It's official. Lord Botetourt 's Jamie Harless is the new head football coach at Union.
From the BHC...
Having guided a high school football team in the Blue Ridge Mountains to its peak success, Jamie Harless is returning to far Southwest Virginia to call the shots for a Region 2D powerhouse.
The 1993 Abingdon High School graduate has been hired to take over the gridiron program at defending Region 2D champion Union, the school in Big Stone Gap announced on Tuesday morning.
Harless spent the past 14 seasons at the helm of the Lord Botetourt Cavaliers, a Class 3 program that twice reached the VHSL state finals under his watch.
Harless compiled a 132-41 record during his time at Botetourt as the Cavaliers finished as state runner-up to Hopewell (led by current New England Patriots running back TreVeyon Henderson) in 2019 and in the spring of 2021 to Lafayette.
This past season, Lord Botetourt went 9-4 and lost to Magna Vista in the Region 3D finals. The Cavaliers opened the season with a 49-12 win over eventual Class 1 runner-up Rye Cove in a game played at Emory & Henry University’s Fred Selfe Stadium.
E&H is where the hard-nosed Harless was a two-time NCAA Division III All-American as a defensive tackle and he is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.
Prior to that he starred at Abingdon and helped the Falcons go 9-3 and finish as Region IV, Division 4 runner-up to eventual state champion Richlands during his senior season.
Abingdon did not win a game during Harless’ freshman season.
He oversaw a similar reversal of fortunes at Lord Botetourt.
Following a stint as the defensive coordinator at Cave Spring in Roanoke, Harless took over at Lord Botetourt in 2012 in a job that was not desirable.
When he arrived, the Cavs owned one playoff win in program history and that had come in 1984.
He was walking into a program that had finished below .500 for seven straight seasons.
However, Harless turned things around and led the Cavaliers to a playoff berth in his first season and the winning never stopped.
He takes over a program that is already established as Union has reached the playoffs every year since the school opened in the fall of 2011 from the consolidation of Appalachia and Powell Valley.
The Bears have won four regional titles and have lost all four of the program’s state semifinal game.
They must replace a talented senior class that included quarterback Kam Bostic, running back Keith Chandler, defensive end Carlos Anderson and several other standouts.
Harless initially did not enter the coaching profession, instead working in construction with his brother, Buddy, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia, among other places. An accident in which he fell off a ladder and broke his back led Harless to reconsider some things and he ended up in the education field.
Now, he’s become one of the state’s top coaches and is back in the area where he starred in high school and college. Abingdon is one of Union’s Mountain 7 District rivals.
