As the fall sports season started this week, there was a major absence for the first time in Cedar Ridge history.
There was no Andy Simmons.
Whether it was fall, winter or spring, Simmons wasn’t just present during almost all Cedar Ridge games. He was present before there was a Cedar Ridge.
In the spring and summer of 2002, Simmons and original football coach Lou Geary would pick up enough rocks to fill the bed of a John Deere Gator Utility cart from the field that would eventually be the centrepiece of Red Wolves Stadium.
“Back then, one of the coaches said we would look back on this and just laugh,” Simmons said.
Eventually, it’s where two 2A State Championship track & field teams would compete. It’s where the 2010 2-AA Eastern Regional Championship Football game would be contested between Cedar Ridge and Elizabeth City Northeastern.
Simmons became the second athletic director in Cedar Ridge history in 2010, replacing Jim Pappas. His final day was June 27, much of which was clearing up the finer points of his myriad of duties to his replacement, Emily Parker.
On Friday night, Simmons returned to his longtime workplace looking rested and relaxed. Cedar Ridge football coach Brent Bailey and his staff formally presented him with the game ball at the Red Wolves Football Jamboree, which will now be named in Simmons’ honor.
“We’ve come a long way in 23 years,” Simmons said during one of his final hours of his old job last June.
It’s still been a busy summer for Simmons. He celebrated his 21st wedding anniversary. His daughter, Reagan, graduated from Cedar Ridge a few weeks before he retired. He helped move her into Wingate University, where she will start playing softball next winter. The past week was spent watching his daughter, Madison, who had two aces and seven digs for the Green Level volleyball team’s win over Wakefield on Tuesday.
In all, Simmons spent 23 years at Cedar Ridge, including eight as a baseball coach and 15 as the athletic director. All the while, he commuted from his home in Wake County. On nights where Cedar Ridge would host a tripleheader in basketball or various other events in the fall or spring, Simmons often wouldn’t leave his office until 9:30 or 10PM. Once he arrived home, a 17-hour day was complete.
Then there was the next day.
It’s easy to see why Simmons says he spent more time at Cedar Ridge than he has at his own home.
Overall, he spent 28 years in Hillsborough.
Simmons was on the staff of legendary Orange baseball coach Dean Dease for five years. He was also a junior varsity coach at Western Harnett for three years, leaving in June 1997.
“I really learned a lot from Coach Dease,” Simmons said. “He really helped me grow as a coach. It’s kind of sad, but I took a lot of his JV players with me when I went to Cedar Ridge.”
For decades, the only divide within Orange County was between Orange and Chapel Hill High School. After integration in 1968, no one was used to Hillsborough being splintered until Cedar Ridge opened in 2002. The dividing lines created quirky situations which Simmons witnessed firsthand.
One of the players who moved with him to Cedar Ridge was named Seth Alston. Seth’s brother, Josh, remained at Orange. The two brothers, still sharing the same household, played against each other. Their mother showed up to games wearing a shirt, half of it colored orange, the other half burgundy.
By the time Cedar Ridge had its first graduating class in 2004, Simmons won his first conference championship.
Along with the rigours of travel, there were other challenges. Football, which was one win away from playing for the 2010 2-AA State Championship, suffered a falloff after Joe Kilby left as head coach for Apex in 2012. In 2018 and 2021, the Red Wolves didn’t field a varsity team. Simmons was pressed into a series of hires aimed at turning around the Red Wolves fortunates. One coach, Antonio King, gave notice on the first day of August training camp in 2019 following one season leading the Red Wolves’ junior varsity team.
Though wins were tough to come by in the Central Conference, as they were for all non-Alamance County schools, Bailey’s hire in 2023 has helped Cedar Ridge regain stability on the gridiron. Bailey’s third team at Cedar Ridge has more players than any of his previous squads.
There were also incredible success stories. In early 2020, Simmons hired a UNC Asheville graduate named Fiona Cunningham, who was working in Chapel Hill, as head volleyball coach. Following the pandemic, Cunningham would lead Cedar Ridge to the 3A State Championship in November 2021, beating North Iredell in four sets at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh. The faces of that state championship team, including Cameron Lloyd, Cameron Lanier, Julie Altieri, Grace Young, Melissa Benkowitz and Anaya Carter, will forever adorn the walls leading into Cedar Ridge Gymnasium.
“That was the high point,” Simmons said. “It was an incredible year.”
After leading Cedar Ridge to a third consecutive conference championship in 2022, Cunningham left to become an assistant at North Carolina Central. She is now the head coach at Division I Le Moyne College in De Witt, New York.
“I’m going to miss the people, the community, the coaches,” Simmons said. “I’ve been able to have some great relationships with people. I was thinking the other day that I coached some kids at Orange. Now, some of their kids are coming to Cedar Ridge in high school. Some of the kids that I coached at Cedar Ridge are now coming back on staff here to serve as coaches. That’s kind of neat to have that impact on people.”
In the fall, Simmons’ days will be spent watching Madison in Raleigh. Next year, he’ll travel to see Reagan on the softball diamond play for Wingate in the South Atlantic Conference.
In his time as athletic director, Simmons watched a punter play for former football coach Scott Loosemore that would go on to be drafted by the Chicago Bears. There are seven volleyball players from Cedar Ridge that will play in colleges from Greensboro to Pennsylvania this fall. There’s a swimmer who will join Cunningham within the Le Moyne athletic program this winter.
Simmons is proud of all of them. But he’s just as proud of the athletes who have gone on to be doctors, attorneys, and first responders.
“Some of them are already making a lot more than I am,” Simmons says.
