Mount Rushmore is set in the hills of South Dakota but five days from now it is our Hope to create our Cavalier version of the famed landmark !
For the first time in my five generations of being around High School 🏫 sports we have four members of the same Senior Class that are set to graduate 🎓 in possession of a Big Time School record.
Alyssa Ervin is the All-Time Scoring leader in Basketball 🏀, Ashlyn Newman is the leading goal scorer in Soccer ⚽️, Jabin Talley is the career wins leader in Tennis 🎾 and Emma Leath is the same in wins on the Softball diamond 💎. Leath is now just 11 strikeouts removed from adding a second mark as the School leader in K’s.
The goal is to get the four of them, their parents along with Principal Thompson and Athletic Director Mathews together pre-game Tuesday and have the Fab Four toss out a Ceremonial First Pitch together and pose for a few Keepsake photos together.
We needed to catch a few breaks along the way to pull this off. The only thing we didn’t have to worry about was getting Leath to Cavalier Park for the event as she will be throwing out the actual first pitch moments later.
We needed the Boys 👦 Tennis 🎾 team to not be playing a match that day in order to get Jabin to the pitcher’s circle and somehow we were fortunate enough to have that.
The next thing we needed was for Track 👣 and Field to be off that day so we would have access to Alyssa Ervin and now that they are closing in on their post season we appear safe!
The final obstacle was for the Battling Ben Tickles ( Girls Soccer) to not have a make up game added to the 14th. Both Alleghany and Glenvar had their visits to Tommy Thompson Field postponed earlier this spring and might want to make the trek down. The thought process was that Alleghany would pass on the long bus 🚌 ride but that the Highlanders would jump at the opportunity to get their match in.
That is exactly how it played out so at 6pm next Tuesday night the Soccer ⚽️ game is set to start. Forty minutes later they will have their 10 minute halftime break which might just create the five minutes needed to still accomplish this….
Fingers crossed 🤞🙏 that all of the Stars 🌟 can line up and we have 14 folks out at the Circle 🔵 and we can celebrate the Senior Class of 2023-2024!!!
Even if one of them has to be Golf Carted back across the street for the second half of her Soccer ⚽️ game.
We ended up having to switch gears to the gymnasium, but it all worked out great as Greg Talley moved the ball up the field by getting the folks at the town office to celebrate our group as well !
Ashlyn Newman would eventually make her way over to Cavalier Park as did both Jabin Talley and Emma Leath. Of course, Emma didn’t have to move very far to toss out her first pitch.
None of this happens if not for Alyssa Ervin and her willingness to share your ultra bright spot light !
The photo Credit goes to Mrs Velvet Leonard…
There will be two companion pieces with this story, including one from Greg Talley on his boy, Jabin. The other one I will pen as a personal Thank You note to Alyssa Ervin as she helped me get some recognition for three other highly successful students !!
