sixcat

The "something" I mentioned before that has gotten the attention of city council is very likely the fact that this appears to be a coordinated effort to attempt to force city council to pay for the football field renovations. City council has made it clear, school board will have to figure out how to pay for the field on their own. The $1.7 million dollar winning bid was accepted at the school board meeting Tuesday night. Yes, you read that right. $1.7 million dollars. Many grade levels at Galax are making due without textbooks yet school board approves this fiasco. Shows where priorities lie. Many, many local residents have lost a tremendous amount of respect for Dixon for this "orchestrated-strong-arm-tactic" (city council members words, not mine), myself included! It's time for local residents to elect city council members who are willing to fix these issues with school board rather than ignore them and hope they go away!

Check your private messages.

I haven't heard anything about it and it wasn't discussed at the city council meeting last night. I will pass along anything relevant from tonight's school board meeting. Plus, there is this.....https://www.applitrack.com/gcps/onlineapp/default.aspx?Category=Athletics%2fActivities Something is going on that has gotten the attention of city council, though We were at the city council meeting last night and administration was chastised publicly for issuing construction plans for bid for the new "stadium" without city council approval. That whole fiasco is getting quite contentious. Edit to add.....school board meets the second Tuesday of each month which would have been a week prior to his resignation, not the day after.

Virginia Tech spring game is at 2:30, not 1:00. http://www.hokiesports.com/football/schedule/

I wouldn't hold my breath! That is wishful thinking coming from the kids from what I understand.

Not in Galax!

Rumor has it, Shane Allen is the front runner for the Galax job.

Very nice!

I have had four confirmed by medical professionals. The first was backyard football with friends that left me with 14 stitches. The second was from an Oklahoma drill during jv football where a varsity player knocked me loopy stupid. The third was during an American Legion baseball game in Roanoke. I rounded first after singling up the middle. I'm still not sure what the first baseman was attempting to do but he was ejected from the game for his actions. The ball was in center field so I know he wasn't attempting a tag, which is what he claimed after getting ejected. As I rounded first, he swiped my helmet off my head with his glove. Meanwhile, the center fielder relayed the ball in to the shortstop who turned a fired behind me at first. But the first baseman was in an argument with the first base umpire and the ball hit me square in the back of the head. I didn't lose conscientiousness but couldn't focus my eyes to see anything beyond a hazy blur for about a half-an-hour. The forth was a car wreck when I was 19 years old. Honestly, extremely lucky to walk away from that one. My date wouldn't return phone calls following. I couldn't imagine why?

Women's NCAA basketball already uses four 10-minute quarters. The same could easily be done for the men's game. I'm not sure how necessary it is though. Referee stoppage of play has gotten out of hand. I saw more than a few instances last weekend where a referee stoppage iced a free throw shooter. Most NCAA Division-1 games and all NCAA Tournament games have an alternate official on stand-by. He should be in charge of making the call while play continues and the game officials confirm at the next timeout. As GMan said, high school basketball is no place for a shot clock by-in-large. Coaches don't have enough time as it is to coach fundamentals. High school games are not played to a high level anyway. Add a rushed environment and the level play would suffer greatly. Oak Hill type schools may be different but not for typical high school play like we experience around here.

Dixon has turned down college opportunities in the past. We all knew this day was coming. The way it came is the issue. It's not a talent issue, believe me. This crop of middle schoolers have the potential to be dominant and I don't say that lightly. We will see how that goes now. A lot of parents are already talking about transferring their kids. I'm not sure how other localities operate but in Galax, city council appoints school board members and, in conjunction with the superintendent, decide how the school system resources are spent. City council doesn't control the school system spending. They only appoint the school board members. So, the school system is free and clear to spend an exorbitant amount of money on something completely unnecessary for an aging and shrinking population. I am not convinced turf will ever come to fruition anyway.

Do your own research into Yerrick Stoneman. That rabbit trail is easy enough to follow. He was an eleven year assistant at Oak Hill Academy (the real team, not the B team) before taking over the girls basketball program at Galax to coach is twin daughters. An administrator wanted his daughter to play varsity basketball as a freshman. Yerrick refused, stating she simply wasn't ready and was fired before the season ended. He took over the program at Ridge View in Columbia, SC. They won the State Farm Classic and reached the 4A Final Four in his first season. The guy can flat out coach his ass off. And what about the administrators daughter? She was on the jv team again this year as a sophomore which says a lot given the girls varsity team only had 8 players for the season. I will point out the fact that City Council is, at least in part, complicit in all of this. School board positions are appointed, not elected in Galax. Get a handful of "like-minded" folks elected to City Council, they control not only city governance but the school system as well. It becomes a "buddy system" where they control everything and attempt to control everyone. If one were to look into the timeline of serving in either role, the pattern is very easy to follow. Keep an eye on the athletic department as a whole when the new school year begins. It will look very different!

