High School, with an enrollment of 165 in a

High School, with an enrollment of 165 in a remote mountainous area, and the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind with an even smaller enrollment. RCHS has an enrollment of 286 in grades 9 through 12.

Football Sets the Tone

“Football sets the whole tone for the school year,” says RCHS Principal Jack Raines, who coached winning football teams for 21 years in Rockingham County before coming here two years ago.

Football is able ta occupy large numbers of restless teenage boys, says Mr. Raines. It teaches them teamwork, discipline, courage, and the satisfaction of seeing the results of hard work.

Football draws more spectators than any other sport for the “pure excitetnent of something to do on a Friday night when the weather is chilly but still nice enough to sit outside,” says Mr. Raines. “I love smelling the grass and hearing the drums playing.... The school band always gets better when it gets to march across the football field at halftime.”

' Without football, in. short, Mr. Raines thinks it’s hard to get students pepped up about their school. They coast into the school year, instead of busting out, both athletically and academically — because Mr. Raines thinks success ..in both arenas goes hand-in-hand.

David Gangel, superintendent of the county’s schools, agrees that football- is needed at Rappahannock: “Football draws the community together in a way that nothing else does.”

My husband graduated from a high school much like RCHS. It was in Jefferson, Georgia, a rural mill town. With about 400 students, Jefferson H.S. was a single A school like RCHS.

In his four years on Jefferson sports teams, my husband saw Jefferson twice take first place in the state in track, first place in the state in cross country, second place in the state in wrestling, and make it to the state