Its not uncommon for a High School community to have a Coach that sets the standard for Excellence that will stand for decades to come. In the Shenandoah Valley, there have been a few that have become known across the Commonwealth and even across the Nation.
The fact that Alan Knight is closing in on 1,100 victories, all at the same School should be a Stand Alone kind of a number but there are two things that slow 🐌 down that fact. First, Knight coached Softball and Volleyball and while those sports are rather important to me, that’s not necessarily the case with mainstream media. Football 🏈 and Basketball 🏀 rule the World, even at the High School level.
Secondly, if you draw a circle around Page County High School, you will run into a number of sensational Coaches and programs.
Chris Dodson, a fellow Page County High School graduate 🎓 operates at Spotswood High School as the Girls Basketball coach and is seeking his eighth State Championship, same number as Knight.
Turner Ashby High School in Dayton is and has been a Baseball ⚾️ factory 🏭.
Jerry Walters at Central High School is the Gold standard for both Coaching and leading a Community.
R.E Lee High School is now called Staunton High School. Paul Hatcher once led his program ( Boys Basketball) to 80+ straight victories.
The Head Coach that has the largest amount of similarly to Knight is legendary Robert Casto of Riverheads High School in Greeneville. Casto has a dump truck full of State Championship 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆and had a winning streak that led the Country at one point.
As the two programs featured in this book, Carroll County and Page County, have very little connection, the folks that live in Galax might have double digit State Championship hardware if not for Casto.
My history with Casto is that while serving as color commentator for ESPN Radio 📻 in Augusta County, we featured a number of their games each season. The next time our paths crossed was in Charlottesville in 2024 when both Knight and Casto were enshrined in to the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame.
My favorite memory of Casto was his first retirement in I believe it was 2016. Coach was talked into returning the following season and then went 39-0, adding three more State Championships.
Now let’s get to the similarities between Knight and Casto, other than being neighbors. Casto was Coaching at a Class 1 school ( smallest size in Virginia) and over his career he built an absolute Dynasty. The centerpiece was just one thing, doing the same thing over and over again, then doing it some more.
There was no long line of star players that ended up at Alabama or Southern California. Casto was only interested in throwing the football as a last resort, which didn’t happen very often and this led to extremely fast games as the clock ⏰ wasn’t stopping for incomplete passes.
From the time that a student reached the third grade the Boys knew that when the got older they were going to play football for Casto. There was no recruiting needed for the Coach and by the fourth grade the Pee Wee coaches were teaching them the Varsity teams playbook. By the time they reached High School they were ready to hit the ground running and run they did.
I can still remember blogging at one of the recent Galax – Riverheads State Finals on a rainy day in Salem. Galax, who for a long time had the distinction of being the last team to beat Riverheads, put up a fight that day but couldn’t slow down the Riverheads Express.
The Segway from Riverheads High School football to Page County High School Softball is an easy one. Everything that Knight and his staff does is based on the basic fundamentals of flawless defense, aggressive base running and the ability to bunt the ball. Sounds a bit familiar when you look at the Riverheads game plan.
We are going to work on things until we can make the plays in our sleep 💤 and then challenge the opponent to outplay us.
Casto wasn’t a one man band all of those years and neither was Knight or actually I should say, neither is Knight as he prepares for yet another season.
Coach Roy taught them how to pitch, long time lead Assistant Coach, Ralph Viafora taught them how to execute and believe in themselves. Now the torch 🔦 has been passed to Lori Mongold and Big Daddy. Its very simple, practice what you need to practice and do it until it becomes second nature.
It’s a shame that the value of a Softball victory is less than a Football victory but such is life.
Note 📝 – Bill ” Pappy ” Meade is now enjoying his latest role as a Grandfather but its worth noting that Pappy has a direct tie 👔 to Hatcher, Casto and Knight. Meade attended High School at R.E Lee while Hatcher was Coaching, covered Knight for a decade and when we relocated to Stuarts Draft, spent time covering Casto. Quite the trio !
A.S.P.N on The Hill 