The Cedar Ridge softball team’s coronation came with 81-degree temperatures, the warmest day so far this year.
That’s not only summer weather. It’s championship weather.
The high school sports season ends on June 2. If 2017 is any indication, it will be well into the high-80s. On the field, it will be in the 90s.
When Orange won the 3A state softball championship at Dail Field at N.C. State last season, pitcher Christina Givens got lightheaded in the dugout. Trainer Emily Gaddy had to give her cold towels, carbonated beverages and breath mints to finish the game.
There’s no other place Cedar Ridge would rather be.
From the time that Cedar Ridge started the season with a 4-1 win at Eastern Alamance on February 28, it was clear that the 6-12 season in 2017 was a distant memory.
As well as it should have been. Pitcher Rivers Andrews missed her entire junior season with a hip injury. 1st baseman Tori Dalehite’s freshman season was lost after she tore her ACL in her first basketball game.
In other words, Cedar Ridge competed in 2017 without its top two players and anyone around the Red Wolves team will tell you pitchers like Andrews don’t grow on trees.
On Thursday, the Red Wolves completed a coronation to its first softball championship in school history, shutting out Southern Durham 19-0. Naturally, Andrews was perfect in her final regular season game, throwing three innings and striking out nine. Dalehite hit her fifth home run, while Kymberlie Thacker belted her seventh.
Anyone can measure a team’s dominance by the slaughter rule, I.e. beating an opponent by over ten runs in five innings. Half of Cedar Ridge’s 14 wins came that way, but the ones that grabbed the attention of many around the Big 8 came on March 14 when they romped past Northwood 11-0, and did it again two days later 12-0 against the Chargers.
On March 28, Andrews tossed her masterpiece against Orange, a perfect game where she struck out 20 of the 21 Panthers she faced. Overall, Cedar Ridge outscored opposition 140-6 in Big 8 play this season.
Andrews threw six no-hitters this season, finishing 12-1 with a 0.64 ERA. She struck out 158 while walking eleven.
Dalehite, in her first varsity season, led the team with a .614 batting average. She had team-highs in hits (27), RBIs (28), runs (26), and triples (5)
There’s also the power of Thacker, who hit seven home runs and added 20 RBIs.
The rain and snow of a strange spring robbed Cedar Ridge of some potentially interesting non-conference games. On Monday, the Red Wolves were supposed to face Roxboro Community School, the only team to beat the Red Wolves this season. It was canceled.
In early March, CRHS was set to face Western Alamance, a game that fell victim to a late snowfall. The Warriors are 20-3. Perhaps that canceled regular season date was only a rain check for sometime in May.
Regardless, Cedar Ridge softball withered the spring snow and rain to take its first conference championship in a race they controlled from day one.
Now, they want to be playing on June 2nd.