Orange catcher Davis Horton made a strong first impression. After transferring from Riverside, Horton went 3-for-5 with 5 RBIs in the Panthers 15-5 win over East Chapel Hill in six innings on Tuesday night at Orange High Field. Horton ended the game with a double that scored Jackson Berini and Conner Funk. But his biggest impact came in the bottom of the second inning when he drilled a 3-run homer to bring in Berini and Will Walker. Pierson Kennedy, Orange’s opening night starter, took the victory on the mound. Ryan Hench, the younger brother of former Orange pitcher/3rd baseman Cooper Hench, went 3-for-4 with a home run and a double. Orange was supposed to play at Vance County on Friday, but the Vipers have forfeited due to COVID precaution. Orange is 2-0 and will host crosstown rival Cedar Ridge on Tuesday night. You can hear that game on Hillsboroughsports.com live!

Now this was worth waiting over a pandemic for.

Entering Tuesday night, Cedar Ridge had lost in six consecutive trips to Northwood. Even the most accomplished Cedar Ridge baseball teams had faltered in Pittsboro in recent years. In 2020, the Chargers pounded the young Red Wolves 15-0. The 2018 Cedar Ridge team, which finished 2nd in the Big 8 Conference, started the league slate with a 19-7 loss at Northwood in five innings.

A year removed from playing just three games because of COVID-19, the Red Wolves didn’t let a lack of game experience bother them in Pittsboro this time.

Cedar Ridge charged out to a 2-0 lead and never trailed, beating the Chargers 8-2 at the Ronald Horton Baseball Complex. It was the first time Cedar Ridge won at Northwood since 2014. It was also the first Big 8 Conference win for Cedar Ridge Coach Bryson Massey, who had a lone league game against Northwood last year before the pandemic hit.

“We remember that game last year,” Massey said. “The guys talked about that. I prepared them and I felt like they were prepared to come out tonight and show who they really are. I challenge these guys to get 1% better every day. If you do that, you’ll get to where you want to be at the end of the season.”

Junior Will Berger earned the win on opening night. He gave up only one hit in two-and-two-thirds shutout innings, with five strikeouts and four walks. Among several revelations on the night was junior Christian Macias, who drove in the game’s opening run with a line drive to centerfield to score Aidan McAllister. Macias would replace Berger with two out in the third inning. Macias threw three-and-one-thirds innings and yielded just three hits and one walk. He struck out three.

B.J. Thornton closed out the game in the seventh inning.

After Macias’ single in the first inning, he advanced to third on a throwing error. Tucker Cothren sent a line drive to center field to knock in Macias.

Senior Grady Ray opened the second inning with a bunt single. After Thornton, who started in right field, walked, Braedyn Jacobson looped a single to right field to score Ray. Northwood Coach David Miller put Zach Barnes in to pitch, but Bryce Clark knocked in Thornton with a sacrifice fly to left field to increase Cedar Ridge’s advantage to 4-0.

The Red Wolves added another run in the fifth inning when Thornton hit a one-out single to right. Jacobson advanced Thornton to second base on a fielder’s choice. Clark then got aboard off an infield error, sending Jacobson to the plate.

Luke Smith scored Northwood’s opening run in the fourth inning off a groundout by Nate Ortiz. Smith started he inning with a line drive single to left.

Cothran reached on an error to start the sixth inning, followed by another error that allowed Ray to reach first. With runners at second and third, Thornton squared to bunt for a squeeze play attempt, but Cothan scored anyway off another Northwood miscue for an insurance run. Ray added another tally off a sacrifice fly by Jacobson.

The Chargers, which lost eleven seniors on a 19-player roster last season because of the pandemic, doesn’t have a senior on its current roster. They have nine sophomores with eight juniors and one freshman. The youth was painfully apparent as the Chargers committed seven errors.

Nonetheless, Cedar Ridge has waited years for a breakthrough victory. With the Big 8 Conference counting only the first meetings between conference opponents in the league standings, this was a vital Cedar Ridge win on several levels.

Now, Cedar Ridge will prepare for its home opener against Chapel Hill on Friday night. The Tigers earned a forfeit win over Vance County on Tuesday when the Vipers had COVID precautions.

“It’s always awesome when you come to Northwood,” Massey said. “You know what you’re going to get. I hope on Friday, we can have the same type of intensity. We want our fans to support Cedar Ridge. Our guys deserve that. They’ve really brought in here. We have a great group of seniors here and they took their lumps from Northwood over the years. They knew what they wanted to do when they came out here tonight and I feel like they succeeded in that.”

