Orange High School

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It was ironic after a difficult week, Orange would find a way to win in Wilson.

For years, Historic Fleming Stadium was a place where Orange had a terrible time winning. For a good portion of the day on Saturday afternoon, it appeared Orange’s trip to Wilson would be another trip to nowhere.

Until Garrett Sawyer came up with the swing of his life.

With Orange trailing Pine Forest 4-1 in the fourth inning, Sawyer hit the first grand slam of his career over the left field fence inside a park that has hosted minor league games. It propelled Orange into a 8-4 lead.

The Panthers would use timely hitting and another save from freshman Mason Bullard to hold off the Trojans 9-8.

Sawyer grand slam was his second home run of the season. He was also Orange’s starting pitcher, throwing two innings.

Orange junior Henry Hoffman, who is tied for the team lead with 13 RBIs, slashed a double that landed at the wall in right field to score Cam Brown and Wren Hash. Mason Bullard, who walked earlier in the inning, scored the tying run off a wild pitch with Hunter Albert at the plate.

Sawyer expanded Orange’s lead in the sixth inning with an infield hit that turned into a two-base error after an errant throw to first base. D.J. Woods, a sophomore starting his first varsity game, knocked in Sawyer with a groundout to Pine Forest shortstop Kaydyn Thomas to put Orange ahead 9-5.

The Trojans nearly got it all back in the seventh inning. Three runs crossed the plate starting with a leadoff double from Chase Mims. Ryan Geske knocked in Mims with an RBI single. Jayhlen Brown, who reached on a walk, scored off a wild pitch to cut the Orange lead to 9-7.

Bullard came in as pitcher as Geske scored off a groundout by Pine Forest’s Wade McLamb to third baseman Dominic O’Keefe. With Landon Thompson representing the tying run at third and one out, Bullard induced Rylan Ditmore into a groundout back to the mound. Thomas grounded out to shortstop Kayden Bradsher to end the game.

Person swept Orange in a two-game Central Conference series last week. It was the first time the Rockets won a regular season game against Orange since they became conference rivals again in 2022.

Cedar Ridge 11, Chatham Central 3: 

Ian McGuffey drove in four runs as Cedar Ridge scored eight unanswered runs to defeat Chatham Central in Bear Creek in a nonconference game on Tuesday night.

Aidan Ryan struck out six over four innings in middle relief to earn the win for the Red Wolves. Ryan allowed only two hits and two runs, just one of which was earned.

With the game tied 2-2 going into the fourth inning, Ryan led off the inning with a single to left field. With Walker  Holmes at the plate, Ryan stole second, then swiped third. After Holmes walked, Ryan would score on a passed ball with Jesus Velazques at the plate. Holmes advanced to third on the same passed ball and would score when Velazquez grounded out to first base.

McGuffey drove a double to right field. Quinn Finnegan drew a walk. John Grove sent a grounder to first that was misplayed, allowing McGuffey to score and expanded Cedar Ridge’s lead to 6-3 just before Finnegan was tagged out at third base.

In the fifth inning, Heckman line a single to left field. Heckman stole second and would score off a double by Ryan to left field. Following another single by Dominic Sena, Velasquez drilled a RBI single to left field to score Ryan

John Grove finished 3-for-4 with three RBIs. Ian McGuffey finished a home run shy of hitting for the cycle. He went 4-for-4 with two doubles and a triple.

Cedar Ridge will face New Hanover on Wednesday afternoon in Hillsborough at 5PM.

Mia Davidson: The Diablos Rojos won the championship of the Mexican Softball League last month. Davidson, playing her first season in Mexico, helped Diablos defeat Sultanes de Monterrey 3-0 in the best-of-five Serie de la Reina (The Queen’s Series). The third and deciding game, played in front of 12,424 fans at Estadio Alfredo Harp Help, was captured by Diablos 5-0. The series broke the league record for attendance. Davidson started at first base in all three games of the series. In game one, which the Diablos won 7-6, Davidson hit the game-winning three-run home run in the sixth inning to vault the Diablos ahead 7-5. She finished game one 2-for-4 with three RBIs. The Diablos finished first in the regular season with a 23-5 record, three games ahead of Bravas de Leon.

