Weekend Roundup With Rome: Local Sports Positive

Weekend Roundup With Rome: Local Sports Positive

By Danny Cardwell · Allegheny Mountain Radio

This conversation probably should have happened a couple of years ago.

Jerome G. Johnson Jr. and I have mutual friends, and my cousin Troy had suggested a while back that the two of us ought to sit down and talk sports. It just never quite came together. Football season finally gave us the excuse to make it happen.

Jerome is the man behind Weekend Roundup With Rome and the Roundup Sports Network, two Facebook pages that have become a useful stop for local sports fans, parents, coaches, and athletes looking for scores, schedules, rankings, and news from around the region.

More than that, though, Jerome has built something that is increasingly rare online: a positive space.

His focus is largely on Alleghany County and the surrounding area, but his coverage reaches into Bath County and across the Pioneer and Shenandoah districts as well. From youth sports through high school, the emphasis is on giving local athletes recognition and giving families one place to keep up with what is happening.

The whole thing started more than five years ago with something much simpler.

“I was at home watching an NFL playoff game, and after the game was over, I decided to go on Facebook Live and give my thoughts about it,” Johnson said.

A few friends watched. One of them, Devin Davis, encouraged him to keep going.

“I’ve got to give him a shout out,” Johnson said. “He was the one that kind of pushed the initiative to get going to begin with.”

Jerome went live again the following week after another NFL playoff game, more people tuned in, and the idea began to take shape.

“That’s kind of the genesis of how it started,” he said. “Then after a while, I just decided to focus on our local student-athletes and give them recognition, breakdowns, and high school sporting events, and it has grown from there.”

What started as commentary has become much more organized over time.

Jerome now spends a lot of effort pulling together scores, schedules, rankings, and information from different schools. For parents and fans, that means they do not necessarily have to search all over social media trying to figure out who played, what the score was, or what is coming up next.

Johnson said he understood early that people were finding value in it.

“From the beginning, pretty much,” he said. “Just that immediate feedback that I got from that first breakdown. Even when it was at a point where only five people were watching, those five people gave me the confidence to pursue this and make it evolve, make it grow.”

As the audience grew, the purpose became clearer.

Johnson said one of the main reasons he continues the work is for people who cannot always make it to games.

“I see people in the community just tell me how much they appreciate what I do, how much ease of access they have to watch sporting events because they can’t make it out themselves,” he said. “That’s the other main thing about why I do it.”

He also wants local student-athletes to feel seen.

“I like these student-athletes, give them their shine,” Johnson said. “I’m sure they get love and appreciation, but you can never have too much.”

That spirit carries over into how he runs the pages.

Anyone who spends much time on social media knows how quickly conversations around sports can become negative. Rankings, coaches, officials, rivalries, and even high school kids can become targets.

Jerome has made a point of not letting that happen in the spaces he controls.

“That’s the main thing. We try to keep it positive, never anything negative,” he said. “There’s too much negative going on in the world now. We don’t need to add onto any of that.”

That does not mean everyone has to agree.

“We’ll take the discourse. We’ll take the disagreements on the rankings or sports, just as long as we have that respectful civil discourse,” Johnson said. “But it’ll never get to a point where it’s heated, where it gets personal, where feelings are hurt, or personal insults or attacks are launched to anybody.”

For Jerome, the goal is simple.

“We just try to keep it fun, positive spirited.”

Over the years, he has also had a chance to watch young athletes move through different stages of their high school careers.

Johnson is quick to give the credit back to the athletes.

“Roundup Sports Network, Weekend Roundup With Rome is a small part of their journey because they’re working hard on their own, lifting weights, drills, anything they do to advance their skills,” he said. “Anything we can do to highlight that, I just feel it’s a small part of it, but grateful to be a part of it in any measure.”

His work has also reached beyond his own audience.

In 2022, before the Alleghany and Covington school systems consolidated, WSLS picked up part of Johnson’s coverage from an Alleghany-Covington volleyball event.

“At the time, I really wouldn’t think anything of it. I’m just a Facebook page here for the local community,” Johnson said. “But then come to find out a well-renowned regional broadcasting network picked up a snippet of what we put out. I’m very grateful for that.”

Now, more than five years in, Jerome is thinking about what comes next.

He has recently worked with the District 2 Sports Podcast — a Southside Virginia-based show available on Podbean, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts — and said there have been early conversations about more collaboration with other high school sports platforms.

“I’ve been recently collaborating with another well-recognized high school sports coverage network called District 2 Sports Podcast,” Johnson said. “Shout out to Gregory, Dev, and Big G.”

He also wants to continue expanding his own reach.

“I’ve gotten love from people as far from the east side and Galax and around those regions,” he said. “Maybe expand out there a little bit and highlight them a little bit more because if they take the time to give our pages attention, we’ve got to reciprocate that and give that love back to them.”

For parents, athletes, and fans looking for a place to keep up with local sports without wading through a lot of the negativity that comes with social media, Jerome has created something worth following.

And after talking about doing this interview for a couple of years, I’m glad we finally got around to it.

You can follow Jerome’s coverage on Weekend Roundup With Rome (https://www.facebook.com/share/1ENyLSqJjp/?mibextid=wwXIfr) and the Roundup Sports Network (https://www.facebook.com/share/1JhKQ5d6ei/?mibextid=wwXIfr).

Listen to our interview below: