Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993                   TAG: 9308060014
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COACHING STAFFS HAVE NEW LOOK IN NEW RIVER

The most intriguing developments have taken place at Shawsville High School, where health problems have forced Mike Blevins to resign as football coach less than two months after he took the job.

With football practice scheduled to begin Monday, Shawsville principal Nelson Simpkins was left with no choice but to ask recently retired Jerry Cannaday to return for a one-season curtain call.

"There wasn't a whole lot I could do," said Cannaday, 60, who was contacted while vacationing in Charleston, S.C.

Cannaday, who previously coached at Greensville County, Monacan and Bassett, will return for his 15th season as a head coach and his third at Shawsville.

Blevins, who served as Cannaday's defensive coordinator, said he decided to give up the Shawsville job after a third operation to correct what he described as a "personal medical problem." He has had two operations in the past year.

For the past two years, Blevins has made the 75-minute trip from his home in Chilhowie to Shawsville each day. He said doctors told him he needed to drastically scale back the amount of time he spends on the road.

"They said the long drive would aggravate my surgery," said Blevins, who has found work much closer to home as a football and basketball assistant and head baseball coach at Rural Retreat.

"The people at Shawsville understand why I had to do what I did; they saw how much pain I was going through," Blevins said. "I hated to pull out on them, but I was afraid not to."

Blevins' legacy at Shawsville will be the wrestling program, which he started from scratch two years ago. In their second season of varsity competition, the Shawnees won the Mountain Empire District championship with a 14-4 record. Eleven wrestlers are expected to return from that squad.

Elsewhere in the New River Valley:

Two moves have taken place at Christiansburg - Danny Knott has been hired as girls' basketball coach and Kirk Litton has resigned as baseball coach.

Knott, a former boys' junior varsity coach, got the job in June. He takes over for Debbie Rose, who left Christiansburg after her husband took an out-of-state job in the fall.

In seven seasons, Litton guided the Blue Demons to four New River District regular-season championships, two tournament titles and four Region IV tournament appearances. He will stay on as Christiansburg's junior varsity football coach.

Another baseball coach at a Montgomery County School, Dennis Green of Auburn, also has resigned. Green, a former baseball coach and football assistant at Radford, will stay at Auburn to work as an assistant on first-year football coach Steve Wright's staff.

At Fort Chiswell, John Wayne Martin has resigned as the Pioneers' football coach after a five-year stint. Larry Neely, a former Rural Retreat assistant, has succeeded Martin.

Fort Chiswell principal Joe Bean said he believes Martin, a former football coach at Castlewood, is seeking an administrative position.