Month: September 2019

In a defensive battle at Auman Stadium on Thursday night, the Orange junior varsity football team grabbed its first win of the season, beating Riverside 14-6. The play of the night came from freshman Ronald Cooper, who returned an interception 56 yards for a touchdown early in the third quarter. It was a strong night for Orange defensive tackle Kameron Harshaw, who finished with four tackles for loss. Panther sophomore Jackson Wood also piled up the tackles as Orange improved to 1-1. Orange is scheduled to start its Big 8 Conference schedule on October 10 against Northern Durham at Durham County Stadium. For the record, Erick Villines was the head coach of the JV squad on Thursday night. 

In the past month, the Orange volleyball team won seven of its first eleven matches, beat previously undefeated Northern Durham and swept Northwood for the first time since 2016.

All of which is why Thursday night was so disappointing for the Lady Panthers.

Three-time defending Big 8 Champion Chapel Hill swept Orange inside Tiger Auxiliary Gymnasium on Thursday night in a contest that was never competitive. Chapel Hill, in the unusual role of playing for a share of 3rd place in the Big 8, rolled 25-18, 25-8 and 25-18.

Afterwards, Orange coach Kelly Young gathered the entire team in a corner of the gym and delivered a passionate talk for over ten minutes, almost longer than the 2nd set. The discussion may have gone on longer if the janitors hadn’t started turning out the lights.

A week after Cedar Ridge stunned Chapel Hill 3-2 in Hillsborough, Young looked at Thursday night as more than a battle for third place. It was a litmus test to see whether her squad was ready to step up to the forefront of the Big 8 and challenge Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill and Cedar Ridge for the upper echelon.

Instead, the result was all too predictable. Chapel Hill has swept Orange in its last seven meetings. Orange hasn’t captured a set against the Tigers since 2015.

Young didn’t mince words postgame.

“We have a mentality against Chapel Hill where we come in defeated already,” Young said. “We have to get over that hump.”

Chapel Hill, which has spent the past month without junior Ellen Zwikker (the youngest daughter of former UNC center Serge Zwikker, who was at Thursday’s match), took control of the first set with a 5-1 run. Leading 15-12, Kaya Monrose and Kaya Merker had consecutive kills off the serve of Lauren Stanfa. The Tigers captured the set after a block from freshman Carly Sciborski.

The Tigers started the 2nd set on a 7-2 run off kills from Courtney Zwikker and an ace from Sciborski. Sam Breschi, the daughter of UNC men’s lacrosse coach Joe Brechi, ended the set with consecutive aces.

Orange started the third set with two straight points, its largest lead of the match. Chloe Riley and Lottie Scully had kills for Orange.

The 3rd set had five ties, but Chapel Hill assume command with a 6-1 run off kills from Sciborski and Zwikker. Orange got within 15-13 after several Tiger strikes went wide, but the Tigers ended the set and the match with a 8-3 run. Merkler had the final kill.

Orange (7-5, 2-2 in the Big 8) will play three matches next week. They host East Chapel Hill on Monday, travel to Southern Durham on Tuesday and host Northern Durham on Thursday.

In the meantime, Young hopes her team’s latest loss to Chapel Hill will serve as a lesson.

“The past few years, we’ve been beaten consistently by them,” Young said. “They’re state runner-ups. They got far (in the state playoffs). But they’re human. They’re another team just like anybody else. They’re beatable. Cedar Ridge proved that. We have to decide if we want it or not.”

Local high school soccer coaches are not only teachers of the game. Many are also fans.

Chapel Hill’s Jason Curtis, as well as his legendary mentor Ron Benson, wear the colors of Liverpool of England’s Premier League. For Curtis and Benson, times are good. The Tigers won the 3A State Championship last November. Last spring, Liverpool claimed its first UEFA Champions League title/European Cup in 15 years when they defeated English rival Tottenham 2-0.

It would be an embellishment to call Cedar Ridge Coach Chris Walker a fan of Sunderland. Doing so would seem to be a pathway of suffering and perhaps long-term therapy.

