2019-20 Georgia Tech Everyday Champions Issue #3

ATHLETICS

BIG B LIVES ON LATE TECH DEFENSIVE LINEMAN’S MEMORY IS CARRIED IN THE EFFORTS OF MANY OTHER YELLOW JACKET STUDENT-ATHLETES

BY MATT WINKELJOHN

I t may be hard to believe that it has been almost a full year since the tragic death of Brandon Adams, and it’s no less amazing how quickly fellow Georgia Tech student-athletes to hatch a plan to honor the late defensive tackle and business administration major. Actually, there are multiple timelines behind Victoria Flores’ idea for last fall’s “Big B” Clothing Drive, which fetched hundreds of wearable items to be donated to homeless people not far from campus. A couple of those timelines were remarkably quick. One in the middle took longer. Let’s move chronologically through a tale that weaves Georgia Tech student-athletes together with each other, their Institute and the world around them all. First, there was that day in the fall of 2017, when the diminutive Flores first met a much larger human in the parking garage of their apartment complex at the corner of North Avenue. Hours earlier, a sophomore from Brentwood, Tenn., played for Tech in a college football game, which Flores – surely one of the biggest fans of Tech athletics even beyond the tennis that she plays for the Yellow Jackets – had attended. In her first couple months on

The Flats, the freshman from Fort Dodge, Iowa, had learned of “Big B,” a smiler similar to her. Then, he was there. “I was just putting clothes in my trunk to donate to a homeless shelter nearby, and he just happened to see me and said, ‘Where are you going? What are you doing? I don’t want you to go alone,’” Flores recalls. “So, he volunteered to go with me, and we went to Gateway Center (on Pryor Street) . . . “It was like really instant. I always heard about him. I’m very friendly; I always hug people the first time I meet them, and he hugged me. He was so friendly, and I could tell it was very genuine.” Flores continued donating clothing to Gateway Center, which is located a few blocks west of the state capitol building near downtown. Gateway Center provides access to critical services and housing for the homeless, basic needs such as showers and clothing, shelter and access to health care and employment resources. Sometimes, her roommates and teammates Kenya Jones and Nami Otsuka joined her. But always, Adams flew wingman.

20   EVERYDAY CHAMPIONS | SPRING 2020