We are closing in on our second and final scrimmage of the season, with the difference being that we will have a live microphone 🎤 throughout the evening.
Much more to follow !
The officials and the Golden Eagles are both in the house 🏠!
Staunton River 25, Lady Cavs 12 in set 1
25 – 12 in the second set, SR
We will now play a 3rd set to 15 [5:55]
6:27 – Wow, what a thrilling third set as SRHS edges our Lady Cavaliers 25-24.
Back and forth opening set ends with SRHS winning 25 – 22 [7:25]
Lady Cavaliers take the second set on a kill from Heidi Painter, 25 – 21 [7:55]
8:14 – Lady Cavaliers take set #3, 25 – 11!
8:38 – CCHS takes 4th set, 25 – 17
Due to the length of the drive 🚗 back, tonight we stop ✋️ after four sets [839]
Prayer circle 🔵 concludes the night at 8:40…
The biggest difference between announcing versus not is the ability to gather photos. My only hope is to have some sent my way.
Head Coach Shawn Montgomery is back for a seventh season at the helm of our cross country teams, and this year, he has volunteer assistant coach Mark Hamlett by his side.
The total number of runners 🏃♀️ this year is 20, with the breakdown being 9 on Varsity and 11 on the Middle School team.
Today, the team is without returning sophomore Will Dalton as the family is enjoying moving his big brother into college.
The meet today is the River Run Twilight Invitational with West Stokes High School being the host team.
One twist for today is an extra category of 2 mile runs on both the Boys 👦 and Girls 👧 side. The goal is. to help keep the event moving along from a time standpoint
19 student athletes, and we will swing back around to capture Will as soon as possible.
This season, when Coach sends me his times ⏲️ at the end of a meet, we can post 📫 a photo 📸 of the proud owner of said time !
Best of luck today to all 19 of our running Cavaliers !
Marion Harris and I share a first-hand knowledge of Mr Camp and his family, as does anyone else who has spent time in the area surrounding the town of Franklin, Virginia.
Philanthropist is a SAT word, and it is a label used for someone who is trying to take some of the money 💰 that they have made and put it to great use.
Paul D Camp made a great deal of money over the years and did more than his fair share to make a difference in the lives of others. One example is that he donated the land for a college near his home, and in 1970, Paul D Camp Community College opened its doors in Suffolk. The other branch sits in Franklin.
It’s a great story, but there is still no connection to The Hill, our community that sits almost five hours west of Suffolk. Both places share US-58 as their main source of travel, but now there will be a second connection as our Bryce Smoot is preparing to lace up his sneakers 👟 for the Hurricanes 🌀.
Smoot, the All-Time scoring leader in the history of Boys Basketball is preparing for a second run at playing at the next level and will do so in Suffolk, Virginia.
The team photo 📸 above is one of the cornerstones of the Anthony Barnes – Kris Richardson Era of Cavalier Hoops, and it is full of success stories, both on and off the court. I was very fortunate that Barnes gave me access to the group, beginning with Elijah Cox and running through the class that graduated 🎓 Isiah Easter and friends.
Cox, our 6’5 big man, became the first member of the group to sign a letter of intent to play college ball. The lovable Cox needed two stops ✋️ to find his home in Lynchburg and just completed his third season.
The fascinating thing about the Barnes – Richardson Era was the fact that they found success through playing the game as a team. They fought for each other and shared the basketball as well as they did their love for playing defense.
Davis Reitzel and Ethan Richardson were two examples of well-rounded student athletes who are both enjoying life on a college campus, but their basketball is limited to pick up games. Both are flourishing in life just the same.
Cody Reece ( Baseball ) , Brayden Smoot ( basketball ), and Jabin Talley (Tennis) each played under Barnes and spent time at the next level. Reece is currently a part of a red-hot CC Baseball program that just completed the most successful season in the schools history !
Bryce Smoot left The Hill as the number one scorer in fifty ➕️ years and played in the same era as his girls’ counterpart, Alyssa Ervin. Ervin is currently enjoying life down at Furman University in Travelers Rest, preparing for her junior season. It is worth noting 📝 that Ervin didn’t just sneak by Erin Gibson in breaking the record, and she has quite possibly taken the overall scoring mark for the school and locked 🔒 it into a vault.
This brings us back to Bryce Smoot and the challenge he faces, and the fact that this impressive young man simply refuses to give up.
While Cox stands at 6’5, let’s just say that Bryce doesn’t have that luxury. Fortunately for him, he plays with a great deal of heart ❤️ and has the endurance of the energizer bunny.
Easter turned out to be one of the most well-rounded athletes on The Hill, and he, too, is now enjoying college life with the focus on education.
The next portion of the basketball history is about to be written on the Boys’ side, and it is a great time to reflect on what transpired under the scowling but lovable Coach Barnes.
The program produced some top-shelf student athletes over the years, and as the college season is right around the corner, we have both Cox and Smoot to cheer on !
There’s a new baseball team down in Gastonia, North Carolina, and being that it is playing in the independent Atlantic League, it is barely a blip on the radar screen of sports.
Before we take a look at this story, kudos to the new name and logo that is being used by the team ! It pops on both ends, especially when you consider that it operated for one season as a basically no-name organization.
What makes this a story is the path that led to Ghost Peppers 🌶 baseball. Just a few short years ago, the folks at ESPN were in town to celebrate the history being made as the Honey 🍯 Hunters were becoming the very first baseball team at any level to have the majority owner be an African American.
Michael Jordan and Ervin Magic Johnson are two former African American athletes who have made the transition from star player to ownership. In Johnson’s case, there would appear to be no limit to what all he can own part of nowadays. Magic was even part of the celebration, flying in to Charlotte and making the short drive over to the ballpark.
Back in August of 2022, I went down to Gastonia to see what all of the fuss was about. That day began with a game in Hickory and ended with one in Charlotte, which leaves three minor league teams inside of roughly 50 miles.
Here is the computerized explanation for what took place…
This story is borderline unbelievable to me in that such a groundbreaking story would be aloud to end in such a manner. The fact that nobody in the community stepped up to see if they could salvage the situation before it ended in such a sad manner is a surprise, to me anyway.
The new owners kept the GM and coaches, so that points to that group being knowledgeable. Does the fact that the AAA Charlotte Knights play in a new stadium 🏟 just 22 miles to the east have a bearing on the story ?
A successful businessman with respect for the game and its history. It was the St Louis Cardinals that were the Gas House Gang back in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Hickory sits just 39 miles above Gastonia and is still part of the official MLB minor league system. The city of Gastonia has to play a major role in the long-term life of an independent team, and the hope will be that the Ghost Peppers 🌶 can stick around for a while. That really is a cool name, or maybe a better line would be a Smoking Hot 🔥 name.
Gastonia is currently hosting the Charleston Dirty Birds 🐦 in a six game set. If that name sounds familiar here, it’s because they play in a ballpark ( Go Mart) where West Virginia Tech University plays occasionally each season.
Charleston had to rebuild its history as well as back in the day they were the Charleston Charlies of the AAA International League.
Yes, baseball ⚾️ is truly a business when it was once just a game.