Bryse Wilson: In his first games for the Chicago White Sox, Wilson threw two innings of middle relief. He tossed a scoreless seventh inning with one strikeout agains the Los Angeles Angels at Rate Field on March 30. Los Angeles won 3-2. On March 29, Wilson threw another scoreless seventh inning, giving up two hits and a strikeout. The Angels won 1-0. The White Sox are 2-3 after losing to Minnesota on Tuesday.

Katie Belle Sikes: The greatest swimmer in Orange High history finished her freshman season at Georgia in the NCAA National Championships in Federal Way, Washington. In the 400 yard freestyle relay, Sikes, Helena Jones, liane Reinstein Bri Robertson finished as second-team All-Americans. They finished 16th in the nation with a time of 3:13.20. Sikes swam the anchor leg at 48.27 seconds. Georgia finished 16h in the country with 58 points. Virginia won its fifth-consecutive national championship with 544 points.

Mary Moss Wirt: Delaware took two-out-of-three games against Elon in a softball weekend series in Newark, DE over the weekend. Wirt scored Elon’s only run in the Blue Hens’ 9-1 win over the Phoenix last Friday. Wirt, starting at catcher, went 1-for-2. On Sunday, Delaware edged the Phoenix 3-2. Wirt went 1-for-3. Against Monmouth on March 23, Wirt finished 2-for-3 with two runs scored as the Phoenix defeated the Hawks 11-0 in five innings. Elon swept the three-game series from Monmouth. In the opening game of the series, Wirt scored a run as a pinch-runner. Currently, Wirt is hitting .242 in 18 games. Elon is 17-14 overall, 9-3 in the Coastal Athletic Association.

Takia Nichols: The North Carolina Central Eagles took the series from Coppin State at CSU Softball Complex in Baltimore over the weekend. Nichols drove in a run off a sacrifice fly in the second inning of Sunday’s series-finale, which the Eagles won 10-0 in five innings. In Central’s 6-2 win over Coppin State on Friday, Nichols drove in the opening run off another sacrifice fly. Nichols went 1-for-2 in the opener. She started all three games at first base. The Eagles are 4-5 in the MEAC. They will host Morgan State at Thomas Brooks Park in Cary starting with a doubleheader on Saturday.

Carson Bradsher: The Division III Averett University softball team dropped a doubleheader to #5 Virginia Wesleyan at Cougar Field in Danville, VA on Sunday. Bradsher, hitting leadoff for the Cougars, went 2-for-7 with an RBI against the Marlins. #14 Randolph-Macon swept a doubleheader from Averett on March 29. Bradsher went 2-for-7 in the doubleheader. Averett is 11-14 overall, 2-6 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Bradsher is leading the team with a .439 batting average. She also leads the team in hits (43), runs (23), and total bases (46).

Ava Lowry: Against Guilford, Lowry went 2-for-5 with a double as North Carolina Wesleyan split a doubleheader against the Quakers on March 25. Lowry had an RBI single as the Battling Bishops improved to 2-2 in the USA South Conference. Over the weekend, Lowry started both games at shortstop as Wesleyan swept a doubleheader from Southern Virginia on scores of 4-0 and 9-1.

Olivia Aitkin: The former Cedar Ridge utility player started in centerfield for Division III Amherst on Sunday. Tufts University swept a doubleheader from the Mammoths. Aitkin also started in centerfield as Amherst split a doubleheader from Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT. In a 6-5 loss to Middlebury, Aitkin drove in a run off a sacrifice fly.

Brianne Foster: Foster started at catcher for Wake Tech and went 1-for-3 on March 26 against Louisburg at Buffaloe Road Athletic Park in Raleigh. Foster finished 1-for-3. Louisburg won 16-1 in six innings. Wake Tech is 14-15 overall, 8-8 in Region X of the National Junior College Athletic Association. Foster has played in 18 games this season and is hitting .205 with six RBIs.

Following its best finish in eight years, three Orange women’s basketball players have been named All-Central Conference.

