She may not have been with Hidden Valley High School long, but her impact on the students and Hidden Valley community are quite apparent.

All you have to do is see the reaction of the students and faculty when they found out that Brenda King, Hidden Valley’s new women’s Basketball coach, P.E. teacher, mother, and friend was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer. Three years ago Coach King lost her husband to cancer.

King will now receive chemotherapy once every three weeks and is unable to coach or teach at Hidden Valley High School, that is until she gets better.

Today, Hidden Valley held a student vs. faculty basketball game to benefit Coach King and her family during her struggle with cervical cancer. The gym was packed and not a single student or faculty member was missing.

They chanted, cheered, screamed, and cried for Coach King and then the games began with the students cheering on their fellow students, and the faculty their fellow faculty. Most of the students and faculty sported their t-shirts designed by the students to the game that read “Fight Like a King” and “HV for BK”.

Coach King was quite overwhelmed with the amount of support she has received from the Hidden Valley community.

“I’m nothing but a high school basketball teacher and coach and that’s all I ever wanted to be. To see all this attention makes you fee humbled and special,” King said. “I’m just so appreciative. I just want to get back here and I’ll work for free. We’ve got friends it seems in every corner of Virginia.”

“It’s like a wonderful reunion I get to have before going to heaven. If you surround yourself with good people your going to be happy in life and that is how I feel,” she said.

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While most college students are just trying to get by and figure out their future, two former Cave Spring graduates, now in college, are doing twice that.

Virginia Tech junior, Wade Hammes, and Radford University senior, Lee Bradshaw are both still in school, but have already started a successful business in something they love- fitness.

FITnoke, an online gateway to better fitness can be found at www.FITnoke.com featuring a calendar of regional events, fitness articles, links to sites, forums to discuss just about anything to do with fitness, product reviews, gym reviews, FITmatch which allows athletes to find others to train with and even a training log. A place for athletes in the area to network.

“We wanted to aim ourselves at a more general range of people,” Hammes, a Business Management major said. “Our main goal is to become an interactive community.”

Both are athletes in a range of sports including football, wrestling, soccer and running and take great pride in their fitness. Now they’ve been able to take their love of fitness and their career paths in business and combine them into FITnoke.

FITnoke.com was launched on June 15 but it took Hammes and Bradshaw only a day to come up with the idea.

“I stayed up for four days straight,” Hammes said.

“We are right at five months now,” Bradshaw, a Marketing major said. “We’ve gone from 10 thousand hits a month to 425,000 hits the month of September to a million hits.”

“Lee and I didn’t know much about web design so I had to learn,” Hammes said. “We studied stuff and then started building the website. I’ve learned so much about web design and I made all the graphics.”

“We went from zero to sixty, just like that,” Bradshaw said.

FITnoke is free and anyone can become a member to start keeping track of their training on Your Training Log which was built specifically for FITnoke by a man in Iceland tailored to FITnoke’s needs for endurance athletes by calculating pace and other things.

Articles on the website include articles related to running, cycling, triathlons, leisure, gym, swim, nutrion and sports psychology, relaxed fitness, and exercise are updated daily and currently features over 50 articles.

Despite all the learning they’ve had to do to conduct a successful website, they’ve also had to keep up with their school work.

“It’s definitely been a lot work with school, work, jobs, and meeting the press,” Hammes said.

“And it’s overcoming the age difference, because we are so young,” Bradshaw said. “Now when I tell them our hits are over a million, they listen.”

Taking their love of fitness and starting a business, has turned into a reality for Hammes and Bradshaw, but they are still soaking it all in.

“The month of September really opened my eyes as to where this could go,” Wade said.  “I want to see this keep growing and see if become a staple. We want to stay true to our roots.”

“We want to stay FITnoke,” Bradshaw said.

They’ve also had relentless support from their families. Bradshaw said his parents use the site a lot.

“They are into it and proud of me. It’s right up their alley,” he said. “When we wanted to start this business we had no money so I asked my mom for help. She asked me to write up a contract. I’d liek to be able to give my mom like $116,000 as pay back if this continues to be succesful.”

