Playing in a holiday tournament for the first time since 2019, the Orange women’s basketball team pulled away from Reidsville 71-45 in the opening game of the Eastern Guilford Holiday Invitational in Gibsonville on Monday afternoon. The George sisters played a big role in Orange outscoring the Lady Rams 23-5 in the final quarter. Senior Samantha George scored 13 points, including seven in the second quarter. Samantha’s younger sister, Evelyn George, had a key bucket late in the third quarter after Reidsville reduced the Lady Panthers’ 15-point lead down to four. Evelyn scored ten points, her fourth game in double-figures this season. When they aren’t teammates in Orange uniforms, Samantha and Evelyn often face each other in 1-on-1 games in their backyards. Orange has won five of its last six games and is 7-3 on the season. This year, the Eastern Guilford Holiday Invitational is comprised of seven teams, so it isn’t a tournament. Orange will face Eastern Guilford on Tuesday night at 7 PM, then wrap up the tournament against Northeast Guilford on Wednesday morning at 11.
This week’s Cedar Ridge Red Wolf of the Week is junior men’s basketball guard Colton Taylor. In Cedar Ridge’s season-opener, Taylor led the Red Wolves with 15 points in a 61-40 win over the Durham School of the Arts at Red Wolves Arena. Taylor scored seven points in the final quarter to earn a victory in his first varsity game. Two nights later, Taylor had eight points as the Red Wolves defeated East Chapel Hill 39-32. Taylor had two 3-pointers against the Wildcats. On December 6, Taylor was the only Red Wolf in double figures with 12 point against Northern Durham in Poe Gymtorium. The following week, Taylor had six points as Cedar Ridge defeated Raleigh Charter 55-37. Taylor also put up ten points against Person on December 10. Taylor and his older brother, Rawlins, are usually in the starting lineup for the Red Wolves. Cedar Ridge will return to action on January 4 when the travel to Orange in the crosstown rivalry game. Cedar Ridge has beaten Orange four straight times.
Kayla Hodges: After four seasons at Elon University as an All-Colonial Athletic Association midfielder in women’s soccer, Kayla Hodges has announced she will attend to Virginia Commonwealth University as a graduate transfer in 2022. In her final season with Elon, Hodges was named first-team All-CAA. Last season, she started all 17 games for Elon and scored three goals. Last spring, Hodges helped the Phoenix win its first-ever Colonial Athletic Association Tournament championship. In ten games, she was named second-team All-CAA. Hodges played 42 games in her career at Elon. She was also a factor in Elon fishing the 2021 season with a team-GPA of 3.693, the highest in team history. She will transfer to a VCU team that won the 2021 Atlantic 10 Conference regular season championship. The Rams finished 13-4 overall, 9-1 in the A-10. The Rams narrowly missed out on going to the NCAA Tournament, losing to St. Joseph’s 1-0 in the Atlantic 10 Championship game.
Payton Wilson: Joe Giglio of WRAL.com reported that Wilson will return for another season with the N.C. State football team. Wilson, who was an All-Atlantic Coast Conference linebacker in 2020, suffered a season-ending shoulder injury against Mississippi State on September 11. Wilson completed only one game this season as the Wolfpack finished 9-3. He was eligible to declare for the National Football League draft since he graduated from Orange High in 2018, longer than the three-year minimum period required by the NFL. He is still a redshirt sophomore with the Wolfpack. N.C. State will face UCLA in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on Tuesday.
Connor Crabtree: The Richmond men’s basketball team will go into Atlantic 10 Conference play with a ton of momentum. The Spiders defeated N.C. State 83-74 in the Basketball Hall of Fame Shootout at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte on December 17. It was the first win over an ACC team for the Spiders since they defeated Boston College in November 2019. Crabtree came off the bench to play seven minutes. He didn’t score. Last Sunday, the Spiders knocked off Old Dominion 67-61 at the Robins Center in Richmond. Crabtree came off the bench to play six minutes and didn’t score. On Wednesday, the Spiders routed Bucknell 81-50 in its final game before Christmas. Crabtree played eleven minutes and scored five points. He also had four rebounds and two assists. Richmond went 6-0 in December with wins over Wofford, Northern Iowa and Toledo. The Spiders open Atlantic 10 Conference play against St. Joseph’s on Thursday.
