Here's what winning will do for you.

I have to ask this question.

Why is it that all-of-a-sudden it seems that Rocky Mount High is going through a period of great athletes?

I personally don't think there has ever been a shortage of good athletes, but if you look back into the past, winning opens up opportunity that losing doesn't present to athletes.

The more often you make it to the 3rd and 4th round of any sport, college coaches can watch an athletes perform against top caliber competition and make better judgements about how that athlete will perform in college.

Looking back in the 60's, Jim Clack and Danny Talbott got noticed not because they were good athletes but good winning athletes.

In the 70's and 80's, Phil Ford and Buck Williams found their way to the NBA from the foundation of winning that they achieved at Rocky Mount High.

Do you think Brian Goodwin would have played two major baseball All-Star Games this past summer if the Gryphons had lost in the first round of the playoffs, instead of being the state champs. Winning provided him extra games to showcase his ability.

Whit Barnes, the Gryphons' starting center, has already committed to play football at Wake Forest next year. Four playoff games helped put him in a spotlight during the playoffs last year.

In 2004, Terrell Hudgins at quarterback and Stephan Virgil as a do-it-all player were given the opportunity to play at the next level.

Both players, Terrell, a redshirt junior and Stephan, a true junior, are proving that winning in high school can lead to success later in college.

Hudgins has found a home at Elon, where he was named an All-American wide receiver the last two years. In his first game this past Saturday, he picked right up where he left off last season -catching 10 passes in Elon's opening game against Richmond (a 28-10 loss)

If this season is anywhere close to the last two seasons, Terrell may have to decide whether the NFL is a possibility or come back to play his senior season.

Stephan has been on the special teams at Virginia Tech his first two season. In the season opener agaist ECU, Virgil found himself as the starting cornerback almost single handedly beat the Pirates scooping up a fumble and rambling 30 yards for a touchdown. In the third quarter, he took a blocked extra point out of the air and raced 90 yards for a two-point defensive conversion.

Before you Pirate fans get upset, I know you all won the game, but this is a Stephan Virgil story. I will have to say that Skip Holtz is doing a great job in Greenville.

Winning is an attitude and that is provided by the coaching staff. In order to talk about the coaches that is another story but there is no doubt that Rocky Mount has excellant coaches in all sports.

Finally, I am convinced that dropping to 3-A level has made a more balanced field to play sports. In the late 80's and 90's, Rocky Mount was caught being a school with 1,400 students playing in a conference where other league members had 1,800 to 2,000 students. Even Northern Nash was pushing 1,700 kids in school.

Yes, we were able to win in certain years back then, but they were few and far between. We have had a few athletes who made it to college level sports, but nowhere like the period we are going through now.

WHY? We didn't win then like we are now.

The press box on a Friday night

I realize that I can't remember things out of the past as well as I use to, but I believe that there was a first for me at Wilson Hunt Friday.

Morgan, the last of the Doughtie children who is a proud Gryphon freshman this year, was away at a church camp for the weekend at Lake Gaston.

As we waved bye to Morgan Friday afternoon and it was almost time to head out to meet Wes Bradshaw and Charles Alston for our road trip to Hunt, Pat (my beautiful wife) looks at me with these sad eyes and says, "well, I guess I will have to stay home all alone on a holiday Friday night."

Right away, my first thought is 'yep, that's too bad.'

I may look stupid, but looks aren't everything. I responded with a quick-thinking 'you know, we could go over to Parker's, and then over to the game.'

I still have heel marks on my chest as she ran over me heading to the car.

I called Wes and told him I would meet him at the game. You know the average person who eats at Parker's is over 50 years of age and is 60 pounds over weight. (insert my picture here). A large combination dinner and five quarts of sweet tea later, we arrived in the parking lot at Hunt High School.

Hunt High has an average-sized press box, but when you put three radio stations: WZAX 99.3 FM doing the call on its "Game of the Week", WLLY AM was doing Wilson County's "Game of the Week" and of course, AM Sports 1390 covering the Gryphons - there is a house full.

Both schools had their film crews, WHIG TV 17 was filming for its "Game of the Week." There was hardly any room for the PA man and the clock operator.

In order to make sure everything is in working order, you must set up the equipment about an hour before broadcast time. If everything works and there is no panic because a piece of equipment is not acting right, you sometimes have 45 minutes to catch up on all gossip from all of your friends from the other radio crews.

