Every now and then you meet someone for the first time and your immediately take a liking to them and that was the case this weekend when Indiana University, Perdue University at Columbus (IUPUC) came to Beckley to play our Golden Bears 🐻.
Bickel is the Head Coach of the Crimson Pride and is simply a wonderful human being. His demeanor just screams Likeable as does his coaching style and it only takes a few minutes to realize it.
The Batting helmet I am holding is a gift 🎁 for the museum at the house and Coach was kind enough to have his Coaching staff collectively autograph it as well.
One never knows who you will meet on a given day but every now and then you strike Gold. Before meeting Coach, the only thing I knew about Columbus, Indiana was that I loved Otter Creek Golf ⛳ Course. Now I know that the Baseball ⚾️ team has an Awesome Head Coach 👏!
High Noon is the estimated time for today’s First Pitch between West Virginia Tech University and Indiana University, Purdue University @ Columbus (IUPUC). WVU-T captured the opening game Friday by a score of 10-4 and now need to win one more to advance to the River States Conference tournament next week in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Waking up to all of the Prom photos 📷 from last night on The Hill put me in a reflective mood for sure. Prom in many ways signals that the end is near, not the end of the story but the end of one chapter of the story.
The thought train 🚆 started rolling down the tracks quickly and brought me to realize that here in a few hours I will be calling Golden Bears 🐻 Baseball ⚾️ for the final time today. If we win one of the two games then the team moves on the final eight up in Ohio next week and if they were to drop both games then their season would reached the end. Either way, the chapter closes at the end of the day today and what a chapter it has been!
Sixteen seasons ago Lawrence Nesselrodt accepted the Head Coaching job at WVU-T, which at the time was located in Montgomery, West Virginia. I still remember the day of the very first home game when I drove to Montgomery to support the man 👨 I tagged as “Big Picture” Nesselrodt. Making the drive 🚗 from Luray, Virginia, I pulled into the campus only to find out that there was no baseball field there and the games were played at East Bank Middle School.
So the journey began at East Bank Middle School 🏫 and today it ends at Linda K Epling Stadium 🏟 in Beckley, West Virginia. There has been home games played in a number of home parks and stadiums along the way, heck, the University itself moved during this stretch.
What started in Montgomery is now located in Beckley and if you have never been to Montgomery it would be difficult to truly appreciate just what the transition was from one to the other.
The program has also changed Conferences along the way before landing in RSC a few years back. The league itself has expanded to a record high 12 teams this season which in turn created the format that has us playing the games this weekend.
In years past, the Top Six teams advanced to Chillicothe but this year the decision was made to hold play-in weekend series across the league. The irony of this is that the Golden Bears 🐻 would have advanced to the tournament in Chillicothe this season after finishing up in the #6 spot in the league. But with the new format, the team had to requalify for the event through a weekend series.
The world 🌎 of N .A .I .A Baseball ⚾️ is a very unique place and books 📚 could be written on the subject and probably should be one day. But for the teams in the RSC, Chillicothe is the Promise Land. The Golden Bears 🐻 have made it up there one time and actually advanced to the Championship game before losing in the ninth inning. The next step 🚶♂️ from Chillicothe is the NAIA World Series and as the old joke about the Lottery goes – you can’t Win if you don’t play. One cannot dream about the World Series without first getting a ticket to Chillicothe !
Hopefully that ticket 🎟 gets punched here in a few hours, whether it be in Game 2 (Noon) or Game 3 (if necessary) at 3:30 pm.
16 years is a decent amount of time in one’s life and its been quite the ride with Lawrence “Big Picture ” Nesselrodt and for the past few years, Legendary Joe Goddard !
It’s time to get ready to head over to the Stadium 🏟 and see just how many Golden Bears 🐻 can find their way to 🏡 🍽….
Each of these four Cavalier Senior Athletes have broken a career record during their Senior Season and we are officially inviting the group to Cavalier Park to toss out a Ceremonial First Pitch together.
