Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 2, 1992 TAG: 9203020067
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Another ODAC tournament finished as a success Sunday at the Salem Civic Center, and that shouldn't be surprising.
Roanoke College won its seventh women's ODAC tournament in a decade, and Hampden-Sydney, led by Roanoke native Russell Turner, took the men's title.
Turner, who played at Patrick Henry High School, was the ODAC men's player of the year - following Cave Spring's David Kagey of Randolph-Macon a year ago.
When the Roanoke men's team didn't reach the civic center semifinals for the second straight year, it was natural to assume the event would suffer without one of its home teams. The ODAC, however, has homeboys and girls spread throughout its teams.
In the men's final, the champion Tigers and Emory & Henry had 11 of the 21 ODAC players who performed for Timesland high schools. The 11 ODAC women's rosters have 29 players from Timesland.
There's more reason for this than the location of most ODAC schools in the I-81 corridor. Roanoke-area players long have prospered at ODAC schools. Hampden-Sydney's career scoring leader is Turner; the rebounding leader, even after 20 years have passed, is Salem's Dave Trumbower.
While the Roanoke Valley can be very apathetic about sports, high school basketball is an exception. A crowd of 5,490 for Saturday night's district championship doubleheader at the Salem arena proved that to Randolph-Macon coach Hal Nunnally.
"One of the things I'm very concerned about is that we haven't done a good enough job [recruiting] in the greater Roanoke area," Nunnally said. "We got David Kagey, and then we didn't follow that up. Other schools have been here, and we will be in the future."
While the Roanoke Valley's metropolitan population of 225,000 produces an average of only one or two Division I players annually, the area has enough quality Group AAA and AA programs to change the ODAC standings.
E&H coach Bob Johnson was glad Kagey, who wore out the Wasps, was gone this season. So what happens? Turner comes home for a title with a 27-point, 15-rebound afternoon against an E&H team with eight Timeslanders.
Nunnally, whose team didn't make the ODAC semifinals, didn't simply come to town to watch his league playoffs and stand around and talk in the hospitality room. He was one of five ODAC men's head coaches watching the Roanoke Valley and Blue Ridge district finals Saturday night.
"The crowd last night is the best example of why this area produces good players for this level," Nunnally said. "People here care about and support high school basketball, and that gives kids all the more incentive to play. It's not like this in Northern Virginia, Richmond or Tidewater."
Nunnally said that in the two boys' district finals he watched, "assuming all of the players make their grades, there were 15 or 16 who would be in the first eight players on an ODAC team."
Expect the ODAC to play its entire men's and women's tournaments in Salem next season, rather than waiting a round later for a homecoming for so many.
by CNB