“Wade puts in all the hard work and the work until 4 a.m.,” Bradshaw said. “We have a good partnership.”

“We are a really good team,” Hammes said. “Lee and I have always gotten along since Mrs. Williams class senior year.”

-Emily Flora SWoCo

The Cave Spring junior varsity football team played Salem Thursday. The Knights came up short, but we still have what we hope is a winning photo gallery of the action.

Photos by Erin Millar

Do you have photos involving teams or players from Southwest Roanoke County? If so, you can share at news@swo-co.com

The automotive department at the Burton Center for Arts and Technology welcomed parents, students, and auto dealers and managers of garages from the area to an open house on Wednesday, Oct. 26. Dominion Dodge, Berglund Chevrolet, Berglund Ford, Virginia Truck Center, and James River Equipment each had representatives to answer questions about the field and to take applications for internships and jobs.

Following a presentation on the Automotive Youth Education Systems-a program that offers ACE certification (specialized and general standardized tests for automotive technicians) to high school juniors and seniors, the gathering ate dinner together, then proceeded to the garage to peruse vehicles from each company that attended.

“Finding and keeping qualified technicians is tough,” said Jim Hosey, service manager at Berglund Chevrolet. The program gives high school juniors the opportunity to intern with a shop, and also gives garages the opportunity to recruit employees. The earlier presentation highlighted the growing need for recruiting and retaining auto mechanics and technicians-jobs traditionally stigmatized as low paying and low skill levels. Today’s vehicles have complicated wiring systems that require knowledge of computers, electric currents, and endless safety features.

“My job is to help get these guys employed when they leave high school,” automotive instructor Joe Moore said. Two recent graduates of the program spoke at the event, Cody Allison and Michael Carder. Both are gainfully employed at local dealerships after attending J. Sargent Reynolds Community College in Richmond. Allison is now one step away from being a senior master technician for Ford vehicles.

Click here to see more pictures of the event.

Weather journalist Kevin Myatt says tonight’s weather for trick-or-treating and football will be, well, let’s let him say it: “PERFECT! Clear skies, dry, temperatures falling from the 60s through the 50s. Maybe a little chillier than that at game’s end.”

For details, see his latest post on his Weather Journal blog.

While we’re at it, let’s use this occasion to make a shout-out for Halloween photos. You can share at news@swo-co.com and we’ll post them here in our Halloween gallery — so check back through the weekend to see what we’ve got.

We’ve already posted photos from the Halloween party at the 419 library and Trunk or Treat at Colonial Avenue Baptist Church.

And if you have photos from tonight’s games — Cave Spring is home against Salem, Hidden Valley is on the road at Blacksburg, while North Cross plays Roanoke Catholic — you can share those, too, at news@swo-co.com

When Mike Brancati, Assistant Principal at Cave Spring Middle School was just a young boy, him and his oldest brother loved to invent golf courses around their home.

“My oldest brother and I used to have fierce battles at the house. We’d use regular golf balls and gold clubs,” Brancati said. “I had such a good time doing that that I thought it could be applied to a course on the school property.”

So with the blessing from Principal Steven Boyer, he did just that and took great pride in it.

The course he calls, “The Squire Links Golf Course” consists of a 9 hole, par 36 course on the school property. Brancati decided to design a golf course on the school property which would allow the execution of the golf swing with a golf ball. After much exploration he discovered many of the plastic practice balls were not suitable for what they were designed for unless their purpose was to only make contact with the club. So he called up the Cayman Golf Company who produced a restricted flight ball that came a bit closer to being adequate, but was not.

Brancati took into consideration the length of the course, the mass of the ball, and the degree of danger is someone was hit by the ball and with the help of Bob O’Keefe tested a whiffle ball that weighed about 16 grams. Brancati then called the Cayman Golf Company and spoke withe the president of the company Troy Puckett.

And to much of Brancati’s surprise, the company quickly designed him a ball perfect for his golf course.

“I finally had a ball which was compatible with the game I envisioned,” Brancati wrote. “To my knowledge, this 16 gram ball is produced specifically for our school on request.”