Sunderland was a member of the Premier League as recently as 2016. Now, they’ve suffered consecutive years of relegation (when a team finishes in the bottom three spots in the Premier League, they get sent down to the English Championship, essentially AAA baseball) Now, Sunderland is in League One (AA baseball)

But Walker certainly can relate to Sunderland. He’s coached a team in the shadow of giants like Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill an Carrboro. More often than not, he’s taking undermanned teams against schools that often have 60-70 players trying out in early August.

Nights like Wednesday night are when it’s most rewarding.

Facing crosstown rival Orange, the Red Wolves trailed 3-1 with 17:00 remaining. That’s when freshman Nicholas Frank scored two goals in a span of 43 seconds to even the game.

Cedar Ridge (3-5-1, 1-2 in the Big 8) would go on to win in penalty kicks 4-3 to beat Orange at Red Wolves Stadium for the first time since 2015.

Even more remarkably, Cedar Ridge pulled off the comeback despite leading scorer Brandon Garcia getting injured in the final 20 minutes. Garcia, who had a seven-game scoring streak to open the season, left the game and din’t return until the 2nd overtime period.

Fittingly, Frank laced the game-winning penalty into the middle right side of the net. Cedar Ridge junior goalkeeper Ty Corbin made the save on Orange’s final attempt to start a wild celebration among the Cedar Ridge players.

Orange (4-4, 1-2) had a chance to score in the opening 5-minute overtime session, but Elliott Sikes’ wormburner from 18 yards clipped the outside left post.

“I told our guys at halftime we had to go back to our game plan,” said Walker, his voice hoarse from an intense night off coaching. “I pulled Nick in the first half because he told me ‘Coach, I’m not getting the ball.’ And I asked him what he was going to do? I told him he had to do more to get the ball.”

And he did. On consecutive possessions in the 2nd half, Frank received the ball after 20-yard runs. His first goal came from 20 yards away after Orange’s goalkeeper came out of net as Frank collected a gorgeous balll from Reese Weaver.

Less than a minute later, Frank received another pass to even the game.

Orange led penalties 3-2 after three rounds, but Corbin made saves on the last two attempts.

Garcia, Weaver, Erickson Thole and Frank scored penalties for Cedar Ridge.

Cedar Ridge trailed Orange 3-1 with 17:00 remaining at Cedar Ridge Stadium on Wednesday night in the first leg of the Hillsborough Derby. Then Nicholas Frank went to work. He scored two gorgeous goals in a span of 43 seconds as the Red Wolves forced overtime with a 3-3 tie at the end of regulation. In penalty kicks, Frank scored the game-winning goal. Junior goalkeeper Ty Corbin stopped Orange’s final attempt, and the Red Wolves won penalties 4-3 to beat their crosstown rival. Frank now has four goals on the season. In this interview, he called the penalty he converted the most pressure he’s ever felt. It was Cedar Ridge’s first home win over Orange since 2015. 

It Wednesday night didn’t test the Cedar Ridge soccer team’s character, nothing ever will. The Red Wolves trailed crosstown rival 3-1 with 17:00 remaining, but rallied with two goals in a span of 43 seconds. The match reached penalty kicks, where Orange led 3-2 going into the fourth round. Cedar Ridge junior Ty Corbin made back-to-back saves on Orange last two attempts from the spot, the final one sparking a raucous celebration as the Red Wolves on 4-3 in penalties. It was Corbin’s second win in his high school career in penalties. Last year, Cedar Ridge defeated Southern Durham at Spartan Stadium where Corbin ended the game with a save. It was Cedar Ridge’s first win over Orange inside Red Wolves Stadium since 2015. 

Article by Tim Hackett

For Orange High School volleyball, last Thursday was pretty unusual. The Panthers are pretty used to playing Cedar Ridge, their cross-town rivals, but they’re also used to beating them: the Red Wolves’ victory at Orange on Thursday was their first in the series in five tries. That’s pretty unusual. The five-setter was the first time Orange had to go the distance in a match since last August. That’s pretty unusual. Cedar Ridge hit .175 as a team in the match and still won. That’s pretty unusual. And that Cedar Ridge victory came just days after their historic win over Chapel Hill, a team that hadn’t lost a match to another team from North Carolina all year. It doesn’t get a whole lot more unusual than that. 

