Best friends Camryn Sarvis and Brylee Mesusan first talked about their dream when they were in second grade: play for the Tennessee softball team and win championships. Twelve years later, that dream has come true.
As a TSSAA official, Brent Warner made thousands of tough calls without making enemies. Warner, who died Saturday at the age of 46, was extremely well respected by both coaches and his peers.
With gratitude to those who have asked and those who have prayed, our Kevin Mays
@kevmays
is on his way home from the hospital.
(Thanks for the photo, Sammy Belcher.)
Former
@GeorgetownHoops
coach John Thompson Jr.: “I love Mac McClung. A lot of kids can’t handle the rigors of college basketball, especially at this level, but he has proven that he can. He is very polite and the type of kid that I would have recruited.”
Landon Knack was on a historic roll when college baseball was shut down. The NCAA doesn’t have a record for strikeout-to-walk ratio on file, but it’s pretty safe to say few pitchers have approached the 51-to-1 mark the
@ETSU_Baseball
righty had fashioned.
“To finally be here is just unbelievable. I’m a blessed man." — Scott Vermillion after his
@bluedevilslive
boys captured their first state 🏀 championship Friday night, breaking records and reaching milestones along the way (with 📸 gallery)
BREAKING: Former Gate City
@bluedevilslive
and Texas Tech basketball star
@mcclungmac
has signed a 10-day hardship contract with the NBA's Chicago Bulls
Phil Robbins has seven state football championships and two state track titles. But to the longtime Powell Valley coach, most important "is how many kids you have that turn out to be productive people in society."
The state champion Dobyns-Bennett boys basketball team is scheduled to arrive at the main parking lot on the school campus about 2 p.m. on Sunday. All Tribe fans are welcome to come celebrate the Indians’ title.
Austin Lewis was a freshman All-American at Liberty, played on ETSU’s Southern Championship team and has been a part of the Tennessee Vols when they’ve beaten their two biggest rivals.
Senior Jaycie Jenkins of
@booneblazerlive
can be considered a rarity: a student-athlete who excels in three sports — basketball, softball and volleyball — as well as in the classroom.
Player of the year Bradley Dean heads up the 2019-20 Times News All-Southwest Virginia boys 🏀 team, which also features Isaiah McAmis, Elijah Hayes, Ethan Powers, Alex Rasnick and Chase Hungate; Scotty Vermillion of
@bluedevilslive
is coach of the year.
Joe Pennucci, the
@ETSU_Baseball
coach, had his team on a roll. The Bucs were 12-3 with a win over No. 24 Clemson to their credit, so when he told his players the season had been put on hold, it was an emotional moment.
🏀 Gate City becomes first public high school in U.S. to have back-to-back-to-back 2,000-point scorers. Bradley Dean crossed the mark Wednesday to become third player to hit the mark and put
@bluedevilslive
in some pretty elite company. Read more:
Sandlick Field is hallowed ground to those who put on the red football uniforms of the Haysi Tigers. And for 33 years they fought with pride for their school and their program under the watchful eye and creative mind of James Colley
#NASCAR
driver Joey Logano raved about the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race during his visit with Discovery Channel's "Street Outlaws," which will be racing and filming at Bristol on Tuesday. Admission is free and gates open at 11 a.m.
Retiring
@dbtribelive
football coach Graham Clark: “I will miss Fridays and I will miss Sunday afternoons with the coaches. I loved everything about it. It was a blessing and honor to serve at Dobyns-Bennett.”
⚽ Tony Weaver, who spent the past eight years as an assistant, got his chance at the top spot Tuesday when he was named the new girls soccer coach at
@dbtribelive
VHSL Hall of Famer Phil Robbins, coordinator of the the Backpack Lunch Project for students of Union Primary: “It’s about hope. If a kid doesn’t have hope, he doesn’t have a chance."
