For Derek Wade and Katie Brown, Baja SAE was the vehicle for their romance.
The two met a few years ago - June 9, 2019, to be exact - during a competition in Rochester, New York. Wade, then captain of ODU's Baja team, and Brown, then captain of Virginia Tech's Baja team, talked back and forth all that weekend.
The other ODU team members knew something was up when Wade seemed more interested in Brown's texts than with communications from his own team about the competition. They, of course, gave him a hard time about it.
Wade and Brown spent that summer getting to know each other through texts and phone calls. Wade was living at home in Augusta County, Virginia, and Brown had moved to Richmond following her graduation.
Their first date, on August 9, was to a Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball game.
They continued to date long distance. Wade earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering technology with a minor in engineering management while Kathryn worked as an engineer.
Today, they are both busy engineers. Wade is a project manager at a construction company in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Brown is a production manager for a beverage plant in Mount Crawford, Virginia.
Now, after three and a half years of dating, they have one more big date coming up; an April wedding.