June 14th is the date 📅 that Dakota Walls Racing 🏎 heads back to the short track over at Franklin County Speedway.

At the end of his Freshman season, Isaiah Easter was called up to Varsity and the undersized Cavalier played a roll on a team led by Elijah Cox.

During the off-season, Easter removed the undersized label from his game and returned as the only Sophomore player on a squad led by then Seniors, Davis Reitzel and Jabin Talley.

That group hit the ground running by winning the Fort Chiswell Christmas tournament, then the Three Rivers District regular season. Head Coach Anthony Barnes led his team to the Top Seed in Regional play before the season ended abruptly after Reitzel injured his knee in the post season.

  Easter started on the 2024-2025 Senior laden team that continued the upward projectory of the Anthony Barnes and Kris Richardson coaching partnership.

The team repeated at Fort Chiswell as well as the District Champs 🏆and landed as the #2 seed in the Region.

Carroll County High School reached the State Tournament after finishing runner up to Northside, the two time defending Champions. The State Tournament run ended at Spotswood High School up in Penn Laird, with the eventual State Champ Trailblazers ending the incredible run.

Easter was named first team by the Roanoke Times in their annual ranking of players and Barnes received Coach of the Year honors in the same poll.

The team was limited in only one category and that was their depth. Most games the team would play and six or seven man rotation.

Bryce and Brayden Smoot have taken their Basketball games over to Southwest Virginia Community College. Cody Reece has left The Hill and will be playing Baseball next year at New River Community College. Three year starter Ethan Richardson is preparing to begin classes at Bluefield University. Four starters that surrounded Easter in the lineup are gone now so 2025-2026 will be centered around Easter.

Ethan Richardson is not the only Laurel Fork resident who finished his time with the Cavaliers after the night at Spotswood. Kris Richardson elected to switch from the #2 spot on the Boys side of the Gymnasium to the Middle School Girls slot that was vacated by the unexpected passing of Jeff Tobler.

Junior Varsity Head Coach Jason Stockner will slide into the spot vacated by the departure of Richardson. This will prove to be a bonus because the latest edition of the JV team will look to fill out the roster for sure and possibly sneak into the starting lineup.

Trace Reavis will be returning for his Senior season once his primary sport of Golf ⛳ has concluded. Reavis was one of two players to see regular playing time before injuring his back late in the season. E.J Conner and Kyle Bunn are two more returning players that will have to fend off challenges from a group of younger players.

Will Motley is set to begin his Freshman season and Chanson Rakes will also be playing in the Summer season at the Fort with the hope being to be part of the Easter led team this coming winter.

Easter has been fortunate in regards to playing alongside some players with leadership on and off the floor. The challenge will now be to make the final transition from a Freshman just happy to be on the team to the Man 👨 at the Center of the Cavalier Basketball 🏀 universe.

While the time playing Summer league is always important, this year its a much more important piece of the puzzle. The past few seasons have been about filling a spot or two in the starting lineup. This time its about filling out a roster and four starting spots.

The Cavaliers will be playing against other area programs over the coming weeks and by the end of the Summer session there should be a roster shaping up around Easter.

Trying hard to make a point about the value of love and support making a difference between success and loss brings me to 9:30 am on Saturday morning at Liberty University.

9:30 was the listed start time for the Girls Long Jump and we all knew it would be a hot 🔥 minute before Corrie Delp took the stage for the first of her three attempts.

Envision that you are going to a 2pm movie 🎥 at the local theater in Galax. You know that you have to sit through 20 – 30 minutes of advertisements and previews before you get to the reason you were there. For good measure, the air conditioning in the theater stops ✋ working and now you can add another level of discomfort to the equation.

Corrie Delp went from being mentally prepared to perform from around 10:30 to not making her first attempt until just after 1pm. Three and one half hours after  the event started our Junior finally got to come out of the limited shade and run down the trail that led to the pit of sand.

Surrounding Corrie was her Mother, two Sisters, Dad/ Coach, teammate and Boy Friend. Together ❤ this group kept Delp at an even keel across the long, long waiting period. Just how relevant is staying in the correct frame of mind ?

Two young ladies in Class 3 cleared an amazing mark of 18 feet ➕ during the regular season. Neither one was around for the Finals. Yes, it takes a great deal of athleticism to perform on the biggest stage of the season but to get past the heat, humidity and 210 minutes of can we start already……. it takes a Village and trust me when I say , Corrie Delp had one in Spades ♠️.