Monday, 15 September 2008 19:44 by
Dave
I supposed I deserved it.
But Monday afternoon, I’m minding my own business, listening in on a conference call with some folks in Dallas. An email pops up from my good friend Paul Draisey. “You seen Loudounextra.com today?”
“No.”
“You may want to look at it.”
I call up the front page, and there, for some strange reason, is my name, being called out for heckling Washington Post sportswriter Paul Tenorio. Apparently my innocent comment of last week – “the games ended Friday night and you STILL can’t get things together by Monday morning?” – may have been misinterpreted as heckling. I was merely showing concern for a Northwestern graduate who could have been so overwhelmed by his alma mater’s 3-0 start in college football, that time was beginning to have no meaning. (Oddly enough, Paul’s editor shouldn’t have this problem: Stanford has lost back-to-back games to Arizona State and TCU)
Tenorio, it should be pointed out, worked marathon hours this weekend, covering high school games on Friday and Saturday, then did the Redskins game Sunday. You can see his feature on Reggie Bush on page E14 if you get the print edition. So he hasn’t had a day off in quite a while.
Because of this tremendous burden, I want to help. Paul’s Monday morning quarterback feature doesn’t have its own logo, and it’s not fair to expect him to have something up before noon on Monday if they’re going to work him all weekend. As a result, I’ve designed a logo that I think addresses these situations, and should dissuade any readers from thinking about future heckling. It’s right under the headline above.
Don’t thank me Paul. It was the very least I could do.
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 23:09 by
Dave
As you can probably tell from an earlier post this week , I really enjoyed the story The Washington Post wrote on Mickey and Patrick Thompson Wednesday. But there was something about the picture they ran with it that has been nagging at me.
If you’ll look at it, both Thompsons have a stern, serious look to them. The background is foreboding: dark storm clouds are overhead, making it appear that at any moment, Stone Bridge High School and the rest of Ashburn would soon be hit with a pretty serious storm. The picture had everything except Garth Brooks singing “The Thunder Rolls” in the background.
Now if that picture had been taken yesterday, when it finally rained (although not enough) here in Ashburn, I’d have no problem. But I live a mile and a half away from Stone Bridge, and the beige carpet in my living room and the grass in my front yard are the same color. Neither has been growing these days because until yesterday’s gray conditions, there hasn’t been a hint of any rain at my house in quite some time.
This means either the picture was taken under conditions where it was dark and stormy at Claiborne and Hay Road, but bright and clear at Windmill Park…or the picture was doctored with a different background for a dramatic effect.
If the latter was the case, why stop at just a dark sky for drama? These are the defending state champion Stone Bridge Bulldogs, for crying out loud. This is Ashburn, where we make drama an art form. You want dramatic? Well, here’s a picture where the background will REALLY get your attention.
Of course, I’m not aware of any nuclear explosions in Ashburn in the last few weeks.
But until yesterday, I hadn’t seen any rain, either.
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 02:53 by
Dave The preseason checklist has been completed. Bratwurst? Check. Hot dogs? Natural Casing. Three kinds of Mustard? Honey, Stone Ground AND Deli style. Buns? Fresh baked from the Harris-Teeter deli. Onions? Vidalia. Chili? 12 cans, Steakhouse Reserve. Cole Slaw? Sweet Southern Style. Batteries for the remote? Just replaced.
I’ve got all the essentials. Football season can now begin.
Now before you say “defibrillator? Check.”, I need to confess that I may take football a bit too seriously. From now until the Super Bowl, every day is a tailgating opportunity. I subscribe to about every football TV package, and I cram four TVs into my study so I can watch multiple games at once. I’ve always believed hot dogs taste better at a football stadium, so a few years ago I acquired one of those grills with the rotating steel bars from a restaurant supply company to recreate the flavor at home. I even bought the bun steamer.
It should be noted that those purchases sparked some controversy on the home front, thus stalling my attempts to acquire a nacho machine. But hope springs anew with the start of each season.
