Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406050013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB TEITLEBAUM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Last year, Timesland teams won 10 state championships. That included one in football by Jefferson Forest, which no longer is considered part of Timesland.
This year still has a week to run, and Timesland teams already have matched last year's total of 10 state championships. If Jefferson Forest still were in Timesland, the total would be 11 because the Cavaliers repeated as Group AA Division 3 football champions.
There's a chance for Timesland to win five more state titles. Carroll County or William Byrd (Group AA), Glenvar (Group A) and Franklin County (Group AAA) are in the state baseball tournaments. In softball, James River and Glenvar remain in the Group A competition. In soccer, Martinsville, which beat William Byrd 2-0 in a state semifinal Friday, plays host to Tabb in the Group AA title game Tuesday night.
Individually, Stacey Green of George Wythe accounted for one team state championship. Green scored 50 points in the Group A girls' track and field meet, and that was enough to give the Maroons the state championship over runner-up King William, which had 42 points.
Green won championships in the long and triple jumps and the 200-meter dash. Had Green performed in the Group AA meet, her distances and times would have won the same three events and placed in the 100-meter dash to score 32 points. That was more points than the 30 scored by Abingdon and Charlottesville, which shared the team title.
While it didn't produce a team title, the feat of Glenvar's Trish Nervo as a distance runner still ranks as one of the year's greatest moments for Timesland.
Nervo ran the 3,200 meters in 11 minutes, 21.1 seconds to win the state title. That won the Group A meet by nearly 40 seconds, and it was nine seconds better than the Group AA winner.
And the Glenvar sophomore wasn't pressed in her run. That made her performance, which was faster than the Group AA and A records by a considerable margin, all the more amazing.
It has been a truly great year for Timesland athletes.
\ GREAT YEAR PART II: Patrick Henry was the dominant Group AAA Roanoke Valley District school this year.
The Patriots won nine district championships: golf, volleyball, boys' and girls' tennis, boys' indoor and outdoor track, girls' indoor track and boys' and girls' soccer.
The boys' basketball team was the regular-season champion and a participant in the Northwest Region tournament, and the football team made the regional playoffs. The girls' outdoor track squad, both swimming teams and the softball team were district runners-up and both outdoor track teams won titles at the Cosmopolitan meet.
\ GREAT YEAR PART III: Cave Spring distance runner Jason Dowdy, who participated in the Group AAA state track meet this week after a first- and second-place finish in two events at the Northwest Region meet, won his 13th Roanoke Valley District title this year when he completed the sweep of the 1,600 and 3,200. That includes outdoor and indoor competition.
Cave Spring coach Joe LaRocco said that ties Dowdy with another former Knight, John Hawthorne, for career district titles in those two running events.
\ GREAT YEAR PART IV: This belongs to the William Byrd boys' soccer team. The Terriers have won nine consecutive district regular-season and tournament titles and eight of nine regional titles. Byrd has lost only two regular-season district games in the past nine years under coach Jeff Highfill.
\ EXPLAIN THIS ONE: The Blue Ridge District softball coaches did a strange thing. In choosing their coach of the year, they couldn't break a tie between Lord Botetourt's Andy Ward and Salem's Jim "Shorty" Wright.
Maybe the Blue Ridge coaches, who do the voting, are used to rubber-stamping people from those two schools as coaches of the year. That's because Salem and Lord Botetourt have dominated the district since the schools began playing softball.
In this case, they forgot the new team on the block - William Byrd, coached by Billy Meador. The Terriers not only won the regular-season crown, they went unbeaten.
One source said Meador didn't get it because he wasn't popular. Now you know: These all-district teams may be popularity contests.
\ NEW ALLEGHANY COACH: Carl Watson, the new Alleghany coach, might have become the head coach at Group AA Warren County had he been willing to wait a year or two. He was in line to take over when Jim Moose retires, which he may do as soon as the end of next season.
"I took the Alleghany job for a variety of reasons," Watson said. "As for Warren County, we might grow and be a Group AAA school. We have the players to compete, but I'm not sure we have Group AAA facilities. I looked at Alleghany as a [good opportunity], so I went ahead and moved."
\ THIS IS PLANNING?: The principals, who run the VHSL, in their infinite wisdom started fooling with next year's calendar that determines the start and finish of each sports season.
The principals moved everything a week later except for winter basketball, which they left on dates corresponding to this year's schedule.
What that did is create a major conflict at the Salem Civic Center. Now the Group AA and A regional wrestling tournaments will be in conflict with the dates for the district basketball tournaments when the two are held on the last weekend of February 1995. The state wrestling tournaments will conflict with regional basketball the next weekend.
Before, it was wrestling tournaments competing with regular-season basketball in Group AA and A. Media outlets could reasonably handle both sports. Now it won't happen, and any fans of both tournament wrestling and basketball will have to make a choice.
So, if parents, fans and athletes think they're getting poor coverage from the media next winter when wrestling and basketball hit the most interesting parts of their seasons, don't complain. Just write a letter to your favorite principal, because that's who runs the VHSL.
by CNB