The fact that its the 10 year Anniversary of that glorious day of June 13, 2015 has a smidgen to do with the timing but today we will take a deeper look at why timing is so important.

We will take a look at the Page County side of the equation first. Alan Knight has been coaching Softball in Shenandoah now for going on 45 years. The actual number of years is a story in itself because Knight doesn’t want credit for the covid season that kept the Lady Panthers from playing.

The team this season was sitting at 3-3, which had the Haters (Thanks, Taylor) lining up to show the Old Man the door. One doesn’t win 1000+ games without bothering others along the way. The slow 🐌 start was followed by 17 straight wins and a spot hosting the Regional final against Central – Woodstock.

  The Falcons picked up a hard to come by road victory that day, sending PCHS on the road to King William. The same opponent the Lady Panthers defeated in both 2014 and 2015 for the State Championship. KWHS scored three late runs to end the season for Page County and they would eventually fall to Central in the State finals.

Once again, Knight won the battle against Father Time. The fact that he has seven State Titles to his name and membership in both the Page County High School 🏫 Hall of Fame and the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame, yet he’s still out there coaching is a testimony about who he is.

  The fun part of this story is Knight is not the only Page County High School graduate with seven rings earned while coaching in the Commonwealth.

Dodson flirted with ring 💍 #8 this season with his success required packing up and leaving town. The definition of an inside joke as Spotswood High School is just 19 miles from Page County High.

Dodson and Knight share a stage in Page County High School history with others, like Wayne Comer, who played Baseball in the Big Leagues back in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

My connection with Knight stems back roughly a quarter of a century now and Page County was our home for a decade and still is home to one of our five Children and four of our nine grandchildren. Our business was located there and I have nothing but fond memories of the Shenandoah Valley.

The fact that Knight is still going at this with everything he has is a story in itself. We joke about how life changed the day we were able to officially dedicate the field to him as to which one of us it meant more to ?

The end of the road is near, for no other reason than it has to, right ?

https://augustafreepress.com/news/alan-knight-the-high-school-coach-who-quietly-won-1000-games/

This was the story from back in 2022 that was part of the VHSL Hall of Fame packet. I am pretty proud of my work on that one.

Thank You to both Chris Graham at the Augusta Free Press and Randy Arrington at the Page Valley News for running the article.

Timing, the why now for myself is I’m getting older by the minute. For Alan, he cannot do this forever and I am proud to have been along for half the ride. In regards to Rick Nester and Carroll County Softball, that will be the next piece to the puzzle.

Emily Cook was a Freshman pitcher on the Carroll County High School Softball State Championship team. Four years later Miss Cook was a freshman at Ferrum College.

  Cheyenne Strickland (Marinus) blazed the Cavalier trail 👣 and one year later Tiffanie Moore transferred to play for the Panthers. Next up the pipeline was Emily Cook.

We are thrilled to have Emily on board with our Softball project. Between the two High Schools, there were 28 Lady Cavaliers and Lady Panthers wearing their jersey that day. The day meant something different to everyone involved and there will be a solid effort to contact as many as possible but one never knows.

  On the administrative side, Darrin Mathews has agreed to come out of retirement long enough to share his thoughts on the BIG DAY.

Truly excited about the fact that Mr Craig Worrell is up to participating as well !!! Nothing but 💘 and respect for Craig….

  3 out of 15 players from the Carroll County team ended up playing for the same College program. Quick Math says that’s 20%. Pretty impressive on its own but then you add in the players that played elsewhere, its quite a number !

Welcome 🙏 to Emily, Darrin and Craig !

Starting at Shortstop back on June 13, 2015 wasn’t the only thing on the agenda of Senior, Cheyenne Strickland. Strickland was heading over to Ferrum College to play not one but two sports at the next level.

  This had to make Veteran Volleyball 🏐 Coach Cindy Edwards smile as she was fortunate enough to Coach this impressive young woman during two out of the three High School seasons.

The great news here is that Cheyenne has chosen to join our efforts in regards to the Softball book 📖! We look forward to seeing this part of her life through her own eyes 👀.

Welcome 🙏 to the team, Cheyenne ! Thrilled to have you on board…

  Every time we would find ourselves in a new location, I would do my best to track down the local Sports writer to see if I could be of some help. Writing ✍ has never been how I paid the bills but its always been a passion of mine. At last count I believe that the number of publications that I have had stories in is two dozen, give or take.

  Chris Graham and his online Newspaper 📰 has been a great place to have a story, when I pen 🖊 something that fits his readership. The Augusta Free Press was the final resting place for many stories, including Kate Gordon, Frank Beamer, Joe Goddard and Alan Knight.

