SACCO: Forced to choose again

Now is the time for the Southern Valley District to shine.

Tonight, yes tonight, is the night that this two-year-old, please-let-it-die experiment and the fine folks who run it — and whose scheduling prowess would make the Mayan’s synchronicity with the heavens blush — to show off how smart they are when it comes to basketball season.

Yes, tonight, when R.E. Lee and Waynesboro basketball programs go toe-to-toe, is when the Southern Valley District becomes the epicenter for the Virginia High School League and gives its yearly class on how, when done right, a basketball schedule can work for huge rivalry games.

Einstein? He’s got nothing on the schedule makers at R.E. Lee, Rockbridge, Stuarts Draft, Fort Defiance and Waynesboro.

Darwin? Shoot, mere child’s play when it comes to the scientific calculations these five schools surely must concoct during the summer when they whip up these schedules and decide who plays whom and where.

No, I couldn’t get through typing any of that with a straight face, so how can anybody expect you to read it without bellowing out a few hearty guffaws? Because, one year after its first go around, the buffoonery we know and love as the Southern Valley DoesStink, is forcing fans of the biggest basketball rivalry in Augusta County and, yes, I’ll just come out and say it, the whole Valley, to choose.

Which is it going to be, basketball fans?

R.E. Lee girls hosting Waynesboro?

Or Waynesboro boys hosting R.E. Lee?

Good thing my last name isn’t Scott or Mickens; I don’t have to choose between watching my son play at Waynesboro or watching my daughter play at R.E. Lee.

Someone in Augusta County could make a whole stack of ducats if they could figure out how to sell out-of-body experiences so fans can watch both games.

But numskulls are numskulls and if the schedule makers are so dead-set in their ways that they won’t even listen to Paul Hatcher when he said last year that, yeah, he wouldn’t mind big games played on different nights, then so be it.

If the powers that be want to treat the opinion of a legend like they would any other slack-jawed yokel, then that’s their problem. That’s their issue of disrespect.

It’s actually kind of cute and funny after two years. This schedule and their steadfast stubbornness to change it is like watching a toddler take their first few steps after months of crawling. Yeah, it’s not pretty and it’s not the most coordinated thing in the world, but man, it sure does make you laugh out loud at the absurdity.

I would like to say I’m done blaming the schedule makers. I would love to tell you that, after tonight, never again will I chastise this hardheaded group of wonks and their utter inability – or is it stubbornness? – to give basketball fans what they truly want.

I’d love to tell you that, instead, we should start blaming the fans. Because you are the ones that continue to allow this to happen. Don’t you people realize that, yes, you have the power to change this? You, after all pay their salaries when you dole out your tax dollars. And aren’t you sick and tired of this sham of a district treating you like you aren’t worth a lick?

All you have to do is send someone an e-mail or two or three or 20, and let them know you’re tired of having to choose between your son and daughter. You can walk into the school, get a visitor’s pass, and annoy the heck out of your favorite athletic director’s office if you so desire.

This is Waynesboro against R.E. Lee in basketball, and the girls and boys should not be playing the same night at different sites. Ever.

We all remember what Jeremy Hartman famously said about the Lee/Waynesboro rivalry after watching his girls lose an overtime game against the Little Giants last season.

“Familiarity breeds contempt. And that’s what this is,” he said.

When it comes to the people who have split these rivalry games on the same night at different sites, we know exactly what Hartman’s talking about.

Entering year two, our familiarity with this scheduling has become tiresome.

You know what comes next.