2017 Perfect Game High School Preview Index
There were a couple of random points of view to ponder when talk turned North Davidson High School’s run to a North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) Class 4A state championship in 2016, the program’s first title in 50 years.
Some folks in and around Lexington, N.C., where the school is located, might have shook their heads from side-to-side and muttered “It’s about time.” Others may have nodded their heads up-and-down and stated knowingly, “It was only a matter of time.”
To fully understand which approach best fits, consider the historical perspective. Lexington sits in central North Carolina, about 20 miles south of Winston-Salem, about 60 miles northeast of Charlotte and about 36 miles southwest of Greensboro.
Some of the best high school baseball teams from the Perfect Game High School Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, D.C., Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia) occupy their home fields not far from where North Davidson’s home field lies, and just reaching the NCHSAA playoffs in any given year requires great effort.
So, with that as a point of reference, while the 50-year state championship drought needs to be mentioned – NDHS won back-to-back Class 2A titles in 1965-66 – it is certainly worth noting that the Black Knights have advanced to the NCHSAA Class 3A or 4A playoffs 18 times since 1980 and finished as Class 3A state runner-up in 1985.
Simply put, the program has done a lot of winning in its 65-year history, and for that reason first-year head coach Matt Griffin choses to take the “It was only a matter of time” approach as opposed to the alternative. But he does so while offering a huge caveat.
“I don’t know at the high school level if you can ever say it’s just a matter of time,” Griffin told PG over the telephone this week. “For us, we’ve had some really good players come through our program in the past and we’ve had some deep runs into the playoffs, and in the one-and-done playoffs, one bullet on the bow can end your season.”
Griffin is, indeed, the first-year head coach at North Davidson but he is no stranger to the program. He graduated from NDHS in 1994, headed off to High Point University for four years, and then returned home in 1999 to become an assistant coach to Mike Meadows.
He held that position for 17 years until Meadows stepped down less than four weeks after the Black Knights won the 2016 championship; Meadows wanted to spend this spring watching his son, Jackson, play at UNC-Wilmington.
Meadows had some great teams come through the program the past 17 years, but it seemed like some sort of obstacle would invariably present itself, and the Black Knights would be blocked from winning a championship.
Griffin recalled reaching the NCHSAA regional finals several times, including in 2007 when they had to face a South Caldwell HS team (Hudson, N.C.) that enjoyed the services of an imposing left-hander by the name of Madison Bumgarner.
“We were just always running into some pretty good teams that kept us from getting to the finals,” Griffin said. “Last year we had a special group of kids and we were able to finally get over that hump and get to the state championship series.”
And not only get to the best-of-3 championship series against Green Hope HS (Cary), but win it in a 2-0 sweep. It capped a remarkable 30-2 season that resulted in North Davidson being ranked No. 16 in the final PG High School National Top 50 Rankings.
There were some important graduation losses from that team, to be sure, but, nonetheless, the Black Knights start the 2017 season at No. 27 in the PG HS Preseason National Top 50 Rankings, the highest ranking of any team from the seven-state PG HS Mid-Atlantic Region. And there is a feeling around the Lexington, N.C., area that the Black Knight faithful might not have to wait another half-century to once again enjoy all the pomp and recognition that comes with a state championship season.
… … …
THERE WAS A MOSTLY UNSPOKEN FEELING GOING IN TO THE 2016 SEASON that it could be a magical one for the Black Knights. They had just about their entire team returning from a 2015 season in which they finished 22-5 after a loss in the quarterfinal-round of the playoffs, and the 2016 seniors and juniors had played a lot in 2015 as juniors and sophomores.
“We were really experienced and had been through the battles so they knew what to expect; they knew what it was going to take to win a state championship,” Griffin said. “That group of kids was so hard-working, and they grew up playing together and they knew each other; it was just a group that worked hard the year-around.”
Eight seniors graduated from that group, including six who are now a part of college programs: Edward “E.P.” Reese (N.C. State), Jackson Meadows (UNC-Wilmington), Nick Borgen (Catawba College), Michael Johnson (N.C. A&T), Corey Joyce (N.C. Central) Cole Beeker (Swarthmore College) and Landon Michael (preferred walk-on UNC-Charlotte),
Countering that, there are three returning starters on this year’s roster, which includes eight seniors and 11 juniors: centerfielder Austin Beck, catcher Jed Bryant and middle-infielder Joe Butts, all seniors. Griffin said his top-two pitchers are likely to be senior left-handers Blaine Curry and Peyton Bennett, who he described as “having really good stuff” but are inexperienced because of the senior-dominated pitching staff the team had last year.
