Former NFL quarterback Teddy Bridgewater has been suspended from his job as a high school football coach after a recent Facebook post.
It’s a story that practically writes itself. No need for sensationalism, embellishment or hyperbole.
And yet, it needed to be written.
Jeremy Haymore took it upon himself to pen “The Bandana Express,” chronicling the tale of the 1980 Giles High School football team, which put together one of the most memorable and remarkable seasons in Southwest Virginia high school football history under legendary coach Steve Ragsdale and a now largely forgotten offense.
The book, releasing later this month, aims to not only regale readers of what happened that fall in Pearisburg, but serve as a narrative history of the region and show appreciation for an often overlooked part of the commonwealth.
“I really just wanted to look at, how can I lay out this information where it’s presented for the more advanced diehard football fan, to the casual fan, and then make sure that I’m doing justice to all the teams in the area,” Haymore told The Roanoke Times. “Making sure that it properly conveys Southwest Virginia. It really became kind of a love letter from me to high school football in Southwest Virginia.”
Haymore, 46, was first introduced to Giles while visiting his grandparents, passing by the high school football field now named after Ragsdale. His father grew up in Narrows and played for the Green Wave in the single-wing offense, the formation that carried Giles to the state championship 45 years ago and is still used by the Spartans despite being largely abandoned by the rest of the football world.
Haymore graduated from Staunton River in 1997 and began coaching football while teaching English. He ran the single-wing on the staff at Appomattox, but remained in awe of how Giles ran it when watching highlights on TV. After his season was done, he would film Giles’ playoff games from the stands, watching the Spartans win the state title in 2005.
While coaching and teaching at Staunton River, he learned of the Giles 1980 team while talking with athletic director Neal Mustard, who played for Ragsdale on the Spartans’ 1993 state championship team alongside ESPN broadcaster Marty Smith, who wrote the foreword for “The Bandana Express.”
Haymore became enthralled with the story — the lore of the iconic coach, the heroes who were born and the titular bandana that became a symbol of Giles football and remains part of its identity today.
He likened it to “Friday Night Lights” and “Remember the Titans.” In fact, the cover of “The Bandana Express” features a pull quote from Roland Lazenby, bestselling author of “Michael Jordan: The Life,” that states “Virginia has its own version of Friday Night Lights.”
“The first time I heard that whole story, I just knew that it was a special story,” Haymore said. “Not only was it similar to all of these sports stories and movies you saw at that time, but the difference was this was all how it happened. I was like, man this is wild because this is actually how it happened. It didn’t need dramatizing.”
Inspired by the nonfiction narrative style of Jim Dent and his works, such as “The Junction Boys” and “Twelve Mighty Orphans,” Haymore began his inaugural book in 2010 while on the coaching staff at Patrick Henry.
He received support from Jeff Williams, who was the Giles head coach at the time but retired in May after 17 seasons. Williams provided 16mm film reels of the 1980 team that Haymore converted to DVDs and then digitized. He also went digging into the archives of The Roanoke Times and other local papers at the Roanoke Public Library.
Haymore combed through games and conducted nearly 150 interviews. He first met with Ragsdale in a six-hour session in July 2010. He started out with just a few contacts, but it snowballed into dozens upon dozens of connections. He interviewed all the starters from the team, as well as coaches and players from opposing teams and even members of Park View, which Giles rallied to beat by a single point in the Group AA state title game.
The process took 15 years to complete. Between raising three children and serving as offensive coordinator for a Staunton River team that achieved much success in the mid 2010s, including reaching the Group 3A state championship in 2016 running the single-wing, Haymore remained busy. He also served as head coach for the Golden Eagles briefly in 2018.
“I never stopped. I always kind of plugged away, just tried to get a little bit done here and there when I could,” he said. “It’s one of those things where I never expected to take that long, but I was determined to finish it. I was determined for those players I had interviewed. I wanted to see it through and finish it.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Haymore left coaching and teaching for a new full-time job, and with the world on hold, was able to devote more time to his book. He finished writing in May 2024 and it’s now set to release on July 29, just in time for the high school football season. Practices begin the 31st, with the regular season kicking off Aug. 29.
“It’s a beautiful thing. I’m really glad that it worked out that way,” Haymore said. “It wasn’t like I had set it up that way, but it just kind of happened and I’m like, yeah it’s perfect because now I can bring that in right as people are starting to get excited about football, and hopefully as it goes through the fall they continue to pick up a copy and read it.”
In addition to the book’s foreword from Smith, a bestselling author who sent a message to Haymore saying he read it for five straight hours, unable to put it down, “The Bandana Express” also received praise from Frank Beamer, a Hillsville High School graduate whose coaching career started in the high school ranks of Southwest Virginia, as well as several others, including Bill Curry, a two-time Super Bowl champion under Vince Lombardi and Don Shula.
Curry, a longtime SEC coach, expressed the refreshment and originality the book provided him.
“He has done everything in football that you can pretty much do,” Haymore said. “And when he wrote that quote that he had, from 1955 until he retired thought he had experienced everything related to football he could, but he was wrong … that really meant a lot to me.”
Haymore said he wants the people of the communities mentioned in the book to be entertained, educated and feel represented by the traditions and history of the region.
“To see that in Southwest Virginia, there are great players, great rivalries and great coaches that have come from those small areas of the state, and they can feel pride about it,” he said. “I hope that Southwest Virginia as a whole can feel that through this book, because that’s what I felt and that’s what I wanted to convey.”
“The Bandana Express” is published by Virginia Beach-based company Koehler Books and is available for preorder online on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Contact Matt Case at [email protected]
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