Pat went up with us to the press box with the intent to go sit on the Rocky Mount side as soon as someone she knew showed up. To say the least, it can be very entertaining in the press box as everyone asks question about players and some old stories pop up.

I think Pat enjoyed all the hub-bub in the box and stayed the whole game. I don't ever recall that she has ever been in a football press box with me while the game was in progress.

Hunt's JV cheerleaders came around just before the half and took orders for food. Somewhere along the way, I missed their visit, but to my surprise, a cheeseburger and fries appeared for me when they started unloading their goodies from the concession stand.

If you listened to the game last week, Kentucky Fried Chicken provides the food in the press box at Gryphon home games for everyone, and Wes got caught with a mouth full of biscuit coming out of a timeout. This time, it was my turn to be caught enjoying a burger when it was time for me to talk.

Do you get the sense that Wes and I can eat?

I think you will find that when a game is a blowout like the Hunt game was, it easy to tell who won by how long the post-game show is on the radio.

The Wilson County crew was off the air in about five minutes. Not much joy to pass around when the team you are covering is clobbered by 38.

WZAX's crew, being the "Game of the Week." was next to go. They will have more games for both schools later in the year.

The press box was deserted (what happened to that jammed press box) except for the extreme right side where we continued to expound on the Gryphons' victory.

A huge crowd at the game meant that even after a half-hour post game show, the parking lot was still trying to get clear as we finally made it out there.

Looking back, having my main squeeze in the press box with me made me feel like I was 20 again .... Ok, maybe 40.

Unfortunately, there's no Parker's to go to next week in Henderson!

Week 2 in the books

For the first time this year, all four Nash County high schools took to the field - the last Friday night in August with two winning and two coming home losers

Southern Nash opened its season, but came up on the short end of a14-8 score with Bunn. Bunn, which is a 2-A powerhouse, had all it could handle from the Firebirds. Even though it is a loss, this game may give Southern folks a reason to feel optimistic after this game.

A team that needs to just feel good about itself regardless of whether it wins or loses is Northern Nash. Tonight may have been one of those games that if the Knights are going to win a few games this year this was one of them. D. H. Conley prevailed 22-11. As a coach, you always want to carry something good out of every game whether you win or lose, and the Knights found a way to come up with 11 points tonight.

The team that made the biggest comeback tonight was Nash Central.

The Bulldogs were embarrassed by Tarboro a week ago, but they found a victory against Smithfield-Selma 28-20. Just maybe last week's humiliation at Tarboro wasn't as bad as it seemed because Tarboro pitched a shutout against Washington 35-0 Friday. People in the 2-A ranks had better pay attention to the Vikings.

I like to watch what people do as they continue their season. Looking at East Forsyth, they rebounded tonight in beating Winston-Salem Reynolds 37-16.

Now let's turn our attention to the Gryphons.

You have to give it to coach B.W. Holt. He knows how to make the Gryphons come out snarling.

Last week by the midpoint of the third quarter, the Gryphons had East Forsyth 43-0, and tonight a very good Hunt team was down 34-0 at the half.

What I really like about the Gryphons' starts is that the other side had "zero" on the scoreboard in both of those scores. In the second quarter tonight, many second-team players had good minutes even before the half against a team we could easily meet again in the playoff.

Even though East Forsyth scored 14 and Hunt was able to score only six, both games were pretty much over when the scores came against the Gryphon defense.

After two games, the Gryphons are averaging 43.5 points per ball game. Last year's team that played in 15 games could only ( I said only) muster 34 per contest.

Is this year's team better than the eastern final team of last year? If two games is enough to make a trend, then the answer is yes. Then why is this team better than last year?

Let's start with the defense. Last year's team had terrific defensive ends, but you can add the entire front four to that list this year. So far East Forsyth and Hunt are averaging just a tad over 2 yards per rushing attempt.

I hardly called any linebackers' names during tonight's game due to the fact that the front four were making all the plays.

It's hard to pass in a game when you jump to a 27-0 lead in the first quarter. So, the Gryphons did most of the passing in the second quarter. Last year was a total gamble putting the ball in the air, but the passing game is better this year.

It is scary to think at how well this team has started off. Tonight, the Gryphons didn't play chop liver but a top 10 3-A team in Hunt at its place.

I know many fans failed to see the first quarter. During a timeout after a Gryphon touchdown, we looked out the press box door and there was 200 or so people still in line trying to get in (metal detector screening slowed the process). It was 27-0 before most of those folks got through the gate.

