Our Retro Orange Panther of the Week is swimmer Owen Rasinske. Last winter, Rasinske qualified for the 3A State Championships in four different events. He teamed with classmate Matthew Geib, junior Ian Moore and sophomore Evan Phillips to finish 10th in the state in the 400 yard freestyle relay in 3:27.40. Like nearly everything else, the state swimming championships were impacted by the pandemic this year. Instead of the intensity of competing against eight other swimmers in opposing lanes, Rasinske and his teammates competed against the clock in timed finals. He joined Moore, Phillips and Geib to finish 10th in the 200 yard medley relay at 1:42.56. That group finished 5th in the Central Regional Championships. Individually, Rasinske finished 10th in the state in the 50 yard freestyle at 22.31 seconds. He also finished 10th in the state in the 100 yard freestyle with a time of 49.03 seconds. In the Central Regional Championships, Rasinske finished 2nd in the 50 yard freestyle and 3rd in the 100 yard freestyle. Rasinske graduated from Orange in June and is set to take a gap year. For now, he continues to train with his club team at the Orange County Sportsplex.

Our final Orange Panther of the Week for the 2020-2021 academic year is senior track and field athlete Erin Mink. On June 26, Mink finished 7th at the 3A State Track and Field Championships at North Carolina A&T’s Truist Stadium in Greensboro. Mink cleared ten feet. The previous week, Mink came in second at the Mideast Regionals at Southern Lee High School in Sanford. Mink didn’t just excel in the pole vault. At the Big 8 Conference Championships, Mink finished second in the triple jump and fourth in the long jump. This season, Mink Mink finished first in the triple jump at Friday Night Lights at East Chapel Hill High School on June 4. Mink had eight first place finishes for Orange this season in three different events. Her final meet at Orange took place two weeks after she graduated. Later this month, Mink will move in to her new surroundings at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she plans to study biology.

In previous editions, I have called the North Carolina High School Athletic Association a “bloated mess” because of playoff snafus, engorged playoff brackets, and odd selection procedures. But never have I ever called for its abolition. Yet, a group of state legislators are making a concerted effort to overhaul high school athletics by abolishing the NCHSAA. 

Back in the fall of 2019, Senator Tom McInnis who represents sections of Anson, Moore, Richmond, and Scotland counties, began to investigate the inner workings of the Association following an altercation between the Richmond Senior Raiders and the Anson County Bearcats during their non-conference football game in August 2019. The situation resulted in numerous Anson County players being ejected because they were involved in the fracas or left the bench area. Per NCHSAA rules, this led to the disqualification of the Bearcats from the state football playoffs despite winning their conference. 

Anson County did not file an appeal and thus, the case was closed by the NCHSAA. However, that did not stop the senator as he begin to probe into the Association’s financial statements. Since then, this bureaucrat has led the charge to eliminate the Association through House Bill 91 which passed the NC Senate’s committee on education by voice vote. As fate would have it, Sen. McInnis is a member of said committee.

As of the publishing of this article, HB 91 now awaits consideration from the NC Senate Finance committee before moving forwards in the legislative process. Should this bill become law, a 17-member commission would be created to run high school athletics. Nine members would be appointed by the governor, four members selected by the NC House, and four members chose by the NC Senate. These members would be staffed by full-time educational employees.

As the NCHSAA is currently a private, non-profit entity, a new high school athletics commission would be under the direction of the NC Department of Administration.

Ok……Let me get this straight, a bleeding-heart politician got his jockey shorts in a wad over a situation that was created by the students. They had to pay the piper because of their actions and this didn’t settle well to him. When Sen. McInnis talked to NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker about the revisiting the Anson County incident and the Commish said no, the Senator developed a big-time grudge.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when a person holding a political office goes on a tangent, advocating for a special interest within their constituency, and leads a charge for change without having a clue on how to execute the change – that my friends, is the reason for President Ronald Reagan’s epic statement from his 1981 inaugural address:

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

I watched the hour-long video on HighSchoolOT.com and listened to politicians say that dissolving the NCHSAA is for “clarity and transparency”. What a load of malarkey. It seems that the state government wants is another governmental agency, create higher taxes, and to create more of a dependence of government. There’s no telling on how much taxpayer dollars this whole crusade has cost hard working North Carolinians.

For 108 years, the NCHSAA has been the organization that has been the authority on operating high school athletics. They have developed policy and procedures on how to effectively run athletic programs and to provide opportunities to student-athletes to play the sports they enjoy. Since 1990, the Association created an endowment fund to attain the financial security for each public high school in North Carolina for years to come. 

