The first piece of business is to say Thank You to Coach Barnes 🙏 for being gracious in his invite for me to sit in on one of this team’s practices.

It’s Wednesday afternoon, the day before the regular season finale at Galax High School and then the waiting game for the Regional seating the be finalized. The mathematics suggests that the Cavaliers will land in between #4 and #7.

The significance of landing the #4 seed is you get to host an opening round game. A 5th or 6th seed keeps you from the opening round play-in-games.

The #7 seed would also host a #7-#10 match up but the winner would then face the #2 seed next.

Practice today starts at 3:30 sharp with the team getting in the necessary Cardio work.

First editors note – Davis Reitzel’s stride while running 🏃‍♂️ laps around the court is as graceful as his elevation to the basket during a game.

The first question that comes to mind is how do four teams work out a practice schedule with just one Main Gym. One part of that equation is the Boys JV team is practicing at a local Church, the name of which I fill find out once Assistant Coach Chris Richardson returns from driving the bus to and from.

Practice started at 3:30pm sharp and is set to run until 5:30 pm. The Bus to Galax will depart at 4:30pm tomorrow.

The Cardio portion of the practice is ending now and the focus is now full court 1 on 1 drills with the focus on defense and screening.

The pairing of Mario Meza Campbell and Elijah Cox seems to be fun for both of them. Nathan Reed and Davis Reitzel pair off as do Bryce Smoot and Ethan Richardson among others.

4:00pm – 5:00 on the clock now and the team is running half court offense / defense. Not looking to accidentally expose any trade secrets here so I will be as vague about the drills as possible.

Very rare that I have to leave a Post without wrapping up the thought but I had to run out to make a planning meeting for Tim Tebow’s Night to Shine this Friday night. Plenty more to come shortly!

My goal today was to just quietly observe the Varsity Boys practice and much to my surprise Coach Barnes created a great possibility and I couldn’t say Yes quick enough.

Life has turned pretty well for Linda and I but I can’t help from wondering how much quicker I might have made it to the Path if someone in High School might have given me the slightest nudge ?

Over the years I have taught many a seminar in People Management, Time Management and a few others as well. I have also spent the past 15 years working with a long-term Friend, Lawrence Nesselrodt at West Virginia Tech helping his baseball ⚾️ players expand their thought process.

Coach Barnes offered me five minutes with each of his 10 players during his practice and I took the opportunity to try and make these 10 young men think in a manner that is not their normal comfort zone. Expand the Brain 🧠 and the Heart ❤.

The experience went well through my eyes and once I share the responses with Coach I will post all 10 of them individually to try and keep folks from comparing the players and their answers to one another.

Looking forward to sharing their mini-Bios starting tomorrow!

Davis Reitzel showing off his Hops against Blacksburg High School !

Very appreciative of this photo ending up here!

BIg shout out to one of the greats or as I call her “legend”.  She is a great example of a true Coach.  This young program has been under her direction from the beginning.  Her and her staff coach everyone to their potential and places them in spots to shine bright!!!  Last night her swimmers at regionals broke 15 different personal best times.  She sets an atmosphere of structure for success but each one is loved by the staff and the team enjoys one another.  She has taken players from all sports during their off season and have made them better for their main sports.  She understands the swimmers in and out of the pool and expects nothing but their best at all times!!  Thank you Joi Honaker Ogle for what you do for our swimming program and our community!!  

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Normally I place a picture 📷 here but in its place today is a Message from Marion Harris to the Coach of our Swim 🏊‍♂️ Team. I don’t have to wonder for a second about how heartfelt ♥ the message is because Marion was sending me information about the Meet for hours after the fact.

He just sent me another message as I type this out saying that 10 of our 17 Swimming 🏊‍♂️ Cavaliers have new Personal Best times after last night’s event.

Because I have to display a sense of humor about the Post from last night/ this morning…

As I move forward with our vision to provide Carroll County High School with an online Sports presence for years to come, I now have a poster child example of what it would look like.

Late last night I received an email with the results of the event. It would have been so easy to stay at home in Laurel Fork and just do a copy and paste of that email. But wouldn’t have done justice to the Student Athletes that performed for CCHS all season.

Tough part is that Swimming 🏊‍♂️ without a doubt is the most difficult High School Sport to cover because of the levels of the competition. The Personal Best aspect in its self brings to light the difference between the sport and the others our Cavaliers participate in.

Where the humor comes from is that we stuffed so much information into the Post that its looks like a Fourth Grader but it together. But is has feel to it that I hope that will be enjoyable.

For one night 🌙 it clicked just like I envisioned it could work. One parent took the lead and went way beyond what I could hope for and a second parent shared the moments of Celebration that are Priceless.

Then after the dust started to settle Marion took the time to pen 🖊 such a Beautiful Thank You to Coach.

I am not sure if we will get to the end vision of Radio coverage of events, Podcasts, Coaches Shows and commentators describing the action for the games on the Network folks watch now without sound.

But for a night 🌙 we teamed up with the Student Athletes that gave of their time and energy and created coverage that might not have existed otherwise.

I have to stop now because Marion just sent me four more things for the Post from last night.