Hope should be springing all over the place tonight, as Broad Run plays at Wakefield to start the high school season. The rest of the teams play Friday, including Milbrook at Briar Woods and West Springfield at Stone Bridge. The Stone Bridge game can be heard locally over WAGE (AM 1200), and Comcast will be televising the Briar Woods game on tape delay. You can see the replay Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m on Comcast Cable Channel 2.
Paul Draisey and I will be returning for our third straight season of calling high school games. Starting next week, we’ll also be on Cable Channel 2 multiple times during the week with our weekly show, “Sportsbeat”, a 30-minute look at high school and local sports in Loudoun County that will include video highlights and interviews from several area games.
Comcast will be showing 11 regular-season games plus the playoffs every weekend from now until all the local teams have been eliminated. I’d give you all 11 right now, but all it takes is a few upsets or a few rainouts, and the schedule changes every week after the first six weeks of the season. But we’re pretty firm about these: Robinson at Stone Bridge (Sept. 5), Brentsville at Heritage (Sept. 12), Stone Bridge at Loudoun Valley (Sept. 19), Briar Woods at Broad Run (Sept. 26), Broad Run at Heritage (Oct. 3) and Potomac Falls at Park View (Oct. 10).
Comcast, which would probably prefer I not point this out, shells out a considerable amount of money (including some to Mr. Draisey and I) on these broadcasts. It’s pretty expensive to maintain all the cameras and equipment, then hire a crew to shoot these games. Comcast does not run or sell any advertising in these games, and eats the entire cost. It’s all done as a community service.
I realize few people view the cable, telephone, or electric companies in a positive light all the time, but this is a pretty nice thing Comcast does. With each passing day, more and more companies are trying to make a business (and profit) off of high school sports, and there will probably come a day very soon when you’ll be going to the “ACME Car Care Dulles District Championship Football Game.” But Comcast doesn’t look at it that way.
As a result, many parents can reach into a drawer and watch a DVD of a Comcast broadcast they recorded of their child playing football or basketball well after their kid has stopped playing. Trust me, aside from the “do you guys really know Erica Garman?” question, the most often thing I hear is “can I get a copy of the (fill in the school) game?”
So if you’re at Briar Woods Friday, stop by and say hello. Don’t worry about interrupting us, by the way, as in television, you learn to focus on watching the action and talking while a director, via something called an IFB, talks to you in one ear. It’s a challenge at first, but you soon figure out how to tune out the unimportant stuff, and only pay attention when you absolutely need to. Being married for 27 years has been a huge help.
Now if I could just figure out how to get that nacho machine…
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Saturday, 16 August 2008 00:10 by
Dave My wife walked into my study the other night. “Go to the NBC4 website,” she commanded. “Wendy Rieger has a blog about turning 52. You have to read it.”
Yes, dear. I'll get right on it.
Moments later, she returned. “Well? Did you read it? Wasn’t that great? That’s exactly how it is.”
The post, called “Weigh Me Down,” dealt with the challenges a woman faces as she grows older, from hot flashes to gaining a few pounds. It was a nice story, but I’ve been married to my wife for 27 years. I am capable of noticing things besides whether the other team is playing a cover-2 defense, so none of what Wendy wrote merited a “Breaking News” bulletin. But I nodded my head, said it was very good, and moved on.
What I moved on to was Wendy’s other post in her blog, which was just above the “Sisterhood Of The Aging Pants” post entitled “The Naked Truth”. In this one, Wendy told of an email she had gotten from her boyfriend, an Irish doctor. It was one of those forwarded emails that has dozens of names in the header, and it had a picture of an unclad young woman standing near a stream. Wendy thought she was beautiful, the Irish doctor thought she was gaunt. Wendy referred to her as the “Nordic nymph.”
Hmmmmm. How, I wondered, could I get a look at this picture?
