Month: June 2018

Since Tuesday’s announcement from the offices of the Orange County School System that Cedar Ridge won’t field a varsity football team this fall, there’s been plenty of questions and speculation. There’s also been confusion, which has led to the wrong people being blamed for things they had no control over. To help clarify the situation, here are some answers to the most basic questions surrounding what has happened and what’s ahead.

Who made the final decision to not field a varsity team?

Superintendent Dr. Todd Wirt after consulting with Cedar Ridge Principal Heather Blackmon, Orange County District Athletic Director Bob Hill and Cedar Ridge Athletic Director Andy Simmons. Cedar Ridge Football Coach Scott Loosemore met with Blackmon, Simmons and Hill last Friday.

Did the Orange County School Board have anything to do with the decision? 

No. The School Board hasn’t met since June 11th and the issue has never been formally discussed.

According to the statement released by the Orange County Schools on Tuesday, Cedar Ridge has 51 players in the program (five rising seniors, nine rising juniors, 15 rising sophomores and 22 freshman). Isn’t that enough to field a varsity team?

The issue here isn’t just quantity, but experience, proximity and safety. The press release said there were 51 players, but some of those players have opted not to play citing potential injury. Cedar Ridge’s enrollment last November, based on North Carolina High School Athletic Association figures, was 1,145. That’s the lowest in the Big 8 Conference by nearly 200 students. On top of that, several Cedar Ridge sources say enrollment has decreased to around 1,050 since January. That’s still roughly the size of 3A power Havelock.

However, an increasing amount of Cedar Ridge’s enrollment is Hispanic, and American football isn’t something that many Hispanics grow up with as a priority in their homes. This isn’t exclusive only to Cedar Ridge. Burlington Cummings also has been forced to deal with changing demographics. The Cavaliers won the 2006 2A State Championship and won the Eastern Regional Championship again the following year. In 2016, they went 0-11.

If Cedar Ridge went through with the sesaon, they would have about 25 sophomores and juniors going against opponents like Eastern Guilford (which had 64 varsity players last season), Cardinal Gibbons (79), Hillside (82), Southern Durham (86), and Southern Alamance (81). In football, your quantity often determines your quality.

Orange has the second-lowest enrollment in the Big 8 with 1,324. Why aren’t they having the same problems?

Orange basically has the entire northern end of the county to themselves. Cedar Ridge is fighting with Chapel Hill, Carrboro and East Chapel Hill for the rest of the area. This week, Orange held an intersquad scrimmage and Coach Van Smith says participation is slightly up from last sesaon. Counting JV and varsity, Smith says he has around 110 players, a number that can fluctuate based on whether students want to keep playing. As for why Orange’s numbers are better, see the above answer regarding proximity.

What happens to Cedar Ridge’s five rising seniors?

There’s no clear answer to that right now,  but it is why Monday is shaping up to be an interesting day.

Cedar Ridge will field a junior varsity squad in August, but seniors can’t play on that team. Last season, East Chapel Hill didn’t field a varsity football team, but East seniors were allowed to play at neighboring Chapel Hill High without transferring to CHHS. The decision was made by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board.

Who will decide if a similar arrangement can be made between Cedar Ridge and Orange? 

The Orange County School Board, which dictates all student policy. The next school board meeting is Monday night at 7. That meeting was scheduled months ago. Coincidentally, a group of Cedar Ridge football parents have scheduled a town hall at the school gymnasium, which will also take place on Monday night at 6:30. This town hall was called shortly after Tuesday’s announcement.

CORRECTION: The Town Hall wasn’t scheduled by parents. It was scheduled by the Orange’s County School System.

As fate would have it, Monday’s meeting is the final scheduled meeting for school board members Tom Carr, Donna Coffey, and Michael Hood. If the Cedar Ridge seniors want to play at Orange, they can approach the school board. The next scheduled board meeting is July 7th, but an emergency meeting can be requested.

A long conversation with a longtime local coach was winding to a close recently when he exposed a theory that made my blood run cold.

“I can see a day in 20 years when there are no high school sports.”

No high school sports? Some people would rather go without oxygen.

The coach’s thesis is there will come a time when high school sports would no longer become financially sustainable. Athletes would focus on one sport only, whether its baseball, softball, basketball, wrestling, lacrosse or anything else where they could attain that elusive college scholarship. The days of two-or-three sports atheltes would steadily wither away, as would the purpose of the athlete serving the school.

