Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040216
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The same thing happens every year. It usually starts on Election Day, particularly if skies are cold and gray as pale linen curtins in a house in the coalfields.
Also influential to my disposition is the casting of a number of losing votes, as I am wont to do.
By Wednesday, my mood is as black as Sadam Hussein's heart. In fact, it is perfect. Because now I can put my game face on.
These next two weeks are when it starts.
Football teams face blood-and-guts, pulled-hair and torn-fingernail matches to get into the playoffs.
The girls' basketball tournaments will commence, all swishing pony tails, arcing 3-pointers, and aching nerves.
The cross-country state championships, all six races - one vast stampede - will be held on Montgomery County soil for the first time Saturday.
These are matters that set my blood to boiling at frothy pace. Yes, friends, it is time to get worked into a verifiable frenzy.
Warmups started one morning this week. That's when I lined up in a three-point stance and tackled the dog as he was being set free for his daily rounds. Being a stout-hearted 100-plus pounder who has little patience for frivolity and poor football technique, he responded with a textbook foreleg shiver to my chin and an open paw slap to the head that sent me tumbling down the stone garden stairs.
Emmett the dog, who revels in the crisp days of late autumn and fears neither man nor beast, feels it, too.
When the time comes for the cross countrymen to break into full gallop; when Lynette, and Rebecca, and Charlee, and Mary, and Meredith start threading their passes, and launching their rainbows, and snatching their caroms; when Pulaski County invades the grassless lands of Victory Stadium, home dirt of the Patrick Henry Patriots, this is when life gets serious.
Serious as a heart attack.
Hopefully, it will snow and sleet the morning of the cross-country championships. Right before the races start, a sullen and numbing rain would be nice. Real character-testing weather we're talking about here.
You don't think cross-country hoofers are tough? Just wait until some 100-pound sophomore elbows an opponent who stands in her way into the muck. They say cross country is a non-contact sport, but it happens all the time, especially at state, where the field is deep and the will to win is deeper.
If things go as they should, every basketball tournament game from now until the championship will be settled by a last second cardiac-arrest kind of shot. From 35 feet. The resultant tears that will flow will flood a big river and you won't be able to tell the winners from the losers for the water works.
Maybe Pulaski County and PH will combine for 1,000 yards worth of offense, six touchdown passes, eight scoring runs and two 40-plus yard field goals. Then overtime will begin. Perhaps Blacksburg and Carroll County will slug it out until the last three seconds of the game when somebody records a safety and wins 2-0.
Maybe the next six or so weeks will be ones that will be burned into your brain so deeply that you'll remember them to your deathbed.
Maybe you're like me and forget nothing, year after year. Because this is when it gets good.
This is serious.
\ Ray Cox covers New River Valley sports for the Roanoke Times & World-News
by CNB