Wendy, I should point out, is not just the News4 anchorbabe in our household. Growing up on the mean streets of North Camellia acres in Norfolk, it seems there was always a circle of about a dozen of us who ended up in the same classes in elementary, junior high and high school. One of those dozen was Wendy Rieger. After graduating high school, everyone went in their own direction, and other than hearing she was a successful TV person, really didn’t know what she was doing until 26 years later when I moved to Ashburn. I turned on the TV, and there she was.
We’ve traded emails over the years, so I knew how to contact her. In her “Sisterhood Of The Aging Pants” post, she mentioned that she was going through some old pictures of herself in preparation for a series she was doing on weight loss as you age, and she was going to be the poster child for the 50-plus set.
It then occurred to me I had a picture of Wendy when she was younger. Much younger. Like 12-years-old younger.
Down in the basement was a stack of all my old junior high and high school yearbooks. In one, for some reason, was a sixth grade class picture. I don’t know why I have it because I absolutely hate the picture. But there, on the back row standing next to a pudgy Italian kid with big black glasses, is a tall young lady named Wendy. I scanned it, enlarged it, then cropped it down to just a picture of her, which I put in an email.
Off went the email with the title “I propose a trade.” It was like an episode of the Sopranos, complete with extortion: Send me the nymph picture and no one sees the star pupil of Mrs. Hicks’ 1968 class.
As expected, the return email started out with “Oh My God!” Turns out Wendy hates the picture even more than I do. I’ve sort of forgotten the rest of the email, but I do recall phrases like “NOBODY better see,” and “NEVER show anyone,” sprinkled throughout the thoughtful reply.
So alas, the picture has been destroyed, and the scanned image deleted from my computer.
But the Irish doc was right. She is gaunt.
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 00:36 by
Dave You can tell fall is near, because the local media is starting to become overrun with stories on high school football. LoudounExtra.com has started running a story every day on area teams, and the Loudoun Times-Mirror and LoudounPrepSports.com can’t be far behind.
I know the folks at LoudounExtra.com are especially busy, because certain members of their staff (hint: his initials are Paul Tenorio) don’t have time to answer emails. I had suggested to members of the local sports media that we initiate a contest similar to the NCAA basketball contest done earlier in the year. If you’ll remember, the “Magnificent 7” included Erica Garman of “Living In Loco” fame, and she proved men know nothing about basketball, winning the contest.
My latest suggestion involved a fantasy football league to figure out who has bragging rights over the fall. My broadcast partner at Comcast, Paul Draisey, immediately responded (I think he believes there’s free food involved), as did Ms. Garman, but the rest ignored the request. Taking a break from her exposes on the doughnut culture in Loudoun County, Ms. Garman did more than just say she’d participate. Her exact message was “I’m in, and ready to beat the skirts off all of you!”
I didn’t realize Erica was French. Sorry about that 400 relay Sunday night.
But while us media schlubs are trying to figure out a way to have fun with football, that’s not the case here in Ashburn, as the tone is already starting to turn quite serious. Check out the comments on the bottom of this LoudounExtra.com piece. It’s only August 11 and we already have a raging quarterback controversy. Imagine the peace and harmony in the stands at Broad Run by, say, mid-October.
I moved to Ashburn Farm in the spring of 2000, just a few months before Stone Bridge opened. I absolutely love it here, and can’t imagine living anywhere else. My home is a 15-minute walk from Broad Run, and a 20-minute walk from Stone Bridge, so I consider both my local high school.
While I love it here, I have to admit that of all the places I’ve lived, Ashburn is unique. We’re all, it seems, from somewhere else. We’re all successful in something, have two-income families, spend money like we’re government agencies, flaunt what we have and have houses that Loudoun County says are worth obscene amounts of money. Most people here are very nice, but just about all of us think we’re something special, and many think the rules are for other people. I’ve often thought if Ashburn had a license plate, its motto should be “do you know who I am?”
