At an age when some officials might be hanging up their whistles, Garland Berry has a shiny new one to display.

Berry, who retired from coaching in 2000, is in his 42nd season of football officiating and this July received the Silver Whistle Award as the top-rated official in the Southern Conference.

"I won some awards as a player in basketball and baseball and [as a coach] at Cave Spring," the 65-year-old Berry said, "but this would have to rank as one of my top achievements."

Berry served as head boys' basketball coach and baseball coach at Cave Spring before wrapping up his coaching career in 2000 as an assistant to Roanoke College men's basketball coach Page Moir. However, he had refereed football games -- mostly as a line judge -- since he was a student at Lynchburg College.

He moved up to the college ranks with the formation of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and has been with the Southern Conference since 1988.

"They say I might be the oldest guy in [Division] I-AA," Berry said, "but I weighed 160 when I got out of Lynchburg College and I'm 165 now. The coaches give me high marks. So, as long as I stay in shape and don't mess up, I'll keep at it."

Berry says he was "kind of a hothead" when he coached but his officiating experience gave him respect for the people in the striped shirts.

He has done some softball umpiring and called basketball games while he was at Lynchburg, but he later was limited to football officiating by his coaching duties.

"A lot of people didn't even know I officiated," said Berry, whose older brother, Tom, was a line judge until he went into cardiac arrest during a game and subsequently retired two years ago.

"I guess I waited too late to get into the big time. They called me one year when they had the replacement games in the NFL and I kind of wish I'd done it now. I could have said, 'At least I did one game.' "

Macklin a Hoya

Georgetown has received an oral commitment from Vernon Macklin, a 6-foot-10 post player from Portsmouth who will be spending the 2005-2006 school year at Hargrave Military Academy. Macklin, known as the "Big Ticket" at I.C. Norcom High School, picked the Hoyas over North Carolina and Wake Forest.

Hargrave coach Kevin Keatts said that Georgetown coach John Thompson III "did an unbelievable job" in recruiting Macklin, and it turned into a family affair as Thompson's brother, Ronny, did much of the legwork for Arkansas in its successful recruiting of Hargrave's Stefon Welsh, a 6-2 guard from Woodside High School in Newport News.

Weak schedule?

When asked about a sportsillustrated.com feature that said Virginia had the weakest schedule in the ACC, UVa head coach Al Groh observed that the Cavaliers are "one of the few" teams in the ACC who play Florida State, Miami and Virginia Tech this season.

He got that right. Duke is the only other team to play FSU, Miami and Virginia Tech this year. Virginia is the only team with games against the preseason top two in the Atlantic Division (Florida State and Boston College) as well as the Coastal Division (Tech and Miami).

End of an era

Virginia announced last week that Joe Gieck will retire, effective Aug. 31, after a 43-year association with the UVa athletic department. Gieck, the Cavaliers' head athletics trainer for 36 years, gained a spot in Tech-UVa football lore when he flung a leg in the direction of Tech defensive back Antonio Banks following an interception in the teams' 1995 game.

Local update

Casey Martin, the 2003 Piedmont District volleyball player of the year, has joined the volleyball team at Christopher Newport. Martin had an opportunity to play at the Division I level before enrolling at Christopher Newport, a Division III NCAA tournament participant in two of the past three years.