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We are doing our FCA Va -Tenn All Star Senior Baseball game at Tenn High , June 11th.. need some strong pitching versus Tenn!

I’m not touching the “who’s the best seniors” for the Bearcats with a 10 foot pole, but I will echo @Falcon Mania and say Tanner Barrs is the best hitter in SWVA and even if you add in NETN, he’s second only behind Gavin Cross for Tn. High. TJ Taylor is also a really, really good baseball player that can play multiple positions, very well. Trey Brown and the Cole kid for Richlands are good ball players too. (I think they’re both seniors.) Simmons is a really good player, but I’m not sure what year he is. Nate Bailey for Union is another good one I’ve seen this year. A few more I’ve seen do some good things this season are.... Moore (JSB) Osborne (Marion. Another one I’m not 100% sure of what grade he’s in) I can’t speak on the Graham kids yet. We haven’t played them, but we do play them twice this week.

Right now Tanner Barrs and TJ Taylor are leading Abingdon in batting average. Somewhere in the .450 range with each having double digit RBI stats

Mac is phenomenal. She’s had a great travel ball coach since she was about 7 or 8. The best players on the team have had him as coach most of these years. He’s definitely coached them up and they’ve definitely answered the challenge with hard work and determination. Kudos to these young ladies! Hope they can get that ring this year.

In my humble biased opinion, I feel like Graham is the team to beat in Region D even without Cam Allen. If their defense mirrors last year’s in the least (after about mid-season when they got their act together) & Lester going to QB, he’s not Cam but he’s close; then GMen will be hard to beat. Richlands losing Moir will hurt them but with Forrest, he’s a phenomenal kicker but a kicker can’t carry the team. Union is always tough. If the kid decided on his own to not play, that’s his choice. I say let him be...if AAU coach convinced him not to, shame on him. Good athletes can excel at multiple sports. VHSL has so many things wrong with their decisions & rules these past few years. Adding year round practice is just one of many. Final note, hurry up August!!!!

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!