By Marty Gordon
Former women’s basketball player and Radford University women’s coach Simone Edwards has died after a long battle with cancer.
Cam Jones, who played high school at Patrick Henry in Roanoke and then at Radford University, has also passed away. His death was announced this past week.
Edwards, who had been diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer, lived in Florida and was the first Jamaican woman to sign with a WNBA team. She played for the Seattle Storm with whom she won the title in 2004 before retiring in 2006.
The 49-year-old coached the Jamaican women’s national basketball team to the 2014 Caribbean Women’s basketball championship title.
She was hired as an assistant coach at Radford University in 2007 and also served as an assistant at George Mason University from 2008 to 2011.
Jones, who most recently was teaching middle school in Richmond, averaged 8.5 points per game for RU in 2014-2015.
In other sports news in the area:
Ft. Chiswell High School has named Zane Quesenberry as its new head football coach.
Quesenberry is a former Pulaski County football player who played football at Maryville (TN) College as a defensive back. He started his coaching career at William Blount Middle School and then moved on to Bearden (TN) High School. In 2016, he rejoined the staff at Auburn High School before moving on to Pulaski in 2020.
A two-person team representing Radford University will compete for the 2023 Major League Fishing Abu Garcia College Fishing National Championship on Lake Toho in Kissimmee, Fla., February 21-23.
Jackson Norton and Kent Clark qualified for the big-money college bass fishing finals by winning a regional college bass fishing tournament last year. The prize pool for the event is $235,000.
The return of EA Sports’ college football video game series now has a time of arrival: the summer of 2024.
Daryl Holt, EA Sports’ vice president and general manager, told ESPN in an interview the brand is going to launch EA Sports College Football at that time because of the enormous undertaking involved in creating the game from scratch. The game will include state-of-the art 3D scans of dozens of stadiums.
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) is again offering a chance to hunt bull elk in the Elk Management Zone of Virginia for the upcoming hunting season. The application period is open until March 30, 2023.
The hunt for the 2023–2024 season will be held Saturday, October 14, 2023, through Friday, October 20, 2023. Five antlered elk licenses are available for this year’s hunt via lottery.
Applications for a special elk hunting license can be obtained online, under elk hunting, or by calling the Department of Wildlife Resources Customer Service for assistance in applying via phone.
Applications require a non-refundable fee of $15 for Virginia residents and $20 for out-of-state residents. Winners of the elk hunting lottery will then need to purchase a special elk hunting license for $40 for in-state residents and $400 for out-of-state residents.
All elk hunt lottery applicants are assigned a random number between 1 and the total number of applicants using a random number generator.
Opportunities to purchase a special elk hunting license will be offered to the applicant randomly assigned number 1 and will proceed sequentially until all slots have been filled in accordance with the following requirements:
The 1 license must go to someone who lives within the elk management zone
No more than one license can be purchased by an out-of-state hunter
If the winner who resides in the elk management zone cannot purchase the license, the next consecutive resident elk management zone applicant will be offered the opportunity.
If any of the other four winners are unable to purchase the special elk license within 30 days, the opportunity to purchase a license will be offered to the next consecutive applicant meeting residency requirements.