Tonight is not about the Duke – UNC basketball game, its about driving over to Rocky Mount, Virginia to show support for our Carroll County High School student who doubles as a Stock Car 🚗 driver.
Dakota Walls and his Father 👨, Eddie Walls will be in the room along with a house full of others there to support their favorite drivers.
Day 3 will be helping Vickey Ritchie with her Basketball 🏀 Classic and Day 4 will be hanging out with West Long for his Wrestling Senior Day.
Quick note 📝 – Allen Worrell will plug 🔌 in a Photo 📷 here.
The Hill – Once again Carroll County High School flirted with a perfect quarter and it was all the Cavaliers needed to defeat the James River Knights 61-40 Friday night on The Hill.
The latest victory moves the Cavaliers to 16-1 overall and 5-1 in the Three Rivers District as the team completed the first half of the league slate.
Carroll County ended the first quarter with an 18-11 lead following a Trace Reavis 3-pointer which set the stage for a remarkable second quarter of play.
Cody Reece started the party 🥳 with a quick basket 🧺 and Isaiah Easter followed the Big Man with a two pointer of his own to push it out to 22-11. Brayden Smoot stretched the run 🏃♂️ to 6-0 with a bucket and then it was Ethan Richardson on a hard cut to the hoop and a perfect feed from Reece. Bryce Smoot made it a perfect 10-0 and the Cavaliers had hit for the cycle 🚲. Five straight scores with one coming from each of the starters, truly a perfect 10.
Head Coach Anthony Barnes was enjoying the effort and was still smiling when Reece, Easter and then Brayden Smoot continued the rotation on the way to 16-0. It wasn’t until Reece scored again that the sharing of the basketball was interrupted and by the time JRHS scored by making a 3-pointer with 1:25 remaining in the first half, the run had reached 22-0. The final number for the eight minutes was 24-3 and the score was 42-14.
” Glad to rebound from tough home lose to Glenvar, we had a great practice Thursday and spent about 45 min along with my coaches and players in film room studying our lack of execution on offense and poor decision making at times , I think it really helped us to revisit,” said Barnes. ” I feel like 1st quarter we started out slow, settled too much at times and defensively were not getting after it.”
The fact that the Knights were limited to just 3 points let’s one know how strong the defensive effort was but the story is in the 24 points. Not even the high quarter for the year but this 24 points was about efficiency as the Cavaliers shot 12 of 14 from the floor for just under 90%.
Easter scored back to back baskets late in the third quarter to push the lead out to 61-18. Math will show you that James River scored the final 22 points of the game as Barnes was rewarding his reserves with extended playing time while James River was trapping on defense.
The final score will not reflect the quality of the middle two quarters of the game where Carroll County outscored the Knights 43-7.
”
I challenged at end if 1st quarter for them to play harder and they did just that, I thought Isiah really had a well rounded night on both ends, huge momentum swing with turning up the heat defensively on them .
” I am proud of leadership from Senior Ethan Richardson on and off the floor. Bryce still struggling a bit scoring but the guys are shoring up around him,” Barnes added. ” The huge run put a smile on the coaches as transition and taking it straight to you is our game. Nice to get time for all the guys off bench, the work really hard in practice also.Nice way to go into the weekend and as always excited for Tuesday going to battle with Floyd. We will get up some shots Monday and prepare for another huge District match-up on our quest to try and repeat. LETS GO CAVS!”
The Varsity team was not alone in playing at peak capacity as Jason Stockner led his Junior Varsity team to a 57 – 18 victory in the opener, despite missing two rotation players due to illness.
Colton Gravley (16 points) and Dane Leonard (13 points) led the offense on a night 🌙 that 10 Cavaliers scored. The fact that the entire team was playing hard nose defense is reflected by the 18 points allowed.
Both team face another busy week as once again they will play three times in the continued effort to get the postponed games played.
Home games slated for the 4th and the 6th and then the rescheduled rematch at Glenvar on the 7th. Seven total games remaining in the regular season for both teams.
Marion Harris, Linda Carter Christopher Carter are to one side with Tammy Tobler, Velvet Leonard, Douglas Owens and Kevin Burress to the other in a Photo taken by Allen Worrell.
