Upon Further Review

When the Little Giants baseball team heads south, which is what it takes to get to Rockbridge, their swagger gets the notion that it has to follow them and keep on going. Sure, Waynesboro stopped in Lexington to play the Wildcats on Wednesday, but their swagger must have thought the game was somewhere around Wise County, because that’s where it went.

And the Giants lost that game, sending all of Giantdom into a tizzy and having fans wondering if maybe, just maybe, the team’s new-found swagger might have headed too far north during their season. You know, maybe going high enough to get to their heads.

But then comes Friday and a seventh inning at Fort Defiance that saw the Giants’ three outs away from leaving the door open for the Indians. Suddenly, the swagger heads back up, tops out somewhere around the Massanutten, and a 4-2 seventh-inning deficit turned into a 9-4 Waynesboro win that clinches the Southern Valley District and, more importantly, gives the Giants the much-coveted Region III berth.

I don’t care what coach Jim Critzer wants to call it. Heart? You bet it is. Character? Darn skippy, skipper. We’ll just call it swagger because that seems to wrap everything up pretty nicely. You remember swagger? The thing this team couldn’t find with a GPS strapped to their batting helmets oh, I don’t know, somewhere around the beginning of the season.

“The kids just wouldn’t die,“ Critzer said of his team’s final-at-bat comeback.

Go ahead, call it that too, if you wish.

All the clown-like administrators in the Southern Valley DoesStink had to do was make a trip to the Waynesboro soccer pitch on Friday to get a taste of what could be.

Thanks to a series of events (mainly Rockbridge County High School treating its girls soccer program like second-class hacks), the Wildcat girls lost a home game and Waynesboro got to reap the benefits with a ultra-rare girls, boys soccer doubleheader. Sure, we can all feel bad for the Wildcat girls, or you can look at it as a wake-up call for the district’s no-brain trust. With two back-to-back games, those terraced stands at the old Wilson-Jackson field were full by the time the boys team took the pitch. (Though, and let’s be honest here people, those “stands” are in desperate need of a weed whacking.)

“It was a great atmosphere,“ said Waynesboro boys coach Bill Meicke.

Darn skippy, Bill.

With e-mail accounts fired up and cell-phone minutes burning away from parents and “fans,“ it would have been easy for the Little Giants girls soccer team to let it get to them.

Nah, that would have been the wrong thing to do. Giving up would have made stupidity from the stands reign supreme over the players on the pitch.

I don’t care who paid for it, how it got there and how much it costs to pump those twinkling lights that surround the Waynesboro pitch full of electricity. Neither did the Little Giants girls soccer team Thursday against Rockbridge. In a game that would have been too easy to lose, they staked ownership of that pitch and let out resounding cry that for 90 minutes each game night, they control what they do and how they do it.

Sorry “adults.“ No. Not yours.

Just as things were looking up for soccer in Augusta County, a few “fans” and “parents” that must have majored in numskullery in college, have to open their mouths, pick up their phones and/or log into their home, work and, yes it’s true, Waynesboro school system e-mail accounts, in a haphazard attempt to get the Waynesboro girls soccer team some newspaper ink.

Trust me, the braintrust that runs this sports department is well aware of how A) young, and B) talented this Waynesboro girls soccer team is and will be. There’s no argument there, but to send e-mails and make phone calls to this sports columnist because he wrote about how young and talented the Wilson Memorial girls soccer team is was just ludicrous. Also, it’s very “unadult-like.“ Something those same “adults” would say only a 12-year-old would do.

All this slack-jawed sports columnist wanted to do was point out that, yeah, soccer is big and the local high schools that haven’t seen those dividends paid just yet soon will.

The youth of Wilson Memorial captured my eye and I decided to head out there and chat it up with coach Scott Crist and a few of the young girls on a freshman- and sophomore-laden team. Sorry, but it’s a fact that the Hornets have raised eyebrows in the Shenandoah District thanks to keeping pace with the always tough Holmes
Tehrani-led Gladiators in a 2-2 tie. Holding their own against a just-as-good Buffalo Gap squad and losing 1-0 only added to the excitement in Fishersville.

Why Giantdom starts acting all dumb again is beyond me, as a few Waynesboro girls soccer fans (“adults,“ by the way) decided it was time to behave like the middle child in a family of five and send some e-mails my way.

I’ll answer a few of the harmless questions for all of you to read: