Diamonds 💎 are a Girls 👧 Best Friend and the fellas like them too : The final chapter is about to begin ! September 20, 2026

95% of the time, my content is designed to be consumed in 90 seconds or less, but this one will be different, WAY different.

God’s sun 🌞 is rising here at Cavalier Park on The Hill, and it is time to put as many mental final touches on the festivities planned for today as possible.

The plan, from start to finish, was to create seven books 📚, one for each day of the week. The seventh one will focus on a lifetime relationship with God.

The first five have been a blast, and today will act 🎬 as the closeout for number six. 50 years’ worth of stories from a lifetime of Baseball ⚾️ and Softball games. The stories are designed to tell a story about the people who make up the games and the story behind the scenes.

When a person wakes ⏰️ up and realizes that they have reached the end of a journey, he or she has a choice to make. Should I sneak out the back door and exit Stage Left or……………

Today is set to be a great final chapter with two dozen different storylines but for now, I need to take my 22 morning 🌄 pills 💊 and get started.

The Energizer Bunny 🐰 played by Raylee Goins…..

Seriously, gotta get started because company is coming after Church ⛪️ and there is oh, so much to do still yet !

Stop ✋️ on by, if you like – there is no charge to cross the Boulevard today….

I will be adding to this post 📫 all week so I encourage our readers to stay tuned !

I feel Blessed 🙌 to be able to go 15 rounds with my partner and dear friend, Kevin Burress today !

We have A-Listers coming over today, so yes, we needed a Red Carpet for them !

Greg Bolen, Joi Ogle and Samantha Reed are all kinda a Big Deal !

Coach Nester is not going to be happy about the fact that deer practiced on his field last night.

One of the many questions that Lin and I bounced back and forth during the drive back from Durham last night was this one ?????? What is the goal that folks want to accomplish on Sunday ?

The easiest answer is this : the day is designed to celebrate your program in the most positive manner possible ! Invite your former players and their families back, invite your fans out, then treat the day like an after church picnic.

The fork in the road for Coach Nester and I is this – the actual game today is extremely important to him and his staff because it is a free look see 👀 into next year’s team.

For me, it’s about promoting both the past history of the program, protecting the current players, and sharing a few laughs with people with whom I have a ton of respect

Plus, it’s an opportunity to put my platform, one in which everyone is equal on full display.

Vickey Ritchie and our ” One Team ” will be a big part of today. Ryan McCafferty, The Walls family, and the real life show that is Kristy Jones all get a piece of the pie 🥧.

The Big Kevin (Burress ) and Little Kevin (Lineberry) are a HUGE part of this story.

Samantha Reed, Joi Ogle and Greg Bolen all have other places they could be today but that trio are coming here by choice.

8:25 am – Thoughts being working 💪 on right now…

Vickey Ritchie and the placement of her / our athletes alongside both our alumni and current players. It would be hard to explain how much thought has to go into this part. If I hadn’t spent the past five years in a gym with them, I would not understand this either.

We have 27 players set to play as I type this out. 13 current players in the third base dugout and 14 alums that will be in the first base one.

Vickey has soooooo many amazing individuals that hang out with us, but their individual challenges are very different. It’s extremely important that we place everyone in a spot where they will be in their comfort zone !

9:15 – just finished up comparing notes with Vickey Ritchie and we are roughly 80% set with her part !!!!!

Next up : 30 minutes with Greg Bolen !!!

I’m trying hard to find a way to limit this to just 30 minutes…..

Greg Bolen is THE MAN 👨 and I wish I could go all Chad Powers so that I could be a student in one of his classes !!!

The first question for Mr Bolen has to be: Do you remember the day that you first accepted the fact that you are Greg Bolen ? When God blesses 🙌 you with a personality that is larger than life, you have to be prepared to deal with it and that is harder to do than you think.

Carroll County is the 40th or so place that I’ve called home, not a typo. I have met some AMAZING people here, and Greg Bolen bats lead off on that list. I wish that our paths crossed more often but when they do…….

9:45 am – I was excited about someone arriving, so I’m not alone…

It’s the Boss !!!!

Scoreboard reflecting the season ending walk – off win 🏆 over James River !

10:20 – This happened.

Kristy Jones 🫳 dropping off the Vickey Vouchers created by Ron Cochran !!!

10:25 – Travis Leath is in the House 🏠

The importance of the Moment of Silence is the next line to address. Hix Miller is a Big Part of what we do here at Cavalier Park, and he just lost his Mother.

We aren’t just going to do a moment of silence. It is our plan to have it mean as much to Hix as Hix does to us !!!!

10:52 AM…..

5:33 PM …. Elvis is leaving the building…

To Be Continued, for days to come !!!!

6:19 PM – Home 🏡 and car 🚗 unloaded!!!

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A very late Morning 🌄 Brew needs to be added!

Travis Osborne and his Bible Verse of the Day :

Psalm 20:5 We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners: the Lord fulfil all thy petitions.

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Diamonds 💎 are a Girls Best Friend : Inside the circle 🔵 with Carroll County High School Softball duo Fire 🔥 and Ice 🧊

While we wait for the latest book 📖 to come back from the publisher, it’s a great time to work on one of the segments for the Softball / Baseball book. Here is the start of this one.

Carroll County High School is located just east of I-77 in Virginia, and while the most recognizable sports figure is longtime Virginia Tech University Football coach Frank Beamer, there are more than a few other rather notable former Cavaliers that shined on The Hill.

Erin Gibson and Alyssa Ervin both excelled on the basketball court with the latter leading the Lady Cavaliers to consecutive State Championships.

Head Coaches, Marc Motley, Howard Mayo, and Cindy Edwards have combined to win well over 1,000 victories and baseball Skipper, Casey Burcham is operating at a level that looks like a college program. But for the time being, the focus will be on another veteran leader, Softball coach Rick Nester.