So parents getting a bit too involved in trying to influence their child’s playing time is no big news. What is a surprise is how heated it can get. Last year I had Stone Bridge’s Mickey Thompson in the studio at Comcast, and we had a nice conversation while the cameras were rolling. After the cameras stopped, I asked him about something he had said during the interview regarding him losing a lot of friends over the years over decisions he made about playing time involving their kids. “Was it really that bad,” I asked. Thompson, who grew up here in Ashburn, said he wasn’t exaggerating. “People take some of this stuff way too serious,” he said. This is from a guy who has been the area’s most successful high school football coach over the last decade.
The comments in the article I’ve linked certainly give you a flavor of something similar. It quickly goes from which person should play quarterback, to the coach is over-rated and anyone could have gone 10-0 last year. The poster says that all this talent was coming through the pipeline, and that’s what made Mike Burnett coach of the year, not his ability to coach.
The poster, who seems to be from the John Edwards school of irrational comment, overlooks the fact that the caliber of athlete from up near Hay Road isn’t much different when you cross over Ashburn Road. A couple of years ago with similar kids, Stone Bridge was in the Group AA state title game while Broad Run was quite the opposite at 1-9. Last year, Stone Bridge was 9-1 in the regular season and Broad Run was 10-0. Same kind of kids, but this time, same results. Think coaching played any role in the difference?
I got to know Burnett a little last year, and I think he’s a great mentor, motivator and coach. Many coaches who try to rotate quarterbacks end up fracturing the team, as some follow one player, and others follow the other. Burnett sold his squad on hard work, teamwork and coming together as a unit so well, it didn’t matter. The team went 10-0. They believed in what Burnett was teaching. After a 10-0 regular season, I doubt the players will stop believing now.
But back to the parents. One poster suggested they let the Dulles District Coach of the Year do his job. To that I say, “great advice.” And with the newly found free time, go get the BMW washed. Pick up a Starbucks. Go eat some bang-bang shrimp over at Bonefish Grill. Watch the Olympics on your 65-inch plasma. Enjoy your coy pond. Talk it out with your personal trainer. Relax.
It’s only August. We have a long way to go.
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Monday, 4 August 2008 12:15 by
Dave If you’re under 50, you probably don’t remember when there wasn’t cable television (unless you live in Western Loudoun, where apparently they don’t have it today in certain places). But just as the generation before me complained of walking to school in the snow five miles uphill, my generation’s hardship memory involves having only three channels: CBS, ABC and NBC.
When I was a student at Virginia Tech, it wasn’t even three channels. If you stuck some rabbit ears out a window a particular way, you could get two of those channels. ABC was just a rumor. If you wanted to watch “Monday Night Football”, you had to go to the student center, or to someone’s house that wasn’t in the middle of a college campus full of tall stone-faced dormitory buildings.
Midway through my college experience, we heard about this new product called cable television. The initial reaction was “why pay for TV when you can get it for free?” A similar reaction erupted the first time someone said they were selling plain ol’ water in a bottle. We obviously were a visionary lot back in the day.
But as a sports fan, there was a carrot involved in trying cable. Yes, this new cable TV promised a much clearer picture of all your local channels. But it also had a station from outside the area, a little independent station out of Atlanta , Channel 17, which was then known as WTCG. Owned by some wild man named Ted Turner, it promised to show all of the games of a downtrodden National League baseball team, the Atlanta Braves.
The Braves were pretty bad back then. But their announcers – Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, and Pete Van Wieren – made the games very entertaining. Caray came from broadcasting royalty, as his father was Harry Caray, the voice of the Cardinals, then Cubs with a loud, bombastic delivery. Skip Caray was the opposite: dry wit, wise cracking, brutally honest, yet funny and effective. In today’s broadcasting atmosphere of “let’s be positive or we’ll buy up every radio station in town,” Caray would not have been tolerated. But he worked for Turner, who was a maverick himself. So it all worked.
