Veteran Head Coach entered Tuesday nights home opener with Bassett High School with a very unique problem, one that we was facing for the very first time in his career.

” In all of my years of coaching, across all of the sports, I had never coached a game where I had so many players experencing their very first varsity game” Nester said. ” We just didn’t know how we would do with seven of our 12 players seeing their first varsity action.”

In only took about five minutes for Nester to get his first taste of his new look team. Senior Emma Leath limited the Bengals to just four hits in the complete game 4-0 shut out but two of those hits came in the top of the first inning. Alyna Moore reached on an infield single and stole second base and one out later Breanna Cooper laced a single to centerfield. Sophomore Holly Miller, making her first varsity play on a ball charged in gathered the ball cleanly and fired a bullet to home plate where Freshman catcher Natalie Burress brought the ball into her glove and slapped the tag on Moore.

In the bottom of the first inning Emma Harman worked a one out walk and quickly swiped second base. Isabella Norman brought Harman into score with a clutch two out single, giving Leath the only run she would need. Leath strung together six straight strike outs early on her way to recording 12 on the night.

Madison Coleman provided the games second run when the Sophomore led off the second inning with a walk and stolen base. Coleman came around to score after consecutive ground outs with Miller picking up the RBI. Nester small ball made it 2-0 as the Cavaliers scored again without the ball leaving the infield. Another newcomer plated the final two runs in the bottom of the third inning when Senior Katherine Lindamood entered to contest as a pinch hitter and immediately plated Norman and Addie Greene with another clutch two out base hit.

While Leath was her normal impressive self after the first inning, she did benefit from two other web gem level plays. Moore reached first base to lead off the top of the sixth inning with her second base hit. Zoie Pace send a line drive shot that was headed to the gap in left center field until Brooke Webb caught up with the drive, making the nice catch and firing to first baseman Laiken Burnett for the double play. Once more two of the seven newbies teamed up for a great defensive play. Just for good measure second baseman Greene dove to her left to snag a ground ball and fired to first to end the inning.

Leath would go on to close out the game with her 10th and 11th strike outs after surrendering an ever so seldom base on balls.

Eight different Cavaliers reached base at least once, four scored and three collected RBI’s while three made sterling defensive plays. Not a bad night’s work for five returning players and seven newcomers.

Carroll County faces a quick turnaround as both the JV and Varsity teams head up to Glenvar Wednesday evening. The Junior Varsity fell 13-9 in their opener Tuesday night at Bassett.

For some of our more recent folks that have joined us lately I will try to explain what these segments are about.

If you don’t get the jest, just skip on to the next post. Our core group of people try to add a little laughter and joy to our readers and roughly once a month we will try to break the stress of day to day life by trying to have some fun. Here we go…..

The photo 📷 up top was provided by our dedicated and beloved Track 👣 and Field plus Cross Country Coach, Mr. Shawn Montgomery. Coach is hosting one of his two home meets tomorrow afternoon. He have written many a story about how much we appreciate the efforts of Coach because he absolutely gets what we are trying to do in regards to providing coverage to EVERY Student Athlete that competes for him.

Coach knows we want to list all of his athletes efforts whether they finish 1st or 9th or 35th in their event. We want to show appreciation for everyone who gives of themselves to train and compete while wearing our School colors.

So we have been writing ✍ a great deal about just how intelligent that our correspondent Shannon Dalton is. Well, it turns out that she is even smarter than we realized.

In the early stages of forming our crack staff we realized that we needed a public face for the team. A local Celebrity if you will that we could use as a Spokesperson. We landed on Laurel Fork’s Kris Richardson.

Richardson knew just how much we needed him to be the 🙎‍♀️🙎‍♂️ face of our efforts so he negotiated hard and landed a personal services contract for $2.5 million dollars. We had to take on a ton of extra responsibility to generate that kind of money 💰 but we eventually got it done. We then buried the paperwork so deep that we were fairly sure nobody would ever find out.

We heard rumors that Richardson spent his entire take on Duke University keepsakes that he has stored in his man cave in the lower level of his family 👪 home 🏡.

Marion Harris is the Heart ❤ of what we do and Richardson is the face but we desperately needed to find someone who was capable of being the Brains 🧠 of our operation.