It sounds simple, but it’s true.

When Cedar Ridge softball plays well defensively, they win. When they don’t, well…

From one game to the next, Cedar Ridge Coach Allen Byrd has no idea what to expect. Last Tuesday, the Red Wolves played flawless in a 12-2 win at Northern Durham. The next day in Hillsborough, in the midst of wind gusts of nearly 30 miles per hour, Cedar Ridge gave up eleven unearned runs off five errors in a 15-14 loss to the same Northern team.

Fortunately, in Cedar Ridge’s final trip to Henderson, their gloves and bats worked in perfect unison.

Takia Nichols hit two home runs as Cedar Ridge defeated Vance County 8-3 at Viper Softball Field. Nichols, who now has 25 career home runs at the end of her junior year, finished 4-for-4 with four RBIs, three runs scored and a double.

Sophomore Hayley King threw a complete game for her seventh win of the year. King struck out three and held the Vipers to seven hits.

Naturally, Cedar Ridge didn’t commit an error in the game. On April 8, the Red Wolves made two errors, leading to three unearned runs, in a 7-4 Vance County win in Hillsborough.

Nichols blasted a solo homer over the centerfield wall to open the scoring in the third inning. Ava Lowry walked, then advanced to third on a single by Olivia Aitkin. Senior Reagan Ruhl grounded a two-run single up the middle. Caira Peach lined a single to score Ruhl and push Cedar Ridge’s lead to 4-0.

In the fourth, seniors Emma-Rae Sharp and ShiLi Quade each reached on errors. Then Nichols drilled a laser over the left field wall for a three-run homer to vault Cedar Ridge ahead 7-0.

Nichols hit a leadoff double to start the sixth. Lowry lined a single to centerfield to bring her in.

Lowry, in her final road game, finished 2-for-3. Aitkin went 2-for-4. Peach also had a 2-for-4 day with an RBI.

The win guarantees that Cedar Ridge will finish with a winning record for the fourth straight season.

Cedar Ridge is scheduled to host Southern Durham for a doubleheader on Friday. It will be the final home game for Quade, Lowry, Sharp, Lajoan Stuart, Alexandria Matthews and Marlee Rakouskas.

ORANGE 15, SOUTHERN DURHAM 0

The Orange softball team officially finished its Big 8 Conference season with a 15-0 victory over Southern Durham on Tuesday night. Southern was the final opponent that the Lady Panthers hadn’t played. With the victory, Orange ends the conference season 7-0, its first perfect conference season since Orange started fielding fast-pitch teams in 1998.

It was senior night for first baseman Gracie Colley and third baseman Emma Puckett. Together, Puckett and Colley have each played on Orange’s varsity team since they were freshmen. Together, they have played on squads with a combined record of 38-17 and have won two Big 8 Conference Championships.

Freshman Caden Robinson returned to the lineup and hit a three-run homer, her third dinger of the year. Sophomore centerfielder Serenity McPherson went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs. McPherson has hit safely in all 12 of Orange’s games this year.

Carson Bradsher went 1-for-2. She also stole two bases.

Orange (12-0) will try to complete a perfect regular season with two games later this week. They travel to Northern Durham on Thursday. A nonconfernece game against Southern Alamance, originally set for Wednesday, has been rescheduled for Friday in Graham.

Southern Alamance will face Southwestern Randolph on Thursday night. The winner will be champion of the Mid-Piedmont Conference.

Orange has already clinched the Big 8 Championship and will host a game in the opening round of the 32-team 3A State Playoffs next week.

The Lady Panthers are one of five undefeated teams in 3A softball. The others are D.H. Conley, Piedmont, North Buncombe, and Crest.

This week’s Cedar Ridge Red Wolf of the Week is Bradley Monschein. Right now, Monschein is preparing for Cedar Ridge’s baseball season, but that’s not the reason why he earned the award this week. Last week, Monschein qualified for the 3A Mideast Regional Golf Tournament at Keith Hills Golf Club in Lillington. Two weeks ago during a Big 8 Conference match at Occoneechee Golf Club in Hillsborough, Monschein led Cedar Ridge with a 87 over 18 holes, which was tied for fourth among competitors among five different schools that day. Remarkably, Monschein didn’t take up golf until just over a year ago. While many people were stuck laboring around the house during the COVID-19 pandemic, Monschein got serious about golf and started playing regularly. Now, he is just one of three players in Hillsborough who qualified for the regionals, which is set to take place next week. In the meantime, Monschein will tend to his duties with his first love, baseball. The 3A Golf Mideast Regionals will be held next Monday morning in Lillington.