Senior forward Evelyn George, junior guard Maura McMurtry and senior center Marshea Byrd were named to the All-Conference team.

George was named All-Conference for the third consecutive year. For the second year in a row, George led the team in scoring, averaging 17.1 points per game. She was also the leading rebounder on the team with 8.4 per game. George surpassed 1,000 career points in the Lady Panthers win over Cedar Ridge on January 7. She became the first Orang women’s player with 1,000 points since Lauren Cates, who finished her career with 1,043 points in 2019. This season, George finished with 12 double-doubles. On November 25 against Southern Lee, George finished with 25 points, 13 rebounds and seven steals in a 58-46 Lady Panthers victory. George started the year by scoring 20 points and grabbing eleven rebounds in a win over Garner. While there has never been an official triple-double in Orange women’s basketball history, George nearly had one against Reidsville when she amassed 19 points, nine rebounds and eight steals.

George set her career-high of 26 points against Chapel Hill on December 10. Against conference opposition, her season-high was 25 points in a win against Williams on January 3. George, whose older sister Samantha graduated in 2023 and also played basketball at Orange, committed to Guilford College last month.

For the first time since 2017, Orange reached a conference tournament championship game after beating Cedar Ridge and Eastern Alamance in the Central Conference Tournament.

After finishing second in the Central Conference to eventual 3A State Champion Western Alamance, Orange defeated Swansboro 50-33 in the opening round of the 3A State Playoffs. It was the first time since 2017 that the Lady Panthers won a state playoff game.

For the second year in a row, McMurtry was named to the All-Conference team. McMurtry’s presence on offense was most noticeable when she was absent from the lineup during a stretch in late January. Without their most experienced point guard, the Lady Panthers went from a 58-41 win over Williams in Burlington to a 61-53 loss to the Bulldogs in Hillsborough. McMurtry returned to the lineup the following week and Orange closed the regular season with six consecutive wins.

McMurtry scored a career-high 21 points in a thrilling double overtime game against Southeast Alamance on December 27 in the Southeast Alamance Holiday Hoopla Tournament. The Stallions would pull out a 74-72 win over Orange. Southeast Alamance would go on to win the 2A State Championship in only it second year.

McMurtry scored 13 points in Orange’s senior night win over Eastern Alamance on February 14, another thrilling game where senior Shannon Murphy hit two free throws with one second remaining to pull out a 64-63 win.

Byrd was the starting center for the Lady Panthers on her third year on the varsity. She averaged 6.4 points per game. Against Southern Lee, Byrd had ten points and ten rebounds for her first double-double of the season. Against Western Alamance on January 24, Byrd finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds as the Warriors won 60-48. It was the closest game that any Central Conference team gave Western Alamance this season. In her final regular season home game, Byrd finished with seven points and six rebounds in the win over the Eagles.

Byrd also had eleven points in the victory over Williams in Burlington.

The Lady Panthers were led by first-year head coach Josh Underwood, an Orange graduate who guided the Panthers to an 18-10 season, the most wins in a season for Orange since the 2018-2019 season. Yet it was Walter Williams Jason Cheek who was named the Central Conference Coach of the Year.

Western Alamance’s Allie Sykes was named the Central Conference Player of the Year.

This week’s Orange Panther of the Week is senior lacrosse defender Drew Jouannet. Over the past three years, Jouaneet has been a steady force for Orange lacrosse coach Chandler Zirkle on the defensive end. Since joining the varsity in 2023, Jouannet’s play has placed him on the long list of great Panther defensive players that have led to Orange becoming the dominant lacrosse program locally. Under the tutelage of former Panthers Nick Cardone, Alden Cathey, Sascha Van Praag, Josiah Tisdale and Kale Womble, Jouannet has helped Orange win the last three Mid-Carolina Conference championships and the 3A/2A/1A Eastern Regional Championship. This year, Jouannet has come up big in a win at Southern Alamance, helping the Panthers shut down the Patriots in the second half. In February, Jouannet officially signed with Lincoln Memorial University based out of Harrogate, Tennessee. This year, Jouannet helped Orange as they opened the year with wins over 4A teams Northern Guilford and Pinecrest. In 2024, Jouannet had 53 ground balls and created 22 turnovers for the most successful Orange lacrosse team in school history, going undefeated in the Mid-Carolina Conference and making it to the 3A/2A/1A State Championship game for the first time in school history. Orange will continue its season against Southern Alamance on April 8 inside Auman Stadium in Hillsborough.

