Thank You Ma’am !

The beauty of the Allen Iverson rant about practice is that it slides over to almost any topic. ⏰🕑🕙🕚 Clock was the main thing that Kris Richardson and I were talking about right before our guests started to arrive yesterday.

The planning had been done and all of the pieces were on the board but there was just one uncontrollable challenge, guessing how long each person would chose to speak ????

Kris and I had created what we called the Coach Nester Bullpen. We made 20 extra seats 💺 available for folks that were there, solely for our tribute to Coach Nester. I believed that we had that area half full with long time friends of our Coach and my concern for those folks was they would be sitting through a great deal of “other ” tributes before we reached the point of Coach Nester Time.

Kris was possibly believing that I was worried about something for no reason. He started listing folks that were going to be speaking that just wouldn’t have anything to say. Kris started with his wife, Paula.

“My wife doesn’t like to speak publicly so you won’t need more than one minute there,” said Kris…

Paula absolutely crushed her speech about her husband !

Kris on Jason Stockner – Jason might go 90 seconds…Once again Jason had created a well thought out script that he shared with us.

I am not picking on Kris, just using him as an example to explain how 3 hours turned into 4.5 hours. Once people started to feel comfortable with the thought that it was okay to open up and share honest feelings about people that it would snowball.

Hagen Giles exceeded my expectations with his tribute to Darrin Mathews. Well thought out and delivered and I know Hagen and his staff were a true blessing 🙏

Ethan Richardson and Anthony Barnes plus Allen Worrell and Craig Worrell were awesome in our serious skit. Russell Smoot, Greg Talley and Kevin Burress were tremendous in our humorous skit. Marion Harris, Allen Worrell and I started out in that one as the band as a show of support but once they got going we realized they weren’t needing our support.

One could tell that our Principal Chuck Thompson was speaking from the heart ❤ each of the four times he delivered a tribute.

Anthony Barnes messages both times he spoke, were enlightening.

Russell Smoot asking for the microphone 🎤 to pay tribute to Kris Richardson was another example of someone that wanted to express his love and appreciation for Kris. Are you going to tell the man that played Garrett Morris so well that no Sir, can’t do it.

Chris Mabry was another person that spoke from the heart when he was paying tribute to Ben Tickle.

Kevin Burress was Kevin Burress from start to finish, coming to the event straight from a work shift up at Volvo. Burress is much like Richardson, someone who says ” What do you need from me?”

180 minutes was the ideal time but I felt 210-220 would be a great night. We landed at 270 which is why we are talking about Time.

Coach Nester was worried about how many people were going to be lining up to get a jab or two in. The upside to that was because of time restrictions, that part was avoided.

Let’s take a quick look at Laurel Fork as we close.

Event Location – Laurel Fork

Event Hosts – Residents

Jay Neal Award – Residents

John Culp Award – Residents

Donna Nester just sent me four of her photos 📷 from last night 🌙

The Nester Family 👪

The moment of the Gift 🎁. Again, a true show of Caring

Kris Richardson was a great Co-Host

Priceless !!!

Special Thank You to Marion Harris for live streaming 💜 and to Brother Stephen for his elegant Blessing of our Meal !

March 23rd, 2024 has been circled on the calender for quite sometime now and its finally here. For the third time we will spend three hours trying to celebrate the things we believe it and praise 🙏 some folks that we believe are as the line says – One of Us.

Life is happening everyday, whether we are prepared for it or not. All we can do is try our best, cling to the things that matter most and hope/pray 🙏 (while our efforts are Faith based , believing is not a necessity to choosing kindness) we will have the strength to accomplish the tasks that matter most.

Last night 🌙 I met a man 👨 from Bassett after the Junior Varsity Softball game by the name of Steve Austin. If you are older, you might remember the name from the TV 📺 show the Six Million Dollar Man.

Mr. Austin was on The Hill to watch his Bassett High School Lady 👩 Bengals team play and he happened to be holding a ticket 🎟 that our AD Darrin Mathews had written the number six on. Austin won the Prize Package 📦 that Ron Cochran and I put together for the season, something that I added to the game day operations last year.

The winner is the person that has the number on the back of their ticket 🎟 that matches the total number of foul balls that leave the field of play. We count them out from start to finish and the fans follow along at different levels of interest. Austin knew he was holding the winning ticket and after the game he walked out to my car with me, because I had left my half of the prizes on my dash.

I want to share just a few of the things Mr. Austin shared with me in our few minutes together.

” I love coming over here for Softball games, everything that is done with matching a game here.

The amount of class shown by the program, from start to finish.”

I then shared with him that Ron Cochran at Omega would be creating him a custom T-shirt 👕 and we could make it a Bassett design.

Mr. Austin followed that with this line, one that will stick with me for quite sometime – I am impressed enough with you all I wouldn’t mind if it was a Carroll County shirt.

Ron and I had a brief exchange yesterday at his shop, which GPS still lists as Omega Church ⛪ and Office Supply, but is now Omega Office Supply. We were talking about the Tazewell Mother 👩 that had won the previous night and took a moment to guess what the combined value of the two gifts 🎁 are and we landed on between $25 – $30.

The takeaway from the exchange was a visiting fan left one of our games talking about the amount of Class Carroll County shows at Cavalier Park.

That is in example of the tag line that our friend Rob Sisk created for us, Encouraging the World 🌎, one person at a time.

Ron Cochran is a kind hearted ❤ that has done as much for us as anyone in Carroll County, Virginia. His kindness allows us to continue to show kindness at a greater rate and this is the reason why Ron Cochran will be the first person we acknowledge today at 4pm !

Daylight is coming and its about time to start the process…