We have another road game next week as the Gryphons travel to Northern Vance - a 29-7 loser to Southeast Raleigh tonight.

Travel with the team to Vance County. You just might be watching one of the best Gryphon teams ever.

Time will tell ....

Olympic Ramblings

I probably did not watch more than five hours of the Olympics these past couple of weeks. I don't know why my schedule just did not work well with the coverage.

I want to throw at you a few Olympic thoughts:

Why do they have an age limit on gymnastics? If a 10-year-old is better, she's just better.

The best hit of the Olympics was the Cuban who kicked the referee after he disqualified him in taekwondo. He should be banned from the Olympics for life.

I have a hard time watching table tennis since the best ever table tennis player has retired. ... Forrest Gump!

If archery is an Olympic sport ,why not have darts? Why is water polo a sport, but not the real polo with horses? In fact, when was the last time you went to a local swimming pool for a game of water polo?

I love to watch rowing. I just don't understand why they don't use a 16-foot Carolina boat like I do when I go fishing?

Why do they play basketball during the summer Olympics instead of the Winter Games when it's basketball season?

This track cycling ... I don't understand why you go as fast as you can for eight laps and on the last lap you stop and try to see if you can sit on you bike without falling and then dash to the finish.

Makes no sense to me. I know this is a winter sport but why do they have downhill racing? It is easy for anybody to go down a hill. Just fall and you will make it to the bottom. The real sport to me is who is the fastest back up the hill.

They have bobsledding where you act like you are a NASCAR driver and go around in circles, but don't have dog sled racing which is a necessity of life in countries that have snow year round.

Here are a few sports that should be added. Bowling, horseshoes, chess and a good one since the Olympics were in China - Chinese checkers.

And finally, how can you have beach volleyball without a beach?

Oh well, that's my take on the Olympics. I guess you will be glad that I won't say anything about the Olympics for at least four years.

Hey, don't forget the winter Olympics in 2010!

Deadly Sport

This high school football season has not started off very well when you talk about the health of player.

Two weeks ago, a Chapel Hill High School football player died at home after practice from dehydration. He called 911 for help and a medical team came to his home and gave him medical treatment. Sometime during the day, the player died at home after the medical team had left without transporting him to the hospital.

This past weekend, a R.J. Reynolds player from Winston-Salem died from head trauma received while playing in a game. His parents had to make a decision about taking him off life support after the doctors told them he was brain dead.

I read last week that football has been replaced by another high school sport as the most dangerous - Cheerleading

That's right, cheerleading has more injuries every year than any other high school sport. It occurs mostly from the cheerleading teams that go to competitions and take risk trying certain stunts to impress judges.

Just a couple of years ago, I was doing a game in Tarboro when I heard a thump in the press box. Now you have to know that the thump had to be loud in order for me to hear it in the press box, while 800 people were watching a football game. It turned out that one of the Tarboro cheerleaders hit her head on the track from a fall. I think within a week she was back at practice.

I even remember within the last five years that a visiting cheerleader got hurt during a playoff basketball game in the Rocky Mount gym after falling.

It hasn't been that long ago that a Carolina cheerleader was injured while doing a stunt at the Smith Center.

We all understand that injuries happen to football players because of the physical contact of the game.

You have to give the cheerleaders credit in the faith that they give to their teammates who they expect to catch them whenever they do one of their backwards dives into the arms of a waiting teammate.

So the next time during the timeouts and the cheerleaders start performing while the players on the field, take a break remember what they do is more dangerous than those guys on the field wearing all of that equipment.

The next football game at Gryphon Stadium is Wednesday night as the JV team cranks up its season to add to its 21-game winning streak against Hunt High. I'll be in the press box, but it will be doing the PA .

Remember at least twice during the game, we will announce the cheerleaders names. Give them a loud cheer as if they had just scored a touchdown because they are working hard too ...

Impressed!

To tell you the truth, I was very scared that the Gryphons were not going to be ready for the Eagles of East Forsyth tonight.

Boy, was I wrong!

I was at practice Wednesday and we didn't seem to be gearing up for a game on Friday. I saw no focus. Even during warmups, I was watching the punts and we were running into each other and I said to myself 'we just don't seem ready.'

I thought the East Forsyth was going to be and average 4-A team, which means it can beat most 3-A schools. Maybe not able to beat the upper level, but if we didn't play up to being an upper level 3-A team, we might be in trouble.

