After two weeks of practice, the Amherst Lancers will return to football action Friday when the team hosts Spotswood in the Region III Division 4 semifinals.

A sunny morning with unusually warm November temperatures made for a great day of racing in Elon on Nov. 14.

The Temple Christian Crusaders volleyball season came to an end on Oct. 23 at the hands the Roanoke Valley Homeschoolers.

Amherst cross country girls coach Teri Grey has added new meaning to the art of coaching. No, it’s not great words of wisdom or a new training method for better times, but rather it’s the stroke of a pen.

The football game between Monelison Middle School and Amherst Middle School may have been anti-climatic, as the Trojans cruised to a 34-0 victory Oct. 29, but Amherst County High School varsity football coach Cecil Phillips was there to put it all into perspective.

If football games were beauty pageants, Friday night’s Amherst-Rustburg matchup would not have even made it out of the first round.

Two freshmen earned All-Seminole District honors last Wednesday at Jefferson Forest’s 3.1-mile Wolf Branch Farm course, pacing Amherst County to its fourth consecutive team qualification for today’s Region III meet at Greenfield Park.

In the first half of Friday night’s football game at Lancer Stadium, Jefferson Forest defused Amherst County’s explosive offense.

The Amherst junior varsity football team has lost four of its six games this season but scored a big win last week when it knocked off E.C. Glass, 22-14.

Amherst continued its march toward a Seminole District title with a 52-10 victory Friday night over E.C. Glass in Lynchburg.

“Unfinished Beesness” read one of the banners hanging outside Amherst’s football fieldhouse prior to Friday night’s showdown with defending Seminole District champion Brookville at Lancer Stadium.

For a team that has been in existence for just three years, the Temple Christian volleyball team has shown remarkable growth.

Somewhere, Tyler Dawson is kicking a football. These days he spends most of his time down in the hollow bowl of Lancer Stadium, honing a skill that had him kicking on the varsity team as a freshman a year ago.

Amherst hits the road again this week to play Bassett before hosting Brookville on the following Friday in an important Seminole District showdown.

Amherst hosted the Region III golf tournament on Monday at Winton Country Club and a pair of Lancer golfers posted promising scores, though neither qualified for the Group AA state tournament next week in Williamsburg.

Transitions in sports are tough. Whether it’s a leap from the junior varsity to the varsity or from the minor leagues to the majors there is usually a learning curve that must be overcome. Overcoming that curve is the aim of an instructional baseball league that has three teams in the Timberlake area, two in Rustburg and Madison Heights and one team in both Amherst and Appomattox.

Pulaski County’s final drive Friday night was mostly for show, used mainly to bolster stats against Amherst’s second unit. Before that 99-yard drive, there weren’t many stats to bolster.

Wayne Ramsey’s season has been frustrating at times — sitting on the sidelines during races and knowing that if he were out there, he could compete for the win.

Amherst junior Kirby Anderson was overshadowed by senior teammate Anthony Rose in the halftime homecoming festivities of Friday night’s football game against Liberty High School.

Perhaps it was the 13-0 loss to Broad Run in the Group AA, Division 4, state championship game last December at Liberty University. Perhaps it was the fact Amherst graduated its entire starting offensive line. But it seemed like this season, more people than ever were wanting to see the Lancers prove something before saying it was the same old Amherst team that had been to three consecutive state title games.

After posting a surprising 41-0 shutout of GW-Danville on Friday night at Lancers Stadium, Amherst’s football team got to watch four of its coaches — Josh Woods, Mike Padgett, Mike Crist and head coach Cecil Phillips — do 41 pushups each, one at a time, in the middle of the post-game huddle.

Amherst County football coach Cecil Phillips employed two contrasting game plans in the first and second halves of Friday night’s Seminole District-opener against Heritage at City Stadium.

Anthony Fletcher and Josh Braxton, who played key roles in Amherst’s back-to-back Group AA, Division 4, state football championships before serving season-long suspensions as juniors last fall, were back in action for the Lancers in this past Friday night’s season-opening 66-12 rout of Tabb.

Dan Hudson, a baseball player with deep roots in Amherst County, completed a rapid rise through the minor leagues this season to pitch with the Chicago White Sox last week.

The Amherst United Boys U17 travel team, coached by Steve Gordon, brought home a championship in the recent 2009 Danville Summer Sizzle Soccer Tournament held at Dan Daniels Park in Danville.

The Sweet Briar Volleyball team traveled to Roanoke College for the Maroon Classic Invitational Tournament held Friday and Saturday where the Vixens went 1-3 last weekend.

Amherst’s football team opened its season firing on all cylinders last Friday night at home.

You’re not hallucinating. That voice you’re hearing address the crowd at just about any major sporting event in the Lynchburg area is the voice of one man. That man is Madison Heights native Chuck Young.

With his resources slowly dwindling away and sponsors not lining up to run with his team, defending South Boston Speedway Late Model Series track champion Wayne Ramsey will not run the final two races of the season at SoBo that have points implications.

Hoping to shake off the rust that accumulates over a long off-season and overcome the jitters that naturally accompany the first game of a new season, the Amherst Lady Lancers faced off against the Nelson County Lady Governors last Thursday.