Wherever the envelope was, Caray pushed it. Since it was an independent station, Caray called 'em as he saw ‘em (“the bases are loaded and I wish I were too,” he once said), and the crew seemed to be making up the rules as they went along. Howard Cosell got the most credit back then for being blunt and getting to the heart of a matter, but Skip Caray was right with him. And Caray could do it in such a way that you wouldn’t hate him for asking.
You never knew what to expect. One night, the Braves and the Cardinals ended up going into the 17th inning and both teams ran out of pitchers. It was past 2 a.m. on the east coast, and the Cardinals were letting their shortstop, Jose Oquendo, pitch. “I’ve just gotten a call from the voice of the Chicago Cubs,” I remember Caray saying on the air, referring to his famous father. “He wants to know what the hell is going on out there.”
Nothing lasts forever, and eventually WTCG became WTBS, the Braves actually became a good baseball team, big sports networks like ESPN took over the landscape, and billion-dollar rights fees made sure broadcasters didn’t criticize the teams they covered. Caray continued being the irreverent cynic, but with each day, he became more of a lone voice in the “boo-yah” world of sports.
Late yesterday, that voice was silenced, as Caray passed away in his sleep at his Atlanta home. He was 68.
Many in media either think or hope they’re unique, but over the test of time, few are. Skip Caray was.
He’ll be missed.
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Friday, 18 April 2008 11:19 by
Dave Now I know why LoudounExtra.com’s Erica Garman took lessons to fire a gun.
Apparently, Loudoun County is the REAL danger zone.
Last night, in watching the Washington Capitals lose a heartbreaker to the Philadelphia Flyers, I listened as announcers made mention of a column written by Mike Wise of The Washington Post. Wise had taken issue with the Neanderthal physical approach the Flyers use, saying “They flat-out market and sell violence here, sanctioned, unbridled assaults disguised as sport.”
Couldn’t agree more. But wow, Mike. Get tired of taunting pit bulls while holding a 16-ounce ribeye? Need something a bit more challenging in your life?
Wise was in Philadelphia for last night’s game, and several media outlets took notice of the potential fireworks, wondering whether the City of Brotherly Love would embrace Wise’s words with a left hook or a right uppercut. Between the third period and the first overtime, Comcast Sportsnet did the same, showing tape of an exchange on “Washington Post Live”, seen earlier in the day.
In the studio was Paul Tenorio, who covers high school sports for the Post and LoudounExtra.com here in Loudoun County. “I’m hopeful that they don’t have too many snowballs to throw at you like the way they treat Santa Claus up there,” Tenorio told Wise. “What are you going to do to sneak out of there?”
Wise, who was grinning throughout the exchange, said he didn’t think it was going to be that bad and that he wasn’t really worried. “If worse comes to worst, I’ll get someone to drive me to my car,” Wise said. “I’m more worried about you getting back out to Loudoun County, Paul.”
So forget Philly. Loudoun County’s where you really need to be careful.
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Friday, 11 April 2008 10:13 by
Dave It’s not often I read a story online and think “Wow”. But I’d been out of town earlier this week, and in catching up with my reading, I came across LoudounExtra.com’s Loudoun’s Winter Wonders, which shows their all-star teams for all winter sports.
It’s not that the material is earth-shattering; it’s just that the logistics and resources needed to put something like this together are substantial. It’s one thing to name all-area football or basketball teams, as getting to see games involving those athletes is pretty easy. We televised about a dozen football games and close to 20 basketball games on Comcast this season, so between Comcast and watching live, you could get a feel for the best players in those sports.
But to come up with the details of all the other sports: boys swimming, girls swimming, wrestling, gymnastics and ice hockey…that’s a lot of athletes to consider, a lot of coaches to call, and a lot of results to tally. Then to get the winners together in a central place, take pictures, and write up the winners in a format that does not take weeks to read…
As one commercial used to say, it’s like “herding cats.”
