Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 27, 1995 TAG: 9507270034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Honestly. Give the girl a break. She deserves better than to be drummed out of the Miss Virginia winner's circle and have her tiara repossessed from atop her gleaming blond curls (not to mention the confiscation of the apartment, the cellular phone and the Camaro) because of a few nitpicky little questions about her pageant resume.
It was all just a minor misunderstanding, said the statuesque damsel.
A misunderstanding on the part of pageant officials and many of the more bloodthirsty members of the beauty contest-viewing public, the knuckleheads.
Well, I believe her. Here's one vote to return our exiled princess to her rightful throne.
For those who think these sentiments are the product of a mind turned to mush in response to Ballengee's stunning performance in the swimsuit competition, perish the filthy thought.
Many of us were equally interested in Ballengee's splendid deportment in the talent portion of the show.
That aside, Ballengee isn't entirely to blame for embellishing her accomplishments. Don't forget, this is a young lady who comes from a rich athletic background and has an award as the Outstanding Female Athlete at Tabb High School to prove it.
Excuse me?
It was the Outstanding Cheerleader Award she actually won, and not the Outstanding Female Athlete, as she had claimed? A claim, you might add, that was among those that landed her in hot water with pageant officials.
OK, OK. Big deal. It's close enough. We're talking semantics here. The stuff cheerleaders do these days is pretty athletic. And cheerleaders do hang around a lot of football players and other sweaty types during the course of their peppy duties.
And at least she didn't claim to be Terry Kirby, Mr. Outstanding himself when it comes to Tabb High sports.
The point is, she is outstanding in her own right.
Which, as all of us in the ball, bat and jock business know, is a heavily used adjective in every gym, arena and playing field in the land.
Actually, this is one adjective that has been misused as often as not. Coaches have to do it, though, just like Miss Virginia candidates. Ballengee, our Andrea, surely grew up listening to coaches just like Floyd County's Alan Cantrell.
As sure as they've ruined basketball by taking away the jump ball, Cantrell is going to do some serious embellishing about an upcoming opponent this fall. The two-time defending state Group A champions will have won nine of 10 or 12 of 13 or something like that and the next foe on the Buffaloes schedule will be 2-13 and losers of its last nine.
``I am very concerned about [Cannon Fodder High], who we play Tuesday,'' the coach will say. ``They have an outstanding team that has had some bad breaks. Throw out the eight 30-point losses and the forfeit and they easily could be 11-4. And that guard [Twana Twoleftfeet], she has as outstanding a jump shot as we've seen.''
Or we'll have Joel Hicks, the Pulaski County football coach, trying to put the most fearsome face as possible on that hopelessly overmatched ``finesse'' team that Hicks' boys are going to chew up and spit out like so many cans of Copenhagen.
``I just don't know if we can stop that passing attack [Canine High] has,'' Hicks will say. ``It's one of the best ones we've seen.''
What he actually means is, ``If we can't stop those clowns, then I'm going to fire my defensive coordinator on the spot.''
We understand. Cantrell and Hicks can't afford to let their teams get complacent.
Why can't we also understand that our Andrea can't afford to submit a boring resume? I mean, why should she write down on her resume the less-than-4.0 grade point average she attained at Virginia Tech when she can take the cumulative GPA she had from three different schools that also include Apex Hair and Nail Engineering Academy and MIT (Mullins Income Tax Prep) and claim she graduated magna cum laude? That's only fair and so what if stuffy old Tech disagrees?
That's the same sort of logic you hear baseball managers using when they say, ``Take the final six weeks of last season and the first six of this one and my first baseman, Jack Emout, is hitting .522 with 20 home runs and 35 RBI.
Never mind that official statistics only cover one season or the other, not parts of the two combined.
No reason on Earth our Andrea shouldn't have said that she had been accepted at University of Miami law school when in actuality, she was merely on the waiting list. Don't businesses do the same thing when they release to the public ``projected earnings'' figures?
And isn't that what coaches mean when they say, ``We won that football game in every conceivable way except on the scoreboard?''
As our Andrea or any coach can tell you, there are a lot of gray areas in beauty pageants and sporting events.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times sportswriter.
by CNB