Tech softball’s seniors are preparing for what comes next.
MARTIN, Castine, Lemley, Peck and Cori McMillan are the five players the Hokies honored on Senior Day.
Eligibility-wise, Martin is a junior, though she will graduate in three years and move on to a career in radiology. Castine will play her fifth year on the team in 2026, after receiving a redshirt since she missed most of the 2024 campaign with a broken wrist. McMillan will graduate with a degree in human nutrition, food and exercise in the fall and Peck will complete a sociology degree next spring, though both will exhaust their eligibility after this season. Lemley is also exhausting her eligibility after four years of softball and a degree in sports media and analytics.
All five of them took different paths to Blacksburg. Lemley committed to the university as an eighth grader under then-head coach Scot Thomas, then the NCAA rules changed to prevent her from committing before her junior year of high school and Virginia Tech fired Thomas.
“It was a year-and-a-half waiting period of: ‘OK, I don’t know, does Coach Pete [D’Amour] still want me to come here? This is the only place I really want to go,’” Lemley said. “But I stayed on them and had them come to my games and stuff and came to every single camp and pitching clinic. Then, on September 1, there was a camp, and I came to that and they offered me again. I immediately was like, ‘Yep, OK, we’re good.’”
Peck initially committed to Drexel, a CAA school not far from her hometown of Royersford, Pennsylvania. She said she wanted to attend a bigger softball school, so she decommitted and attended a camp while touring Virginia Tech.
“I went home and was told to think about it and give it some time, but I knew right away that this was where I wanted to be,” Peck said. “It was the best decision I probably could ever make.”
Martin’s recruitment process stemmed from her experience with her travel team, Starz Gold. Many Starz Gold alumni have landed at Virginia Tech, so the school was on her radar.
“I’d heard nothing but good things about Virginia Tech,” Martin said. “... I knew there were a lot of good things coming out of here. In my recruitment process, this was where I felt like I was at home. I visited other places, but this was the one place that really felt like home to me.”
Castine said she always wanted to play college softball, though her process was fairly straightforward.
“In travel ball and high school, I had a goal of playing in college, but it wasn’t my life. I wasn’t spending hours sending emails and stuff,” Castine said. “Once I started getting interest, it piqued my interest a little bit more. … I think Coach Pete was my second or third offer, and I accepted it probably three days later. … It wasn’t really a question of where I was going once I got an offer here.”
McMillan is the one transfer of the group; she played her first two seasons at Radford before moving 15 miles to Blacksburg. She entered the transfer portal after her sophomore season concluded and D’Amour texted her the same day. She visited a few weeks later and committed soon after.
“From the second I set foot on campus, I knew that I was going to end up here,” McMillan said. “They said everything I wanted to hear and they said we were going to win — and that’s what I was looking for. I wanted to be on a team that won and I wanted to be with a coaching staff and on a team that was going to make me a better player and a better person. And that’s exactly what I found here.”
McMillan had offers from some mid-major schools out of high school, but none from power conference teams. She wasn’t on a travel ball team that went to big tournaments in Colorado and California, so she went largely undetected.
“I don’t regret any path that I took,” McMillan said. “I loved Radford and I loved playing at Radford. I love the school and the people. I just needed something that would push me a little harder.”
With only a few miles of distance, McMillan was familiar with her soon-to-be teammates, especially given the team’s super regional run in 2022. That season, Peck started at third base and Lemley was the ACC Freshman of the Year. The National Fastpitch Coaches Association also named Lemley as one of the season’s top 25 freshmen — along with McMillan.
Radford traveled to Tech Softball Park in 2023 and McMillan knocked a first-inning home run. The Hokies won, 12-1, and McMillan ended the game standing at the on-deck circle, a batter away from facing Lemley. As teammates that fall, McMillan finally had a chance to face Lemley; she grounded out to first base on the first pitch.
“I think that was the one time I made contact that entire fall,” McMillan said. “I was 0-for-17 with 16 strikeouts in my first at-bats in the fall.”
Her 0-for-17 stretch didn’t last. Entering the NCAA Tournament, McMillan carries a .416 batting average at Virginia Tech and 51 home runs in two seasons — including 30 in 2025, obliterating the single-season program and ACC records. In turn, the ACC named McMillan its player of the year on May 7.