Loudounextra.com, by virtue of being part of The Washington Post empire, has the resources to devote to such a section. It’s just as impressive day-in and day-out to read the scores and detail of every game in every sport on Loudounprepsports.com because the staff, ownership, clean-up crew, writer and editor is the same guy: Dan Sousa.
I like local sports, but I’m basically a football and basketball man. Dan’s committed. And when he’s fielding calls from 27 coaches every day to get every last lacrosse and field hockey score, he probably feels like he should be committed. It’s probably why he picked UCLA to win the NCAA Tournament.
But I digress.
In the bigger scheme of things, these local all-star teams probably mean little. But it does add to the sense of community out here in Loudoun County. I’ve lived in small towns, where a local weekly newspaper made a big deal of any scholastic success; I’ve also lived in bigger cities, where unless you were heading for the big-time, the bigger daily newspaper in town didn’t write about it. We’re lucky enough to get the best of both worlds.
So to Jeff Nelson, Paul Tenorio, Joel Richardson, J.C. Reed, Christian Swezey and Cara McCoy, nice job. Now that you’re done with this project, perhaps you can tackle a bigger challenge: helping Tenorio with next year’s NCAA basketball picks.
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Wednesday, 2 April 2008 10:27 by
Dave Last week it was announced that The Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon and his wife Sheryl celebrated the birth of their first child. Mike, all of Loudoun County congratulates both of you on the arrival of Matthew Raymond Wilbon. And since we’re pretty close in age, there are a few things I’ve learned as a Dad I’d like to pass on to you.
Since it’s your first child, both of you will be hyper-sensitive when he cries. So just like in golf, it’s very important that you keep your wrist straight as you pretend to inadvertently nudge your wife in the back to wake her up. Done properly, she’ll believe she’s been awakened by the cry of her child and take care of things, while you get to keep sleeping. It’s sort of like being asked to help with the laundry and you shrink your wife’s favorite sweater. Do a job poorly once, and you’ll never be asked to do it again.
If you have pets, tell them life as they know it is over. My wife and many of her friends looked at the family dog as “their baby” until a child came along, and all of them swore a baby in the house would never change that. Less than 30 days later, the baby is ruling the roost, and the dog is in the backyard. Keep this in mind when you make your wife mad, because thirty days from now, you could end up in the backyard too. She now has a child to keep her company.
Since you travel, it will take a few years before you encounter this; but when you’re getting off the airplane, you may be blessed with the sight of both your child and wife with open arms to welcome you home. When you approach your child first, your wife WILL remember. Oh, it will be subtle, but it’ll come up, and keep coming up. Master the move where you pick up your child with one arm while moving in the direction of your wife. It will appear as if you were going to both first. It may not be that big an issue with a son. With a daughter, it’s a lose-lose situation.
Record everything. The obvious benefit is preserving memories, but the bigger benefit is leverage. My daughter absolutely cringes whenever I pull out the DVD of her when she was two years old at Christmas. Now that she’s a teenager, I don’t threaten with loss of privileges. I just tell her my plans to put a sheet over the garage door, rent a projector and show the neighborhood that DVD. On prom night.
You may have dealt with pressure as an athlete, or deadline pressure in newspapers, or the pressure of the camera’s red light on television. It’s nothing compared to the pressure you’ll feel the first time your son performs in public. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on an athletic field, stage, or in front of the classroom. His joy is your joy. And his disappointment is your disappointment. Times three. Despite all this, you’ll be the calm one. Moms are far worse. Learn to deal with it.
Finally, of all the jobs you’ve done – writer, columnist, editor, television star – the job of “Dad” is the one you were meant to do. When my daughter was born, a co-worker told me that your children will give you “your highest highs and your lowest lows,” and added that sometimes “both come on the same day.” Other jobs may pay a lot of money. But this one gives a satisfaction that none can equal.
So Mike, again congratulations, and welcome to the club. We eagerly await the day Matthew breaks all of Michael Jordan’s records with the Chicago Bulls. For now, just remember: keep that wrist straight.
