Gainey Wins Top Female Award

I bet I can tell you where Rocky Mount's High's Gainey family will be next Thursday night during the NCHSAA awards night at the Dean E Smith Center in Chapel Hill. Pam Gainey Rocky Mount High school girl's basketball coach will be receiving the Doris Howard Award at the Top Female High School coach in North Carolina.

Gainey a Goldsboro native took her basketball skills to ECU where she won the Academic Award as well as best defensive player award her senior year playing for the Pirates.  So now you can tell why Pam loves to get her girls to play defense so much she is an expert having  played that way during her playing career.

Gainey came to the Rocky Mount  schools system in 1989 and took over the reins of the girls basketball program in 1994.  Her career total wins stand at 391 which is good for an average of 18.6 wins a season while losing 169 or about 8 per year.  She has had 10-20 wins seasons including one Regional final game.

She has coached in the East-West high school All Star game in Greensboro as well as she has been on the sidelines coaching the NC-SC basketball Classic held every year in Myrtle Beach.  She is married to Gryphon athletic director Michael Gainey making one of the few combo's in North Carolina high schools where the wife/husband coach their schools basketball teams.  Of course the two Gainey Children  MJ a former member of the Gryphon 2012 state Champion basketball team and Michelle a rising junior at Rocky Mount where she will be playing her third year of varsity basketball.  You think this is a basketball family or what?

Benton Moss has won the Jim Tatum Memorial Award given each year at the University of North Carolina to the student athlete who has performed in his sport with distinction and has contributed to the university community through constructive activities participation.  He has also been chosen as one of the top ten student athletes through having one of the top grade point averages.  Moss is a double major in business and economics at UNC.

You know there are times when school systems make judgement  calls about whether to have school or not base on the weather forecast.  Surely looks as if it was a great call moving the Northern Nash/Rocky Mount and Southern Nash/ Nash Central  sports that were schedule for Friday all the way up to Wednesday.

There was no way any game could have been played Thursday and now even Friday was eliminated as Fike and Hunt chose to wait out the weather and they lost. Baseball and softball between the two schools were rained out both Thursday and Friday forcing a baseball game Saturday afternoon at 2pm and softball at 3pm.

The risk moving up any game because of the weather especially when it is the top rivals meeting each other the risk is great of fans who would normally be there on the regular night  didn't hear about the change or something else was scheduled  where they couldn't make the new time.

Rocky Mount had a great gate Wednesday and the impact on the baseball game by the fifth inning included all the softball watchers who stayed to see the end of a very close baseball game.  If the sun shines as the weather forecast calls for I doubt there will be many other than mamas and papas watching Saturday afternoon when Hunt and Fike clash.  There might be more coaches scouting baseball and softball teams  from the Big East since the Big East Tournament starts Monday in both sports.

Two Big East Football Players Invited to East-West

Only two football players from the Big East were invited to play in this years' East -West All-Star game July 22nd  in Greensboro during the high school coaches association meetings.  Southern Nash's Aramans Martin and Fikes Anthony Evans will be going from the Big East.  No players for any of the three Rocky Mount High schools were invited.

The Big East boys player of the year in basketball Josh Willingham of Hunt will be invited  to play in the basketball  East -West All Star game but the rosters have not been announced as of yet.   He has also signed to play college basketball at Louisburg College.  The girls player of the year Kiana Thomas of Northern Nash is heading to play at Howard University.  Tristan Marshall of Northern Nash has been chosen to play in the All Star soccer game which will be in played on July 22nd  in Greensboro.

Tuesday was the first round of the boys Duel tennis championships and only two teams were qualified from the Big East and Fike  16-0 on the season had little trouble winning it's opening round Match 8-1 over Ledford.  They don't play again until the second round on May 5th.  Southern Nash as the # two seed from the Big East lost to Western Alamance 5-1and failed to advance to round two.
This weekend begins the process of the individual players  advancing in the playoffs so no teams are involved.

Last weekend when the Big East held their conference tennis tournament Northern Nash's  Tremel Davis   won the singles title to be the conference champion in singles.  The duo from Fike of Reid Harris-Sunny Sandhu won the doubles.

Brian Goodwin is playing baseball again but not at AAA Syracuse for the Washington Nationals.  He is playing in AA Harrisburg.  There are many times when players are injured and are sent to the minors to get in shape before being called back up.   This is what is happening here since Brian has not played since mid-July last year because of injury.  Six games played Brian is hitting 318.  It won't be long before he is sent back to Syracuse.

Hobbs Johnson is 2-0 at Buloxi Ms after winning earlier this week.  His ERA is 1.68.  Those type numbers if they continue will send Hobbs to AAA by season end.