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Ever heard of Steve Ragsdale?

David Cutcliffe, Hugh Freeze & Mike Leach never played football

Mac McClung won a state championship. Everyone else was along for the ride.

Don Williams was Lee High's coach through the 90s when they had their best years and coached Pennington through the 70-80s. Never played and they didn't have a football team period.

Want to really upset your peoples in Lee County? Your good ole boys used to have a coach by the name of Jamie Hackney. He is one of our coaches now here at Gate City. He used to be the JV boys basketball coach at Lee High and I was told by some of his pals that he did have an interest in taking over the basketball program at Lee High had it been offered to him. They chose not to so he came back to Scott County and became a coach at Gate City and won a state championship with them. Sad though. Had he been able to coach some of those talented shooters that Lee High has now and with the "correct" support that he should have had as a coach it is really hard telling what kind of great program Lee High would have right now. It is really sad. A county that is so big and so beautiful with so much to offer and yet no one wants to settle there. No business would be caught dead there. No hospital wants to help anyone there. No one wants to coach there. No one I say really wants to teach there only because it is probably home for some of them and for others a job and you can make some money. All because you have some really grumpy old grandpas who cant get out of the 1940s and feel that Bobcats and Bulldogs are two animals that will never be able to co exist at all with each other from Darwin's Order of Natural Selection. Yet you have Bulldogs and Vikings just over the hilltop at Union winning state championships and region championships and going to all kinds of state tournaments by simply working together. And furthermore is one of the two sections of Wise County that people from Gate City can actually tolerate. We wont speak about the other section. We like Lee a lot but evidently Lee people who run the county and the schools feel that the universe ends at Powell Mountain and the Virginia state line near Kentucky. They cant get anything right at all in their choices and cant understand still yet why everyone else is winning and they aren't. Maybe its because they don't understand that outside of Jonesville and Pennington there are other kids in Virginia working for their school and really don't care what town they come from. I think it would make a great 30 for 30. What if I told you there was this county in Virginia that had five high schools. Two were great football powers. They came together and for a couple years were really good. Then the people couldn't figure which town the kids came from was better? So they fought and they fought and they fought. They fought to the point that instead of being strong together they acted like five year olds and said, "Hey, lets split our high school back up into two. That way we can have what we want. You know. Because we have the greatest athletes in the universe." And yet they haven't won a thing of significance in 30 years. Yet the county right across the ridge from them came together and two of those schools just across that ridge probably had a better sports tradition than they ever thought of having. And they came together and have won consistently ever since. Backward, I think so. In terms of tv shows, Union goes from Dynasty to Empire. Lee High goes from Game of Thrones to Married With Children and those four touchdowns in a single game way back when. Three cheers for Al Bundy!! That's my opinion and I welcome any doubters. Thank you and you're welcome. And to Jamie Hackney hope you like that ring boy! Shines bright from what I've seen of you coaches!

They was an extremely down year for 2D, and Battle got an extremely favorable path to get there. Fort Chiswell wasn’t a bad team, but when a team that can’t beat a sub-.500 Graham team is the #1 seed in the region, let’s just say it’s not a banner year. The “Miracle at Max Meadows” was the play of the year for SWVA football, though.

Abingdon will definitely be reloading and not rebuilding this year. They will be replacing some key elements but should be fine with the depth they had last year and the number of players that got playing time. The battle for the top spot in the Mountain 7 will be between Abingdon, Union and Ridgeview.