I guess Sen. McInnis didn’t get the memo that over the past 30 years, millions of dollars have been distributed throughout the member school that ensures every student-athlete has the ability to play a sport they so choose. If this bill becomes law and knowing how government works, that money will somehow find a way to line the pockets of the politicians and will defund the schools – the recipients in which the money was collected for in the first place. 

But now, due to a politician’s gripe, all of this might be a thing of the past. It’s just another reason as to why politics has no place in any sport.

Once again, the Cedar Ridge football program is without a head coach just weeks before its season opener.

On Friday night, Cory Lea released a graphic on Facebook announcing that he was returning to Riverside to reassume duties as head football coach. Lea departs Cedar Ridge after one, pandemic-shortened, season where the Red Wolves went 0-6.

Lea was announced as Cedar Ridge football coach in February 2020 after leaving Riverside. He brought along a track record of taking once-successful programs that had fallen on hard times and resurrecting them.

According to a source, Lea informed Cedar Ridge Athletic Director Andy Simmons of his decision to return to Riverside Thursday morning. Lea coached Riverside for four years, starting in 2016. He led the Pirates to its second conference championship in school history in 2019.

In his only season with the Red Wolves, Lea was supposed to have running back Isaiah McCambry return after a promising sophomore season in 2019. But McCambry transferred to Walter Williams, who he led the Bulldogs in rushing with 556 yards in only five games.

If that wasn’t enough, Cedar Ridge lost sophomore quarterback Aidan Seagroves in the first quarter of the season-opener against Northwood. That forced Elijah Whitaker, a senior starting wide receiver, to play quarterback for the rest of the year. The Chargers won 48-0 en route to a share of the Big 8 Conference Championship.

The only game where Cedar Ridge held a lead the entire season came against Vance County on April 9, where the Red Wolves scored the opening touchdown. Vance County held on for a 20-14 win.

Lea’s announcement came exactly seven weeks before Cedar Ridge is scheduled to open its season at Chapel Hill, who will once again become a 4A team in August.

Even worse, it continues the pattern of Cedar Ridge looking for a savior in a football coach that starts with promise and ends with uncertainty. On top of that, the Red Wolves are set to start play next month in the new Central Conference, which includes Eastern Alamance and Western Alamance, both of whom won games in the 3A State Playoffs last spring.

Eleven years ago, the Red Wolves were one win away from playing for the 2-AA State Championship. Now, they’re searching for its sixth head coach in six years.

It started in 2015 when Steve Johnson was hired after winning two state championships at Burlington Cummings during a 21-year career, which included coaching the likes of former UNC wide receivers Brandon Tate and Dwight Jones. Johnson never coached a game with the Red Wolves because of thoracic aortic aneurysm suffered just as practice was set to start. His assistant, Scott Loosemore, took over in an emergency role for that year. He remained head coach for three seasons, including Cedar Ridge’s last winning campaign in 2016.

In 2018, Cedar Ridge didn’t field a varsity team because of a lack of players. Loosemore, who never got a full-time teaching position at Cedar Ridge despite plenty of public support, left to become an assistant coach at Scotland County. With Cedar Ridge sporting only a junior varsity team, former Hillside head coach Antonio King was hired in August 2019.

A year later, on the first day of practice, King gave notice to Simmons so he could become an assistant coach at North Carolina Central University. Torrean Hinton coached the Red Wolves in 2020 and led them to a 20-19 win over Chapel Hill on October 11, its first win at the varsity level in 455 days.

Hinton spent the 2021 season as a junior varsity head coach at Riverside. Last season, the Pirates varsity squad was coached by Andre George. They went 0-6, which included forfeits in its first three games.

In 2015, Lea applied to become Cedar Ridge coach before Johnson wound up being offered the position. Instead, Lea went to now-defunct Northern Vance.

Bryse Wilson: The last time Bryse Wilson started a game in Durham, he admitted that his fastball wasn’t working for him.

On Wednesday night, it was.

In front of 4,205 fans at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Wilson threw seven scoreless innings for the Gwinnett Stripers. Wilson left the game in the eighth inning with the Stripers leading 1-0. Reliever Dylan Lee surrendered a solo homer to Durham’s Ryan Boldt, which cost Wilson a chance to win the game. Gwinnett’s Cristian Pache singled home Terrance Gore in the ninth inning for the winning run as Gwinnett prevailed 2-1.

Orlando Arcia homered in the third inning for Gwinnett.

On the night, Wilson allowed only three hits and a walk over seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts. At one point, Wilson retired 12 consecutive batters. Wilson threw 91 pitches, 58 of which were strikes. As usual when Wilson pitches in Durham, many Hillsborough residents and some of Wilson’s previous coaches were on hand to watch.

Dating back to July 21, 2019, Wilson is 10-2 with a 2.53 ERA and a .247 batting average allowed over his last 14 starts with Gwinnett.