Everything ends where it began.

Tonight, Cedar Ridge baseball will return to the spot where last season abruptly ended. When the team bus pulled out of Pittsboro onto 15-501 on March 10, 2020, Red Wolves Coach Bryson Massey was focused on the challenge of getting his team to move forward after losing to the Northwood Chargers.

No one on board had any idea they had just played its final game as a team together. Certainly not seniors Cameron Hartley, Francisco Martinez, Grant Fox, and Chris Pearce, who tried to move on to their next game against Northern Durham, which would never see the light of day.

The following night, Rudy Govert of the Utah Jazz would give an infamous press conference where he mocked the coronavirus. Within hours, the NBA suspended its season and the dominoes across the sports world, from metropolitians to small communities, all collapsed with warp speed.

Massey had just started his head coaching career. After spending two years as an assistant at A.L. Brown High in Kannapolis, Massey hadn’t even started to form the shape of his new team’s foundation before it all ended. Without any games, Massey found himself just like many other baseball coaches across the state. He spent the subsequent weeks traveling down sparse roads to take care of his field, usually in complete solitude.

There were just no players to play on it. Massey’s Zoom sessions with his team were better than nothing, but they were no substitute for infield drills.

A year later, as Massey stands outside the batting cage as his young Red Wolves prepare for the most unusual season opener in school history, he reflects on last spring, a surreal memory that he would just as well forget.

“We talked about it a lot,” Massey said. “It’s not just about baseball. It’s about life. When you come out on this field, you never know what could be your last moment. Last year taught these kids a big lesson in life. You’ve got to take every moment like it’s your last.”

Massey will spend the next month trying to create stability, something Cedar Ridge baseball has lacked since the departure of Jamie Athas as head coach in 2018. Before he left for Walter Williams, Athas led Cedar Ridge to a combined 35-13 record in 2017 and 2018. The heart of the pitching staff was Phillip Berger, who won a school-record 21 games in his Red Wolf career. Berger is now a starting rotation pitcher for Division III William Peace University.

Now, Berger’s younger brother Will is the leader of the Cedar Ridge staff. Will Berger, who was a varsity starting quarterback for the football team in the fall of 2019, skipped the gridiron this winter to focus on baseball.

“Will has worked very hard this offseason,” Massey said. “He’s brought in trying to get his arm stronger and just develop into a better baseball player. That’s what he focuses on this offseason. He continued to work while we were shut down.”

Because of the pandemic, many of the teams across the Big 8 Conference lost a chance to field experienced teams last year. Of Chapel Hill’s 18 players, 12 were seniors. Orange lost the 2019 Big 8 Conference Player of the Year Joey Berini, now at East Carolina, along with six other seniors, including starting left fielder Tucker Miller, first baseman Dayne Watkins and pitcher Cooper Hench.

In that regard, Cedar Ridge has a step ahead of the rest of the league. They lost only four seniors. On the other hand, the returning players missed out on a year’s worth of playing experience.

“We didn’t lose 12 players and we have a lot coming back,” Massey said. “But we don’t have varsity experience. We have JV experience and there’s a big difference between JV games and varsity games. And just trying to get these guys used to the speed of the varsity game. We’re trying to get them as many games as they can.”

Another player that Massey will rely on is Matt Hughes, who has committed to Brunswick Community College. Hughes, a senior, started four games as a freshman. Marco Velasquez will also see time on the mound.

“We have a lot of guys that are going to go out there and compete on the mound and give us innings,” Massey said.

Cedar Ridge starts with a tough stretch. They open with Northwood tonight, who reached the 2019 3A State Playoffs. Its home opener is against Chapel Hill on Friday, then they travel to Orange.

Win or lose, the point is Cedar Ridge is competing again. And Massey’s message to his team, after a dormant and empty ten weeks last spring, is to treasure every moment.

“On the first day back to practice, our guys had some butterflies because they hadn’t practiced together as a team. for a year,” Massey said. “We had everybody out here on that first day. You take it for granted sometimes. I looked up and was thankful just to be on a field again.”