Orange Panther of the Week: Drew Jouannet

This week’s Orange Panther of the Week is senior lacrosse defender Drew Jouannet. Over the past three years, Jouaneet has been a steady force for Orange lacrosse coach Chandler Zirkle on the defensive end. Since joining the varsity in 2023, Jouannet’s play has placed him on the long list of great Panther defensive players that have led to Orange becoming the dominant lacrosse program locally.

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We cover Hillsborough Sports. Play-by-play for Orange and Cedar Ridge baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, softball and lacrosse!

Photo by Phil Stapleton 

He commuted daily from Greensboro to Hillsborough, rolling up the school entrance hill inside his trademark Volkswagen Bug.

Such was the dedication of Richard Lyons, who spent much of his life coaching young people in baseball, track and field (which he introduced to Orange County Schools), men’s basketball and in life.

“If he got worn down by all that driving, you didn’t know it,” said Wayne Bynum, one of his former players.

The original Athletic Director at Stanford Junior High School, Lyons passed away last month from pneumonia after suffering a fall at his home.

Lyons was a trendsetter in Hillsborough youth sports during integration. His sacrifices and commitment greatly benefitted northern Orange County, but it came with a heavy price personally.

“As I look back on Mr. Lyons as a coach, I remember him as a guy who could get things out of you that you didn’t know you had in you.,” said Jim Gentry, a member of Orange High’s 1969 3A State Championship team, where Lyons was an assistant coach on the staff of Ken Mauer. “He believed competition brought out the best in a player.”

Lyons was the Athletic Director of Stanford when the school opened in 1969. In the spring of the school’s first academic year, Lyons led Stanford’s baseball team to the conference championship. Gentry was one of the original Chargers.

“I met Coach Lyons for the first time last April at our celebration of the 1969 State Championship Team,” said Anne Purcell, Chairwoman of the Orange County School Board. “I was immediately taken by his wonderful smile and his interaction with the players on the team. Many of the players on the championship team he coached at Central High School and had in Physical Education at Central High. Anyone watching immediately knew that there was a special bond between them. They respected him and he respected each one of them, over 50 years after being their teacher.”

Lyons was the head coach of the Orange men’s basketball team for five years in the 1970s and won several conference championships. He was on the sidelines when Ronnie McAdoo scored 53 points against Durham High School in 1977, still the school record. McAdoo would go on to play at Old Dominion. His son, James Michael McAdoo, suited up for North Carolina from 2011-to-2014 and now plays professionally in Japan.

Yet Lyons referred to his time at Stanford as his glory years. It’s where he was the Athletic Director and coached a varsity of sports.

Lyons had many motivational slogans, one of which was “There is no success without stress.” His words were sired from a lifetime of battling racism, including several instances when innocent situations nearly turned fatal.

His first job after graduating from North Carolina A&T was teaching at Brunswick County in Shallotte. Living in Longwood, he was roommates with a farmer who wore an eyepatch to mask a lost eye and called Lyons “fez,” short for “professor.” He battled the coastal heat and taught inside classrooms that lacked air conditioning but offered plenty of gnats.

After two years in Brunswick County, Lyons arrived to the place where he would build his legacy. He was hired as the junior varsity boys basketball coach at Central High School, the all-Black school during a time when Hillsborough was still segregated. In order to fulfil contractural obligations, Lyons was required to establish a residence in town, so he stayed at a local rooming house.

“He was someone extremely important to Stanford Junior High,” said Nick Walker, who was a physician education teacher at Stanford who eventually coached men’s and women’s tennis at Orange High, Chapel Hill and East Chapel Hill. “He did a lot to organize the school athletics and meant a lot to people. His word was his bond.”

In his spare time, Lyons took graduate courses at North Carolina Central and UNC-Chapel Hill. On Saturdays, he would travel to the county prison farm and coached minimum security felons.