But on Tuesday night in Hillsborough, everything was pretty much back to normal. Back at home in their first game since Thursday’s thriller, the Panthers (7-4, 2-1 Big 8) eked out a close first set before dispatching the Northwood Chargers (6-7, 1-3) in straight sets, 26-24, 25-15, 25-21. It’s the third straight win in this in-conference series for Orange after the Panthers won both matchups in four sets a year ago. 

The two teams went toe-to-toe to start the tilt. The Chargers served well to start and got out to a 13-10 lead, and Orange had little luck getting the left-side attack in gear. The solution? Switch the offense to the right side. It’s an uncommon strategy at any level of volleyball, but Orange’s Lottie Scully was the girl for the job. Facing that three-point deficit, Kaitlyn Werden back set for a right-side kill, sparking an 8-3 that vaulted Orange into the lead. But the Chargers wouldn’t die: the teams battled to ties at 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 before, fittingly, a Scully ace gave Orange set point and a Scully set for a Werden kill on, you guessed it, the right side, gave Orange the set at 26-24. 

“We’ll feed the right side especially if they don’t have the defenders to block it,” Orange head coach Kelly Young said. “A lot of teams aren’t used to a strong right side attack from a defensive standpoint, so we’ll definitely go to it when we can.” 

The success on the opposite end finally opened up the traditional attacking avenues as the match progressed – Avery Miller and Emma Clements got their looks from the left side, and Erin Jordan-Cornell added a few kills out of the middle. Orange’s offensive diversity was on display in the second set as the Panthers scored the first five points and never looked back. Miller was clinical from both sides all set before Ella Van Tiem appropriately finished it off at 25-14 with another kill from the right side. 

But the Chargers still had some juice left in them. The visitors won five of the first six points and, after Scully responded with back-to-back kills from each pin, Northwood generated a run to establish a 16-13 lead. Young called a timeout, and the Panthers responded by rattling off the next six points to take a 19-16 lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Clements cleaned up the rebound on one of Northwood’s few blocks of Scully for match point, and then the Chargers bump-set a free ball wide to hand Orange the set 25-21 and the match three sets to none. 

Northwood’s serving, especially from Kaela Harris, kept the Chargers in the match early. Young conceded that her players might have been a little unsettled in their first match since Thursday’s events, but said that once they cleaned up their serving and passing in the second set things went a lot smoother. As for Scully, the sophomore setter/right side had a splendid showing in all phases – serving, setting and swinging. Afterward, Young said Scully has been playing through injuries all year and we might just be seeing the beginning of how good Scully could be. 

“She’s not even at her full potential,” Young said. “I’m just waiting for her to be as good as she can be.”

But things won’t get any easier for Scully and the Panthers, as Chapel Hill, the three-time defending conference champs, loom on Thursday. After Orange was able to get back to business as usual on Tuesday, if the Panthers were able to tame the Tigers on Thursday, that would be unusual indeed. 

In the new Big 8 Conference, the top teams play a big game every week. Sometimes, twice a week. A week after beating Chapel Hill and Orange in a 48-hour span, Cedar Ridge continued its torrid pace by beating Northern Durham 3-0 on Tuesday night at Red Wolves Gymnasium. The Red Wolves improved to 10-1, 4-0 in the Big 8 Conference. Cedar Ridge is tied for 1st in the Big 8 with East Chapel Hill. As you may have thought, Cedar Ridge will travel to East on Thursday night in a showdown for first place. Cedar Ridge defeated Bartlett Yancey on Monday night 3-0. In that match, seniors ShiLi Quade and Celeste Pasley helped the Red Wolves to its third straight win. They spoke with Hillsboroughsports.com’s John Franklin after Tuesday’s win over the Knights.  

The realignment of the new 3A/2A/1A lacrosse conferences raised some eyebrows across Hillsborough among players and coaches last week.

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association released new the new conference configurations last Thursday. Orange and Cedar Ridge remain paired together in Conference 9. The biggest surprise isn’t just who joined them, but also who didn’t.

Often, the NCHSAA will keep teams from an existing league evergreen for lacrosse, as well. However, Big 8 Conference members Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill, Northwood and Southern Durham were split off into a new Conference 10. They were joined by Carrboro and Voyager Academy.

Orange and Cedar Ridge are joined in Conference 9 by fellow Big 8 member Northern Durham, and also J.F. Webb, Roxboro Community School, Vance Charter and Vance County.

