Laos Books

Barry Reed is one of the most intimidating forces on the Southwest Virginia softball scene.

But when the longtime Virginia High coach began preparations for the 2011 season, he best resembled the downtrodden Old Mother of nursery rhyme lore.

Reed’s trophy case was stacked, but his cupboard was bare.

Missing was the Core Four – Crystal Bullock, Adrianne Evans, Lannie Johnston and Fallon Thomas – a quartet of departed seniors who won a school-record 84 games during their four years as Bearcats and made the semifinals of the state tournament three times.

Back were a few talented, but mostly unproven youngsters, a couple of veteran role players and more questions for Reed to grapple with than a student starting the SAT.

“We had a number of holes to fill,” said Reed, the Bristol Herald Courier’s 2011 softball coach of the year. “We had a lot of work to do.”

Despite the success of the past four seasons and district titles in 14 of Reed’s first 15 years leading the Virginia High program, the Bearcats were picked in the preseason to finish just third in the Clinch Mountain.

“I took that as a challenge right off the bat,” Reed said.

When a season’s worth of dust had settled, Virginia High had matched the best-ever finish by a Reed-led squad, making it all the way to the VHSL Group A, Division 2 state final before falling 2-1 to James River.

“I guess out of all the Final Fours that we’ve been to and regional titles and district titles, this one may be a little more special to me than all the others because we had so much further to go this year,” Reed said.

Pushing with patience

It doesn’t take runes or sheep entrails to divine what drives Reed.

“I’m not a good loser and I learned that at an early age in high school,” he said.

Reed is well known for his baptism-by-fire coaching style, but this year he turned down the temperature in the pressure cooker he puts his Bearcats in each spring, albeit by just a degree or two.

“He wasn’t near as over the top with the girls as he is usually,” said Bearcats assistant coach Carson Smith. “I mean at times he was.”

Virginia High got off to the sort of middling start many foresaw, winning just four of its first seven games and suffering a rare loss to city rival Tennessee High at the State Line Classic.

But Reed swallowed his anger on more than one occasion and trusted that his time-tested formula of rigorous practice sessions and conditioning would be enough without unleashing his full arsenal of tirades and tantrums.

“We squirmed and I guess bit fingernails and did all the things that coaches do, but you have to let those kids work it out and work through it,” he said. “We just had to take some of our bumps and bruises and just keep going and let time heal the wounds.”

Sophomore Kelsey Nave, who became a postseason hero for the Bearcats by the time June rolled around, said Reed may have been slightly calmer, but he wasn’t much kinder to behold at sunrise.

Nave recalled Reed rousing the team for a 6 a.m. jog on the beach – just hours before the Bearcats were set to play a game at a Myrtle Beach tournament.

“I think we conditioned a lot more this year than we did in the past,” she said.

While the daily grind of playing for Reed isn’t always fun, Nave said she wouldn’t trade her demanding coach for a rainbows-and-sunshine leader.

“This past year I can honestly say if we wouldn’t have had all the weightlifting and the conditioning and the three-hour practices, I really don’t think we would have ended up where we did,” she said.

‘Even more’

Although Virginia High’s run to the state final came as a pleasant surprise, the season’s end was still a bitter disappointment.

For 28 years – in a number of sports and at three schools – Reed has chased a state title, only to come up short in excruciatingly close fashion time and time again.

“Sometimes I wonder: Am I ever going to win one?” Reed admitted. “But I try to pull it together and I say, well, there’s a lot of people that would like to be where we are.”

This spring, Reed gave up his position as the Virginia High girls basketball coach, freeing him to focus solely on softball. With loosened Virginia High School League rules on offseason practice for 2011-12, he’ll have many months to train his 2012 squad – a group that will return nearly entirely intact to give Reed a full shelf of bones as he tries once and for all to chase off the no-state-title monster that looms in his psyche like the slobbering dog beyond the fence tormenting “The Sandlot” kids.

“I’m going to take some of the younger players and some of the less experienced players and work with them and just try to get them to play like juniors and seniors,” Reed said.

With expectations already building for 2012, don’t expect Reed to pat his bunch of 2011 overachievers on the back and hope for the best.

“The kids, they get mad and the parents get mad sometimes because I am the way I am, but I have to tell them it doesn’t matter how good they are and it doesn’t matter how good they do,” he said. “I’m going to push them to do even more.”

No one, though, gets pushed more than Reed himself.

“Most of the time I’m calling the pitches – until I get distracted and have to go jump on somebody for something – but every game we sat there and we said not only can [the players] not mess up, I can’t mess up by calling a bad pitch,” he said. “One bad pitch this year would have beaten us.”

It’s that kind of passion from Reed that has allowed Virginia High to become a contender every year, a program where “rebuilding” means falling a single run short of being the best team in the state.

So, yes, another season has passed with Reed and the title of State Champion once again an inch that may as well have been a mile apart.

Is Reed satisfied with 2011?

No – and that same attitude is why his Bearcats weren’t a mere third-place team in the Clinch Mountain District.

But is Reed scowling?

For a fleeting moment, that may have just been a smile.