If there is one thing that B.W. Holt has taught since he has been to Rocky Mount is speed.(Insert chuckle here). Several times tonight the defensive ends were in their correct positions to make plays for the Eagles, but they found themselves not able to outrun Rocky Mount's stables of backs to the corners.

Collins Cuthrell had an excellent game throwing the ball. He adds a skill that the Gryphons lacked last year.

I thought that the Eagles would move the ball with their throwing QB and test a secondary that was without Brian Goodwin, who does not have enough practices to play yet having just come back from playing baseball at Wrigley Field last Sunday.

The Gryphons had the ball five times in the first half - scored three times, missed a field goal and gained 65 yards in 49 seconds just before the half on their last drive before the clock ran out.

Instead of sitting on a 22-0 halftime lead, the Gryphons scored twice on offense the first five minutes of the second half and blocked a punt for a touchdown.

The defense gave up 14 points in the fourth quarter after Rocky Mount had the lead up to 43-0. It gave up over 100 yards in East Forsyth's two scoring drives. Even then, they only allowed 152 yards for the whole game.

The offense garnered over 360 yards rushing from a host of backs and added 146 yards passing just to make future coaches take notice .

Turning our attention to tonight's broadcast, at 2 this afternoon, I had no idea that we would get on the air tonight. Wes Bradshaw's adventure into trying to become the next Rupert Murdoch was not going well at all. He has invested in new equipment so we can control everything from the stadium instead of having to have a board operator back at the station.

Wednesday and Thursday, that new equipment was having a hard time being compatible with the equipment at 1390. Somehow, we got on the air.

It is funny, but the broadcast are always better when you find yourself ahead 43-0 at some point in the game.

Don't forget our next game is Thursday night at Hunt. Hope we can introduce an on-field mike next week to bring you the "Toss of the Coin" from the field.

Oh ,by the way, I think the Gryphons were ready to play tonight. If they weren't, I pity the team that they play the night that they are.

Nervous!

During my Little League days, I use to play ball or be at a game six days a week. I'd play Little League on Mondays and Fridays, Church League ball during the day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and serve as the bat boy for the Ahoskie American Legion team Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights.

There was a game every day and you never had time to worry about last night because there was another game today.

Football is different. You practice all week getting ready for one game. A loss on Friday night and you had to live with it a whole week.

While I was a player in football, I played for Ahoskie High. From 1947 until 1970, we won the state championship at our level five times. The entire town lived and died with each game on Friday night.

In fact, if you go to the Chamber of Commerce in Ahoskie today, the second floor of its building is a museum of Ahoskie High School football. The Chamber used to have every game on film from 1947 until the last game played in 1987. I think you can find my picture up on the wall there somewhere.

To be a football player for Ahoskie back then meant there was a lot of pressure when you put on the Black and Gold to perform well every time out. When the school closed in 1987 to become Hertford County, Ahoskie had won 72 percent of its games in 62 years of football.

For a player like myself that hardly ever played when the score was close, my reward for being a player was to getting to wear my football jersey to school on Fridays. I was somebody.

Even though I sat on the bench, every Friday afternoon sometime before arriving at the stadium or before getting on the bus to go on a road game, I had to give up my groceries.

This never happened to me playing baseball, but that was the case before every football game.

When I first started in radio, during football games the groceries business continued. But I finally learned after a few years to just be nervous. Today, I have a mystery cough that appears Friday afternoons and stays with me until after I have spoken my first words.

When we begin the broadcast Friday night - bringing you the Gryphons and East Forsyth, we will be using a completely new system to bring you the games. Everything will be controlled by us at the stadium using a PC.

Now let me tell you, it's only Wednesday and I am back in the grocery business. This week game is like the first time ever. A rookie in his first game.

The only way to get rid of that rookie feeling is at about 5.30 Friday afternoon go charging up those four flights of steps to the press box as if I way running through the banner that the cheerleaders will have on the field for the players.

Hope I don't pull a hammy!

Football season is Hurricane season

• Had better start paying attention to the weather. This storm that is coming out of the Caribbean. Looks like opening night at the Rocky Mount Athletic Complex might be in jeopardy?
  
  The storm track looks as though it is going to come up the west coast of Florida and head northeast, which puts it near North Carolina by midnight Thursday. If it follows the track which the weather service most likely thinks, all we will get is rain.
  
  If we are postponed on the 22nd, you might be looking at a Saturday night game instead of the following Monday night, which B. W. Holt likes to do. The Gryphons are already scheduled to play on Thursday, the 28th at Hunt High School due to the Labor day weekend.