Instead, the athlete could simply develop their skills with travel teams in the spring, summer and fall. To a lesser extinct, it’s already happpened with Showcase Baseball, which is one-stop shopping for college coaches where top-tier high school talent spend their summers traveling to colleges across the region to play in front of college recruiting coordinators. It’s also happened in boys and girls basketball for decades at the AAU level.

Shifting uncomfortably as I envisioned this plausible scenario, I asked this coach “How would the schools lose money?”

“Because of the loss of football,” he said.

And he we are.

Cedar Ridge was once so gung-ho about football under former coach Lou Geary, it became a tradition to hold Midnight Madness workouts on August 1st, the very second it became legal under NCHSAA bylaws to practice.

Now, the Red Wolves won’t have enough players to field a varsity team this fall. The official announcement came from the school system on Tuesday afternoon, catching even some of the people closest to the program by surprise.

What happened? There are many answers, ranging from the top of the sport to its most basic levels.

Acccording to the Aspen Institute, participation in youth football has declined 19 percent from 2011 to 2016 for kids aged 6 to 17. For the NFL, those numbers are a long-term problem. For high school, it’s a crisis right now.

”There has been a decline in our area,” said Chris Casey, a former Cedar Ridge Head Coach. “Since the NFL came out with its concussion report, it killed the Pop Warner programs and the Orange County Youth Football program. In turn, the numbers at middle school have dropped off and now you are seeing it at the high schools.”

The future of football has been increasingly in question for years now. The truth is, no one knows where the game will be in 30 years at the professional, college or high school level.

As far as Cedar Ridge’s situation is concerned, there are some things we do know.

The first one is there are no winners in this situation.

The players lose, namely the seniors, because they miss out on playing the sport they love. Last season, when East Chapel Hill didn’t field a varsity team, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools allowed Wildcat players to play at neighboring Chapel Hill High while remaining students at East. Whether Orange County Schools will allow Cedar Ridge players the same luxury at Orange remains to be seen. (Cedar Ridge will field a JV team this season, but seniors aren’t allowed on that squad).

The opponents of football, some of whom build their names and incomes off of the game while also desiring its demise, may learn about this situation and think the players are benefitting because they’re “staying safe” by not playing. If that’s true, then the seniors are just surviving life, not living it.

Cedar Ridge students lose because they miss out on the classic atmosphere of a Friday night home game. Granted, Cedar Ridge has struggled since reaching the 2-AA Eastern Regional Championship game in 2010. But where else in Hilllsborough do thousands of people, regardless of color, creed or political affiliation, gather to cheer together? To sing together? To celebrate together? To console together?

Most of all, the coaches lose. The circumstances that head coach Scott Loosemore has dealt with in his career have been nothing short of incredible. He joined the staff in 2015 as an offensive coordinator under former Burlington Cummings head coach Steve Johnson—who never even led one practice.

Johnson suffered a thoracic aortic aneurysm the week before training camp was ready to start. Loosemore stepped in as interim coach while Johnson spent the season recovering.

Loosemore was named the permanent coach in 2016 as crosstown rival Orange rose to prominence under Pat Moser. But adverse situations were nothing new for Loosemore, who led Eastern Guilford for eight seasons, including the 2006 campaign where the school literally burned to the ground.

Knowing Orange would have a numbers advantage because they have an entire side of the county to itself, Loosemore has worked tirelessly at middle schools across Hillsborough to attract students to Cedar Ridge football. He’s held private workouts on Saturdays when he could have sat home and watched the SEC. He’s held signing ceremonies for rising freshman that brought into his sincere message. He’s stayed late after school to attend lacrosse, baseball and basketball games in hopes of selling football to players.

In short, Loosemore has done a lot of work for free, all while being a newlywed and as his father was dying. He did all that not just to win football games, but to simply have the chance.

Unfortunately, the decision to quit was taken out of his hands and made by someone else. And, ultimately, everyone loses.

Eight years ago, the Cedar Ridge Red Wolves were one win away from playing for the 2-AA State Football Championship.

This fall, they won’t field a varsity team.

In a statement released by the Orange County Schools on Tuesday night, the system announced that Cedar Ridge will not field a varsity football team for the 2018 season. The statement cited safety and lack of players as the reason.