“The most significant aspect to the design of the course is that all par 4′s can potentially be reached in one stroke and the par 5′s can be reached in two, using the 16 gram Cayman ball,” Brancati writes in a description of his course.

This is the fourth year that the golf club has been using his course to emphasize accuracy and developing a proper golf swing. 6th, 7th, and 8th-graders are allowed to participate in the program and the golf tournaments are intramural.

Brancati said this year’s program had as few as 27 and as many as 29 students involved at any given time. The program includes five instructional meetings and an invitational Benjamin Franklin Middle School hosts at Willow Creek. Each year Brancati is able to send six of his best golfers to the invitation. There are also four restrictive tournaments held on school property.

“I think the students get a lot of fun out of it. Primarily, they learn a lot about golf. I’m not a professional golfer but there are some things I can share with the kids at the beginner level that is good fundamental golf instruction,” he said. “I think they certainly get that out of it and get a basis rather for developing their golf swing.”

Brancati said he enjoys seeing the students develop and getting involved in the game of golf who may not have gotten involved if they weren’t involved in the program.

And for two of the program’s participants, it has resulted in a love for the game.

Sam Walker, a 6th-grader at Cave Spring Middle School decided to join just because he wanted to see if he was any good at it.

“I haven’t really tried any other sports,” Walker said. “So I wanted to give that a try and it turned out that I was very good at golf.”

He loves gold because all of the courses are unique and vary in difficulty.

“I learned how to swing a golf club, how to grip a golf club and how to judge a golf ball’s speed and how it will move in different directions with the wind and all of those things,” he said. “The only other experience I’ve had was putt-putt.”

Walker also participated in some of the tournament the golf program had and remembers shooting 1 under par on a 9 hole course and 7 under par on an 18 hole course at the Future Knights Championship. And since he found he has a knack for it, he plans on joining the golf team when he gets to the high school.

And 7th-grader Nick Bondurant plans to be on the team also, but hopes to make the JV Golf team at Cave Spring High School next year. He shot the top score for Cave Spring MIddle School during the tournament held this year at Benjamin Franklin Middle School.

“This is going to be my second year in the program,” Bondurant said. “I joined just because I wanted to play golf.”

Bondurant had only played twice before he said.

“Pretty much 90 percent of what I needed to learn, I learned from the golf club, like keeping my left elbow straight during my swing.”

Have you ever wanted to know what it’s like to help people across the world that you’ve never even met? Colonial Avenue Baptist Church, is doing just that with their “Bead for Life” party.

The party will feature beautiful beaded jewelry made of recycled paper by refugees from Northern Uganda’s brutal war and HIV-positive mothers, as a way of lifting their families out of extreme poverty.

The jewelry will be on sale on Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at the church located at 4165 Colonial Ave. and is sponsored by Colonial Baptist Church’s Encouraging Women, Women’s ministry group for free.

“We found out about “Bead for Life” last year at a local coffee shop,” Melissa Scott, minister of youth and education at the church said. “There are several of us in the church that make jewelry and after having seen the jewelry and hearing the stories of the women in Uganda, we thought it was a great thing to offer to our community and church.”

By selling the beads  in the community the church is essentially allowing the women of Uganda who hparticipate in the program an opportunity to make an income which in turn pays for food, medicine, school fees for their children, and other developmental community projects, Scott said.

“All of the proceeds go straight back to “Bead For Life”,” Scott said. “What we don’t sell goes back to them and they will bill us for what we sold. The great thing is it has allowed these women not to have to work so hard in the fields and allows their children to go to school.”

This will be the second time that the church has held the “Bead for Life” show. Last march the church held the show, but decided to do one before the holiday season so that people could purchase the beads as gifts.

“It’s really a mission project for us and allows us to have fellowship together. The more that people that  know about the needs the more that can be done to help them,” Scott said.

To learn more about the Bead for Life program, visit their website at www.beadforlife.org and read the stories of the women who make the jewelry. For more information about Colonial Baptist Church’s Bead for Life party call 774-2084.

