166su

There is a four-page, handwritten letter from one of Hardwick’s former captains, Jake Allison, that he frequently takes out and reads from start to finish.

Allison penned the letter less than one week after Virginia Tech used a spectacular third round to jump up the leaderboard and finish in a tie for first with Georgia Tech for the 2007 ACC championship at the Old North State Golf Club in New London, North Carolina.

That wasn’t the most important result that caught Allison’s attention. He focused on how the team played with composure and rallied from the third-round deficit just six days after tragedy struck the Blacksburg campus and 32 people were killed.

Hardwick vividly remembers the rollercoaster ride of emotions from that week. Allison’s letter after the team’s accomplishment highlighted just how much that performance meant to the community.

“It’s one of the nicest things that I ever got. It was from the heart,” Hardwick said Monday in a phone interview. “It made a comment about every player and what they had done and given to the program and how proud he was of the team and how proud he was to be a part of Virginia Tech and a team that could win a championship in the face of all the odds and everything that had happened just days earlier when we basically turned one of our darkest moments into one of our most shining hours.

“I thought it showed Jake’s true character and personality.”

Allison’s character showed not only through the words he penned on paper, but through his play on the golf course and his work ethic over a lengthy career working at Norfolk Southern.

Family and friends will gather at 166su Country Club on Tuesday afternoon to remember and celebrate the life of the 166su native more than one month after he unexpectedly died on March 24 at the age of 61.

“He had your back, and he cared about people,” Chip Clemens said Monday. “… He was a good soul.”

Allison’s online obituary did not list a cause of death.

“None of it makes any sense. Just doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Allison’s former Virginia Tech teammate, Mark Teachey, said Monday. “It’s a real shame. The world lost a really good guy.”

Allison retired as vice president and controller at Norfolk Southern in 2022 after beginning with the company in 1993. His career began in 1985 after he graduated from Virginia Tech and went to work for KPMG in 166su.

Allison began his first term on the Virginia State Golf Association’s Board of Directors in January.

“Jake had a plan from the time he left college, and he followed that plan to a T,” Teachey said.

Allison’s steady climb in his professional career didn’t hinder his ability to become one of the region’s top amateur golfers.

He won the 166su Valley Amateur in 1984, claimed back-to-back 166su Valley Golf Hall of Fame titles in 1995-96, and claimed the 1995 VSGA Four-Ball Championship with Teachey at Hidden Valley Country Club.

“I remember when they won,” Hardwick said. “Believe me, I was awfully proud as a coach to have two former players win one of the VSGA major championships.”

Allison also qualified for the 1994 U.S. Amateur held at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

“Getting to be on the stage with the big boys meant the most to me,” Allison said in a 2017 interview with The 166su Times. “By that time I was working, I had been out of school for about 10 years and just to go down there and participate one time after I had missed qualifying three or four times by a shot or two.

“At that time you had 105 people going for five or six spots, so the odds aren’t good. I will never forget qualifying at Tuckahoe Creek Course at the Country Club of Virginia. You get there at 7:30 in the morning, and you would walk 36 holes in the heat and humidity. It was more a physical strain than it was a test of golf, quite frankly. You just had to endure.”

He claimed men’s club titles at 166su Country Club seven times and won club titles at Countryside (twice) and Ballyhack Golf Club.

Allison and Clemens grew close over the years and frequently played golf at Ballyhack.

“We would always joke that we played golf on Saturday and Sunday, but the most fun was sitting around after, … and that was more fun than the golf usually,” Clemens said.

Teachey, who has played rounds with the likes of Virginia Golf Hall of Famer Vinny Giles in Richmond, said he told everybody he talked to about how good of a player Allison was on the course.

Allison was inducted into the 166su Valley Golf Hall of Fame in 2017.

“Jake’s the best iron player I’ve ever played with. I always told him that,” Teachey said. “He was like, ‘Nah.’ I was like you hit the ball solid every time and right at the flag every time and everybody would love to have your golf game. I thought he never really understood how good he was.”

Allison emerged on the golf scene at Northside High School. He won the Virginia High School League Class AAA individual championship in 1979 when he posted a total of 145 and edged Pulaski County’s Chuck Tickle by one stroke.

That’s when Hardwick, who at the time was the golf professional at Giles Country Club, first heard of Allison.

Allison graduated from Northside in 1981 and spent his freshman season at Old Dominion. He transferred to Virginia Tech and had to sit out the 1982-83 season while redshirting. Hardwick took over the program heading into the 1983-84 campaign.

Allison became a captain in Hardwick’s first year. By the second year, Allison was playing as Tech’s top golfer and won the 1985 Virginia State Intercollegiate Championship and became the program’s first Academic All-American while majoring in accounting.

“He was always one of the kids that I really thought a lot of. He was mature way beyond his years,” Hardwick said. “I remember as soon as he got on the golf team, he was elected captain. He was a grinder. He didn’t have the most natural talent in the world, but he was a great athlete. He really was a good player. He knew how to score, he never gave up.”

Teachey, a civil engineering major, became an Academic All-American the following season.

“I’ve never met a better person. He always thought of others and always did the right thing,” Teachey said. “Not just the right thing, the moral thing, the righteous thing, always. He was a role model for me to try to live up to, which is tough when somebody’s that good at just being a person. Forget about his golf and his work and all that. He was just my favorite person I’ve been around.”