Joey McMullin: The Sandhills Community College men’s basketball team ended 2021 with five straight wins in December. On December 15, Sandhills defeated Shooting for Greatness 108-78 in Pinehurst. McMullin came off the bench and scored 13 points in 12 minutes. McMullin shot 4-of-6 from the field and knocked down a three-pointer. He added three rebounds and one assist. On December 18, the Flyers defeated Thomas Nelson Community College 90-71. McMullin had 16 points for Sandhills, which improved to 10-4 overall. McMullin had 16 points along with a team-high eight rebounds. He shot 7-of-10 from the field, including scoring on his only 3-point attempt. The Flyers are ranked #10 in Division III of the National Junior College Athletic Association. They are also 1-0 in Region X of the NJCAA. Sandhills will travel to Davidson-Davie Community College in Thomasville on New Year’s Day.
Desean Motley: Following in his father’s footsteps, Desean Motley has been promoted to Associate head coach for the Division II Lees-McRae men’s basketball team. Motley was a guard for his father, former Orange men’s basketball coach Greg Motley, at Orange. He averaged 14 points, six rebounds and five assists for the Panthers. Motley played two seasons for Lees-McRae before he started his college coaching career during his senior year with the Bobcats. Lees-McRae is currently 5-2 in Conference Carolinas, 7-4 overall.
Aidan McAllister has had a long relationship with baseball. It didn’t start well.
“If I’m being honest, when I first started playing baseball, I was not good at all,” McAllister said. “I was originally a soccer player and I enjoyed that. It was my stepbrother who got me into baseball.”
Somehow, McAllister made the Hillsborough Youth Athletic Association Hawks in Hillsborough when he was ten years old, but his relationship with the game hasn’t always been smooth over the years. There were time he wanted to quit.
Yet baseball is a game of failure. In the Major Leagues, the best teams will lose 60 times a year. The worst teams usually win 60 times.
Bryson Massey, McAllister’s head coach at Cedar Ridge High School, was barely out of his mother’s womb when his beloved Atlanta Braves lost 97 games in 1990. The next year, they won the National League West and got within one win of a World Championship.
Though he’s been tempted to walk away, like any relationship worth preserving, McAllister have found that baseball is the thing he can’t leave behind.
“I wasn’t as gifted as others,” McAllister said. “I felt like I had to work a lot harder at it. I just wanted to prove to everyone else that I could be good at it. You have to be very mentally strong to play baseball. I’ve done things during slumps that I thought would help me and it only made me worse. I’ve learned from it and it had made me better.”
Last October, McAllister formally committed to play with Hofstra University in Nassau County, NY. On Thursday at the Cedar Ridge Media Center, McAllister formally signed his letter of intent with the Pride, a member of the Colonial Athletic Association.
Massey, Cedar Ridge Athletic Director Andy Simmons and Principal Dr. Carlos Ramirez were on hand for the ceremony, along with McAllister’s teammates and other students.
“He’s a kid that’s going to outwork a lot of people,” Massey said. “We’ve talked a lot about focusing on proving some people wrong. We talked about that at the end of last season. Last summer, he got in the gym and worked on his body and his swing. He got a lot better at baseball and that’s what you have to do.”
While his high school career has consisted of just 16 games over two seasons because of the pandemic, McAllister has continued to work on his game as a first baseman with Cedar Ridge and the Canes Baseball showcase squad during the summer.
“It was definitely the coaching staff,” McAllister said of his reason for committing to Hofstra. “I formed the best relationship with them. I really enjoyed the Hofstra campus. The school is definitely different from North Carolina. it was very big. It was more rural than I expected.”
Officials from the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and various schools across North Carolina had also contacted McAllister about playing.
McAllister briefly played with Team Elite, a showcase team coached by Andrew Cook, who spent last season as the Director of Baseball Operations with North Carolina Central. The Eagles’ shut down its baseball program in June.
Before classes at Cedar Ridge, McAllister is a daily morning presence at the Edge Sports Complex in Durham, where he’s worked on the mechanics of his swing.
“When I came here, we set a plan to reach his goals,” said Massey. “I’ve spent a lot of time with him on and off the field. Throughout this offseason and into the fall, we really focused on finding somewhere to fit him. We talked back-and-forth and felt that Hofstra was the best school that gave him what he needed and the opportunity he deserved.”
Though McAllister hasn’t had as much time in a Red Wolf uniform as he would hope through his first three years at Cedar Ridge, he credits Massey with helping him grow into a Division I-caliber player.
“I was pretty immature when I first came to high school,” McAllister said. “He helped me in that aspect. Maturing was a big part of it for me. That helped a lot. He’s also given me a lot to work on, like with drills. He’s helped me with the recruiting process.”
Next spring, McAllister will get a chance to play a full schedule. It’s something he hasn’t done at Cedar Ridge. The Red Wolves’ season begins at Chapel Hill on March 2.
“I definitely want to make a statement and show my ability,” McAllister said. “I’m just going to continue to put in the work.”
Dean Dease has spent more Sunday afternoons at Orange High ballpark than any other place on Earth.
