#4 Seed Lakeland followed up its upset of #1 Hopewell with another seed buster by defeating #2 Lafayette this afternoon in Tidewater.
Lakeland will now host Brentsville District and Lafayette travels in the direction of Meridian.
Both sides of the bracket are now set and we have 3 sets of Cavaliers amongst the Elite Eight.
Greetings All – being that I’m on the road with the Golden Bears 🐻 Baseball team I don’t have access to everything I would back home. So today is a great day to dabble in how easy it is to start a rumor and why being able to do so is just wrong.
But we live a world 🌎 where its an ongoing 24/7 media access fueled by Social Media. So while the baseball ⚾️ team worms up let’s have a little fun.
I can go down this particular path because of the amount of respect I have for Spotswood’s long time Coach Chris Dodson. That’s important in that if I didn’t know and appreciate Coach D I wouldn’t feel comfortable having some fun.
With that said, most of the Carroll County High School fan base was pretty excited about the Lady Cavaliers getting to host the State Quarterfinals and Semi-final games before possibly taking the trek to Richmond for the Championship game.
A true home court advantage in that the opposition for both games would be facing lengthy bus rides ahead of the contest.
Add in now that the story I posted from the DNR in which Dodson was being incredibly gracious after coming up short at Liberty Christian Academy. Coach said he doesn’t fancy having to make the drive to Hillsville.
Carroll County beats a very solid Lord Botetourt team later on Saturday night 🌙 and the home fans are excited about Spotswood having to travel all the way from Penn Laird to the Hill.
Then the word starts to spread throughout the building about CCHS not getting to play the game in their own building. Next thing you know both teams are heading to Pulaski County and most people don’t know why???
So we will just connect the dots and paint a picture of how that happened. Dodson is the Bill Belicheck of Girls High School Basketball in the State of Virginia and has a matching set of rings to go with the reputation. Dodson reaches out to the folks at the VSHL and pounds his fist 👊 full of rings on the desk and demands his way. That’s pretty easy to create and somewhat plausible but could not be further from reality.
The VSHL made a decision well ahead of time as to how they were going to handle the playing of the 48 Quarterfinal games. Our Athletic Director, Darrin Mathews, was well ahead of the curve on this one and made the most logical decision based on all of the right reasons
I mentioned to Mr. Mathews that if we had to drive over one hour to play Friday that I would have picked Grayson County. The logic being that if nobody wanted to drive 🚗 to Hillsville from the Shenandoah Valley then getting to Independence would be borderline frightening and could have kept some of the visiting fans away.
To wrap it up, we are going to Pulaski Friday because of a decision that the VHSL made it advance and our AD absolutely made the correct call. There will be Hoops in our Gym on Friday and it will have a Carroll County connection to it as Fort Chiswell will be “Hosting” its game there.
Carroll County and Spotswood is quickly becoming a staple in post season contests are both schools are enjoying the ride. Just remember when you have to buy $6-10 worth of extra gasoline ⛽ in addition to the surcharge on the electronic ticket 🎟 that none of this is the fault of Darrin Mathews or Chris Dodson.
There’s no Dr. Evil or Darth Vader here, unless you want to blame the VHSL and that would pull focus off two great basketball programs.
A great picture 📷 of the Day on the kickoff to the Let’s Celebrate from now until the Party 🥳 is over Campaign…
At the beginning of the Winter Sports season I introduced myself to Coach Motley and mentioned to him that I believed that if there was a Carroll County Sports team that would receive coverage on a regular basis that it would be his group. So to make sure everyone received their moment in the spotlight I would be covering their games every step 🚶♂️ of the way but not at the expense of any other team.
Now that the Winter is winding down and the Lady Cavaliers are the one team remaining in action at CCHS we can proceed at Full Steam Ahead Pace.
The line at the top is the reference point – there is no longer a need to spread the focus, its okay to go as 24/7 as possible from now until the run ends.
The photos 📷 you see above were provided by the Richardson Family 👪 and it allows us to go back in time to Yester Year. One of the goals is to find the name of everyone that Coached these young Ladies along the way with the hope being for the 10 of them to be fully appreciated for the decade long pursuit of excellence.
This is not a story about Overnight Success but one of a lifetime of Love for the Game.
A.S.P.N on The Hill 