Beck has signed with North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Bryant with Wingate (N.C.) University and Butts with Catawba College (Salisbury, N.C.); both Curry and Bennett have D-I interest and it seems likely they will play college baseball at some level.
The gem of the group is Beck, a 6-foot-1, 190-pound speedster (6.5-second 60-yard dash) who Perfect Game ranks as the No. 126 overall national prospect (No. 5 North Carolina) in the class of 2017. Beck, however, hasn’t played in a competitive game since early May, 2016, when he helped the Black Knights win a first-round playoff game by hitting two home runs and driving in five runs.
But then, while warming up for his team’s second-round game on May 13, Beck tore the ACL in his left knee. The injury not only cut-short his junior season and denied him of celebrating a North Carolina state championship, it also sidelined him for the summer and kept him from celebrating a championship with his beloved Dirtbags teammates at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., last October.
In an interview with FanRage Sports conducted last November, Beck described the ordeal: “It was really tough, mentally and physically,” he said. “Sitting there watching your friends play while you’re sitting at home and can’t really do anything, it’s hard. … It makes you appreciate the game a lot more.”
Beck worked extremely hard to come back from the injury even sooner than doctors expected. He’s been hard at it all winter and now after nine months away from the field, he chomping at the bit to get back out there.
“I’m just excited to play baseball again,” he told FanRage Sports. “I’m constantly working to get better every day and night; I want to continue to work hard and improve myself.”
And that’s music to Griffin’s ears, especially coming from someone who can be a definite difference-maker for the Black Knights this spring:
“He sets the table for everything,” the head coach said. “He’s that guy in the middle of your order that the other team is going to have to be careful with a pitch around, so other guys get better pitches to hit. He’s a guy who’s probably going to get the chance to be our closer, he’s our centerfielder and he’s our fastest base-runner. He’s definitely the guy that sets the tone for the entire team, for sure.”
… … …
THE BLACK KNIGHTS ENTERED THE 2016 NCHSAA CLASS 4A PLAYOFFS with a 22-1 record – they won the Central Piedmont League with an 11-1 mark – and as the No. 3 seed in its region. They promptly won first, second, third and fourth-round games by combined scores of 30-7, and went into the regional final best-of-3 series against Providence with a full head of steam.
And then they stumbled. Providence took the first game, 7-2, and for what seemed like the first time all season the Black Knights were playing with their backs to the wall. But they rebounded by winning the next two games, 5-1 and 3-2, and then beat Green Hope by counts of 6-0 and 5-2 to win the championship. And while it was the school’s first state title in 50 years, Griffin is confident that the players never lost that sense of tradition that comes with being a part of the program.
“When they walk into the ballpark (for the first time) and they see how nice our place is and they know from being in his community the success this program has had, they want to be a (graduating) class that keeps that (tradition) going,” Griffin said. “They take pride in how they play just because of the players that have come before them, they take pride in how our field looks … and they just take pride in our program overall.”
With its location in the center of the state and its proximity to Winston-Salem and the Greensboro-High Point area, North Davidson HS is pretty much surrounded by other baseball-loving high schools with players who also take a lot of pride in their programs.
A lot of NCAA Division-I players come out of the area, which shouldn’t be too surprising because there are 18 D-I programs in North Carolina alone (there are also 13 D-II’s and 5 D-III’s). The Central Piedmont League is home to several other tradition-rich programs that adequately prepare the Black Knights for postseason play.
“Coach Meadows started that several years back with (a difficult) non-conference schedule,” Griffin said. “Even though our conference schedule is tough, he wanted to make sure that by the time the state tournament gets here that we were battle-tested and we had seen the best we could see to prepare us for that one-and-done situation.”
Griffin admits that it’s going to take some getting used to not having Meadows around at practices and during games and everywhere else the team gathers. Meadows, Griffin and pitching coach Greg Simpson were all on the staff together for 17 years and now an important part will be missing. But not much will change.
“Like I’ve said, my philosophy and Coach Meadows’ philosophy on how we should play is really similar,” Griffin said. “The different things that we do a lot of times depends on the strength of our players, so I really don’t see the philosophy changing much at all. … We try to put our players in the best position to be successful no matter what that is, and we’ll continue to try to do that.
“We don’t talk about state championships every day, it’s more about being the best possible players we can be and the best team we can be, with that being the ultimate goal to win another state championship,” he concluded. “We’re going to keep our noses down and keep working hard every day and hopefully at the end of the year we’ll have that chance.”