  
  

• Anyone who has ever swam before has to marvel at Michael Phelps as he now has the record for the most gold medals in any Olympics ever.
  
  A 100 yards swimming is like running a quarter of a mile. In track and field, you don't see the guys who run the 100 meters also run the 440. Michael Phelps can do 50 meters or 200 hundred meters.
• Regardless of whether the USA basketball team wins the Gold or not, Coach K (I don't have any idea how to spell his name) has to be commended for his coaching job. He has taken a group of superstars and has molded a really good defensive team.
  
  If they win the Gold medal, it will be their defense that does the trick. Even with all the superstars on the team, they are not a good shooting team, but they are hiding that behind their good defense.
  
  While I'm on the subject of the Olympics, why in the world do they have water polo? When was the last time you went to the pool and a polo game broke out?
  

We have finally reached game week. Game No. 1 of the season. Hopefully we have 16 to go.

Rating the teams

Please don't get caught up on polls that show Rocky Mount as the No. 1 preseason pick in 3-A football.

The inaugural Rocky Mount Gryphon Fooball Jamboree gave me the opportunity to see eight teams in our state. There is 330-plus more that I have no idea what they have, so for me to vote in a poll would be picking teams out of a hat.

I carried a chain on the sideline last night and and except for 15 minutes while I was trying to get my share of the chicken away from Charles Alston, I saw every team up close and personal.

Officials also use scrimmages to find their groove and pass rule changes along to the teams as the game goes along. The biggest change I saw during the scrimmage was that the refs were reminding coaches that only three are allowed in the box this year instead of five as in the past.

The box is the area between the 25-yard lines where players must stay two yards off the sidelines . Coaches roam in that box, but this year only three are allowed in that space instead of five.

I thought the Rocky Mount Booster Club did a great job with the chicken plates and having the tent set up for people to eat. I hope that attendance was good enough that this becomes an annual event. The Rocky Mount Athletic Complex, with the parking it has, is a great venue for an event like this.

I thought the field looked in great shape considering how in looked in May. Limiting the use on the complex has surely helped.

Here is my poll of the eight teams that took part in the head knocking that went down last night at the Complex.

1. Rocky Mount:

• Justin Barnes was my biggest surprise as to how much he has improved at quarterback. You know the Gryphons have not finished a season since Terrell Hudgins graduated with the quarterback they started the season with. This is a deep team at quarterback. I guess when you have been to at least the third round of the playoffs or more for three years in a row without Terrell Hudgins, they have always been deep at quarterback.
• I just don't know why colleges are not knocking down Nick Hahula's door. Last night, he made a 53-yard field goal with 10 yards to spare.
• The Gryphons will have to play at least the first two games without Brian Goodwin in the lineup. He will not have enough practice time. If Brian stays healthy, he will never wear Carolina blue for Mike Fox. How good an athlete is Brian? I think he is a better football player than baseball player!

2. Wilson Fike:

• The fans who already assume that SouthWest Edgecombe and Rocky Mount will play for the conference championship had better take notice. Richie Pridgen's club is for real.

3. West Montgomery:

• One of B. W. Holt's old stomping grounds has a solid football program. They held their own against everybody last night.

4. Durham Riverside:

• They have a Div. I quarterback
• Unfortunately, they need help in the line

5. Oxford Webb:

• John Hammett's club is going to be solid in their league.
• Last night was the first time that I had seen John since he left Rocky Mount in 2003.
• For those of you who didn't recognize him, he has lost over 100 pounds.
• I think I found the weight that he lost.... on me.

6. Northern Nash:

• Chad Smith has the program moving in the right direction.
• The Knights have almost doubled the number of players they had on the field last night over what they put on the field at anytime last year.
• I doubt whether they will finish with five wins, but they will deserve everyone's respect as they leave the field each Friday night.
• Last year, they never left the field knowing they had more points than the other team.

7. South Central:

• There was talk last night that this is the year that they take down Greenville Rose.
• Good luck! I'll take Rose by 50 - sight unseen.

8. Orange County:

• Orange County wore all Orange last night. (imagine that)
• They win the ugly team uniforms award.

I know that football in August is hard to do. Rocky Mount is in the midst of their greatest run in school history - since the back-to-back state titles in 1962 and 1963.

Show your support next Friday night and every Friday night this fall.

See you there!

How lucky can we get!