This season with the Stripers, Wilson is 4-2 with a 3.97 ERA through eight starts. In 45 innings pitched this season, Wilson has 39 strikeouts and 14 walks.

Gwinnett improved to 23-26. Durham fell to 32-17. The Stripers start a homestead against the Nashville Sounds next Tuesday.

Phillip Berger: Berger made his latest appearance out of the bullpen for the Elizabethton River Riders last Saturday against the Danville Otterbots at American Legion Field in Danville, VA. The Otterbots defeated the River Riders 6-5. Berger suffered his first loss of the season. He threw the sixth and seventh innings for the River Riders and surrendered three runs off three hits. Only one of the three runs were earned. Berger walked one and struck out two.

Since then, Elizabethton has won three in a row, including a 9-2 victory over the Johnson City Doughboys on Wednesday night. Berger still leads Elizabethton with three wins. In seven pitching appearances, Elizabethton is 3-1 with a 3.46 ERA. He has thrown 13 innings and has 12 strikeouts with four walks. Elizabethton is 12-10 and in third place in the Appalachian League’s Western Division. The River Riders are two games behind the Greenville Flyboys for first place.

Joey Berini: Berini continues to play regularly for the Asheboro Copperheads of the Coastal Plain League. On June 25, Berini started at 2nd base for the Copperheads as they defeated the Forest City Owls 4-3 at McCrary Park in Asheboro. Berini went 0-for-4, but had two assists at second base. On June 26, the Florence RedWolves defeated Asheboro 4-2 at Cormell Field in Florence, SC. Berini started at shortstop but finished 0-for-4. On June 27, the High Point-Thomasville HiTome edged Asheboro 10-9 in ten innings. Berini, who started at second base, finished 1-for-5.

The Coastal Plain League crowns it champions over two halves of the season, similar to how the lower levels of minor leagues used to crown champions. Asheboro finished the first half in third place in the Western Division with an 11-11 record, eight games behind the division champions, the Savannah Bananas. Asheboro has opened the second half 2-0 with wins over the Martinsville Mustangs and High Point-Thomasville.

Despite the 3A State Baseball Playoff field being narrowed down from 64 to 32 teams this year because of the pandemic, the Orange Panthers still made the postseason for the 19th consecutive year.

Six Orange players were honored on the All-Big 8 Conference team, which was announced after all the Big 8 teams were eliminated from the postseason.

Junior catcher Davis Horton, the Big 8 Player of the Year, was among the players honored. So was sophomore Ryan Hench, the co-Big 8 Pitcher of the Year.

Also included were senior first baseman Will Walker, sophomore shortstop Jackson Berini, junior right fielder David Waitt and senior centerfielder Jaren Sikes.

Horton led Orange with a .490 batting average and hit safely in every regular season game. He paced the team with 24 hits and 15 RBIs.

In addition to being Orange’s top pitcher, Hench was among the top hitters on the team. Hench, who rotated with Cesar Lozano at third base when he wasn’t on the mound, hit .421. He was second on the team with 16 hits. Hench also tied for the team lead with six doubles. He was such a reliable bat that he usually remained in games as a designated hitter even after being replaced as pitcher. In Orange’s final game of the year, a 5-4 loss to Asheboro in the 3A State Playoffs, Hench went 2-for-4 with a run scored.

Before the season started, Walker committed to play at Pitt Community College. He finished the year with a .324 average with 14 RBIs. Walker’s best stretch of the season came during a four-game winning streak that started in late May. In a 7-0 win over Walkertown on May 25, Walker went 3-for-3 with 3 RBIs. In the sixth inning, Walker hit a ground-rule double that brought in Conner Funk and Jacob Jones. Against Northwood on June 1 in Pittsboro, Walker went 1-for-3 with 2 RBIs, including a RBI single in the third inning that scored Waitt and pushed Orange ahead 4-1. Against Cedar Ridge on June 8, Walker had a two-run single during a 11-run 7th inning as the Panthers came back from a 6-3 deficit to win 13-6.

Berini played his first full varsity season in 2021. He started every game at shortstop, the position where his older brother Joey played for four years at Orange before moving on to East Carolina. Jackson, who lead off in every game, hit .333. Berini led the team with 16 runs. He also had 14 hits, which was tied for third-best on the team.

In Orange’s 10-1 win over Northwood on May 7, Berini reached base in all four plate appearances. He went 2-for-2 with three runs scored. Berini opened the game with a single and scored off a double by Funk. Berini’s base running prowess paid dividends early in Orange’s 3-2 victory over Chapel Hill on June 4 in Hillsborough. Berini walked to lead off the bottom of the first. Horton singled, which led to Berini moving over to third. Horton raced for second base after Berini slid in safely, which led to an errant throw by Chapel Hill that wound up in centerfield. Berini scored, and Horton followed right behind him to give Orange an early lead they would not relinquish.

