Every season of High School Softball has a game that is the Win and you’re In contest in regards to the State Tournament. The game takes place in the Regional Semi-finals and in 2015 for Carroll County, it had the Lady Cavaliers trying hard to make their way up to Fluvana County.

The record book 📖 shows us that Carroll County prevailed by a final score of 3-0 after the team scored one run for every day that they tried to play the game. It would be awkward enough to need three tries to get to play a regular season game, let alone the contest that would send the team on to the State Tournament.

There was a Community send-off on Day 1 and then another one on Day 2 before the weather forecast triggered a postponement. Finally, on the third attempt, the team made it up to Fluvana and history shows us that Sydney Nester pitched a shutout, the defense sparkled and there was enough timely hitting to carry the Lady Cavaliers onto the Final Four !

Modern day, that victory translates to the Elite Eight of State but back in the day it landed a team in the Final Four.

The twice delayed game pushed Carroll County High School into the need to head up to Woodgrove for the Regional Championship from Fluvana. The team jumped back on the Bus 🚌 and drove another 120 miles North.

  Third time was the Charm will be the subtitle for the game versus Fluvana and the first game against Woodgrove will be labeled – The Bait and Switch….

One cannot have a Softball program maintain a degree of excellence like has taken place at Page County High School over the past 40 years without a slew of folks that step up and accept the baton from the people before them.

Dennis Zimmerman is one of those people and just being in the vicinity of ” Preacher ” can raise a smile. The combination of energy and passion is the key to his disposition. Years after his daughter, Caroline,  graduated 🎓 (Class of 2019) with the third State Championship in 5 years, Dennis can still be found at Lady Panthers Softball games, keeping the scorebook.

Zimmerman was one of the main people who helped us in our Raise A Barn project at Page County High School Softball Complex. There are so, so many roles that Dennis has played over the past decade or so and we look forward to rehashing them all !

Christopher Andrew Carter is the fourth of our five Children and the just turned teenager was in the Co-Pilot seat 💺 for our eight Pacific Northwest baseball ⚾️ stadium 🏟 tour in eight days, back in the late 1990’s.

Short Season Class A Baseball, where it would turn out that legendary Joe Goddard began his professional career, was the setting for our ” Practice Run ” to our Around the Valley in 60 Days promotion.

Three teams in Oregon, three in Washington, one in Idaho and one in the Great White North of Canada 🇨🇦, the challenge was finding out the minimum amount of evenings it could take someone to visit all eight parks. Rubic cube type of puzzle to search out the quickest path to completing the Loop.

The Sports Editor of the nearby Everett Herald agreed to sit down with Christopher after the trek was done. Pretty big deal for a Middle School student. Math puzzles are fun and there needs to be a game being played in the park that day for it to count.

Yakima Bears 🐻 opened the loop and the Boise Hawks wrapped it up. The trip over to Boise was the only one that required a flight ✈️ (Southwest Airlines-$39.00). The shortest day was Lake Stevens to Everett (10 miles / 21 minutes) and Boise was what we call the ” Runner “.

This loop was a low budget one, that included returning each night but it created a memory for a lifetime between a Father and one of his three Sons. That  fact would come very handy when we were encouraging fans of the various Valley Baseball League to participate in our Around the Valley in 60 Days.

Here’s Christopher Carter on the left, alongside Mr Andrew Good of the Page County Parks Department at their fundraising event this past weekend.

The goal in everything we try to do is to find joy for others, never doing something just because we could. Spending time with your Children when they are young is a treasure so grab it while you can!

    We will have the highlights and the feature story that ran in the Herald.

Just for fun, here is the much younger Christopher

Of there’s anyone out there with pictures 📷 of the actual Ground Hog that was the Mayor of Cavalier Park that would be what we call a Tremendous Get !

One name that will pop up on a regular basis in the Carroll County High School Softball story will be that of Tammy Quesenberry. Tammy has wore many a Hat 👒 in connection with Lady Cavaliers Softball, from Coaches Wife to having a daughter who played to having a Granddaughter ( Addie Greene) play in addition to being a driving force in regards to the improvements of the facility over the years.

Part of the challenge in getting a story of this magnitude told correctly is the chronological order and trying really hard to not omit anyone that played a role in the process.

One of the first things that Tammy shared was prior to June 13, 2015 the only restroom 🚻 at Cavalier Park was a Porta Potty and a large Groundhog had taken up residence underneath it.

The stories about how a home Softball game back in 2015 was a must see 👀 event are included in the story and have been described by many. A photo 📷 of that would be a 🙏🙏🙏 welcomed gift.

I would like to think that no Groundhogs were injured in this story and I would add that in the screen play version of the story, we would have a Groundhog with Gray whiskers telling stories to his (or hers) grandchildren about the good old days where hundreds of town people would gather at his home for Softball games.

When the little ones would ask for more stories from Papa Groundhog he would say the only disturbing thing about sharing the space with the townsfolk was the gosh awful racket that came from the right arm of Sydney Nester during pregame warm-ups everytime she popped the catchers mit.

The Page County Softball portion of our Book 📖 will be titled : Blue Print for Building a High School 🏫 program and will be dedicated to the memory of Mr Roy Clark.

It would be interesting to know how many High Schools in the Commonwealth have produced a pair of future Coaches that would go on to capture SEVEN State Championships each.

Neither Chris Dodson nor Alan Knight are resting on their laurels as both led their 2024-2025 teams made it to the State Tournament. Dodson and his Lady Trailblazers (Basketball) and Knights Lady 👩 Panthers ( Softball) made the Final Eight in the chase for #8.

Knight is eight years older than Dodson so he is closer to the end of the road but both leaders appear to have fuel left in the tank.

There will be plenty of career comparisons between two amazing people who have spent their entire adult lives teaching and coaching our Youth !