Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070127
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Having passed a grueling three weeks of houseguests, death-defying calorie intake and reckless credit card flinging, only now has arrived the opportunity for deep reflection on events of the past year.
Actually, the year ended in harmony at our house, which may have been a bigger upset than Carroll County beating soon-to-be state girls' basketball champion Blacksburg in the last week of the regular season.
The holidays began on an ominous note when one relative who was in from the West Coast for an extended visit announced his intentions toward another of our kinfolk who would be coming from Richmond for an overnight visit:
"The next time I see that [unpleasant fellow], I'm going to punch him in the nose," said the West Coaster.
Violence was averted, however, perhaps for no other reason than shared gloom on the part of the bickering parties at the misadventures of the Washington Redskins.
So on that happy note, we must conclude in retrospect that it was a good year for domestic relations.
It was a good year for concessions at Pulaski County High's Dobson Stadium. Discerning food critics found it next to impossible to pass the heavenly work of the open-fire barbecue roasters near the front gate without depositing liberal amounts of dollars to have a crack at the feast.
It was a bad year for the football-playing Cougars, notwithstanding the perfect record and fearsome reputation they carried into the Group AAA Division 6 title game against Annandale at frigid and wind-lashed W.T. Woodson High. Pulaski County could not withstand the savage weather, the loss of injured super junior Eric Webb nor the passion of the true believers among the gritty gridders from Annandale and failed to achieve back-to-back championships.
It was a good year for the female basketball runners and stunners from Floyd County. They sank 3-pointers by the truckload, ran like politicians and pressed their way to the Group A crown.
It was a bad year for baseball in Pulaski. Calfee Park was a depressing vacant lot this summer after the traitorous Appalachian League Braves moved to more glamourous digs in Danville.
It was a good year for baseball in Pulaski. The town stood ready to benefit from an Appy expansion and the hoped-for impending arrival of the Pittsburgh Pirates organization to take up its rookie league work at Calfee in coming campaigns.
It was a bad year for weather. If it wasn't a March blizzard disrupting baseball spring training, it was foul and freezing winds icing the exposed limbs of brave track-and-fielders. If it wasn't a hideous heat wave searing every summer-leaguer, duffer and netter in sight, it was a gross mud bath for Giles at boggy Haysi and a slipping and sliding contest for Pulaski County against waterlogged Indian River in the football playoffs.
It was a good year for the single-wing offense and hell-fire-and-brimstone oratory at Giles. Master motivator Steve Ragsdale coached the Spartans to a 14-0 season and a title tilt pasting of legendary Lunenburg Central.
It was a bad year for pitchers. Narrows' Whitey Blankenship, who could hit a golf ball with a coat hanger, saw to that with a batting average that approached the heavens. Whitey, in fact, gave a lot of people a bad year, continuing his stout-legged heroics into football season, when he trampled just about everybody in sight before being derailed by Rural Retreat in the playoffs.
It was a good year for soccer in Blacksburg. It usually is for coach Shelley Blumenthal's boys.
It was a bad year for Beamer reamers. Hokies football coach Frank stuffed a knee pad in the mouths of his detractors by orchestrating Virginia Tech past the despised denizens of Charlottesville and weed-eating the flatlanders from Indiana in the bowl on the bayou.
It was a good year for Blacksburg girls basketball. The Indians shook off the Carroll County catastrophe and stuck a Mary Thorn in the side of their enemies while winning their second straight state championship.
It was a bad year for Thanksgiving overstuffing in Pulaski. Pulaski County principal Tom DeBolt warned the football team of the evils of Turkey Day gluttony prior to Friday's playoff clash with Gar-Field. That was before he passed out recipes for turkey soup to the players with instructions for fixing it for their families the day after the game. "We'll call it Victory Soup," he said clairvoyantly.
It was a good year for football picking. The fellow whose portrait adorns this column crushed Bob Teitlebaum like an egg in choosing the winners of the weekly football games. The sweetest words ever spoken in the Roanoke Times & World-News sports department (where occasionally a sweet word is written), were those of the great Teits, who said in mid-October, "I concede."
Ray Cox covers New River Valley sports for the Roanoke Times & World-News
Keywords:
YEAR 1993
by CNB