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Friday, 14 March 2008 11:56 by
Dave Erica Garman’s short story on the increasing number of people getting permits to carry concealed weapons in Loudoun County predictably sparked a flurry of comments to her column on LoudounExtra.com. One comment even pointed out that Garman, who also does a weekly show for Comcast Cable Channel 2, had taken a gun class and written a story in The Washington Post. “I couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling that I had the power to kill in my hands,” she was quoted as saying. You did Erica. And I promise from now on, I’ll watch your show every week.
While more of our neighbors appear to be packing heat, we have nothing on places like Martinsville, VA. I lived there in the early 1980s, and it seemed like everyone had a gun. It’s a place where factories have to close down for the first few days of deer-hunting season, because everyone would call in sick if they didn’t. Knowledge of guns was as routine as knowing how to read and write.
I, however, was among a small minority who somehow made it through life (and still have) without ever firing a gun. My Dad had one. Many of my friends do. I’ve been invited to go on deer hunts many times. It’s just never interested me, and it was never an issue except for the years I lived in Martinsville.
One of the greatest people I ever got to know in life was a man named H. Clay Earles. Clay decided that one day, a lot of people would want to see cars go around in circles, so in 1949 he built the Martinsville Speedway. He was right, as these days hundreds of thousands of people go to Martinsville to see folks like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and a host of others. When I met him, I was in my 20s, Clay (who passed away many years ago) was around 70. And he never went anywhere without a gun.
One day, we were eating lunch together at a place called Clarence’s, and the conversation turned to guns. He pulled out a very small pistol, talked about it the way you’d talk about a good friend, and asked what I owned. I told him I didn’t have one, and in fact, never had fired one.
“Never?,” Clay asked, squinting his eyes as if I had told him I had grown a third arm.
“No,” I said. “Never needed one.”
Clay thought some more on the subject, but couldn’t get his arms around it.
“Never?,” he said.
“Never.”
“Hmmmmmm,” he said. “Well if that’s true, let me ask you this: Do you like girls?”
During my time in Martinsville, I crossed paths with two others who had an impact on sports in Loudoun County this season. Both were at Martinsville High School, which enjoyed state championship caliber football and basketball teams about every year. The Bulldogs had a running back named James “Turk” Dallas, who also played basketball. Dallas came from a very athletic family, and when he was gone, his younger brother Tony starred for the next three years in basketball after James graduated.
Over 25 years after I wrote stories on the teams Dallas played on, a new principal was named at Cedar Lane Elementary in Ashburn: James “Turk” Dallas. And when watching Freedom’s girls basketball team play in the Dulles District finals a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice Olivia Dallas on the Freedom roster. She’s James’ daughter, and the number she wore was significant. At Martinsville, Dallas wore No. 12 in both sports. Olivia’s number? Same No. 12.
But it was Dallas’ basketball teammate at Martinsville that may have had the most impact on football in Loudoun County this season. Jeff Adkins was the team star, and would later go on to a nice career at Maryland, playing on a team that won the ACC Tournament. Adkins would later return to the area, and eventually become the athletic director at a private school named Carlisle.
Carlisle would one day have a vacancy for a basketball coach. Among those that applied was a lawyer from New England who had tired of the law, and wanted to be a coach. His interest in coming to a small town in Southwestern Virginia was rooted firmly in just getting a chance to coach, as public schools required previous experience. Private schools didn’t have that requirement, and after many conversations, Adkins gave the lawyer a chance.
Carlisle’s new coach learned the coaching ropes, became good friends with Adkins, even married a local Martinsville girl. When the opportunity arose to become a head football coach on the West Coast, he took the job, but still kept his ties with Virginia. He was a success on the West Coast as well, and after a few years, started to look for a job back closer to the East Coast, and his wife’s home.
Three years ago, he found it. There was an opening at Broad Run High School. The coach’s name is Mike Burnett. Three years later, he would go 10-0, and lead the Spartans to the Dulles District title.
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