Parents behind them on the mound and we will have a Kodak moment for sure!!
We know that Emma Leath will be there because she will actually be pitching later that night 🌙. We are hoping that the other three can join us as we have picked a day that right now would be wide open.
I had never spoken to the Floyd County Softball Head Coach before yesterday and my first impression was OFF THE CHARTS !
Here’s Rick Nester speaking on the FCHS Skipper-
” Wes Starkey! I have known Wes for over 40 years and have never met a more top class person. It shows with him, his program and his girls! The Floyd program is top class.”
Starkey was in the middle of cleaning up his field after dropping a nail 💅 bighting 3-2 game versus one of his biggest rivals and he sees 👀 us having a little team mini celebration with the team and coaches in honor 🎖of Victory #56.
Coach calls over to us and asks if he can share in the celebration by offering his thoughts to Emma. I was so impressed by his gesture 👏 that I had to ask him if he would mind posing for a photo 📷 with her and naturally the answer was YES…
With a bit of misdirection on numbers, Emma Leath was truly surprised to learn that she passed Sydney Nester on the All-Time Pitching wins in the history of Carroll County High School. Nester ended her stellar career with 55 total victories and 694 strike outs.
Leath is as driven as anyone that has wore the colors on The Hill and her Head Coach Rick Nester was trying hard to protect his Senior from mental overload down the stretch of her final season.
The chase for the career strike out total has been very public and when you add that to trying to be one of two Senior (along with Katherine Lindamood) leaders on a roster full of Freshman and Sophomores, you can see the cause for concern.
The topic of how surprised Leath was at the post game gathering Thursday night after the brief Team Celebration following the 57th victory over Floyd County came to light.
” I was caught totally off guard by the news that I broke the school record for wins,” Leath said. ” I have to thank Coach Nester, Coach Tobler and the defenses that have had my back the last four years. It is shown as an individual accomplishment but the wins belong to all of us. We still have a few more to add!”
Leath was limited in opportunities in her Freshman year due to Covid cutting a number of games out of the schedule but she has made up for lost time ever since. The Maddux comparison is spot one as the “Professor” was also extremely undersized and had to rely upon his location in winning 300+ Major League Baseball games over his career. Leath weighs in just over 100 pounds and when you see her head to the pitching circle it might be easy to chuckle at the thought of her having the ability to dominate the game the way she does.
Its not just one opinion of the Maddux / Leath duo as Coach Nester also made the reference when asked to describe his four year pitcher.
” Congratulations to an awesome young lady that has devoted so much time and effort into becoming one of the best athletes, not only in Carroll County/southwest Virginia but the state of Virginia!,” said Nester. ” I consider her to be the hall of fame Greg Maddux of softball. THE GIRL CAN PITCH!!! Just an example of this was displayed tonight! The bottom of the 7th with the tying run at second and the winning run at the plate, she battles to come back from a 3 and 1 count and strucks out the batter looking for the final out of the game on a change up! Before she threw the pitch, I told Coach Tobler that this is the game! Way to go Miss Emma Leath!”
The tag line for Maddux was ” Looks like an Accountant, Pitches like an Assassin” so maybe the comparable would sound like, Looks like she might should be playing with dolls, pitches like she’s after your Lunch Money…
The Lady Cavaliers now have six remaining regular season games left ahead of a possible 1 vs 2 District Championship game and then regional play. Leath now sits at 57 wins and 653 strikeouts, leaving her 42 shy of the second of the two records with six to a possible dozen games left. There’s no telling where the two final numbers will land but we can all hope its the State Tournament before we find out.
The next time the numbers can increase will be next Tuesday at James River and the team will celebrate the milestone next Friday (5/3) with the home crowd.
The photos 📷 appearing in this story are curtosey of Kelly Hawks and Velvet Leonard.
A.S.P.N on The Hill 