Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer gave head athletic trainer Mike Goforth a few days off this week to go coach Blacksburg's 9- and 10-year-old state championship team in the Dixie Youth Baseball World Series in Madison Heights.

It's a decision that may have saved the life of a 12-year-old North Carolina boy.

Travis Oliver, a member of North Carolina 11-12 team in the event, likely would have drowned in the Lynchburg Ramada Inn swimming pool if not for some quick reaction by bystanders Goforth, his wife, Tracy, and Norman Croy, a Blacksburg volunteer firefighter.

"Some kids started hollering there was a kid underneath who hasn't come back up yet," Goforth said Monday. "I dove in the pool, went down and touched bottom and couldn't find him. Then I went down again and couldn't find him ... it was kind of a cloudy pool. Before I could go down a third time, my wife had jumped in, found him, and started pulling him out.

"We pulled him up on the pool deck and tried to determine if he had a pulse, if he was breathing, and we determined he wasn't. Croy, one of our player's parents, started breathing and I started compressions. It was probably a minute or two before we got a little response out of him and some of the water started coming out. We kept going until we got some breathing, and about that time the [Lynchburg] EMS arrived."

Oliver was rushed to Lynchburg General Hospital and was later transported by ambulance to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, where he was listed in fair condition Monday afternoon.

"I understand Travis is at 65 percent run function now and they're going to try to ween him off the ventilator," Goforth said. "He's communicating by his eyes and with his hands, which is a great sign."

Goforth's son, Ethan, is the catcher for the Blacksburg team. This is the first time that Goforth has missed any of the Hokies' preseason football practices in his nine years at Tech.

"I'm just grateful that Coach [Beamer] let me do this," Goforth said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing and it turned out to be more important than we thought. There might be a reason we're here and it might not be baseball."