“Currently, the Cedar Ridge High School football program has five rising seniors, nine rushing juniors, 15 rising sophomores and 22 freshman who have committed to play football in the fall,” the statement reads. “We have had some of our student athletes in recent weeks choose not to play football for a variety of reasons.”

“After considering the injury data and the number of student athletes committed to play football in the fall, we have decided to not field a varsity football team in the fall of 2018.”

The statement confirmed that the school will field a junior varsity football team and play a full schedule of games.

“This will give our freshman, sophomores and juniors the opportunity to play against peers of similar size and strength,” according to the statement.

Cedar Ridge becomes the second Big 8 Conference school in as many years to not field a varsity football team. In 2017, East Chapel Hill only had a junior varsity squad. Last month, East Athletic Director Randy Trumbower hired Brian Nunn as its new head coach and plans to return to varsity competition in August.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow for a program that was one win away from playing in the 2-AA state championship game in 2010. Since losing to Elizabeth City Northeastern 21-7 on December 3, 2010, Cedar Ridge has gone 21-56 through five head coaches. It’s only winning season in that span was in 2015.

Last spring, Cedar Ridge Football Coach Scott Loosemore said he knew numbers could possibly be a problem for 2018. In 2017, Loosemore attracted enough players from other sports to play varsity, and even had enough for a junior varsity team for the first time in four years. Nonetheless, Cedar Ridge went 1-10.

In the offseason, several Cedar Ridge players told Loosemore they would not be returning for 2018, including starting quarterback Phillip Berger, an all-Big 8 Conference pitcher.

In an attempt to improve participation numbers, Loosemore voluntarily stayed after school to attend basketball, lacrosse, wrestling and baseball games to encourage players to go out for football. He worked with students in the weight room that weren’t football players. His main purpose was to get them to play football.

It was something he did when he was the head coach at Eastern Guilford, a school that is now a 3A power. When Loosemore took over the reigns of the Wildcats in 2004, there were roughly 35 players in the program. Three years later, there were 110, despite the school burning down in November 2006.

While Orange gets the vast majority of players from the northern end of the county, Cedar Ridge has been left to compete with Carrboro, Chapel Hill and East Chapel Hill for the students in the western and southern end.

Cedar Ridge has scheduled a town hall meeting on Monday night at 6:30 inside the school gymnasium.

When then-Orange Principal Dr. Stephen Halkiotis hired Dean Dease in 1984 as football and baseball assistant coach, his final words to his new employee was “Don’t screw it up, boy.”

Well, Dr. H, he didn’t.

On Monday afternoon, Dease gathered his returning players for 2019 in centerfield at the field he created, slaved over, mowed, fertilized, cleaned up and won championships on and told them he was retiring after 31 years as a varsity coach.

When most high school coaches depart (its already happened at three Big 8 schools in the past month), they leave behind a team.

Coach Dease is leaving a program. One that he created.

As word spread of Dease’s announcement on Monday night, generations of players who played under Dease expressed surprise and remorse that an era was ending.

For comparison’s sake, in 2018, Orange has a program. In 1984, they barely had a field. During Dease’s years as an assistant under previous head coach Gary Maske, they played some games at the Cedar Ridge Ruritan Club while the regular field was undergoing renovations. Even after those repairs were completed, the light poles were still inside the stadium. At times, that lead to an obstacle course for outfielders chasing fly balls.

While field quality improved over time, Dease saw it all and saw them all on the road in his early years. Before a game against Hillside in the mid-90s, he got off the bus with his team with his mouth agape as he stepped onto the grass consisting largely of weeds and dirt. He ordered his players to line up in the outfield before starting drills.

“Coach, are you making us run extra laps?,” asked one player.

”No,” answered Dease. “We’re going to pick up rocks.”

After replacing Maske in 1988 as varsity coach, Dease won 504 games and captured 12 conference championships. His last win came against Jacksonville on May 9th in the opening round of the 3A state playoffs. It was the seventh consecutive year that the Panthers have won a playoff game. Only Southeast Guilford has a longer streak in 3A baseball.

If only that could statisfy everyone.

Often in college sports, whether its Urban Meyer or Billy Donovan, coaches begin to look elsewhere when winning becomes so common, it starts to feel like a relief instead of a thrill. Sometimes, Dease didn’t even get that luxury.