It’s where he mowed grass, raked dirt, spread fertilizer, sewed grass, picked up rocks and sunflower seeds for 35 years. He was doing this in the early 1990s, a time when some local high schools still had grassless infields. By his own admission, keeping Orange’s field in proper shape was his obsession.
This past Sunday was different. Since retiring as Orange’s baseball coach at the end of the 2018 season, he has kept his distance from the program that he once couldn’t pull himself away from.
Two years ago, Dease’s replacement, Jason Knapp, started work with the Orange Dugout Club on a sign that would hang alongside the entrance to Orange High Baseball field. As visitors walked up the steps towards the press box, they would see the long list of accomplishments that Dease achieved over three decades in Hillsborough. He started at a time when there was only one high school in Hillsborough and just two public high schools in all of Orange County.
After many delays created by the pandemic, various schedules to get the right people in place, the day for the unveiling finally happened this past Sunday.
The irony that it occurred on a cold, rainy December afternoon wasn’t lost on the many current and former players in attendance, which included current Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Bryse Wilson, former UNC catcher and UNC Pembroke head coach Matt McCay, East Carolina shortstop Joey Berini and current members of the Panthers.
Usually, Dease worked on the field amid the ruthless North Carolina summer heat, something he endured growing up in Bessemer City.
However, Sunday’s ceremony was a surprise for Dease, something that his wife Jan and daughters M’Lynn and Abby have kept secret for months.
Once the surprise was finally revealed, Dease couldn’t hold back his emotions.
“That’s beautiful,” Dease muttered as the sign, outlined in white against a black backdrop, was unveiled.
The sign listed Dease’s 12 conference championships, 21 state playoff appearances, two sectional finals, the 2008 2A State Championship, and his induction into the North Carolina Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2019.
“You don’t even remember winning all that stuff, do ya?” Knapp asked Dease.
“No, but I remember all the losses,” Dease replied.
“This is an honor,” Dease said after he composed himself. “I never even considered something like this. First of all, thank you to the players because none of this happens without players. We’ve had some really great players in my years. When I started in 1988 with those guys, even Bobby Miller was good.”
Miller, a former player for Dease’s first varsity team when he replaced Gary Maske as head coach, went on to become Orange’s junior varsity coach during Dease’s final season in 2018. Miller’s daughter, Avery, is an Orange senior volleyball player.
All coaches, regardless of sport, have ups and downs with parents. Dease navigated the ebbs and flows of parental demands as much as anyone who ever coached in Hillsborough, but he honored the mothers and fathers in his speech.
“You’re their discipline, their role models,” Dease said. “Without good parents, we don’t have good players and that’s the bottom line.”
Wilson, who won Game 4 of the National League Championship Series for the Atlanta Braves just 14 months ago, stood on the stairwell that leads to the press box with his father Chad during the ceremony. Wilson pitched for Orange from 2013-2016, where he recorded a 33-4 record with a 0.90 ERA. He was a member of four Big 8 Conference championships. In his senior year, Wilson had two no-hitters, including a perfect game against Eastern Wayne in the opening round of the 2016 3A State Playoffs.
“This had been in the works pre-COVID,” Knapp said. “We were finally able to pull it off. There were a bunch of bumps in the road. I’m glad we could finally make this happen. Coach Dease is a mentor. As a young coach growing up, I always looked up to him. Before I came to Orange, I was always picking his brain. trying to mimic his program, trying to bring things that he had created where I was at. He’s just a guy that all coaches in the state still look up to.”
Dease also honored Knapp.
“I worried when I retired what would happen to the field and to the program,” Dease said, who was drowned out by parents murmuring he was more worried about the field. “Obviously, there’s been no looking back. Jason has taken it to another level. So thanks for everything you’re doing.”
Dease’s daughters inherited their love of the game from their father. M’Lynn, who recently graduated from Coastal Carolina, served as a student manger for the UNC Wilmington Seahawks baseball program. In his speech, Dease expressed remorse that he couldn’t have seen more of her games for the Orange softball team, whose games are a short walk down the hill from the baseball field.
“I never saw a game because we were up here,” Dease said. “Somebody said she hit a double off the field one time, I don’t know. I sacrificed a lot of time with them.”
When Abby Dease was a swimmer at Orange, Dease could be found poolside holding a stopwatch to time her meets.
Sitting around the house in retirement has been a challenge for Dease–almost as much as winning 503 games over 35 years.
Since retiring as a teacher at Orange in 2017, he’s kept himself busy by waking up early on weekday mornings to mow lawns at Occoneechee Golf Club. It’s where one of his former students, Scott Ray, works as the day-to-day manager and another former player helps keep the course looking immaculate.
