Adam Nester, far right in the Photo surrounding The Board.

Adam is a second generation member of the Family 👪 we know as Cavalier Baseball and is currently the Assistant Coach alongside Steve Combs on the Junior Varsity team.

Adam Nester :

As many other people have stated, Cavalier baseball started early in life for me. For the majority of my life I have been referred to as “Coach Nesters son.” So much so that when I introduce myself to people I follow it up with “Coach Nesters son” and that seems to ring a bell with them. I grew up with the understanding that there were only two seasons in life. Hunting season and sports season. Both of which kept us busy year round and still do to this day. 

I have had the blessing of being coached by some of the best there is when it comes to baseball. Rick Nester, Steve Combs, Joe Tompkin, and Kevin DeHaven. Starting from TeeBall all the way until I graduated high school I had my dad (Rick Nester) coaching me in some aspect of the game every year.

Some of my favorite memories of Cavalier baseball comes from our summer league team that he and Steve Combs coached. They coached my rec ball team all the way through until we aged out. We were always competitive and won more games than we lost. I would love to say it was from our abundance of athleticism but much more of it came from them knowing the game of baseball and putting us in the right situations for us to be successful.

After going to a few state tournaments and taking some lumps from very talented teams, we bought into the Cavalier way and it seemed like every year we were always in the championship. More importantly to us, the more we won, the more pool days we had at the hotel to have fun. Probably the most memorable thing to ever happen to me when it comes to my mind of “Cavalier baseball” was one of the hardest times of my life.

When I was 13 I had a life altering wreck during the summer that landed me in the hospital for a month. One of the hardest parts for me at the time was not knowing if I would ever get to play sports again with my friends. After finally being released from the hospital, I wanted to go watch my team play in the all star game in Grayson County. Upon my arrival to the field, I noticed everyone’s hat had my number on it. It’s something that I will never forget. 

That same rec ball group as a whole made up most of the varsity team when we got to that level. We had been playing baseball together for the majority of our career which made us competitive in high school as well. Joe Tompkins and Kevin DeHaven were my varsity coaches. As others have alluded to, small ball was a necessity for Cavalier baseball. Luckily for me, bunting the baseball was the strongest part of what I offered offensively. If it was a bunting situation, there was no need for Joe to give me the sign, I knew what my job was.

Not that it’s a statistic that is kept up with, but I am very confident that I would lead the program in successful suicide bunts. If there was a runner on 3rd and I was up, the first pitch was going to be a squeeze. Joe and Kevin did an excellent job of knowing the kids and putting the right ones in the right situations in order for the program to be successful. 

After my playing days were over, I knew that coaching was a must so that I could still be a part of the game somehow. During my student teaching while I was in college, Joe Tompkins called and asked me if I wanted to coach the 9th grade baseball team at Carroll. There was no hesitation, I was a part of Cavalier baseball again. Upon graduating college I got a job at Rural Retreat High School as a PE teacher and the JV baseball coach. Of course fate would have it that Carroll County was on the schedule. It was an odd feeling being at Bill Worrell Stadium but in the visitors dugout. One that I would assume not feel again.

The following year I was able to get a job at Carroll. My dad had been coaching the girls Softball program for a few years at that point and he asked if I wanted to come to the other side of 58 and coach with him. There was a 0% chance I was going to pass up the opportunity to coach with my dad. I thought I learned alot from him coaching me as a kid, it doesn’t hold a candle to what I was able to learn about how to be a coach from him during those years. He taught me everything he knows.
Much of which comes from the great Bill Worrell.

I never had the opportunity to know Bill personally. But the way my Dad talks about him I didn’t need to know him in order to understand that he was a great man. There’s going to be a lot of people I want to talk to one day in heaven when I leave this earth, he will be one of them. 

Four years later I received another phone call about baseball, but this time it was from Kevin DeHaven. Kevin took over the baseball program after Joe retired from coaching and offered for me to come back to the other side of 58 to help.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Continue coaching with my dad or go back to what I consider the greatest sport there is. Ultimately I went back to baseball, to where I currently am as the head JV baseball coach. 

At this point I have been given the opportunity to coach with Joe Tompkins, Rick Nester, Steve Combs, Kevin DeHaven, and now Casey Burcham.  Each coach offers their own style of play and ideas but every one of them has something in common. It all goes back to the legendary Bill Worrell.

I want to end by saying thank you to all the coaches that helped me as a player and continue to help me as a coach and with two quotes that give a nod to Bill. 

“Hero’s get remembered, but legends never die.”

“If it’s not broke, dont fix it.”

Bill got Cavalier baseball going, and the success that this program has had continues on through his coaching tree. 

Adam Nester