Today's Sports

Watts’ career off to hot start

RALEIGH, N.C. –– The college basketball career of Jessi Watts is all of five games old. The former Carroll County standout is already making her mark.

Watts, a freshman at Salem College, was named to the all-tournament team following the Jackie Ammons Memorial Tournament at Peace College.

A freshman guard, Watts averaged 15 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5 assists per game in the two-game tournament, shooting 15-for-19 from the floor, including five 3-pointers.

Galax girls’ basketball coach Jamie Dotson isn’t into predictions. It’s probably a good thing, because nobody would have foreseen what the Lady Maroon Tide accomplished last season.

One year removed from a 1-18 record, Galax bounced back by coming within one game of a Group A Division 1 state tournament berth, knocking off Holston and then Highland County in triple overtime before falling to Bland County in the Region C semifinals to finish the season at 10-16.

Here’s a telling fact about small-school football, which, by necessity, is about as iron-man as it comes: Of the 14 names listed on the all-Mountain Empire District first-team defense, no fewer than 11 were also first- or second-team on offense.

That’s single-A ball, where few are expected to do much. Few did more than Galax’s Tyler Houk, the only player named first team at three different positions on the 2008 all-MED football team, voted on by the district’s coaches.

I come not to bury the 2008 football season, but to praise it.

On second thought, let’s do a little of both. For the first time in 14 years, no Twin County football team advanced to the Virginia High School League playoffs. The season is deceased in our neck of the woods, and it flat-lined pretty early, with the three area teams going a combined 8-22.