Nester is in his fifth decade of shaping young student athletes at Carroll County and has been blessed to work with not one but two of the most impressive hurlers in the schools history. Sydney Nester and Emma Leath possess every feasible pitching record in the 50+ year history of the high school.

The two young ladies went about their business in completely different fashion as the baseball comparison would be Nolan Ryan and Greg Maddux. Two of the greatest of All-Time but on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Dave Quesenberry was the pitching coach for the Lady Cavaliers when Nester was taking care of business and offered this take on the mindset of the flame throwing Nester.

” There were times that Sydney could defeat a visiting team before the game even started,” said Quesenberry. ” The velocity of her warmup routine was enough for opponents to mentally give up on the idea of hitting her.”

Leath delivered every single varsity pitch across her four years of eligibility and did so with the touch of a surgeon. The Maddux comparison is spot on, and the pair treated the idea of issuing a base on balls to a batter as absolutely unacceptable.

Nester would go on to first pitch for the Wolfpack at North Carolina State before transferring to Marshall University of the Sun Belt Conference. During her final season with the Thundering Herd, the powerful righty found herself leading the country in D1 strikeouts.

Diamonds 💎are a Girls Best Friend : Breakfast with the Legendary Joe Goddard in Columbus, Indiana !

Golden Bears 🐻 Baseball ⚾️ today !!!

It’s almost time ⏲️ to head to the ball field !!!!

The two decades of relationship with Lawrence ” Big Picture ” Nesselrodt has led me to a number of people who have impacted my life. John Culp is one that falls into my Pic Six list of people that God placed in my path. We lost John way too soon, and he will be the third person we acknowledge at the front of this book.

The Legendary Joe Goddard is how I introduce our Assistant Coach at each home game, and it still brings a smile to many a face ! Getting to write his story was another cross-over moment with the Graham’s at the Augusta Free Press plus it was picked up by a number of news outlets across West Virginia.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https%3A%2F%2Faugustafreepress.com%2Fnews%2Fjoe-goddard-literally-built-this-field-of-dreams%2F&ved=0CAEQmL8OahcKEwj4p7axsbGXAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBg&opi=89978449

Thank you to Chris Graham for helping me get that one of a kind story out !

If you are a baseball fan, please check out the Joe Goddard piece ! Plenty more from West Virginia Tech University Baseball still to come.

Diamonds 💎 are a Girls Best Friend : Still holding out Hope for our May 14th Photo 📷 of a Generation @ Cavalier Park… this one was full of twists and turns !

Mount Rushmore is set in the hills of South Dakota but five days from now it is our Hope to create our Cavalier version of the famed landmark !

For the first time in my five generations of being around High School 🏫 sports we have four members of the same Senior Class that are set to graduate 🎓 in possession of a Big Time School record.

Alyssa Ervin is the All-Time Scoring leader in Basketball 🏀, Ashlyn Newman is the leading goal scorer in Soccer ⚽️, Jabin Talley is the career wins leader in Tennis 🎾 and Emma Leath is the same in wins on the Softball diamond 💎. Leath is now just 11 strikeouts removed from adding a second mark as the School leader in K’s.

The goal is to get the four of them, their parents along with Principal Thompson and Athletic Director Mathews together pre-game Tuesday and have the Fab Four toss out a Ceremonial First Pitch together and pose for a few Keepsake photos together.

We needed to catch a few breaks along the way to pull this off. The only thing we didn’t have to worry about was getting Leath to Cavalier Park for the event as she will be throwing out the actual first pitch moments later.

We needed the Boys 👦 Tennis 🎾 team to not be playing a match that day in order to get Jabin to the pitcher’s circle and somehow we were fortunate enough to have that.

The next thing we needed was for Track 👣 and Field to be off that day so we would have access to Alyssa Ervin and now that they are closing in on their post season we appear safe!

The final obstacle was for the Battling Ben Tickles ( Girls Soccer) to not have a make up game added to the 14th. Both Alleghany and Glenvar had their visits to Tommy Thompson Field postponed earlier this spring and might want to make the trek down. The thought process was that Alleghany would pass on the long bus 🚌 ride but that the Highlanders would jump at the opportunity to get their match in.

That is exactly how it played out so at 6pm next Tuesday night the Soccer ⚽️ game is set to start. Forty minutes later they will have their 10 minute halftime break which might just create the five minutes needed to still accomplish this….

Fingers crossed 🤞🙏 that all of the Stars 🌟 can line up and we have 14 folks out at the Circle 🔵 and we can celebrate the Senior Class of 2023-2024!!!

Even if one of them has to be Golf Carted back across the street for the second half of her Soccer ⚽️ game.

We ended up having to switch gears to the gymnasium, but it all worked out great as Greg Talley moved the ball up the field by getting the folks at the town office to celebrate our group as well !

Ashlyn Newman would eventually make her way over to Cavalier Park as did both Jabin Talley and Emma Leath. Of course, Emma didn’t have to move very far to toss out her first pitch.

None of this happens if not for Alyssa Ervin and her willingness to share your ultra bright spot light !

The photo Credit goes to Mrs Velvet Leonard…

There will be two companion pieces with this story, including one from Greg Talley on his boy, Jabin. The other one I will pen as a personal Thank You note to Alyssa Ervin as she helped me get some recognition for three other highly successful students !!

Diamonds 💎 are a Girls Best Friend : Dedication Celebration: The Group Photo !!!

Dedication Celebration: The Group Photo

It was a night we will not soon forget. We hope you won’t, either. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and made the Dedication Celebration everything we could’ve dreamed it would be and more. Congratulations, again, to Coach Knight and to all the generations of softball playing Lady Panthers who now have a field they can be proud to call home.