When Orange defeated Chapel Hill on April 20th, it led to the Panthers’ 16th straight consecutive playoff birth. He was barely done with his team’s postgame huddle when he found a parent waiting for him along the first base line, waiting to read the coach the riot act for not playing his son.

Dease estimates that was the fifth time it had happened this year. It’s something he’s dealt with, to various degrees, since he took the job. At one point, there were over 900 players in the Hillsborough Youth Athletic Association. At one point in time, the vast majority of them aimed to play at Orange. Some of them stood out and raised their parents hopes of grandeur that they do something beyond Hillsborough. Often, Dease had to break it to grown-ups their little Jimmy or Johnny wasn’t the 2nd coming of Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman or Bryce Harper. Some parents understood.

Others waited for Coach Dease after the game and deliver barbs that stung. Even after all the wins and all the years, some parents forgot that the man behind the uniform and the cap was human.

In April, I spoke with Coach Dease for an hour on an Sunday afternoon for my first article as Sports Editor for the News of Orange. When I broached the subject of retirement, he didn’t seem to give it very much thought. He said it barely entered his mind and called coaching his “obsession.” If he was ready to leave, he didn’t show it that day.

Obviously, something happened between then and now. On Monday night, he revealed he met with Orange Principal Eric Yarbrough and Athletic Director Mike McCauley about possibly retiring the week after Orange’s season ended against Chapel Hill on May 12th. He had retired as a teacher in 2017. This spring, he spent his mornings working at Occoneechee County Club under the direction of Scott Ray, one of his former players.

Yarbrough asked Dease to take a weekend to think about it. So he drove to the Greenville Regional of the NCAA Baseball Tournament, where UNC Wilmington was playing. Dease’s daughter, M’Lynn, is an administrative assistant for the Seahawks. She does everything from filing statistical sheets to holding the radar gun.

While Dease has been to many college baseball games, it was the first time he had ever interrupted his routine long enough to sit down and enjoy a regional college tournament. He found that he loved it.

Then he thought about his family. His youngest daughter, Abby, just finished her freshman year at Orange. He thought back to previous summers, which he barely had time to vacation. A baseball coach’s life is dictated by routine, and part of Dease’s routine was getting ready for summer baseball every June. He could take a vacation, but for only about a week. Then summer ball would start and it wouldn’t end until it was almost time to start another academic year.

Increasingly over the last month, Dease began to think about what a life away from that routine he had lived for 31 years would be like.

Now, he’s ready to try it. He joked that his wife of 26 years, Jan, thought he was crazy for staying with coaching for as long as he has.

1,000 words isn’t enough to summarize Dease’s career and what he’s meant for Orange Baseball and the Hillsborough community at large. It doesn’t touch on the 57 players who have gone on to play college or professionally. Or the endless stories about the thrilling moments in games, like one contest in the 2nd round of the 1992 4A state playoffs against Anson County, where 2nd baseman Craig Swainey tied the game with a 2-run homer in the 7th inning, a game that Orange would go on to win. It’s still a moment that rolls right off of Dease’s tongue.

So over the next few days, we’ll bring you memories of players and coaches from Dease’s past and how much he meant to the community and their lives.

In the interest of full disclosure, I graduated from Orange in 1991 (There. The secret is out. I’m old. But I’m old going to as many concerts as possible). High school was a struggle for me. I spent a fair amount of it not really caring about my grades because I didn’t feel I had much to offer to the world.

For reasons I still can’t remember, I joined Cathy Bennington’s Newspaper class in 1989, a year of tremendous inner turbulence. That February, Mrs. Bennington (I still call my teachers that) asked me to start doing public address announcing for Orange’s JV baseball team.

Me? I sounded more southern than a UNC football fan that didn’t attend UNC. I barely spoke in class. Not just Newspaper class, ANY class. Somehow, I took the job. No pay, of course.

Orange won the first game 11-1 over Graham, which included Orange pitcher Jonathan Hoffman throwing to catcher Scott Hackler throwing to first baseman Jamey Hall for a 1-2-3 double play. Midway through the game, Coach Dease walked into the press box. We had never spoken before and he wondered why the JV team had a public address announcer while the varsity team didn’t. He asked me to do varsity, too.

Extremely slowly and somewhat surely, that was how I made my living with words, whether they came out through a microphone or over a keyboard like I’m typing on now.

So it isn’t enough for me to simply thank Coach Dease for his cooperation with this article. I have to thank him for his cooperation with my life.