January 16, 2009
3 miles north of the North Carolina/Virginia border: that’s where I was tonight. I was at Magna Vista High School (a Group AA medium-sized high school) located in Ridgeway, Virginia, which is near Martinsville, Virginia. I was there to see a high school freshman basketball player named Shaquille Patterson of Magna Vista. Shaquille Patterson is a member of the high school Class of 2012 and being recruited by Atlantic Coast Conference colleges. His Magna Vista High School Warriors were playing at home against the Martinsville High School Bulldogs. At one time, Martinsville High was considered the best Group AA basketball program in Virginia, but that was back in the 1980′s. This was a long, long ride from where I live near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. First I had to drive 130 miles south to Danville, Virginia. Then, it was about 30 miles west until I finally got to Ridgeway, Virginia. Shaquille Patterson has a lot of potential. He’s listed at 6-4 190, and might be closer to 6-3. He plays small forward in high school. He dribbles well and has a nice outside shot, but he really is more of a low-post/mid-range player.
Shaquille Patterson wears jersey number 24 in the photos in this article. It was in the low-20′s, which is cold for the state of Virginia, and was predicted to get in to the single-digits that night. I noticed a number of University of North Carolina fans at this game, wearing their Carolina blue. I didn’t know if they were there to see Martinsville High or Shaquille Patterson play. I try to make my website different by talking about some non-basketball things. So, here’s the time it took to go to this game. I left Charlottesville at 12:50 P.M. on Friday. At 2:11 I was in Amherst, VA. At 3:25 P.M., I was in Chatham, Virginia on Route 29 South, where I heard station 1000AM, the CNN all-news station. By 4:23 P.M. I was 3 miles east of Martinsville, VA. The game started at 7:40 P.M. I left the game and was in Danville, VA at 10 P.M. In Danville I could hear radio stations from the state of North Carolina. students. I was in Lynchburg, VA on Route 29 North at 11:30 P.M. I got home at 1:15 A.M. on Saturday!
In this part of Virginia near the NC/VA border, high school basketball is taken very seriously. In front of a roaring crowd, Magna Vista defeated Martinsville 49-46 in the junior varsity game. Shaquille Patterson started off well. He missed the opening shot of the game, but grabbed the rebound and scored. In the first half, he had 8 points and 5 rebounds, but his team trailed 29-19. He had hit on 4 out of 8 field goal attempts. However, for the rest of the game, his team made no attempt to get him the ball. As a result, Martinsville won, 68-53. Martinsville basically ran a layup drill against Magna Vista High, which was playing without it’s injured point guard. Games like this often result in a star player transferring to a private high school. Hopefully Shaquille Patterson won’t do this, because I think it’s a big mistake for a player to do it. At a private high school, players don’t get the individual attention they do playing for their local public school. Plus, what do they gain by playing another private school and winning by 70 points? If they don’t play much, I think they actually regress at private schools. He should stay for 4 years at Magna Vista, in my opinion. Shaquille Patterson finished with 11 points and 13 rebounds. Magna Vista fell to 7-5. Martinsville team went to 9-5, but 3 of their losses have been to Group AAA (the larger classification in Virginia) high schools.
On a side note, this high school had the strangest set-up I’ve ever seen for basketball. Although it did have three parallel basketball courts, the main middle court was surrounded by a double-railing, which blocked the view of spectators. This may have been because the side basketball courts were elevated, and the idea was to use the railing to prevent players from falling off of the outer courts. Who wants to watch high school basketball like this? Haha.