After three years away, Dease is ready to return to coaching. During the ceremony, he announced he had recently accepted a position to become the new head coach at Durham Academy.
“I’m sticking my foot back in the door,” Dease said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t have any skills!”
After verbally committing to play baseball at Hofstra University in October, Cedar Ridge first baseman Aidan McAllister formally signed with the Pride during a ceremony inside the Cedar Ridge Media Center on Thursday afternoon. The event included Cedar Ridge baseball coach Bryson Massey, Athletic Director Andy Simmons, Principal Dr. Carlos Ramirez and member of the Red Wolves baseball team. McAllister has played for the Red Wolves varsity squad for three years. Last season, he hit two home runs in the opening two innings against crosstown rival Orange. Just a few years ago, McAllister was unsure if he was capable of being a college baseball player, much less a Division I caliber player. McAllister credits his improvement to The Edge Sports Performance in Durham, as well as Coach Massey. McAllister and the rest of the Red Wolves will start their season on March.2 at Chapel Hill.
Even with the omicron variant spreading doubt across the sports landscape once again, it’s still a time for high school wrestling teams to live again.
Traditional holiday tournament are back, at least for now, and it’s giving some of Cedar Ridge’s youngest grapplers a chance to shine on a big stage for the first time.
On Saturday in Knightdale, that person was Kaden Tatro.
Tatro, a sophomore, finished second at 170 pounds in the WRAL Invitational, a two-day tournament at Knightdale High School. Tatro reached the final after pinning Cape Fear’s Gatlan Thompson in the semifinal at 4:54.
From the very beginning of the semifinal, Tatro was in an uphill battle. Thompson scored three takedowns in the opening period, the first only 15 seconds into the match. Trailing 6-4 going into the second period, Tatro earned a quick escape point, but was down 8-5 midway through the match after Thompson scored a leg sweep for another two points.
“It was such an amazing feeling to see Kaden punch his ticket to the finals,” said Cedar Ridge wrestling coach Scott Metcalf. “Especially after he was losing early in his semi-final match then came back and pinned the kid. Shows something about his character and grit. The kid has a lot of ability and continues to get better and better as the season goes along. The future is awfully bright for him.”
In a field of 22 competitors, Tatro lost only to Wilmington Laney’s Alex Hopper in the championship match. It was the best finish for Tatro in a high school tournament. Last month during the Red Wolf Invitational at Red Wolves Arena, Tatro came in fourth place at 170 pounds.
Tatro opened with a 10-8 decision over Samuel Leguizamo of Corinth Holders in the second round. In the quarterfinals, Tatro pinned Ian Troan of the North Carolina School of Science and Math in 3:39 to punch his ticket to Saturday’s semifinals.
It was only the second high school tournament for Tatro, who was a starter for Cedar Ridge as a freshman. Last spring, wrestling season was reduced to only dual matches, individual regional and state tournaments. Traditional holiday tournaments were canceled, as were the consolation rounds of the few individual events that were allowed to continue.
As a sophomore, Tatro has a record of 21-6 with 15 pins. He leads the team in wins and pinfall victories.
Cedar Ridge junior Fernando Martinez earned a eighth place finish in the 120 pound division. As was the case in the Mideast Regionals last summer, Martinez earned a tough draw. Lucas Cotto Jr of Laney, who eventually reached the semifinals and finished third at 120, edged Martinez 7-6 in the opening round.
In the consolation round, Martinez defeated First Flight’s Jacob Kresicki 7-4. He decisioned Havelock’s Seth Bliss 4-2. Martinez is now 19-5 with nine pins this season. He has 74 career wins.
“I was also really proud of Fernando,” Metcalf said. “In his last two wins of the tournament I finally saw the switch turn on for him and things start to click on the mat. It reminded me of one of our former wrestlers Darius McLeod. There was one tournament where things finally clicked for him his senior year. And he went from a good wrestler to great wrestler.”
Cedar Ridge heavyweight Louis Tedder won his opening round match with a pin over South Brunswick’s Eli Hedblom in 3:51. At 195 pounds, Red Wolves sophomore Joe O’Melia pinned Green Hope’s David Preis in 55 seconds. In the consolation round, O’Melia pinned Apex Friendship’s John Marinaccio in :24. O’Melia defeated New Bern’s Vincent Grist via forfeit to advance to the next consolation round, where he lost to Clayton’s Tynell Streeter.
Laney dominated the tournament and won the team championship with 282.5 points. Cape Fear finished seconds with 132.5 points, barely holding off Ocean Lakes, Virginia for third. Ocean Lakes had 132 points. Cedar Ridge finished with 55 points, 20th in a 48-team field.
