Covid did a lot of damage at the beginning of this decade, but through the equivalent of a Zoom call, Shorty and I hosted our annual Senior Day festivities from the other side of the country.

Naturally, we wore baseball jerseys for the occasion. She had Stan the Man, and I had Tim Tebow. The things you do because you can.

From the Desk of Bill Meade

Since Pantherpalooza was 2011, I would have been 58. My best guess for home run derby count was 11 to 6 for the next competitor.
I’ll let you tell this story. “I was only as good as the one pitching to me.” (That was the HOF Coach Knight)


Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a sports junkie.
When I was five, I started collecting baseball cards.
Now, 68 years later, I’m fortunate to be able to coach high school golf in the fall at Ridgeview Christian School in Stuarts Draft and high school tennis at Staunton High School (my alma mater).
In between, I’ve been blessed to rub elbows with athletic greatness and just as importantly with unsung heroes who are legends in their own rights.

To Jerry: When I complete the full story, maybe you can help edit it. There are other parts before and after, but I’ll just touch on these three for you now and fill in some others later when more time allows.

My first job after graduating from William & Mary was as a teacher and coach at Immanuel Christian Academy in Newport News.
With no prior experience and no tangible idea what I was doing, I was tasked with teaching 5 different junior and high school subjects AND coaching all of their boys’ sports teams.

To say that I was in a way over my head is a monumental understatement. But at the time, I was oblivious to the challenge.
In the fall, it was coaching soccer on Mondays and Wednesdays and with mainly the same students, coaching flag football.
I was also the designated bus driver to the away games.
Winter brought JV and varsity basketball and more bus trips throughout Tidewater Virginia.
In the spring, yes, it was on to baseball. Did I know how to teach throwing a curve ball? Well, in a word, no.
Enter unsung hero Frank Doherty, a close church friend who voluntarily drove from Williamsburg to Newport News on his own dime to take on pitching coach duties.

One day, the principal came and mentioned that he needed me to take our athletes to compete in a regional track meet. At that point, all I knew was that a shot put and a discus were different shapes, and one would throw them out somewhere in the distance.
A few years later, when we were both then living in Charlottesville, Frank paid for me to take a computer class.
Another selfless act from someone who believed in me when I needed it.

The reason why this photo appears here is that Bill Meade created one of the five pieces of paper that went into the file we sent to the VHSL in hopes of Alan Knight making it into their Hall of Fame.

The letter that Pappy composed made me tear up just a bit as it came from the heart.

More from Pappy :

2015 brought several impactful changes for the Meades.
After a  nine-and-half run as sports editor for the Page News and Courier and the Shenandoah Valley Herald in Luray and Woodstock, it was time for retirement (or so I thought).
As Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend.”

I got over retirement quickly as free-lance sportswriting, refereeing soccer, and security gigs at college sports venues consumed many more hours.
In June, we moved from Page County to Stuarts Draft.
In September, a destination wedding in Ireland for our niece brought more memorable sporting opportunities.
A side trip to Sunderland on the Northeast English Coast took younger son Tim (on his birthday) and me to the Stadium of Light for a match between home standing Sunderland and the Harry Kane-led Tottenham Hotspurs in a Premier League contest.
Later, I had the fortunate chance to play a seacoast round of golf at the Courtown Golf Club, overlooking the Irish Sea. Truly breathtaking!

After golf, a friendly native Irishman from Bray explained Gaelic football and hurling to me.
Later, we were surrounded in the streets of Dublin by members of the winning Gaelic team in a raucous celebration.
In October, my older son Will married Lorena in Charlottesville.
As the year closed, my fantasy football team, the Stanley Stag Beetles, won the championship in the It’s a Wonderful Life fantasy league, now (2026), in its 20th season.

One more for the road, from the road !

The trip of a lifetime

The World Cup came back to the U.S.A. in 2026.

