varsity.roanoke.com

MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Christiansburg coach Tim Cromer, shown directing his players at practice Tuesday, told his team over the summer to set high goals for this season.

MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Christiansburg coach Tim Cromer (center) watches his Demons go through practice drills. Christiansburg plays at unbeaten Amherst County at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the state semifinals.

varsity.roanoke.com

Timesland on Twitter

• twitter.com/timesland for the latest news and updates from across Timesland

The high school football lives of Christiansburg coach Tim Cromer and Amherst County counterpart Cecil Phillips have intersected countless times.

Most recently that happened in the steamy days of last July when Cromer accepted an invitation from his old rival, colleague, and friend Phillips to bring a group of Blue Demons to the home of the Lancers for an offseason camp dealing with the finer points of the wing-T offense run by both teams.

For three days, the Demons slept in the Lancers gym by night and attended clinics conducted by wing-T scholars from the Carnegie Mellon football staff when the sun was shining.

When it was time for the Christiansburg boys to go home, both Phillips and Cromer suspected at the time they might be seeing each other again in the not too distant future. They even had a target date and location: Dec. 5, 2009 back in Amherst.

And so it has come to pass. The Lancers, winners of two of the last three VHSL Group AA Division 4 championships and runner-up for the third, play host to the Blue Demons at 1:30 p.m. Saturday in the state semis.

"We told our kids last summer, hey, our goal is to be right back here on Dec. 5," Cromer said.

For a team that has never won a state football title, not to mention coming off a 5-5 season, that may have seemed like a stretch. Apparently the two coaches must have thought otherwise.

"We talked during the camp about that possibility," said Phillips, who returned key players from the team that was blanked 13-0 by Broad Run in last year's final. "We knew they had a solid core of players coming back and that they'd be one of the tougher teams in the River Ridge District."

Set high goals, Cromer told his guys.

"Coach told us to dream," Christiansburg linebacker Drew Bibb said. "If we did good and went far, that we could be back up there at Amherst playing again. Dream big."

Amherst County is unbeaten since last year's final, a span of 12 games. Christiansburg has three setbacks but is coming into Saturday's clash on a four-game winning streak. Earlier in the year, the Demons won six straight.

The players from the opposing teams got to know each some during the summer, but there hasn't been much texting back and forth or other communication among team members since. It was all business at the camp; each squad working as a unit. Not much time was spent socializing. A mutual respect developed, though.

"They don't like to talk a lot of crap or anything," Bibb said of the Amherst County athletes. "They're really nice boys. They're fast and they really know their stuff, a really good team. We have a good team, too. We're right there with them. We're not as fast, but I feel like we're right there with them."

There won't be many secrets offensively. There are subtle differences between the Demons and Lancers. Christiansburg uses a tight end package and Amherst County does not, for example.

"But other than that, we're mirror images of each other," Phillips said.

Defensively, they both favor five-linebacker sets.

It's unusual that semifinal opponents, being from different regions of the state, know as much as about each other as these two do.

"That's going to give us little bit of an edge Saturday," Christiansburg receiver Sterling Harrison said. "In the playoffs, the teams we've seen so far -- Bassett, Hidden Valley, and Salem -- we'd played them all before. All we [would have known] about Amherst was their record and what we've seen on TV and what we'd heard about them. Now that we've been on the same field with them, we know a little bit about what to expect."

When they were playing rivals, Cromer at Christiansburg and Phillips at Radford, the coaches probably never dreamed they would run into each other on football fields as many times as they have since.

Both graduated in 1987. Although Cromer was an offensive guard and Phillips, a middle linebacker, lined up facing each other many times, they'd didn't know each other well in high school. Phillips went off to play football and go to school at Ferrum; Cromer, his playing days done, went to Radford University. That gave him the opportunity to return to Christiansburg as a college student to stay close to the football program and begin his apprenticeship as a high school coach.

Later, after both had finished college and started coaching, their careers each took them out of state. Cromer made it to Florida, where he eventually became head coach at Middleburg High. Phillips took a job in Georgia, working on the football staff of former Jefferson Forest coach Bob Christmas.

When Cromer and Phillips returned to the Old Dominion, they were both on Norman Lineburg's staff at Radford for a season in 2001.

Cromer took the Christiansburg post four years later. Phillips, meanwhile, started the program at new King's Fork High in Suffolk. Three years ago, he brought his last King's Fork team to Christiansburg for a scrimmage.

Cromer and Phillips are linked in one other way. They are both part of the large coaching fraternity that has come out of the New River Valley. That frat has done some serious partying this fall. In Division 2's final four, for example, three of the teams have New River Valley coaching ties. Included are brothers Matthew and Kevin Saunders at Radford and Gretna, respectively, and Pulaski County's Todd Jones at Essex. Goochland, under Radford alumnus Joe Fowler, is consistently strong and finished this year 10-2 after losing in the second round of Region B Division 2 playoffs. Then, there's Cromer and Phillips in Division 4.

Coincidence?

"I think it goes a little deeper than that," Phillips said. "There's always been solid football played in the New River Valley area. There has always been an excellent group of coaches down there. They've been mentors to some of us younger -- well, I'm not so young anymore -- but the younger guys who have come up through the ranks. [The older coaches] have gotten us excited about football and working with kids and it's something we take a great deal of pride and pleasure in doing."

Those same personal associations have helped continue old rivalries and started new ones.

"The great thing about rivalries like that is you can always be great friends off the field," Phillips said. "That's exactly what me and Tim are."