On the Golf ⛳ course was Ness and Joe Goddard

  Our Senior Day ceremonies at West Virginia Tech University are simply masterpieces, says the modest emcee of the events. That comment should make my friend and neighbor, Kris Richardson smile.

Most years they are the most well planned, carefully created events that you would ever want to witness. But for someone to appreciate the teamwork involved between Ness and I, let’s rehash the Senior Day that included Ryan Kessinger and friends. It was great to cross paths with Kessinger this year as the young man is part of the Baseball staff at Alleghany High School.

  It’s Sunday morning and we are putting out fires 🔥 on both ends. Ness is dealing with flash flooding in East Bank and I’m down a key person on my delivery staff back in Front Royal, Virginia.

  I had to move around numerous pieces of my delivery team, causing me to miss the back end of my cutoff time to safely drive over to West Virginia. Ness is dealing with sandbags, umpires and the opposing team.

  I had to find the closest Airport that had a flight ✈️ that could get me to Charleston in time, if we did indeed get to play the game and host the ceremony. Ness has to devise a plan where he can stop was he’s doing long enough to pick me up.

The flight ✈️ lands and there is Ness holding up a sign that says Michael Jordan. The looks of disappointment when it was only a guy with newspaper ink on his face and clothes, instead of his Airness. Rule 1 with NAIA Baseball ⚾️ is expect the unexpected and learn to roll with it.

  The next stop is Shoneys where the entire team is eating breakfast ➕ we are hosting a potential Stud recruit and his Mother. Throughout the process, it was impossible to ever create a script for a program that on average lasts 25 minutes.

We finally have a green light to play the game and that was only possible because East Bank Middle School had an Astroturf infield. That fact is another story for another day….

Realizing that we were out of time, I asked Ness to give me a one word answer to each of his graduating Seniors and I would somehow ” Wing It “. Each year for the past 17 seasons, I time how long the ceremony is from start to finish and that year it was 23 minutes.

There were plenty of tears 😢 from parents and friends as we completed the festivities. Afterwards, one of the player’s Mother came up and asked me could I please give her the script that I read because she was so moved by the kind words…. to this day, I still think that she questioned my response of actually Ma’am, there was no script, just a thought process.

We played the game, packed up and headed back to the airport so I could get back to work and Ness headed up the road to visit another recruit. Just another day in the office 🏢 for a tag-team that excels at doing what has to be done on any given day.

Later on the School was swallowed by West Virginia University and then the campus was moved from Montgomery to Beckley, where we were blessed 🙌 to meet the legendary Joe Goddard.

Just the tip of the Iceberg in regards to the two decades of College Baseball ⚾️.

Almost 90 years ago Johnny Vander Meer recorded back to back No Hitters and to the surprise of few, the feat has never been duplicated.

On June 2nd, 1990 I was living in Roanoke, Virginia and had a voucher on Northwest Airlines for a flight ✈️ to any destination in the United States and it was set to expire that day. Not wanting to have it go to waste, I booked a flight out to Seattle, Washington and back.

One of my closest friends at the time had moved out there earlier in the year so I thought I would drop by and say hello. Only having 24 hours of work, I booked the Red-Eye back to Dulles Airport.

Luck would have it that my friend had a family emergency and was gone. Trying hard to not feel it was a wasted trip, I headed down to the Kingdome and bought a ticket to the Tigers – Mariners game.  I was scoring the game and the Dome was two-thirds empty so there wasn’t a ton of energy. Johnson was still struggling with his control back then so it didn’t ” feel ” like a typical No Hitter.

  Johnson recorded the first No Hitter in club history and I drove back to Sea-Tac, flew back to Dulles, drove to the Roanoke Times and World News building at worked my weekend shift.

  Almost three years later, I was finally living in Washington State and was trying to get off work from one of my four jobs in time to return to the Dome for my second M’s game. My boss needed me to stay late so I missed the opening pitch and he asked me why I still wanted to go ? I answered that question by saying that one never knows what might take place at a baseball game…

Chris Bosio looked like a pitcher that belonged in a Church ⛪ League Softball game but that night 🌙 he was unhittable.

