Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203290059
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB TEITLEBAUM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Athletes from this area have hauled away a lot of honors in Virginia High School League-sponsored events. It's been a team and individual effort.
What are the biggest surprises? Those would be the six individual wrestling championships that the Pioneer District won in the Group A tournament. Wrestlers from five schools pulled off that feat. Lexington's Robert Hull (heavyweight) and Joel Ides (189 pounds) made the Scarlet Hurricane the only team with more than one winner.
The other surprise was Northside's boys' basketball team. The Vikings simply refused to be beaten until running into a group of superior athletes from Nansemond River in the championship game.
At the beginning of the season, if you had said Northside would play in the Group AA state final, people would have thought you were crazy. The Blue Ridge District hadn't had a team in the final since Glenvar won the 1975 title.
Team-wise, Patrick Henry in boys' basketball, Christiansburg in boys' cross country, George Wythe in Group A volleyball, Lord Botetourt in Group AA golf and Glenvar in Group A golf won VHSL titles.
Besides Northside, there were plenty of other finalists: three in football (Jefferson Forest, Salem and Parry McCluer), two in girls' basketball (Martinsville and Pulaski County) and one in volleyball (Glenvar).
Franklin County's wrestling team finished fifth in Group AAA, which is very good for this area. Next year the Eagles might be strong enough to challenge for the top, a goal generally unreachable for teams from this area.
Pulaski County's second trip to the Group AAA girls' basketball final tells another part of the story. Cave Spring made the semifinals for the second year in a row. Those two teams have established the Roanoke Valley District as the strongest in girls' basketball.
In indoor track, Ronde and Tiki Barber had the second best performances in the nation in two events. Ronde was a nationally ranked 55-meter hurdler, and Tiki was a top long-jump performer.
\ Tony Weeks has resigned officially as the Bassett boys' basketball coach, and it appears Stan Clark won't be after the job.
Clark, who coached G.W. Carver to two Group A titles before that school was merged with Drewry Mason to become Magna Vista, isn't applying for the job.
"It's just not the right situation for me," said Clark, who still hasn't given up returning to coaching.
\ Claudia Dodson, a programs supervisor for the Virginia High School League, says she walked into University Hall at Charlottesville on the morning of the Group AAA final on March 21 to find Booker T. Washington boys' basketball coach Barry Hamler and the Bookers going through a walk-through for that night's game against Patrick Henry.
"They were out on the floor in street clothes, so I asked them to leave," said Dodson.
Hamler told Dodson that he thought a rule prohibiting teams from practicing on the University Hall floor applied only to before the tournament and not during the tournament.
Hamler also permitted one media member into his dressing room after the Bookers' semifinal game against South Lakes, then closed his dressing room to other members of the media. The VHSL said that won't be permitted in the future, that all members of the media will have equal access.
\ A clarification of the new VHSL rule regarding basketball teams playing in invitational tournaments will permit schools to play as many as 22 games.
In prior years, teams were permitted 21 games, meaning if a school such as Patrick Henry went to a four-game invitational tournament like the Arby's Classic, the team could play only 17 other games. Now they can play 18.
The benefit is that a school won't have to find a single game instead of a home-and-home exchange if it goes to a four-game invitational.
\ Northside has been invited as the eighth team in the Virginia High basketball tournament in early December.
With William Fleming in that tournament, it could mean the two neighboring schools, which dropped their series when the Vikings left the Roanoke Valley District for the Blue Ridge, might play one another in a semifinal or championship game.
\ The Cave Spring girls have informed officials of the Fort Eustis Christmas basketball tournament that they won't be back. The Knights had won two straight titles, but they prefer to look out of state, possibly going to Florida for a tournament.
by CNB