Sydney Nester was a Freshman on the State Championship team of 2015 and it was almost eight years later that had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time up at Marshall University..

https://aroundthevalleyin60days.blog/2025/07/01/diamonds-%F0%9F%92%8E-are-a-girls-best-friend-now-pitching-for-your-carroll-county-lady-%F0%9F%91%A9-cavaliers-is-sydney-nester/

Here’s the link to the story from that day and it appeared in The Carroll News as well. I have to smile about the fact I used the same title back in 2023 – Diamonds 💎 are a Girls Best Friend.

  I remember the conversation with this highly motivated young Lady like it was yesterday and I shared with her that I hoped to write ✍ about how a young Lady took learning how to throw a Softball incredibly well and turned it into a six year College education.

For the time being, we worked together to create a catching up with Sydney Nester story and talked about getting back to the bigger story later. The Thundering Herd had a game later that day and I had to get back down I-64 to Charleston for a West Virginia Tech baseball game. It was a great visit and I looked forward to the next one.

Fast Forward to the 2023 Lady Cavaliers visit to Floyd County to face the Buffaloes. Sydney Nester was doing her best to get the Herd deep in the post season and they were playing at the same time. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I went out beyond the right field fence so I could watch Syd pitch while covering the current team.

It turned out that Israel Easter was also out there and this led to probably the most pleasant conversation the two of us had together. Then there was this young Lady playing right field and every time she finished warming up she would turn to us and share a thought.

Israel was eating a bag 🎒 of Combos during the game and by the third inning, Macie Adkins started working on Israel to share his food. He pulled back his arm and fired one in her direction, it was a nice throw by the way. The Combo landed in her glove but bounced out and fell to the ground.

Without hesitation, Miss Adkins reached down, picked up the Combo, ate it with her smile and said ” Five second rule “. Then in a heartbeat it was back to business as usual. That was the day that I first saw the potential in this young Lady

The title of the Carroll County High School portion of the Book 📖 is Cause and Effect. This story is a small version of how one thing leads to another.

If I don’t know Allen Worrell, I don’t reach out to Chuck McGill and drive to Marshall for an opportunity to meet Syd. If I don’t meet Syd, I am not watching her game on my cellphone in rightfield with Israel Easter and I don’t discover that Macie Adkins is someone that has a gift that can bring joy to others !

On the Golf ⛳ course was Ness and Joe Goddard

  Our Senior Day ceremonies at West Virginia Tech University are simply masterpieces, says the modest emcee of the events. That comment should make my friend and neighbor, Kris Richardson smile.

Most years they are the most well planned, carefully created events that you would ever want to witness. But for someone to appreciate the teamwork involved between Ness and I, let’s rehash the Senior Day that included Ryan Kessinger and friends. It was great to cross paths with Kessinger this year as the young man is part of the Baseball staff at Alleghany High School.

  It’s Sunday morning and we are putting out fires 🔥 on both ends. Ness is dealing with flash flooding in East Bank and I’m down a key person on my delivery staff back in Front Royal, Virginia.

  I had to move around numerous pieces of my delivery team, causing me to miss the back end of my cutoff time to safely drive over to West Virginia. Ness is dealing with sandbags, umpires and the opposing team.

  I had to find the closest Airport that had a flight ✈️ that could get me to Charleston in time, if we did indeed get to play the game and host the ceremony. Ness has to devise a plan where he can stop was he’s doing long enough to pick me up.

The flight ✈️ lands and there is Ness holding up a sign that says Michael Jordan. The looks of disappointment when it was only a guy with newspaper ink on his face and clothes, instead of his Airness. Rule 1 with NAIA Baseball ⚾️ is expect the unexpected and learn to roll with it.

  The next stop is Shoneys where the entire team is eating breakfast ➕ we are hosting a potential Stud recruit and his Mother. Throughout the process, it was impossible to ever create a script for a program that on average lasts 25 minutes.

We finally have a green light to play the game and that was only possible because East Bank Middle School had an Astroturf infield. That fact is another story for another day….

Realizing that we were out of time, I asked Ness to give me a one word answer to each of his graduating Seniors and I would somehow ” Wing It “. Each year for the past 17 seasons, I time how long the ceremony is from start to finish and that year it was 23 minutes.

There were plenty of tears 😢 from parents and friends as we completed the festivities. Afterwards, one of the player’s Mother came up and asked me could I please give her the script that I read because she was so moved by the kind words…. to this day, I still think that she questioned my response of actually Ma’am, there was no script, just a thought process.

We played the game, packed up and headed back to the airport so I could get back to work and Ness headed up the road to visit another recruit. Just another day in the office 🏢 for a tag-team that excels at doing what has to be done on any given day.

Later on the School was swallowed by West Virginia University and then the campus was moved from Montgomery to Beckley, where we were blessed 🙌 to meet the legendary Joe Goddard.

Just the tip of the Iceberg in regards to the two decades of College Baseball ⚾️.

Almost 90 years ago Johnny Vander Meer recorded back to back No Hitters and to the surprise of few, the feat has never been duplicated.

On June 2nd, 1990 I was living in Roanoke, Virginia and had a voucher on Northwest Airlines for a flight ✈️ to any destination in the United States and it was set to expire that day. Not wanting to have it go to waste, I booked a flight out to Seattle, Washington and back.

One of my closest friends at the time had moved out there earlier in the year so I thought I would drop by and say hello. Only having 24 hours of work, I booked the Red-Eye back to Dulles Airport.

Luck would have it that my friend had a family emergency and was gone. Trying hard to not feel it was a wasted trip, I headed down to the Kingdome and bought a ticket to the Tigers – Mariners game.  I was scoring the game and the Dome was two-thirds empty so there wasn’t a ton of energy. Johnson was still struggling with his control back then so it didn’t ” feel ” like a typical No Hitter.

  Johnson recorded the first No Hitter in club history and I drove back to Sea-Tac, flew back to Dulles, drove to the Roanoke Times and World News building at worked my weekend shift.

  Almost three years later, I was finally living in Washington State and was trying to get off work from one of my four jobs in time to return to the Dome for my second M’s game. My boss needed me to stay late so I missed the opening pitch and he asked me why I still wanted to go ? I answered that question by saying that one never knows what might take place at a baseball game…

Chris Bosio looked like a pitcher that belonged in a Church ⛪ League Softball game but that night 🌙 he was unhittable.

Once again the crowd was less than 20,000 but low and behold, the Mariners now had their second No Hitter in team history and they were my first two games in the Kingdome.

Sports Talk Radio 📻 was just beginning back then and it was still a great listen. KJR-950 was one of the leaders nationwide and their Morning 🌄 Show was hosted by Mitch in the Morning and his co-host, Fish 🐟.

I was out doing some work on Mercer Island 🏝 ( home of Duke’s Quinn Synder, now coaching the Atlanta Hawks) for USA-Today when Mitch opened his show by announcing that Fish was sick and he didn’t want to host the four hour show by himself. He said that the first person that called in with an entertaining story would be invited down to be his Co-Host.

I broke out my Johnny Vander Meer story and Mitch said, Come on Down !

The morning was an absolute blast and one I won’t ever forget !

Side note 📝 – if Boston holds on at Houston tonight, my M’s will pull into a 1st place tie 👔 with the Astros !! One day we will make it to the World Series !!!