Appalachia High and Powell Valley are two small (combined student population is just 750) high schools in Wise County, a rural area in the coal-mining area of southwest Virgina. The towns there rely on two things: coal, and Friday night high school football (people begin reserving seats by setting down blankets more than three hours before kickoff). But with the poor economy hitting small towns like this especially hard (“In Appalachia, most of the storefronts in the business district are empty. There is no cellphone service because the town cannot get a cellphone tower built”), consolidation has become the new key phrase. As in, merging high schools like Appalachia and Powell Valley together, despite their rivalry that has spanned generations.
Your Enjoyable Lunchtime Read of the Day
↵↵“I don’t think there would be a problem with the kids,” Robbins said. “It’s the adults I’m worried about.”
↵Robbins could not be more right about the adults. Hunched over coffee in the Fast Stop Food Market in the Appalachia business district, the Bulldogs fan Andy Taylor repeats the smear that has been used often here since the cold war.
↵“If Powell Valley is playing the Russians, we’re rooting for the Russians,” Taylor said.
↵↵From the first sentence, when you learn that Appalachia once practiced on an actual gravel parking lot, to the end, the New York Times’ Ray Glier paints a picture of small-town high school football that would make Texas blush.
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