Shannon Dalton enters the picture and she is beyond perfect for what we need but somehow she went through back channels to find out about the deal that Richardson received. The deal was in a sealed file but some one led her to it.

Her asking price became $2.51 Million Dollars 💵. We don’t have that kind of money lying around but we cannot lose her, she’s too valuable to us. I asked her what in the World would she do with that kind of $$$$.

The answer was she had stumbled across a pair of earrings she liked and that was the cost of the pair. I immediately thought to myself what would a pair of earrings that cost that much even look like???????

So we go out in search of a way to create $2.51 Million Dollars 💵 and the only answer we could find was to approach Coach Montgomery 🤔. His contract is legendary so we put together a production deal that includes the rights to handle two home meets with a player option on a third one. Our asking price ? Of course it was $2.51 Million Dollars 💵..

Right after we all signed the legal documents, Coach Montgomery looked up and asked me about the agreed upon amount? When I explained to him where the funds would be going, he quipped, must be quite a pair of earrings!

Tomorrow afternoon I will wonder across the street to the Press Box and the school and begin my time as the 2023-2024 Track and Field PA guy 👦.

I am quite the fan of the program and the Student Athletes that compete for Coach. The verbiage will be different and the timing will have to be learned but I will give it everything I have !!

Bare with me for the beginning process but once we get the ball rolling it should be fun !

Thank You Coach Montgomery for bailing we out of a jam.

Feel free to mention to Mrs. Dalton that you heard about her earrings.

Mrs. Patti Goins was keeping us in the loop during the game, but the game ran long which meant the Bus didn’t make it back until late.

CCHS started strong leading 3-2 early before the homestanding Bassett Bengals scored three runs in the second to take a 5-3 lead. Carroll County added one in the top of the third to trim the lead to 5-4. Both teams plated two runs in the fourth to make it 7-6 Bassett but then the home team plated three more in the home half of the sixth to make it 10-6.

Our Lady Cavaliers battled to the end before falling 13-9. They will get right back at it tomorrow evening at Glenvar.

Thank You, Mrs. Goins !

When I first approached Head Coach Rick Nester about adding the only true missing piece to his majestic kingdom that we call Cavalier Park, I only had one condition.

I told Coach he should choose every bell 🔔 and whistle he wanted, pick the shape and size but it had to include one thing, it had to have space for nine innings.

The logic was simple for me, I am a HUGE Emma Leath fan. Everything about this young Lady 👩is impressive and it bothers me a great deal that she is being punished for her size. The reality is that in this day and age is that if Leath was 5’7 and 150 her and her Father would be fighting off recruiting folks 24/7.

Scouts cannot actually watch every pitcher out there so they make judgements on size versus stats. If Leath remains healthy this season she will leave The Hill as the All-Time Strike Out queen 👸 in the history of Carroll County Softball.

Our old scoreboard only had space for our score and the visitors score. The new board needed to show the work inning by inning. I told Coach that I wanted Miss Leath to see every single zero she put in the score book to be displayed on the big board.

Fast Forward to tonight in our home 🏡 opener. Leath went the distance, scattering four hits and one hit batter and one walk (very un-Emma like) while leading our Lady Cavaliers 👩 to a 4-0 victory over Bassett.

Leath struck out 12 and received three web-gem level plays from her defense. We will get more into those details when we write ✍ the game story.

We will be celebrating the new scoreboard throughout the season as we show gratitude 🙏 to everyone that aided our cause. Tonight we had Kay Carter and Kim Banks on the mound to toss out our ceremonial First Pitches.

These two young ladies are leaders at Skyline Bank 🏦 and they played a huge part in our efforts 👏.

I am not sure if Miss Leath took the time to glance at the board when she left the pitching circle for the seventh and final time but I know that I was smiling at the site of 0000000 – 0!!

. Going to add a few more fun pics from the evening here before heading off to write ✍ the game story.

Three of our former players took in the game and were kind enough to pose with Mr. Mathews & Coach Nester

Our first Foul Ball contest winner 🏆 was Mrs Lindamood. Here she is with her Frisbee and her next stop will be at Omega Church and Office Supply where Ron Cochran will create her a free T-shirt 👕.

Mr. Mathews was kind enough to umber our tickets 🎟 from 0-50 and the number of foul balls out of play was 5.