The release of the new league brought this skeptical response from East Chapel Hill’s lacrosse Twitter account.

Unpopular Opinion: It was nice to have a (now former) Lacrosse Conference that was aligned to our #Big8 Conference… you know, like EVERY OTHER SPORT – made us feel like part of the whole. #PerpetuallyStartingOver @trianglelax @nclaxnews #nclaxscores pic.twitter.com/52WjRpld9x— East Lacrosse (@EastLax) September 12, 2019

Some of the players from both high schools in Hillsborough has a similar reaction.

One lingering question is will everyone in Conference 9 actually have a team?

Vance Charter opened in 2017. Though they offer 15 different sports, they have yet to do so for lacrosse. Vance County, formed after the consolidation of Northern and Southern Vance High Schools in 2018, joined the Big 8 Conference this summer. Even though Northern Vance had a lacrosse team in its final years, Vance County hasn’t fielded its first squad.

Roxboro Community School was slated to play in Conference 8 in 2019, but never made it to the league campaign. After playing four games, they disbanded, leaving Conference 8 to be contested among only Carrboro, Voyager and Webb.

It’s possible the NCHSAA was concerned about creating a league primarily consisting of schools that can’t be relied upon to complete a season or field a team. While Cedar Ridge and Orange are still young programs compared to their neighbors in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, they also have healthy participation and recent playoff success.

Cedar Ridge played for the 2017 3A/2A/1A State Championship. Last May, Orange defeated Northside-Jacksonville for its 2nd-ever state playoff win.

“Honestly, I was surprised,” said Cedar Ridge coach Patrick Kavanaugh about the new alignment. “Typically, the state has tried to keep the all sports conferences as in tact as possible. Obviously, splitting up East, Chapel Hill, Northwood and Southern out of our conference, they didn’t do that.”

For Cedar Ridge and Orange, it’s the exact opposite of conference stability that Chapel Hill and East Chapel Hill became synonymous for. The Tigers and the Wildcats were among the first teams in North Carolina to offer the sport in the late-90s. Long before it was sanctioned by the NCHSAA, Chapel Hill and East often met in the state playoffs when the sport was governed by the North Carolina Lacrosse Association, largely comprised of local head coaches. In fact, the Wildcats and the Tigers played for the 2006 State Championship at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.

Both Kavanaugh and Orange Coach Chandler Zirkle say they will continue to schedule Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill and Carrboro for nonconference games.

“We’re going to keep playing all of those teams,” Kavanaugh said. “They’re longtime rivals, they’re good teams and they’re close. We’re lucky. Orange and Cedar Ridge don’t have to travel 90 minutes to get quality lacrosse games. I teach until 4 o’clock. I’m not going to schedule games on the east side of Raleigh or in Greensboro when I can get quality of games within 20 minutes of Hillsborough.”

Carrboro and Cedar Ridge met for the 3A/2A/1A Eastern Regional Championship in 2016 and 2017.

Zirkle, whose father Franklin is the coach at Leesville Road in Raleigh, also was taken aback by the new league.

“I was a little disappointed that we won’t be playing the same times that we have in the past,” Zirkle said. “They’ve all been really fun rivalries to develop the last few years. Our goal is still going to be to play them. Those rivalries won’t go away.”

However, Zirkle said the new league does offer new possibilities for his team.

“We’re excited about the new opportunity,” Zirkle said. “There’s new competition and some teams that we don’t see all the time. So we’re interested to see what’s the going to be like.”

This week’s Cedar Ridge Red Wolf of the Week is senior soccer midfielder Brandon Garcia. Entering Monday night’s game against Chapel Hill, Garcia had a six-game scoring streak. He ended last week with seven goals and three assists. That included a hat trick in a crazy 6-6 tie against the Durham School of the Arts on September 4. Garcia started the season with a goal and an assist in a 4-1 win over Eastern Alamance on August 19. He has scored a goal in every game except one. The lone exception was against Carrboro, where he assisted on a goal by Reese Weaver. This is Garcia’s third year on the varsity. When he graduates from Cedar Ridge in June, he hopes to move into the field of sports medicine and try to play soccer in his spare time. Garcia and the rest of the Red Wolves will host crosstown rival Orange on Wednesday night at Cedar Ridge Stadium at 6:45.