By Staff
By Kevin Travis
A couple of familiar faces will be walking the sideline at the 2007 Shrine Bowl.
Former Northside High School coaching great Walt Davis, now the head coach at Manteo High School, and former Williamston High School assistant coach Jim Bob Bryant, now the head coach at Greene Central High School, were named as assistant coaches for the North Carolina team.
Davis was the first head coach with the Northside Panthers, guiding the team to a 61-39 mark from 1989 to 1997.
He’s still enjoying success with the Manteo Redskins, compiling a 27-3 mark over the past two seasons. Davis led Manteo to a state runner-up finish last season.
Bryant, at the age of 33, is the youngest coach ever to selected from North Carolina to coach in the Shrine Bowl. A former quarterback and assistant coach at Williamston High School, Bryant has been instrumental in developing and running combines over the last six years to help with the Shrine Bowl process.
He coached in three state football championship games and four state baseball championship series while at Williamston. Bryant, voted the Coach of the Year for the Eastern Plains 2-A Conference in 2003 and 2005, has been coaching at Greene Central the past four years.
Burlington Williams High head football coach Sam Story, the head football coach at Burlington Williams, was tabbed as the head coach for the North Carolina squad. Joining Davis and Bryant as assistants will be Ron Green of Lawndale Burns, Bob Wolfe of Apex, Salisbury’s Joe Pinyan, Durham Riverside’s Tommy Blalock and Bill Geiller of Charlotte Independence.
Out of the mouths of babes
I’m not a prude, but a couple things have caught my eye, and ear, on television while watching sporting events in the last week.
During the Saints-Eagles playoff game, I could have sworn I saw a female fan wearing a T-shirt with the words, (“Naughty word here) da Eagles” standing in or near the front row. I saw a picture of the “lady” in that T-shirt on the web the following day. FOX didn’t do a very good job of screening.
Then, while watching the Australian Open on television Monday evening, I heard a rather nasty word come from Maria Sharapova during her match against Camille Pin. Granted, the No. 1 seed and pin-up queen from Russia had to be feeling the heat, literally and figuratively, as it was over 100 degrees on the court and the unheralded Pin was on her way to forcing a third-set tiebreaker.
During one exchange, play was stopped and Sharapova grew angry. She walked over to the line judge and said, “Are you (extremely naughty word here) kidding me?” She quickly apologized for the sour language.
Chris Fowler, an announcer for ESPN, did likewise. Seems ESPN didn’t have a mute button or any way to control the on court microphone. Oops.
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Kevin Travis is the Sports Editor of the Washington Daily News. You may reach him at 940-4217 or by email at Kevin@wdnweb.com.