How lucky can we be!

Five years ago and about at this time of the summer, some guy from Montgomery County had just been named head football coach at Rocky Mount High School.

He wasn't in the running when RM's first pick didn't quite pan out. In the second go-round for a head coach, he was selected as the best of two options. The beginning of July is a hard time to find a coach, but the school had picked longtime Starmount football mentor B.W. Holt.

I called Holt up on the phone and asked if Wes (Bradshaw) and I could carry him out to lunch one day to talk over how we as a radio station, then we were on ESPN 1490 AM, could handle covering the Gryphons that year.

You see, when you watch the games on TV, the networks pay for the right to broadcast the games. So they come in and demand interviews and access to players and coaches that on the local level we can't afford to do. So when you hear B.W. before and after the game, he is doing it because it helps promote his players, not his wallet.

I asked to be able to get close enough to be able to hear him and his coaches teaching each weeks assignments for that game. He even granted me permission to sit in on the Sunday night film sessions when the coaches come up with the game plan for the next game.

The last three years I have be off doing the "Game of the Week" which means you cover two teams each week and after that week, cover two more next week. It is a lot harder to create relationships with players and coaches that way. I have been able to stay close to Gryphon football because I will be starting my fifth year doing its JV games as the PA announcer.

We were very impressed as we left Ryan's Steakhouse that afternoon after listening to B.W. talk. An announcer's dream is to ask a question and for the coach to say something besides yes or no.

He held court with us talking about life and football. Many fans now make it to the field after the games just to listen to B.W. talk to his team about just that - life and football.

How lucky can we all be in five years to win 57 games and 10 playoff contests?

We'll start this season out as the preseason No. 3-A team, which means nothing. RMHS' non-conference schedule is brutal. That's the way B.W. wants it. Nothing comes easy if it is worth anything.

We all are scared to death that B.W. will retire after any season now and go back to the mountains of Tennessee, his second home. Shoot, he has already retired once!

He and I did a TV show recently promoting the NFL development camps that he did during the summer and as we were leaving the studio, he made the comment to me that he wished he had of come to Rocky Mount when he was 30.

Don't we all!

A new beginning!

I have been in press boxes on Friday since August of 1971. The previous June, I had just graduated from Ahoskie High School, and for those of you who know Wes Bradshaw, that was me back then. I was eat-up with Ahoskie High like Wes lives Gryphon sports.

My junior year in high school I had an opportunity to go to work at our local radio station. Yes, I spent several years playing the hits on the old turntable radio station back during the dark ages of the 70s.

It was only natural that I would start doing games on the radio fresh out of high school. To show you how "dark Ages" it was back then as the color man on the games, my main job was to read the commercials live at the game. High school press boxes, even though some are still small, most schools in the 70s only had press boxes for the PA man and the timekeeper. So I came up during an era where in some cases we had to sit in the stands on the opposing sidelines during our broadcast.

In most cases, it was very hostile place to be cheering for the team on the other side of the field to the folks back home. For those of you who know me and think I talk too loud all the time, this is where I got it from - trying to be heard on the radio as people jeered and cheered for their team as I sat beside them in the stands.

Times have passed and as corporations have bought up all the local radio stations, there is no more of let's go cover the game as a public service to the community. It is now "If we can't make 200% profit on it" it isn't worth doing. So, as you hit the seek button on your radio on Friday nights, there are fewer and fewer high school games.

Wes' obsession for radio play-by-play and the Gryphons has led him to AM 1390. He is buying the time from them on Friday nights to cover the games. He is going out trying to sell ads, which is going great. He is buying equipment so when you hear the broadcast, it will all be done from the press box with a laptop computer. All the commercials will be played by us at the stadium - not back at the control board at AM 1390.

Yes, Wes, now at the age of 26, has done something that I was never able to do. Follow through on a dream. I had a chance to buy my station back home, but was too scared to pull the trigger and sign the dotted line.

Even though this is not the whole station, Wes is out laying a lot of money for this project to work. I have "talked the talk" for several years about doing what Wes is doing - fulfilling a dream.

I am glad to become the color man for Gryphon football this fall because Wes is helping me live the dream.

Live it with us on Friday nights this fall. Pay your $6 and go and sit in the stands to see it live and carry your Walkman radio and let us tell you what you missed!

The Boys!

Here is the AM 1390 Sports radio team that will cover the 2008 Rocky Mount High School football season! (I'm the short one in yellow!)