Thursday was a busy, busy day for our efforts here in Carroll County but if a busy day is a productive day, its nothing but a thing.
Junior Varsity Volleyball, Varsity Softball, hanging out with Wrestling Coach West Long, mapping out our September 13th festivities, conversing with Allen Worrell made it a Good Day.
Getting to exchange messages with Mr. Brad Nester took a Good Day and made it a Great Day ! Getting to share some positivity with Cheyenne was pretty awesome as well!
Very excited about hearing / reading the thought process from Sydney’s Dad 👨!!!
Hopefully some folks found a reason to smile today, thanks to everyone who helped create the material!
I like my chances of tomorrow being a Good One as it will include crossing paths with Kevin Burress !
When you live in a World 🌎 where the number one goal is equality, you cannot play favorites. With that said, if there is one Coach who I always fine time to visit with, its Mr West Long. Long is committed to the Long Run and now I am hearing Don Henley and Glen Frey singing that very song 🎵…
West Long wrestled at Carroll County High School and did so with a great amount of success. If you find yourself in the Cavalier Wrestling room you will notice his name on the board more than once.
Thursday afternoon provided an opportunity to catch up with Long and a few of his current Wrestlers. Good news is that our mutual friend, Allen Worrell will have a story coming out shortly in The Carroll News. In the case of High School Wrestling, any awareness about said program is welcomed.
Long is as passionate about what he is chasing as anyone I’ve met. When we can both slow 🐌 down long enough to compare notes it comes back to one thing, getting people into the Gym to see his Boys and now sanctioned Girls team is full of dedicated Student Athletes.
Long is doing all of this while raising an adorable little girl. One fun way to promote could be to have a night where if a fan comes in with a story about playing Basketball with his Father-in-law, they get in free and if the story includes an elbow, a free bag of popcorn 🍿.
The Girls program is part of the Virginia High School League and adds more reasons to come out to the Gymnasium to watch his grapplers compete.
Allen will have all of the sponsorship information that Long has put together ahead of his 2025-2026 season.
Long knows the challenge he is facing but there is no backing down in his mind. Samuel Collins gave him his first State Wrestler in Year 2 and four young Lady Cavaliers finished up by competing up in Richmond.
Long is determined to achieve his goals and has some Top – Shelf people on his Band Wagon already but there is still plenty of room for more !
West Long is a Man on a Mission and his squads will be appearing in a Gymnasium soon !
First, we have the serious photo, sadly we were missing Laiken Burnett and Alyssa Lawson.
In a blink of an eye 👁, the FUN look. I promise that no Lady Cavaliers were injured in this moment and I’m impressed with the cat like moves of Assistant Coach Kayla Nester !
We will do everything we can to help make this season as fun as possible for this neat group of young Ladies !
Meanwhile, down the hall, poor Nikki Heflin is trying to dust off the cobwebs on her new Assistant Coach.
Nothing is more fun then showing Love 💘 towards Mrs. Shelia Harris. Shelia returns to coaching for the first time in eight years and will be helping out Coach Heflin this season.
Here’s the Fun Look from the Junior Varsity squad.
Looking forward to seeing how the season unfolds for this batch of Lady Cavaliers !!
The link above will show the replay and I will set the table for the story about what took place one special day on the Campus of James Madison University.
Living by the words Duke, UVA and where I stay in regards to who I pull for, I have followed four Baseball ⚾️ teams in my 62 years. Being born on a Navy base south of Oakland, California I learned the game of Baseball from Charlie Finley and his swinging A’s.
There will be more about Joe Rudi, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and the rest of the cast of characters that ruled the early 1970’s later.
My Father, Charles T Carter spent right at 30 years in the Navy and we moved ALOT. One place we stayed was down in Albany, Georgia so it became the A’s and the Atlanta Braves. Back then the Braves crushed Home Run after Home Run but other than spitballing Phil Neikro, had zero pitching. They were bad for a long stretch but loyalty rules.
My Father had a deep relationship with God and this allowed him to deal with four strange kiddos and one fairly normal one without losing his temper.
Fast Forward to 1992 and when I tell this story, I lead with the question – who scored the most famous run in the history of the Atlanta Braves ? If I get an answer other than Sid Bream, there’s no point in telling the story because you’re not talking to a Braves fan.
The third team is whatever team that Greg Maddux ( fourth and final one being the Seattle Mariners) so I was doubly invested in Game 7 of the National League Championship. Atlanta was trying to rally past Barry Bonds and the Pirates when THE PLAY happened.
When Bream scored the run I lost my mind and sadly for me I was watching the game at my parents house. Connect the dots to get the response from my Father after being awaken by my outburst.
Now we will jump forward another decade and I’m blogging about a college game between Liberty University and JMU. I was there with Mr John Leonard, someone who I respect to the moon and back. Leonard is a separate story that will be included as well as he takes knowledge of Americas Pastime to a entire different planet.
We are a few innings into the game when I look up in the stands and notice a familiar face. All of the sudden I have a ridiculous grin on my face, to the point John asked me what I saw ?
There was a man that was watching 👀 the game with great attention so I waited to the half inning before turning my attention towards him. With a great deal of gusto, I pointed to him and shouted, ” My Father only yelled at me one time in my life and it was your fault.”
Without hesitation, he shouted back, I’ve got one question for you Buddy, were you screaming for me or against me?”
I quickly replied back, ” For you for sure!”.
Realizing what just happened, John suggested that I go get his autograph but I replied that I got to tell my Sid Bream story to Sid Bream so that was better than any autograph.
Bream was there watching his Son play for the Flames and by doing so, he made my day, week, month !
Editing Note 📝 – if this was a book about Basketball 🏀, I would add my telling Jay Bilas story to Jay Bilas.
A.S.P.N on The Hill 