BLACKSBURG, Va. – It was learned on March 4 that starting center fielder and team captain Sean Ryan was lost for the remainder of the baseball season with a broken hamate bone in his left hand. He is scheduled for season-ending surgery on March 6 to remove a piece of the bone.

“This is a tough loss because Sean is our most experienced player in the ACC,” Virginia Tech head coach Pete Hughes said. “He was really starting to have some success – he was hitting .450 and he was really starting to feel good about himself. He can defend gap-to-gap in the outfield, and he gives us speed in the top of the order. We’re just lucky that the outfield is our deepest position.”

The hamate is a hook-shaped bone at the base of the fourth and fifth metacarpals in the palm of the hand. When broken, pain is aggravated by gripping, so swinging a bat was going to be a tough task for the senior from Ashburn, Va.

Ryan suffered the injury while swinging through a pitch in the East Tennessee State game on Feb. 24. He sat out the next four games (aside from pinch-running duty against Bucknell on Feb. 28) before the fracture was confirmed.

Ryan started the season’s first four games and had racked up nine hits, nine runs scored, six runs batted in and four doubles. He will likely gain a fifth-year of eligibility should he choose to apply for it.