Once again the crowd was less than 20,000 but low and behold, the Mariners now had their second No Hitter in team history and they were my first two games in the Kingdome.

Sports Talk Radio 📻 was just beginning back then and it was still a great listen. KJR-950 was one of the leaders nationwide and their Morning 🌄 Show was hosted by Mitch in the Morning and his co-host, Fish 🐟.

I was out doing some work on Mercer Island 🏝 ( home of Duke’s Quinn Synder, now coaching the Atlanta Hawks) for USA-Today when Mitch opened his show by announcing that Fish was sick and he didn’t want to host the four hour show by himself. He said that the first person that called in with an entertaining story would be invited down to be his Co-Host.

I broke out my Johnny Vander Meer story and Mitch said, Come on Down !

The morning was an absolute blast and one I won’t ever forget !

Side note 📝 – if Boston holds on at Houston tonight, my M’s will pull into a 1st place tie 👔 with the Astros !! One day we will make it to the World Series !!!

” It should be obvious that June 13th, 2015 is a special date to me. When my wife and I sat down to figure out a date to be married, it never occurred to us that it could conflict with anything that couldn’t be moved to another date. Turns out you can’t ask the VHSL to move the state championship game for anything less than a natural disaster. Nobody realized that it could be an issue until it was well past the appropriate time to change the date for the wedding.

    The softball team was making a great run in the playoffs and I kept getting asked the same question over and over. “What happens if they make it to the championship?”  I always answered the question the same way each time, “how awesome of a problem would that be.” But truly I did not know the answer to that question, I was just hoping for dad that it would be one that we would have to figure out and luckily it was. Fast forward to the day of the wedding and the game, we had come up with a plan. Ricky Thomas was kind enough to offer to fly mom and dad back to an airport in Mt. Airy following the completion of the game. Had he not done that, I’m not sure how well it would have worked out for them to be able to get back in time.

     The wedding venue was in Cana Virginia so that also helped. The game wasn’t televised but I was glued to a radio that sat on my kitchen counter as my groomsmen and I sat around and listened. When the final out of the game concluded, there was an eruption of cheering that came from my house that I can guarantee every neighbor within a 100 yard radius could hear. It was going to be a good day regardless but everyone in Carroll County knew that it would be icing on the cake (pun intended) if he was able to show up to the wedding with the first ever State Championship Carroll had won.

      After the conclusion of the game, celebrations, and interviews my parents hopped on a small plane and headed straight back with no issues and were there in plenty of time to share in our celebration of marriage. The day couldn’t have gone any better.”

Now we will add a photo 📷 or two here and Kayla Goins Nester shared that they were able to play Queen’s We are  the Champions at the reception and I hear there are great photos of her new Father – In Law cutting a rug on the dance 💃 floor !

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY

The portion of our latest Book will include three equal parts. A part Carroll County High School Softball, one third Page County High School Softball and then the rest will be related to America’s Pastime, Baseball ⚾️.

Before I start in on my ” Nugget ” about Casey and Combs, I will share my background on the game of Baseball that stretches over five decades.

I have covered games for dozens of Newspapers 📰, been the Sports Editor for a Newspaper, visited every Major League stadium 🏟, every AAA Park and over 50 more lower minor league fields.

Spent two decades around the game at the College level, announced games in two dozen parks, owned a team outright and was a minority owner of another.

While I still prefer Softball to Baseball, I share my History of the game here for one reason and one reason only – to show that I’m qualified to say this about Casey Burcham, in a lifetime of spending more time around the game than I ever intended to, I have NEVER witnessed anything like what Mighty Casey pulled off in his first 12 months on the job !

I remember the day that it was announced that Casey Burcham was going to be the Head Coach and Steve Combs would slide into the number 2 spot, I wrote a story comparing the hire to Mike Young at Virginia Tech. Getting someone who has his dream job nowadays is harder than you would think

Here’s a Link to that one.

https://aroundthevalleyin60days.blog/2024/07/13/casey-burcham-is-carroll-countys-answer-to-virginia-techs-mike-young/

Looking back now, I realize that I had no idea of the depth of the Skill set Burcham contained. The surgeon like precession that Mighty Casey operates with is nothing short of remarkable.

