Jean and Ron Gregory made it a point to stop and eat at the Virginia Tech Block and Bridle Club's barbecue site at the State Fair in Caroline County. For years the club has grilled at the fair, and it's the group's biggest fundraiser each year. ROBERT A. MARTIN/THE FREE LANCE-STAR Visit the Photo Place

These Tech students do serious grilling

Virginia Tech students sell mounds of barbecue each year to raise money for livestock club

Date published: 9/29/2009

By Rob Hedelt

WHEN most college students toss some beef or pork on the grill, they're feeding a handful of folks.

When Virginia Tech's Stuart Sanders and Blaine White cranked up the grill, they were tossing 600 pounds of pork, 250 pounds of beef and 200 pounds of chicken in their massive cookers.

And they still had 300 pounds of lamb set aside for the weekend.

It's all part of their job as barbecue chairmen of Virginia Tech's Block and Bridle Club, an organization that gives members the chance to "get involved promoting the ever-changing livestock industry."

Each year at the State Fair, the club sends dozens of students in two-day shifts to run a barbecue restaurant as a fundraiser for the club's many educational and philanthropic programs.

"It's our biggest money-maker of the year," said Sanders, who hails from Irvington in the Northern Neck. "When there's good weather and good attendance at the fair, we can make $60,000 at the fair."

With interest high in the State Fair's new location at the Meadow Event Park in Doswell this year, the Block and Bridle Club is hoping for those big numbers.

What's impressive to many who'll stop by for a pork- or beef-barbecue sandwich or chicken dinner, with custom-made baked beans and coleslaw, is the fact that there aren't chaperons running this show.

Students like Sanders and White are in charge at the tent, near the livestock area. They do the planning that will put more than a dozen volunteers through a day that has Boston butt cuts going in the cookers at 5:15 a.m. and clean-up winding up around 11 p.m.

On a good day, the crew will feed 2,000 fairgoers.

It helps, said White, that the club has been doing this long enough to have all the equipment and the game plan that make it all work.

They have trailers and portable equipment that creates a huge kitchen and prep area in one tent, and tables and serving equipment that make the restaurant in another.

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Date published: 9/29/2009

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