Lights-out defense was the mantra for the
@bluedevilslive
girls basketball team in a stunning 53-43 upset of Region 2C champion Floyd County on Friday night inside Auburn’s Teel Gymnasium. Next up? The
#VHSL
Final Four — with
@tcookJCPKTN
📸📸
The outcome of Saturday’s Region 2D boys 🏀 championship game came right down to the final second but in the end, Gate City
@bluedevilslive
survived a furious Wise Central rally to take a dramatic 46-45 win and claim the title. — with Sammy Belcher 📸📸
🏀 Gate City has the Region 2D and Mountain 7 players of the year — Bradley Dean and Sarah Thompson — for Class 2 teams, and Wise Central (T.J. McAmis), Union (Kory Bostic) and Abingdon (Jimmy Brown) boast the coaches of the year.
📸🏈
@centralvalive
fought its way to a 4th straight win, rushing for 375 yards to turn back host
@bluedevilslive
. But one GC player enjoyed a very special senior night surprise. (Roddy Addington 📸📸 gallery: )
"I am blessed that God has allowed me to be a part of these kids’ lives." — After 20 years as a head basketball coach, Wise Central’s T.J. McAmis is hanging up his whistle.
SURVEY SAYS ... Mac McClung and Logan Reynolds are the best high school basketball players ever to play the game in Southwest Virginia, according our completely informal, unscientific poll conducted via social media.
Rising Gate City
@bluedevilslive
senior Sarah Thompson announced Sunday that she's verbally committed to attend and play basketball at East Tennessee State in the 2021-22 season.
Survey says ... Former
@unionbearslive
star James Mitchell was voted the top receiver to come out of Southwest Virginia, heading a list that also includes Carroll Dale, Aaron Fuller, Mike Owens, Austin Fuller and Dakota Stanley.
Gate City's road to the
#VHSL
Class 2 boys 🏀 title was littered with shattered records, and the player who broke them —
@bluedevilslive
's Mac McClung — earned top honors in Region 2D and the Mountain 7 (with complete teams)
A labor of love: More and more Southwest Virginia high schools are adding internet sports radio play-by-play broadcasts, giving fans a fresh way to connect with their favorite teams.
Gate City native Mac McClung might have single-handedly restored the shine on an NBA All-Star slam dunk contest that has been widely panned in recent years.
Mac McClung did something that no Gate City athlete had ever done, and something that no basketball player from the region had done in decades, making his ascent into the NBA the Times News' top sports story from Southwest Virginia for 2021.
📸📸 PHOTO GALLERY: The
@dbtribelive
🏈 team welcomed Greeneville to The Fred on Friday night and got a firsthand look at why the Greene Devils are the defending
#TSSAA
4A champions
Congratulations to the Daniel Boone Little League softball team for its tremendous run to the
#LLWS
. The girls from Gray fell 9-2 in the championship bracket quarterfinal round Monday.
Player of the year Sarah Thompson heads up the 2019-20 Times News All-Southwest Virginia girls 🏀 team, which also features Peyton Carter, Kaylee Yates, Jayda Smith, Anna Whited and Lakin Burke. Kelly Houseright of
@bluedevilslive
is the coach of the year.
#VHSL
coup:
@bluedevilslive
boys dethrone two-time defending state champion Radford — ending the Bobcats' 37-game winning streak — to advance to the Class 2 Final Four
Jaycie Jenkins played just a couple of games in what most consider her best sport. Despite missing most of the softball season because of the pandemic, the Daniel Boone senior was the easy choice for the 2019-20 Times News Female Athlete of the Year.
Several familiar names — John Fulkerson, Makale Foreman, Patrick Good, Courtney Whitson, Macie Culbertson, Emily Schubert and Shy Tuelle from NET and James Mitchell, Mac McClung, Zac Ervin and Luke Lawson from SW Va. — are making noise outside our region.
Dobyns-Bennett used a nearly flawless overtime period to defeat Bearden 69-60 on Saturday in the TSSAA Class 4A title game for the Tribe's first boys basketball state championship since 1945.
The games went on Friday night, not because of some rock-headed idea that football must be played at all costs. They went on mainly because our student-athletes need a sense of belonging more than any generation before them.