My one true Baseball hero will always be Greg Maddux and I was fortunate enough to see him in person multiple times throughout his long career. The best line from Baseball is that Greg Maddux won four straight Cy Young Awards but Cy Young could not have won four straight Greg Maddux Awards.

Burcham has an understanding of who he is, what he wants and the proper steps 🚶‍♂️to take in order to achieve it. While I been around what feels like a Thousand coaches over the years, I have never been taken back by one in the manner that Burcham leads. He leads in a manner that makes people want to follow and down the road I could see him doing the same job at the next level.

The future of Cavalier Baseball is in great shape today and that’s because Burcham has the potential for Greatness, which means so does his program !

This story will be one of about 50 Baseball stories in the book 📖 and it will be a fun write ✍.

Sitting down on Monday with Mr Alvin Davidson was such an uplifting experience that even a wordsmith like myself will have trouble explaining but I will give it my best shot.

My ties to Cavalier Park are only five years deep and I’m in the middle of trying hard to create a time-line story in regards to just how the jewel of a place came about. Cause and Effect is going to be the title for the third of the Book, Diamonds 💎 are a Girls Best Friend.

Because Mr Donaldson had two daughters that wore the Lady Cavaliers jersey back to back, Alvin is qualified to take the torch 🔦 for an eight year span (2009-2016).

Our conversation started at 11am and wrapped up a bit before 2pm so its safe to say that we covered a tremendous amount of ground. When I asked Alvin how I should describe him, his answer was ” A Softball Dad 👨 who loves the Game.”

Older daughter Lindsey and little Sister Gracie gave Dad a reason to be front and center at Cavalier Park for eight years but that was just the tip of the iceberg for the Donaldson Family 👪. The amount of stories about the Travel teams were priceless, especially the ones about little Gracie being a part of Lindsey’s group when she was just five or six years old.

Alvin Davidson is a 1983 graduate 🎓 of Carroll County High School 🏫, a very good year as it included fellow Senior, Tammy Quesenberry. His ties to this community run deep and include a position on the current School Board

Two names that came up in our conversation about The Park were Brad Nester and Gene Kimball. While I have never had the pleasure of meeting either one of these two gentlemen, I would welcome the opportunity.

Kimball worked on the playing field religiously and his daughter Lilly played. Brad Nester is Sydney’s Dad and was instrumental in a number of improvements during her time on The Hill.

  The goal here is to magnify every single step along the journey that led to the Park that now sparkles south of The Boulevard. Passing of the baton or next person up if you will, is how something like this gets created.

If this goes as planned, Alvin will be able to fill a chapter of the book 📖 and then some !

Another name that came up was 2023 Graduate 🎓, Macie Adkins. It turns out that Macie was a student at Laurel while Davidson was Principal

Macie Adkins is another version of a role model for younger Lady Cavaliers, the ones that are currently working on their game in hopes of representing the program in years to come. Adkins just wrapped up her two year playing career at Southwest Virginia Community College where she doubled up as Team MVP and Dean’s List Student. The impressive young Lady is part of our Game Day experience at Cavalier Park when she is in town.

  Because I envision Alvin filling out a large portion of the story, I will refrain from borrowing his material in this Nugget, minus ➖ one exception.

When the topic turned to Cheyenne Strickland and her mad skills, both Athletic and Academic, Davidson shared a story about a play that occurred in a game versus Floyd County.

Gracie was in the circle 🔵 and there was a runner 🏃‍♂️ on second base. The batter sent a shot headed towards left center until Strickland climbed the ladder, gloved the line drive and in the same motion returned to earth 🌎, applying the tag to the base runner trying to get back to second base.

The Art to telling a story is a combination of passion and knowledge. Alvin Davidson is that kinda of a person who I’m looking forward to working with!