Holly Strong

Tonight in the Black Box Auditorium of Rocky Mount High School the IB students of Rocky Mount High School put on their eight annual One Voice Talent Show.  This year's show was called Project Holly and the current IB students past and present and even the community of Rocky Mount came together to join the fight with Holly Fryer a former IB student who is fighting cancer.

They all did it for Holly and even little brother Ian delighted the crowd as MC.  The highlight of the night was a group from Englewood Baptist Church sang That's What Friends Are For and a penciled art work done by Tony Harrison of Holly. The night was topped off when Tyron Taylor had of dream of winning the National Spelling Bee and all he had to do is spell the word strong.  His spelling of strong was HOLLY.

Tonight's show raised over thirty two hundred dollars and now puts Project Holly to over eight thousand dollars raised.  Many times our community comes together to be one and tonight and over flow crowd were one.

The Lady Knights of Northern Nash had their hands full fot three quarters but the fourth was all Lady Knights as Northern Nash's final game if the regular season keeps them unbeaten as they beat Rocky Mount for the third time this year by double digits 57-45.  Alexus Hill playing her final regular season game scored  26 points to lead the Knights.

The high school  playoff seedings are one week from today and with a victory tonight I see no way Northern could possibly be seeded any lower than fourth in the seeding which would guarantee them home court advantage throughout their sectional.

Northern out rebounded Rocky Mount 34-26.  Northern's defense caused the Gryphons into 17 turnovers while only having 12 themselves.  Northern finished the season 21-1 while Rocky Mount finished 13-8

The Gryphon boys jumped out early on the Knights, lead by 11 at the half and beat The Knights 83-67.  Rocky Mount finishes 8-2 in conference and 14-7 overall.  They finish in the Big East in second and have a bye until Wednesday night's semi finals of The Big East Tournament.  Northern finishes 1-8 in the Big East and plays Monday night in Rocky Mount against Fike who is 16-6 on the year but only 4-6 in conference play.

Play Ball

Isn't it amazing just three days ago we had snow sticking to the roads 30 minutes after it started because the temperature was cold enough that every flake stuck.  Friday's temps made 90 per cent of the snow to disappear and yes there will be a lot going on in the area today.

Last night at Fike the Hunt boys completed a perfect conference schedule winning in front of a standing room only crowd 69-61.  Today Rocky Mount travels to Northern Nash with nothing on the line as far as seedings are concerned but the Lady Knights could top off their conference season undefeated. Southern Nash and Nash Central will finish all that they will play today as today's action will be only their ninth conference games.

Since no seedings are involved but Hunt, Southern, Nash Central and Northern not playing all ten games this will allow the Big East tournament to start Monday at Rocky Mount with Southern Nash boys playing Nash Central again.  Fike will play Northern Nash.  The Fike/Northern winner will play Hunt Wednesday and the Southrrn/Nash Central winner will meet Rocky Mount.

Even though Rocky Mount is on the road at Northern today the gym will be a busy place as the Eastern Regional wrestling tournament will begin. Weigh in begins at 9:30 and the tournament will keep going until the wrestlers who are still winning wrestle up to five times.  The NCHSAA puts a limit in the number of matches per wrestler per day at five so the finals will be held on Sunday at Rocky Mount's gym.

Tonight the Black Box Auditorium at RMHS will be a live with entertainment as the IB programs annual talent show will be performed.  It starts at 7pm admission is donation and all funds raised will be donated to the UNC Cancer Center in the name of former RMHS student Holly Fryer who after being the goalie on the soccer team as a sophomore has fought Liver Cancer the last four years.