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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.

I should also point out, Georgia has just as many titles over that span of time than traditional powers Centre, Lafayette, Detroit, and Washington & Jefferson!

Georgia doesn't have the football tradition most would expect them to have based on their over-inflated-self-valuation. Georgia has 1 National Championship in 1980 and played for another in 1942. That's in 113 years of football. They weren't playing for titles before Richt! Richt took them to a level they had never reached before in terms of consistency and recruiting. As I said earlier, a matter of perspective! http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/georgia/

The Richt argument has never made sense to me. Georgia won 10+ games eleven times from 1902-2000. They won 10+ games ten times under Richt from 2001-2015. Seems like a lack of perspective to me!

I have been shaving with a Merkur safety razor since 1989. I have also used virtually every blade on the market at one point or another. Absolutely nothing compares to a Feather blade!!!!!!!!!!!! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AGG3MNU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

My brother and a close friend of ours use Dr. Carvers from Dollar Shave Club and like it a lot. I haven't tried it though. I have tried Mickey Lee and Stirling but not Soap Commander. I liked them but not much more than Barbasol. I guess my grandfather has had a lasting impression on my life. He passed away 13 years ago and I still find myself doing all of the things he taught me.

My grandfather gave me a Merkur 34C and a box of Feather blades when I was 15. It was stolen from my footlocker in the military a few years later. After a few months of using over-the-counter crap like Gillette, I had my pharmacist, who happened to be my future father-in-law, order me another. Now, they are readily available on Amazon but this was prior to the internet being commonplace. As for soaps, I have tried Proraso, Taylor of Old Bond Street and several others but found a very thin coat of plain old Barbasol works best for me.

Asking me to simmer down implies I am somehow upset, which isn't so. Far too many kids in SWVA peak in high school. Kudos to this kid for not wanting to be one.

Not sure I follow!?!?! Dime a dozen? Most 17 year olds can't decide to get college application paperwork submitted in a timely fashion. Here, we have a young man showing drive and initiative. Neither are very prevalent with the millennial generation. Athletic motivation or not, he is motivated. Something else not common with the millennial generation. And he is getting shit for it on a message board! Perspective, I guess!

My former boss was an early enrollee at VT in the mid 90's knowing full well he would likely never see the field. He was ridiculed by kids and adults alike in his hometown, mainly for his choice to not play basketball as a high school senior. He used the additional semester to prepare himself for the rigors of the math associated with an engineering curriculum. Statics, Thermal Dynamics, Strength of Materials and Accelerated Calculus among others are no joke!!!!!!! Nor can many high schools prepare you for what those classes entail. This is the main reason freshman engineering students are called "Pre-Business" majors. He was on the team for five full seasons, rarely seeing the field and graduated with honors a few months following a national championship appearance. His stature as a former player has opened doors for him as a professional engineer that otherwise would have been closed. His career has been greatly enhanced based on the choices he made as a 17 year old kid. Cut this kid some slack and lets see where his dreams take him!

I am interested to see the team Galax fields this spring. The basketball teams, girls and boys, have had an abnormally high number of players quit who have been multi-sport athletes for years. That can easily be seen in comparing last years basketball rosters to the rosters this season. The varsity boys roster consists of 9 players while JV features a roster of 10 and that is after adding players who had previously been cut. Pretty sad for a program that won back-to-back state titles just a few years ago. The girls program has been decimated after firing the varsity coach following last season. He spent 11 years as an assistant at Oak Hill Academy and was a GA at VT before that. It's hard to fathom Galax could hope for much better for a girls program. He is now the head boys varsity coach at Ridge View in Columbia, SC. They won the Farm Bureau Insurance Classic in Spartanburg over the Christmas holiday. The Galax girls basketball teams currently have 9 varsity and 7 JV players. Doesn't bode well for the future. An injury or two away from not even being able to field a team. Rumor is, the player revolt will continue come baseball season. The baseball coaching staffs for varsity, JV and middle school are in turmoil as well following the debacle at Honaker last spring. It's still not entirely clear who is still on the coaching staffs.