Chuck McGill ran the Sports department at the Northern Virginia Daily in Strasburg and that connection went five years.

John Galle broke into the business with the Shenandoah Valley – Herald and we teamed up on a few projects, including the cover shot on the Strasburg Volleyball 🏐 book.

  Rob Sisk was the sports editor for the News Virginian out of Waynesboro and is the one that created our Logo off a vision I had while looking off our back deck one evening in Laurel Fork. The Sun 🌞 setting over the Hills.

That leaves us the duo of Allen Worrell and Bill Meade, or as I like to call them, Homer and Pappy. Despite being separated by roughly 20 years, the pair have a number of similar qualities and I’m proud to consider them Friends of mine.

  Pappy and I have known each other for roughly 20 years now and we met through his efforts at the Page County News. The newspaper 📰 is a weekly effort and while Pappy no longer writes for them, he continues to write for other publications. One of the better efforts that I have read from Pappy was his one page letter he gave me for Alan’s VHSL Hall of Fame packet.

Meade was in the thick of things back in 2015 on the Page County side of things and I look forward to reading his reflective hindsight on the Lady 👩 Panthers. Pappy might be the OG of OneofUs.Care as he too refuses to go dark in his writing ✍.

The past few years have been spent with Allen Worrell and the Carroll News. Another weekly Newspaper 📰 that is part of a bigger chain. The most notable difference in between the two papers is that while we were involved with the Circulation end of the Page News for years. With the Carroll News its just been about the writing.

Worrell ( pronounced Whirl) is another stand up guy 👦 that was dealt a work whammy. Meade was tasked with going from being the Sports Editor for one County newspaper to doubling up with a second County. For Allen, he was tasked with going from being just the Sports Editor to being THE EDITOR. Sports can be fun, but that other stuff is work.

  The next connection is the fact that these two writers / editors worked for Newspapers 📰 that were on the fringe of a daily newspaper. The Daily News Record in Harrisonburg and the Roanoke Times in the Star 🌟 City. The difference between the two is the DNR owns the Page News while there is no connection between Carroll News and Roanoke Times. Both daily papers have plenty of High Schools to cover during the regular season and tend to only pay attention to the outlying ones in the post season.

One more player at the table here is Randy Arrington. Randy was the Editor for the Page News for a long time before branching out on his own with the online newspaper – Page Valley News

https://pagevalleynews.com/

  Craig Worrell is a Carroll County resident and fellow member of the Carroll County High School Hall of Fame. Craig manned the desk at the Galax newspaper 📰 for decades and was there back in 2015. The Worrell Brothers are actually not related, but are lifelong friends. We would welcome 🙏 anything that Craig would like to contribute, photos or thoughts.

Now we know a bit more about the folks that were tasked with reporting on that day back in 2015. Solid, hard working journalists who graduated 🎓 from William and Mary (Meade) and Emory & Henry ( Worrell).

Newspapers 📰 are my Life and have been since I delivered my first copy as a 13 year old for the Virginia Pilot. Newspapers and Softball for this effort will be interwoven.

Thanks to Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press, Kate Gordon and her Home Run became the most read story in my writing ✍ career!

https://augustafreepress.com/news/jerry-carter-a-magical-day-in-okc-for-jmu-softball/

James Madison University managed to upset Missouri in the Super Regional tournament to advance to the College World Series in Oklahoma City for the first time in school history. The Dukes were the rare unseeded team to make it to the Big Party and their reward was getting to face quite possibly the best Oklahoma team in their historical dynasty.

   Turns out that Kate’s Mom and Dad 👨 were there as well that day, along with Big Daddy and his daughter. The solo Home Run in extra innings led JMU to the shocking upset of the Sooners and a story was written in the parking lot later that night.

  Chris Graham and Kate Gordon combined to allow me to ink a story of a Lifetime.

  The fact that I was in Oklahoma City to begin with, is a story all to itself. I was just passing thru as our Son Chris needed some help with the purchase of his initial tractor trailer. He drove our car 🚗 to Tidewater, Virginia to pick-up the truck 🚚 and I needed to fly into Norfolk to retrieve the car.

  Why not have some fun with it, right ? I flew to Norfolk by way of Oklahoma City, picked up the car and drove back to Laurel Fork afterwards. Watching and announcing Kate’s at bats across her four years as a Lady Panther had been truly enjoyable and my thought was this, how often is a player that I have a connection to going to play the game on the games Biggest Stage ?