It would be noticeable to the readers of our work that this is the first time I have written anything about the fact that Rick Nester nominated me late last year and I was voted in by the Committee.
Just last week Bryce Smoot broke the All-Time scoring record for Boys Basketball 🏀, a record that was held by Tee Jackson. Smoot is a hard working young man that I’ve had the privilege of getting to know ( and his Family) over the years. He is someone that has spent his entire life here and spent over half of his life waiting for his turn to wear the colors of our Community. Bryce is from here and as Allen Worrell wrote in his feature story, reached the pinnacle of a life long journey.
I am honored 🙏 to have been recognized in the manner I was last night 🌙 and it meant a great deal to be surrounded by the people who were standing 🧍♂️next to me. Each one was there because of how much they mean to me.
I made a point to try a say Thank You to everyone that played a role in the ceremony and it wasn’t I made it back out to Laurel Fork that I realized that I couldn’t remember if I had said Thank You to Kevin DeHaven so I did it with a text message.
I understand that I’m not from here and while its year five for us, I’m never going to be from here. I accept that and move on with our mission. It’s fitting that the moments leading up to the Ceremony I was covering a Junior Varsity Basketball 🏀 game and as soon as it was over I went back into the Gym so I could cover the Varsity team for the Carroll News.
Speaking of which, its now 5: 14 am and that story still needs to be written so its a great time to get to work on it.
Thank you one more time to ANYONE who said Congratulations 👏 last night and everyone 👏 involved with the Ceremony !
Blake Reed was missing from the Starting lineup due to being under the weather but his team had his back from start to finish and both ends of the court.
Colton Gravley led a balanced attack and finished one basket 🧺 shy of matching James River by himself (His 16 to their 18). Dane Leonard scored 13 points to join Gravley in double figures and 10 different players broke into the scoring column for Head Coach Jason Stockner.
Thank You Coach….. Chanson Rakes was the other Cavalier out of action 🎬
James River HS 5. 5. 6. 2 – 18
Carroll County 25 15 9 8 – 57
Another busy week awaits the Younger Cavaliers !!
Night three of quiz bowl action this week is in the books! MACC hosted Grayson at home for senior night and had a 3-2 victory!
Congratulations Seniors!
Jacob Roberts – Social Studies & Scholastic Bowl
Julia Largen – English
Ethan Edwards – Math & Scholastic Bowl
Abbie Cockerham – Science
Thomas Payne – Science
Connor Beasley – Science & Scholastic Bowl
Match Results:
All-Around 66-50
English 40-30
Math 41-45
Science 83-10
Social Studies 48-65
A special thank you to our judges:
Kim Robinson, Kim Kern, Drew McBride, Shawn Montgomery, Rhonda Edwards
MACC is on the road Monday at Graham.
Carroll County High School Cavaliers
_________________________________________
All-Around was a close back and forth, and despite the Cavs not knowing that Graceland was scammed in a extortion scandal, they pulled out the win.
English continued their positive upswing and worked well together to pull out a win against Grayson, with contributions from Julia Largen, Jack Wright, Trenton Newman, and Chloe Billings.
Math was a stressful match where the numbers just didn’t quite add up for the Cavs. A close directed round was followed by some negs in toss up. Coming into the last question, Carroll could have won by 1 point if they got the question correct, but it had a twist to the answer and the points went unclaimed.
Science took another stab at their season goal of earning 100 points in a match, but they fell just shy at 88… still an impressive total.
Social Studies lost to a strong Grayson team. This pair last squared off at the Western Division Tournament with Carroll taking that win. A highlight in this match was a first MACC buzz in for Sadie Spence.
We’d like to send our collective prayers over to Grayson head coach Earl Cherry, a long time friend and amazing person who is struggling in his battle with cancer. We are praying for hope, guidance, and answers for Earl, his family, and his medical team.
A special part of the night was senior night and we honored our seniors for their contributions over the years.
We have an amazing group of seniors who make MACC and Scholastic Bowl a great place to make lifelong friends.
Thanks, as always to Mrs. Dalton for her time and energy, not only with the competition but also for feeding us the information !!
A.S.P.N on The Hill 