Battle Reaches Milestone

The football playoffs with so many local teams playing has taken up a whole lot of space over the first three weeks of November in this blog.  Recently the Lady Knights were winners and on that night was the 500th win for Grover Battle.

Two things that mark greatness in coaches is state championships and Grover Battle has one at Northern Nash.  The other is winning 500 or more games during their coaching career.  You must remember that in high school twenty to twenty five games is about all teams play every year so it is not like colleges when they may play 30 or more every year.

There is a banner hanging in the gym at Northern for one of their legendary coaches Bill Ennis.  It is time to make room for one more.

Carmen Richardson sophomore guard for Queens University in Charlotte and former Lady Gryphon was named the Astro Turf  South Atlantic player of the week on November 23rd after scoring 44 points in two games.  She gathered 12 rebounds and 5 assists.

This was a very good year for Kyle Holland who quarterbacked the Eagles of Rocky Mount Academy.  During the season he was honored by Tom Suitor and WRAL TV as The extra Effort award winner and last Sunday he was recognized by the Carolina Panthers and the U S Air Force as a Community Captain.

In order to qualify to be a Community Captain you must do more than excel on the football field but have at least a 3.0 grade point average and do community service work in your community.  Congratulations to Kyle

Wes Bradshaw gave me a heads up this week that I needed to check out the Winter League baseball.  Former Gryphon Brian Goodwin who finished the baseball season in AA baseball which from the Washington Nationals expectations of Brian last season was a major disappointment.  Brian is playing Winter Ball in Venesuela.

This week has just started the second half  of the season which runs through December 29th.  The first half Goodwin hit 289 with 2 homers, a triple and five doubles.

If you recall at the beginning of the 2014 season Brian was scheduled to be the starting center fielder for the Nationals in 2015.  A poor first half of the season Goodwin was hitting a mere 229 when a shoulder injury ended his season and it also ended his dream of playing in Washington in 2015.

Another slow start had Goodwin demoted from AAA to AA and demoted as the Nationals top prospect to the mid 20's.  This either shows the Nationals haven't given up on Goodwin if they haven't it would show injuries are the poor performance by Goodwin  or they are advertising him as trade bait.  The Nationals have several players who have announced they were trying free agency and if the Nationals don't  resign most of them the Nationals will have several holes to fill which could be done by their farm system or trading farm system players for top of the line players from other teams or signing free agents.