“A lot of folks said that I was crazy to do this,” Lyons wrote in his book “From Start to Finish.” “But I knew that there were a lot of folks out there on the street who were worse than the prisoners. My thinking was that they just had not been caught.”

He would take the prisoners to Chapel Hill for basketball and softball games, something that ended when the guards noticed inmates smelling of alcohol after the obligatory search. It turned out that some of the inmates had been drinking when supposedly going to the woods to relieve themselves.

Lyons was elevated to varsity men’s basketball coach at Central High in 1965.

Eventually, he would join the Orange High staff when the school was integrated in the academic year of 1968-1969.

It was a time filled with tension that often spilled into violence.

In his book, Lyons details one incident were his Volkswagen overheated along U.S. 70 in Hillsborough on his way back to Greensboro. After pulling up to a nearby Exxon, he told the station attendant that his fan belt had broken and needed it replaced. The attendant responded he only provided gas. When Lyons asked for an adjustable wrench, the attendant went inside and returned with a gun. Instead of shooting, the attendant attempted to hit Lyons with the gun and it turned into a struggle where the firearm discharged. Ultimately, the attendant told Lyons to leave or else he would kill him.

Lyons reported the situation to police, where he ran into resistance from some skeptical officers. Ultimately, Lyons didn’t pursue charges based on the fear of a public backlash.

Of the five players on Orange’s 1969 3A State Championship team, four were starters on Lyons’ final squad at Central High School–Roosevelt Chavious, Fred Chavious, Johnny Crump and Calvin Wade.

“Coach Lyons treated me like I was his son,” said Roosevelt Chavious.  “I used to spend 2-3 weeks during the summer at his home and played summer league basketball through the recreation center where he worked. During my senior year he took me to visit colleges, even though he was no longer my coach, and thought Winston-Salem State University was a good choice. He even came to some of my games and would wait and talk to me afterwards.”

Last May, Lyons returned to Hillsborough for a ceremony to honor the 1969 State Championship team organized by various prominent members of the Orange County community. After the team waited 55 years to receive its state championship rings following its victory over Madison-Mayodan inside Sykes Gymasnium at Durham High School, Lyons and his players got their hardware last spring.

“It was probably best I didn’t get my state championship ring until last year,” Bynum said. “If I had gotten it in 1969, I would have lost it a long time ago.”

The Orange men’s tennis team earned an important non-conference victory over Voyager Academy on March 19. The Panthers two senior co-Captains, Cameron Foster and Porter Pelphrey, clinched the match with a win at #1 doubles. Foster and Pelphrey defeated Will Baker and Micah Smith 8-2. Foster and Pelphrey have been teammates in doubles the past two years. Last season, they made a deep run in the Mideast Regional Tournament but came up just short of qualifying for the state championships. Against Voyager, the Panthers got wins from Ryan Jouannet, Kate McAuley, Zachary Cole and Jackson Coleman to win the final four singles matches. In addition to Foster and Pelphrey’s win in doubles, Orange also got doubles wins from McAuley and Jouannet, who defeated Tyler Hinshaw and Graydon White 8-3 at #2. At #3 doubles, Cole and Bryson Waters defeated knocked off Caden Densmore and Alex Wilder 8-6. Earlier this week, the Panthers drove to Pittsboro and defeated Northwood 7-0. The Panthers now go into Spring Break with a 5-5 overall record. They’re 2-4 in the Central Conference. With the state dual team tennis tournament at 64 teams this year, the Panthers are aiming to make the state playoffs. Once plays returns in April, Orange will return to action against Person on April 7 in Hillsborough. They will face Roxboro Community School on April 10, also in Hillsborough.

Orange men’s tennis Cameron Foster and Porter Pelphrey discuss win over Voyager Academy

The Orange men’s tennis team earned an important non-conference victory over Voyager Academy on March 19. The Panthers two senior co-Captains, Cameron Foster and Porter Pelphrey, clinched the match with a win at #1 doubles. Foster and Pelphrey defeated Will Baker and Micah Smith 8-2.