Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 17, 1993 TAG: 9312160024
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV9 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A UFO guy would have to be excused for overlooking it as he buzzed through on his way to Wytheville.
Folks driving through to other lands such as Mount Airy, N.C., or Bozoo, W.Va., might nod and say, "Nice creek, but where's the opera house?"
What the outsiders may not notice, though, is that these few acres of real estate are the home of some young people who have the hearts of gorillas.
So you want to debate that one? Glad to hear it. We'll chew you up worse than Gore did to that goofy cuss with the big ears who says he's from Texas.
Example No. 1 is the Giles High football team. Those boys went 14-0 and won the Group A Division 2 state championship.
Example No. 2 is the Blacksburg girls' basketball team, which lost two games all year on the way to winning its second consecutive state Group AA title.
Example No. 3 is the Floyd County girls' team, which sliced and diced the competition more effectively than a top-of-the-line food processor en route to the Group A crown. By the way, Floyd County only lost one game this year. To Blacksburg. In overtime.
Example No. 4 is Pulaski County, whose Cougars won 21 straight football games before coming up short on a couple of plays and losing to Annandale, 14-7, thus being denied their second straight state crown.
Not convinced?
What do you think of Blacksburg's football team? Trying not to let the girls get all the publicity, the Indians went into the Division 4 Region IV playoffs with a 5-5 record. Then the Indians won the region, flattening Carroll County and Lee High in the process.
Blacksburg's improbable charge ended at Rustburg in the state semifinals, where the Red Devils stopped the Indians, 20-8. But that wasn't until Blacksburg quarterback Greg Shockley, a junior, threw for 227 yards in the mud, a figure that is 20 yards shy of a state Group AA playoff record.
Rustburg went on to bonk Nansemond River for the championship, which meant that of Blacksburg's six losses, two came to state champions (Rustburg and Giles), one came to a Division 3 regional champion (Graham), one came to a Group AAA playoff participant (Heritage), and another came to Northside, which shredded Salem like coleslaw in the last game of the regular season but barely lucked out in beating the Indians.
How about Giles? Those guys were tough as the Internal Revenue Service in mid-April. Included in their inventory of victories were Blacksburg, Radford, Narrows (which made the Group A Division 1 Region C championship game) and, in succession, George Wythe, Haysi and Central of Lunenburg in the playoffs. GW, Haysi and Central all were undefeated when Giles played them, and the Chargers were the defending state champions with a 27-game winning streak.
Furthermore, Giles won at Haysi in the biggest mudhole since the World War I Western Front.
Those were the worst conditions some people had ever seen for a football game, and I would have been inclined to agree - until I saw Pulaski County play in an arctic gale against Annandale the next week. It was so cold that when the wind blew, it felt as though you were being worked on by a drunken accupuncturist. My cheeks hurt like somebody was beating them with a shovel, and the wind howled so hard that the moisturizing tears from my eyes evaporated before they reached my earlobe.
Pulaski County lost a brutal one there; with five more minutes, the Cougars might have been able to pull it off. But Annandale was stout, make no mistake about that, and the Atoms are a worthy champion.
People will ponder for years how much it hurt Pulaski County not to have broken-jawed wingback Eric Webb. No doubt, the dreaded Webb crisscross play would have given the Atoms pause. But injuries are a part of football.
Just ask Giles, which had to make do with using its best offensive player, Raypheal Milton, throughout the playoffs for only a handful of snaps, and then only as a designated passer. Milton had more than 1,000 yards rushing last year as a sophomore.
As for basketball, the great debate will forevermore be: Blacksburg or Floyd County, who was better? Very difficult to tell on that one, but Floyd County did tend to win more spectacularly. In three regional tournament games and a state quarterfinal, the Buffs forced something like 135 turnovers.
A recent caller to this office wanted to see if the newspaper would sponsor a winner-take-all showdown between the Buffs and the Indians after the state tournaments were over.
Rest assured that the Virginia High School League, both high schools and this newspaper want no part of that one.
But if any of the girls on the respective teams has a notion and a spare basketball, give me a call. We'll see if we can't find a court somewhere, so we can settle this matter.
\ Ray Cox covers New River Valley sports for the Roanoke Times & World-News
by CNB