Sunday afternoon in Boone, North Carolina was memberable to me for a trio of reasons and #3 was experiencing the Erin Matson effect.

Matson, standing just a few inches taller than 5 feet (5’4), is the Head Coach of the North Carolina Field Hockey 🏑 program. Before that this impressive young Lady 👩 went from High School to UNC-CH and calmly led the Tar Heels to four consecutive National Championships. This would make Matson the Bre Stewart (Stewie) of the World 🌎 of Field Hockey 🏑.

After capturing four straight Natty’s in a team sport, Stewie left UCONN and went on to the WNBA, playing for the Seattle Storm and now the New York Liberty 🗽.

Matson took a different approach in that immediately after capturing Natty #4, she went from being the Top player on the Top team to being the Coach of said Top team. Quite the transition but Matson won 🏆 Natty #5 last season and I wouldn’t bet against her winning a 6th straight here in a month or so.

Here are the two Squads (UNC & App State) just after I introduced them before our match yesterday in Boone.

Captains meeting prior to first touch.

Reason #2 for the Day being special was that after 46 years of holding a 🎤🎙🎤 I was calling a game that included the #1 team in the Nation. Reason #3 is the reason for reason #2 and the #1 reason that October 13th, 2024 will stick with me for a spell is that we re-opened the campus of Appalachian State University.

Hurricane 🌀 Helene pounced on the Greater Boone area just over two weeks ago, leaving part of the Campus and City under flood waters.

Classes are set to resume here in two more days and the sign leading up to our Stadium 🏟 shows how high the water reached.

Boone and a large portion of Western North Carolina will be recovering from the Storm for months, if not years.

For a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon things felt normal on The Rock and its just the first step 🚶‍♂️ on a long road back to normal.

Here’s our Coaching Staff that have been doubling up as Care Takers since the storm. Emily Dinsmore and her two Assistant Coaches, Azure Lokos and Pima Iturraspe were all great players in their time and are excellent recruiters. They have traveled the Globe 🌎 to bring people to Boone and I’m fairly confident that the recruiting brochures didn’t include any possibility that one day you might have to swim out to your car.

Our Marketing promotion team passed out miniature Field Hockey sticks and Ice Cream 🍦 Bars. It was a great day to be back doing what we do after a long couple of weeks !