As a soccer-loving family, it was time to plan a father-son adventure.
Questions immediately came up. Do we want to see the U.S. national team? Where do we want to go? When can all of us go together? How much will tickets cost?
We settled on a trip to California to watch Paraguay and Australia play in Santa Clara in Levi Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49’ers.
The night before, Will and I made it over to Oracle Park to see the S.F. Giants play the Athletics in a Bay Area night game.
We had picturesque seats in the outfield pavilion, with the bay right behind us.
The Giants, our favorite team for decades, won in dramatic fashion, with back-to-back solo homers in the bottom of the ninth.
Later that night, Tim joined us at the hotel.
Riding a 1912 cable car and an autonomous Jaguar were highlights of a fun-filled day in San Francisco.
The World Cup game came down to a defensive struggle.
The atmosphere at Levi was electric, and the stadium sold out, as about 30,000 Aussies and probably another 5,000 Paraguayans witnessed a scoreless draw.
But for us, just being together there, 3,000 miles from home, was the real story.

To not close this out by giving credit to Pappy for his role in the Lady Panthers juggernaut would be an injustice. The level of coverage that Bill provided for the future Alan Knight players when they were in middle school made a difference in a manner that few would understand.

Chris was there for so much of the journey that it would be hard to just focus on a few. But today is the close out day for the gathering of our sixth book, minus the four blank pages that have been reserved for companion pieces.

Playing the National Anthem on his guitar 🎸 on the night, we dedicated the field at PCHS would be a favorite for sure. The day that he showed up at the building of the Pavillion when youth was needed would be another.

Keeping Marion Harris out of trouble every so often was always appreciated, and your work through your church up in Page County is inspiring.

I am so very proud of you and appreciate your willingness to be a guest star in an unscripted reality show that we call life !

You will see the name Dennis Zimmerman spread throughout this book, but there needs to be one stand-alone post that acknowledges his role in the story about Magic Mountain or as normal people would call it. Page County softball.

Zimmerman is like most people in this story, a loving father who watched his little girl grow up around people like Roy Cardin and Big Daddy while falling in love with the sport of softball

The slogan or tagline at PCHS is Tradition, never graduates, and Zimmerman is proof of that every day that he is still around the program.

For a program to have decades of success, it doesn’t need every parent or player to stay involved. Just the right ones and Preacher is just that ! The Right One…

Roy Cardin and the light in Dennis Zimmerman’s eyes, one of hundreds. This one belonging to the Viafora family !

Coach K had announced his retirement from Duke University ahead of the 2022 season, so Lin and I thought it would be cool to watch him coach his final game of his career. It’s harder than you think because of the unknown factor of when will it end in the NCAA tournament ?

We were in Greenville, South Carolina, for the opening two games as we were driving back from the desert. We finished the drive back to Laurel Fork, unpacked the car, and then flew out to San Francisco for the next two games that put Duke into the Final Four. At this point, Lin was pre-commited to visiting her mother in Missouri, so she needed to tag out.

This is when my cousin, on my mother’s side, Douglas Owens, slid into the second chair as the show headed down to New Orleans for the Final Four. The Superdome was rocking that night when UNC ended the run for Coach K.

All of a sudden, we had 48 hours to fill and sticking around the Big Easy wasn’t all that appealing to me. So I asked Doug if he was up for an adventure ?

In order, we drove over to South Alabama for a softball game in Sunday afternoon.

Stop 2 – Missouri for a quick hello with Lin on Monday. We did watch Kansas upend UNC on Monday night in a hotel room.

Stop 3 – South Bend, Indiana, for our second softball game. This time, it was to introduce Doug to Rob Sisk, and the venue was on the campus of Notre Dame.

Stop 4 – we had to go quite rapidly down to West Virginia immediately after the game as John Culp was going in for a procedure at the crack of dawn. The battle with cancer had pretty much run its course, and this was going to be my final shot at a goodbye, and we made it with a few minutes to spare.

Stop 5 – Arby’s in Tom’s Brook, Virginia, where we pulled in after failing in our attempt to contact Jay Neal. The timing aspect of both John Culp and Jay Neal are part of a final book story.

Stop 6 – Page County High School Softball complex to catch up with Alan and show Doug the sign with my parents’ name on it.

Stop 7 – Waynesboro, Virginia, where we met up with Chris Graham at his house, and while there, we recorded one of our podcasts together. Life was getting blurry  by this point, but we still had to make it back to Charlotte to get my car as CLT was the airport where I had originally parked.

We just missed connecting with Lawrence Nesselrodt up in Beckley, but that was my next stop after we headed our separate ways.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and finally, Wednesday is unscripted reality TV. None of which would have taken place if Duke had defeated North Carolina on Saturday.

John Culp, in one of the photos used at his Memorial service.