AFTER falling short of the super regional round for the second consecutive season, D’Amour placed an emphasis on mental strength.
As he said before the season, more than 75 percent of winning softball games is mental, but very few teams actively practice it. D’Amour hired Jason Kuhn, a former Navy SEAL and Division I baseball player, to speak with the team before the season.
“It was a Friday night and a Saturday morning,” Castine said. “Friday night, he was telling us stories about when he was in war, telling us stories about when he was in college and the mental toughness he’s had to have. It was super inspiring to listen to all the stories he has. On Saturday morning, we came in and did this boot camp.”
“That we had no idea we were doing,” Martin interjected.
“We walked in and he’s like, ‘Everyone help grab the logs off my truck.’ We were like, ‘What?’” McMillan said. “He said, ‘Grab these logs and these tires.’ We were like, ‘We thought we were just doing some sit ups.’”
The experience was designed to push the team, establishing trust within each other before playing a game.
“There’s never been anything that mentally taxing that we’ve put ourselves through, and I’m more grateful that we had the opportunity to put ourselves through something like that to understand one-hundredth of what Jason went through,” Martin said. “It makes us 20 times more grateful for what we get to do here and how much worse somebody else has it out there. It also taught us to fight for each other. We fought for each other every single second of that training, and it’s translated over into every practice and every game.”
Through that focus on mental strength and two, three or four years of experience at Virginia Tech, all of them have noticed growth — both personally and with their team.
“I’ve learned a lot more about how to communicate well with certain people and how you have to communicate with certain people,” Martin said. “Not everyone is the same. … We’ve learned how to deal around that and still fix what’s going on without having to hurt someone’s feelings or learning that maybe it will hurt your feelings for a little bit, but if someone hurts your feelings, it’s not personal. It’s only for the betterment of us and the team. I think that’s helped us grow as a team all together — having the ability to talk to each other.”
More individually, Peck said she has grown as a student. She said she struggled academically throughout her freshman and sophomore years, especially with balancing school and softball’s wonky travel schedule.
“I think I’ve definitely grown as a person with that,” Peck said. “I’m very proud of myself, because I’ve never been huge on school or doing well in school.”
It took shifting majors, but Lemley said her time at Virginia Tech helped her learn what she wants to pursue after college.
“I came in as an engineer and quickly found out I do not like this at all,” Lemley said. “I did well, but I was like, ‘This is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ So, I changed my major to sports media and analytics, and I found out that I want to stay in sports for as long as I can. I’ve matured in my four years here, not even in softball but outside of softball, with being able to speak up for myself and decide what I want to do with my life and be happy with where I am in our senior year.”
THE season is not over yet, though all five of them have plans for the next year.
Lemley and McMillan will play professionally in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League this summer; the Blaze selected Lemley with the third-overall pick in its recent draft, while the Bandits took McMillan fourth. Then, they will return to Blacksburg, where McMillan will work for the team as a volunteer assistant while finishing her degree. Meanwhile, Lemley will be a graduate assistant while earning a leadership studies degree within the Online Master of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“Emma is actually working on a farm,” Peck joked.
“Never thought I’d be getting a master’s in agriculture, but here I am,” Lemley said.
Martin is completing her four-year degree in human development in three, then plans to pursue radiology in January at the Sovah School of Health Professions in Danville. Once she finishes the two-year program, she will have a worldwide certificate to practice radiology anywhere. The program accepts about 15 students each year and Martin still has to apply by June 1.
“I’ve already talked with the person who runs the program and everything, and they’ve assured me that coming from a four-year college in three years is gonna put me in the program, basically,” Martin said. “… It’s really small and it’s really competitive, but it’s worth it.”
Before the five of them have to face the real world, the NCAA Tournament awaits. Virginia Tech (41-11) will travel south this weekend for the Tuscaloosa Regional to face No. 15 Alabama, Belmont and Jackson State. Regardless of how the postseason progresses, they have all left a legacy in Blacksburg — both within the softball program and outside of it.
“I’m really glad that we all ended up at Tech,” Lemley said. “These are my best friends forever. I’m just so happy that we all ended up in the same place and that I have these girls in my life.”