Sarah Thompson and Kelly Houseright of
@bluedevilslive
named the Virginia High School Coaches Association girls basketball Class 2 all-state player and coach of the year on Sunday.
The
@dbtribelive
🏈 team had a weapon at QB. When 🏀 season arrived, the Indians used Zane Whitson in a different way. Together it was two very successful seasons, and Whitson’s impact helped him become the 2019-20 Times News Male Athlete of the Year.
Mac McClung scored 26 points in 35:45 minutes on the court and Georgetown beat Syracuse 89-79 on Saturday afternoon after a rash of transfers plunged the program into scandal and depleted the roster.
#Collegebasketball
ICYMI: Tight end
@j_mitch82
James Mitchell, the former
@unionbearslive
star from Big Stone Gap, will forgo his recognizable No. 82 and don Frank Beamer’s No. 25 when the No. 25-ranked
#Hokies
welcome Pittsburgh for Saturday's
#ACC
matchup.
BEST OF SW VIRGINIA: The football sections of the VHSL, ACC and UVA record books could be confused with memory books for Thomas Jones, voted by fans as the best running back in far Southwest Virginia high school history.
🏆 Willa Rogers became Dobyns-Bennett's first female state champion in singles in 43 years on Friday at the TSSAA Large Schools tennis championships in Murfreesboro.
Mac McClung: “I’m not really worried what other people think, good or bad. I’m just staying the course. My goal is to make an impact in the NBA, and I’m just going to keep working until that happens.”
🏈 ICYMI:
@chiefslive
senior quarterback Collin Trent hasn’t suited up for action on the football field in more than a year, and he’s itching to get back out there — especially inside Big Red Valley.
🏀 Gate City becomes first public high school in U.S. to have back-to-back-to-back 2,000-point scorers. Bradley Dean crossed the mark Wednesday to become third player to hit the mark and put
@bluedevilslive
in some pretty elite company
Union's Bradley Bunch and Zack Moore and Gate City's Sarah Thompson and Kelly Houseright doubled up, heading both the All-Region 2D and All-Mountain 7 🏀 teams. — 📋 with complete list of 2D and Mountain 7 boys and girls, Region 1D girls teams
Junior Sarah Thompson had 24 points and six steals, and the
@bluedevilslive
girls 🏀 team advanced to the state championship game for the first time since 2014 with a hard-fought 59-52 victory over
@unionbearslive
on Tuesday. — with
@roddyaddington1
📸📸
Kingsport native and
@bluedevilslive
graduate Tanner Alley is the new assistant coach for the
@LMURailsplitter
women’s basketball team, the university announced this week.
Sasha Neglia will be the first
@dbtribelive
runner ever to compete in the Nike Cross Nationals after her runner-up finish Saturday in the Southeast Regionals
J. Richard Carroll, who spent nearly five decades as an educator in the Bloomingdale community and was a devotee of
@snhsraiderslive
athletics, died Saturday
🥎
@UVAWiseCavs
junior third baseman and former
@eastsidevalive
standout Kaylee Jones has been named the 2020 Virginia Sports Information Directors College Division Softball player of the year
“I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to lead this program.” — Travis Mains, who led the
@booneblazerlive
girls 🏀 team to a 30-5 record and a state quarterfinal appearance last season, steps down
Five seniors will be honored before the
@ETSU_MBB
game against Western Carolina on Saturday at Freedom Hall. If things go the way the Bucs hope, there will be an even bigger celebration afterward.
Kaley Jones — an
@eastsidevalive
alum who's now a junior infielder for
@UVaWiseCavs
— was sitting high in several NCAA Division II categories when the Cavaliers had their softball season cut short.
Kim Mathes-Moore, the current
@unionbearslive
coach and a
@bluedevilslive
and
@UVaWiseCavs
alum, was the top vote-getter in an informal, weeklong social media poll asking fans to select the best all-time volleyball players from far Southwest Virginia.