Monday, September 22, 2008

Virginia Tech senior Orion Martin starts at defensive end for the Hokies, in the same huddle with his younger brother, Cam, a whip linebacker. Orion is 18 months older than Cam, who arrived in Blacksburg with considerably more hype than the former walk-on Orion. The brothers grew up in Martinsville, Va.

It's a strong sense of family. I know he's out there and I know I'm fighting not just for my teammates, but my blood is out there. That's just part of me. It's the same flesh and blood. He's one of my best friends. I've known him longer than anybody. He's been there from diaper days to now. When he's out there and I'm out there with him, I just want to play even harder.

Sometimes I don't even need to say anything to Cam. We just look at each other and know what we're thinking. We see something funny and we just look at each other, like when we're in a meeting and the coaches say something funny. He'll look over at me, I'll look over at him and we'll just be laughing. The communication is there. When we used to get in trouble as kids, like if my dad asked one of us something if we did something, we'll look at each other and say, 'No, we're not going to tell what happened.' We've always had that.

I think we're not that far apart, so we help each other out. I never felt like I was the older brother where I felt like I was 5-10 years older than him. So a lot of stuff I was going through, he was going through at the same time because we're only like a year and a half apart. Some of the things I was learning, he was learning with me. So I guess that brought us closer, us being so close together in age.

-- Interview by Zach Berman