Dixon isn't the first coach to leave under suspect, at best, circumstances. Two other coaches were fired in recent years for standing up to administration. Dixon fought a good fight against administration but ultimately, it got to be more than he was willing to tolerate. He will not be the only football coach on the current staff to leave the football program, either. I love that Dixon is taking the high road publicly and he should. I just wish the truth about what has been going on behind the scenes since this administration took over would come to light for more people to see. To an extent, it has on Facebook, especially this week, but not enough people outside this area see it.

Small town with a newspaper that only circulates three days a week. The Roanoke Times won't have it until after The Gazette does. They don't report on Galax anyway unless somebody gives them the story.

http://www.swvasports.com/ipb/index.php?/topic/35282-controversial/ This should get you started in the right direction. It has only snowballed from there.

There has been a growing disconnect between a couple of school board members, the superintendent and the rest of the community for over a year now. The festering isn't going to end with Dixon's departure either. It's a sad situation when the actions of a few completely destroy the first real success this community has ever experienced. Some people can't handle or accept the success of others. Jealousy is a real thing! If Dixon is indeed leaving, and all indications are he is, he isn't the first. Yerrick Stoneman stood up to he current administration last year and was fired as a result.

John Engelberger Chris Shreve CJ Carroll

Coleman Thomas had 9 offers. I feel he likely would have gotten a few more had he not committed to Tennessee so early.

Which is precisely why a cooperative approach would likely never gain traction in SWVA. Everyone has their own narrative and agenda. Just read through this thread. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

Carroll County consolidated in 1969, well before divisions, school size and travel to get to similarly sized schools was an issue. If they had it to do all over again with the knowledge that a decision made nearly 50 years ago would squarely place all athletic programs on a proverbial island, I'm certain a different decision would have been made. As for the current situation in Carroll, they are married to the concept, they have to be! The cost to reverse a decision made nearly 50 years ago would financially cripple a county with an ever shrinking population and school enrollment. Grayson County consolidated in 1988. At it's peak in the mid '00's, the high school had roughly 750 students so it was never isolated at any point from similarly sized schools. However, the population has steadily decreased as jobs became more and more scarce. Grayson's enrollment is currently closer to 550. Losing 200 high school students a decade isn't going to continue in my opinion, but it isn't likely to reverse either. Galax has been the economic engine of Carroll and Grayson County's since forever. Galax has lost nearly 9,000 factory jobs since the turn of the century if you count the sewing plants in the outlying counties and Fries. In return, they have managed to piece-meal some 3,000 jobs together with small businesses that are very successful, but only employ 10-20 people each. It's difficult to gain traction quickly that way but it is effective. SWVA is in a difficult and unique situation that, for all intents and purposes, doesn't have a single, broad reaching solution. It will take a collective effort from many different areas to stabilize and/or reverse a three decade trend. I'm not sure that will ever happen to be honest. In my opinion, traditional county borders should be ignored for future school consolidation. It should take on a more regional or community look and feel. Again, that would take a tremendous amount of cooperation within areas that haven't traditionally played very nicely together in the past. It makes much more sense to build a school that eliminates cross-mountain travel than stick with traditional county boundaries, in my opinion. But again, it's unlikely any of that will ever come to fruition.

I lived in Roanoke during Redick's middle and high school years. His parents lived in an adjoining neighborhood to the one where I lived. Without question, Redick was more polished at that point than McClung is now. Not intended to be a knock on anyone, just a fact. Redick was a member of the 2001 USA Basketball youth team, the 2003 FIBA USA junior team, 2003 USA Basketball junior team, 2005 USA U21 National Team that all competed across the gobe. He also played on the Boo Williams AAU national championship teams that featured and competed against a who's who of future NBA talent. Just Google Redick's USA Basketball profile. He played in 13 countries prior to attending Duke. While McClung has an impressive resume for a small area kid, he hasn't done anything remotely close to what Redick had done at this stage of his career.

When this rumor popped up last year, I called BS within that thread. Oak Hill was returning the top 4 players at guard from the previous season and all 4 were major D1 signees. This year is different. All 4 of those guys graduate and they return nobody from the back-court. Oak Hill is also returning several front-court stars. McClung is the type of talent Steve Smith looks for and develops beyond what "regular" high schools are capable. It makes sense for next year.

How did any other school fair against Alabama during that span? Pick a school, any school! It's easy to say Richt underachieved with the talent he had at Georgia. But nobody else is beating Alabama consistently over that same time frame.

My point exactly. Georgia has a tradition, just not the one most would expect to find.