In his first year as a starter, Waitt hit .304 with 14 hits. In a 19-9 win over Cedar Ridge on May 5, Waitt launched a three-run homer in the first inning over the left field wall. Waitt went 4-for-4 against the Red Wolves with four RBIs and three runs. Against Chapel Hill on May 11 at Tiger Field, Waitt went 2-for-4 with an RBI single in the seventh inning to score Jones.

Sikes was a regular starter in centerfield. He hit .364 and reached base in 12 of 13 games. Against Northwood on June 1, Sikes went 2-for-3, including a triple down the left field line that scored courtesy runner Mason Thompson to tie the game. In the fourth inning, Sikes walked and scored off an error for an insurance run. Sikes was also a relief pitcher who made mound appearances in wins over Walkertown and Northwood.

Tyler Lloyd and Jordan Underwood were named honorable mention All-Big 8 Conference.

Anyone who saw the May 18 game baseball game between Orange and Northern Durham drove out of Hillsborough knowing they saw the two best pitchers in the Big 8 Conference.

In a showdown to determine the #1 seed for the 3A State Playoffs from the Big 8, Orange’s Ryan Hench and Northern’s Matthew Lombard each threw six consecutive scoreless innings. They each struck out eleven. Only one Northern player reached third base when Hench was in the game. Orange loaded the bases twice against Lombard, who calmly got out of the jams in the first and third innings.

Based on North Carolina High School Athletic Association rules, Hench had to leave the game to start the 7th inning as he approached a 105-pitch limit. Against Orange’s bullpen, Northern ended the stalemate with four runs in the seventh to win 4-0.

Hench and Lombard have both been honored as co-Big 8 Conference Pitchers of the Year. The awards were determined after a vote of the Big 8’s coaches after Northern was eliminated in the second round of the 3A State Playoffs by D.H. Conley.

In his first season as a varsity starter, Hench went 3-1 with a 2.22 ERA. He was second in the Big 8 Conference with 49 strikeouts, trailing Lombard’s 51. Hench allowed just 12 runs over 34 innings.

After Northern secured the top-spot from the Big 8 Conference for the 3A State Playoffs, Lombard didn’t make another start for the rest of the regular season. He only made sporadic relief appearances in the second half of the year, which included a win over eventual 4A State Champion Fuquay-Varina. It was Northern’s first winning season since 2016.

Hench, a sophomore, had not started a varsity game entering 2021. His only varsity pitching appearance came in his freshman year when he replaced Jordan Underwood in a win over Eastern Alamance in 2020.

By the time the season ended, Orange Coach Jason Knapp knew he had his top starter for the next two years.

Hench erased all doubt on May 11 when Orange shutout Chapel Hill 5-0 at Tiger Stadium, which sewed up a state playoff spot. Hench delivered the first complete game shutout by an Orange pitcher since Cooper Porter against Cedar Ridge in 2019. He threw a two-hit shutout and allowed just five baserunners, two of whom reached on dropped third strikes. It was a power pitching performance not seen since Byrse Wilson’s senior year in 2016.

In just his second varsity start, Hench struck out 14 Tigers and earned the complete game on only 90 pitches. It was the most strikeouts in a game by an Orange pitcher since Wilson struck out 15 against East Chapel Hill on March 21, 2016. In the 7th inning, Hench drilled an RBI single to the centerfield wall to score Jackson Berini for an insurance run.

Hench’s Chapel Hill start came on four days rest. He made his starting debut the previous Thursday in a 10-1 victory over Northwood in Hillsborough. After Orange opened the game with five runs in the first inning, Hench threw four hitless innings. He had one walk, which was the only baserunner he allowed, and struck out four to notch his first varsity win.

Hench didn’t allow a run in his first three starts. That streak ended against Northwood on June 1 in Pittsboro when he conceded an unearned run in the first inning. After that, the Chargers didn’t get another hit in the subsequent four innings. Hench took the win, which turned out to be his final one of the season.

In the opening round of the 3A State Playoffs, Hench started against Asheboro. Following a shaky start where he allowed four runs in the opening two innings, Hench shut out the Blue Comets over the next four innings as Orange fought back to tie the game 4-4 going into the 7th inning.

Hench’s older brother, Cooper, pitched at Orange from 2017-2020. Cooper Hench went 4-1 over three seasons with a 2.05 ERA. He was slated to be Orange’s top starter during his senior season before the pandemic ruined everything. Cooper, who is now a member of N.C. State’s club baseball team, was a frequent attendee to his brother’s games this season.