The Hidden Valley cheerleaders had lots to celebrate this week. They took first place in the River Ridge District cheerleading competition and, thanks to John Tyree, we have a photo gallery of the Titan cheerleaders in action. You’ll find one of his photos on the cover of this week’s SWoco, more photos of the competition inside — and, yes, even more photos here online.

Each week in our print edition we ask readers to send us photos, and John did. Thanks, John!

Each week we also say “see The Notebook” for more.  Well, here’s this week’s guide to this week’s “more.”

(And before we go on, let’s also tip our hat to the Cave Spring cheerleaders, as well. They came in second and we have another photo gallery from the district competition right here. Double coverage of cheerleading!)

But moving on . . .

* Apartment fire displaces one on Garst Mill Road
* Five lawyers from Southwest Roanoke County win national recognition
* Southwest Roanoke County man raises giant pumpkins
* More photos of Cave Spring Middle School student Colleen Truskey, who won Subway contest
* More photos of Green Valley Elementary Fall Carnival
* More photos of Penn Forest Elementary Fall Festival
* More photos of Faith Christian School celebrating Oktoberfest
* More photos of Bent Mountain Elementary Fall Festival
* Cave Spring homecoming photos
* Hidden Valley homecoming photos
* Photos of Southwest Roanoke County people at Howl-O-Ween
* Photos from Trunk or Treat at Colonial Avenue Baptist
* Photos from autumn snapshot contest
* Roanoke County’s voting history

AND IN SPORTS . . .

* Webcast asks: Why didn’t Hidden Valley band stay for the Salem game?
* Webcast pays tribute to Hidden Valley Coach Brenda King
* Photos of Hidden Valley JV football vs. Salem
* Photos of Cave Spring Knights vs. Botetourt Crusaders
* Photos of the Valley AFC Crush soccer team
* Photos from golf tournament to raise money for Cave Spring boys’ basketball

So how can you get your news and photos in SWoCo? Easy! You can share at news@swo-co.com

For more information — including how to advertise and reach more than 90 percent of the households in Southwest Roanoke County – see below:

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Looking for some drama in your life? Showtimers’ upcoming show may be just what you are looking for.

The play, “Come Back Little Sheba” opens on Nov. 12 and concludes on Nov. 23 at Showtimers Community Theatre located at 2067 McVitty Road.

“Come Back Little Sheba” was a play before it was a movie, written by William Inge in the 1950′s. The main character Lola’s dog, Sheba, disappears and according to Jayne Brill, director of the play, “It’s about letting go of the past and moving forward. It’s one of the first plays of its time to deal with alcoholism and addiction which is in the household she lives in.”

The main character Lola, is played by Della Mason-Stacey and Barry Bedwell plays the role of Doc. About 11 people make up the cast but it will take approximately 25 to put the show off every night.

“It’s the first play to ever deal openly with addiction alcoholism,” Brill said. “It’s very much a drama, but there is also humor in it, too. We have a great cast and several new faces for this show, and I’m excited to be working with the regulars and the new ones.”

This will be Brill’s second play she has directed at Showtimers, but she has been involved with Showtimers since 1992 and played many roles including, on stage, back stage, acting, stage managing, director, cleaning, whatever needs to be done, she said. She has also served on the board of directors and recently finished directing at Virginia Western Community College.

When Brill, who is originally from Ohio, isn’t following her passion of theater, she works as an accountant clerk.

“When I found Showtimers, I thought where else should I get my feet wet and get back into theatre but at a community theater,” she said.

“It’s a very expensive hobby. It takes a lot of your time and commitment. It’s more of a passion. I can’t imagine not doing it. It’s just part of my life. When the show closes it’s like, ok what am I going to do with my evenings. It’s a great mentoring program also, not just for young people but for people’s first time on stage.”

Showtimers Community Theater will be putting on the play, “Come Back Little Sheba” Nov. 12 – 23 on Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.

For tickets or more information email boxoffice@showtimers.org or call 540-774-2660 or 1-877-336-9294. Tickets are also available for sale at www.showtimers.org.