News-Record.com

George Kennedy, the always entertaining Western Guilford soccer coach, has added another title to his resume: Team barber. Kennedy, who has buzzed his own hair for years, offered to give sophomore Tom Allen a trim at practice this week and wound up buzzing half the team. No word yet if it's made them any more aerodynamic.

The number of suspensions issued as a result of the fight late in last week’s Ragsdale-Southeast Guilford game has been reduced from three to two after officials ruled that one of the penalized Falcons had not left the sideline to enter the fight as was orginally ruled on the field. Video review showed that the player in question was on the field before the fracas.
That leaves one suspended player for each team. Neither has been officially identified, but both will miss the next two games.

Sure, moving last week’s rained out games to Monday was a bit of an inconvenience, but it could have been worse. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, wary of interfering with Rosh Hashanah, which started Monday night, opted to reschedule last week’s games for next Monday. That means they’ll play Friday-Monday-Friday – eight games in three days. And many of those seniors will be taking the SAT on Saturday. If there’s a way to invest in Red Bull stock just in the Charlotte market, I’d look into it.

Northwest Guilford quarterbacks coach Steve Oele knows how to take command from head coach Joe Woodruff. At least now, there’s no threat of running laps for it. Oele was a two-year captain for Woodruff at Comstock Park High School in Michigan in the late 1990s. Oele later became a coach at his alma mater, but when Woodruff took over at Northwest last year and called him with a job offer, he jumped at the chance to move south.
“It’s hilarious – I’ll say, “Remember six years ago when that team ran this and we did this?’ and he’ll be like, ‘Yep, got it!’” Woodruff said. “The other coaches get frustrated with it, I think.”

My younger brother visited Central Michigan last weekend and came away with a letter of admission. He also came away with a news tip for me.
Central’s football team was hosting Buffalo, and my family listened to the game on the radio as they drove home. When Buffalo’s starting quarterback suffered a minor injury late in the third quarter, his true freshman backup was called in for one play.
“Let’s see,” the play-by-play man said, rummaging through his notes. “That’s Zach Maynard from Greensboro, North Carolina.”
Yes, that Zach Maynard, the one who was a first-team all-area selection last season after scoring 40 all-purpose touchdowns as Grimsley’s do-it-all quarterback. That was his first snap with Buffalo, although with only one other non-freshman quarterback on the roster, he could see significant playing time as early as next season.
Maynard handed the ball off and didn’t make it back in the game, so he doesn’t even appear in the box score. I’d never have known if not for that twist of fate.
What can I say? It pays to be connected.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Southern Guilford's Scotty Wayne, who died in a car crash yesterday morning, and to those of the other three men involved in the accident. Wayne was 17 years old, the same as my younger brother, so I couldn't help but get a little contemplative as I sat in on Wayne's memorial service at the school today. Here was a kid who had a million-watt future laid out in front of him, gone in the blink of an eye. As one of the pastors on hand said Sunday, none of us is promised tomorrow.

Asad Khan, one of Wayne's friends at Southern, said in a message today that Wayne was the kind of kid "who you just loved to be around. In latin 3 class there was only 6 of in that class, but it was everyones favorite class, because of his sense of humor and energy he had. He was telling about the school that were willing to offer him full ride scholarship for football, and mentioned Duke University. I told him he should go there, he's like thats never gonna happen their's too so many nerds, i wanna have fun."

Here's a video of Wayne that Khan posted on YouTube:

Thursday, October 9
Mt. Zion Baptist Church
1301 Alamance Church Rd.
Greensboro, NC
Visitation will begin at 11:30 a.m. and the funeral will follow at 1:30

Burial services:
Guilford Memorial Gardens
6000 High Point Road
Greensboro, NC 27407
Phone Number: (336) 454-2013

Flowers and donations:
Hargett Funeral Services
905 E Market Street
Greensboro, NC 27401
336-273-8293

Here's another Scotty Wayne tribute video, this one by Asad Khan, who we quoted here before. There's a lot of insight here about the kind of personality we lost:

A relative newcomer to the state, Northern Guilford football coach Johnny Roscoe didn't know anything about Charlotte Christian when he saw the Knights were on his schedule this season.

Now that he's been informed, he kind of wishes he was still in the dark.

"They're pretty good, I tell ya," Roscoe said Tuesday afternoon as he put the finishing touches on his paint job of Northern's field, which will play host to the 6-0 Knights on Friday in the program's biggest test to date.

The Nighthawks, still without a senior class in their second year of operation, have opened their first season of varsity football with a 5-1 record, looking sharp despite a patchwork schedule that's taken them all across the state. They've already traveled to Charlotte to play Victory Christian and Derita Academy, and they've hosted teams from as far as Fayetteville and Raleigh. Their lone loss came 29-7 to East Lincoln, which is now 6-1.

"They've done much better than even I thought they would have," Roscoe said.

But Northern has yet to see anything like Charlotte Christian, which advanced to the NCISAA Division I championship game last season and knocked off defending champ Charlotte Latin 17-9 last week. The Knights have outscored their opponents 199-18 and are ranked sixth in the state in the most recent NCpreps.com poll. They beat East Lincoln 34-16 last season.

The Knights are predictably stocked with talent, with 6-foot-6 defensive end Willis Hall already the recipient of scholarship offers from Duke and Elon and quarterback Luke Bard the younger brother of UNC kicker Daniel Bard.

"They've got so much more depth than we do. When we get dinged up, it hurts us a great deal," Roscoe said, citing specifically the loss of receiver Tyler Davis to a ruptured spleen earlier this season.

But these are the kind of challenges Northern was seeking, and they're the kind Roscoe knows his program has to accept if it's going to grow.

"We've had to mature quick with the teams we've been playing," Roscoe said. "It's been a true challenge for the players."

The Tigers' 6-foot-5 do-it-all wing player chose the Panthers on Wednesday night, passing on offers from UNCG and Appalachian. He had received interest from some bigger schools - Wake, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Miami - but wanted to wrap up his decision before his junior year.

"I decided to stay close to home," Canty told scout.com. "My family thought it was a good decision. I dreamed about going somewhere bigger but deep down inside I want that education and I want to go to college. I took note of how colleges get really interested in you and they told me they really wanted me. I was proud of that.”

Canty was a first-team all-area selection last season after posting 17.5 points, 7.2 rebounds, 2.5 steals and 2 blocks a game. Here's our all-area video interview with him:

UPDATE: Ragsdale head coach Craig Shoemaker on Canty's development: "His freshman year, he would really just take the ball to the basket, shoot an occasional 3-pointer. Now he's got a much more complete mid-range game, he's a much better defender, he's just learned to take over a game. He's still very unselfish, and he understands that taking over a game doesn't necessarily mean he has to score, just put the team in the right position. And he's become much more of a vocal leader. He works so hard that when he says something, it means something to the other guys."

Big win for Reidsville tonight, which can thump its chest and claim it still has dominion over the North State 2-A for another season at least. But I'll go on record to say that wasn't Eastern Guilford's best punch the Rams got. Even though head coach Scott Loosemore said the rain didn't affect his playcalling at all, the Wildcats offense never really got rolling on the Slip 'n' Slide field. Quarterback Jason Davis, who sat out the fourth quarter, did not look like the same quarterback I've seen torch teams this season. He had a fumble and an interception, and against a team as good as Reidsville, that's a death wish. I was amazed to find out afterward that the 17-point win was Reidsville's smallest since the conference realigned. That's Globetrotters-over-Generals dominance.

When I ended an e-mail to Southeast AD Scott Smith this afternoon with "Good luck," he replied, "We are due for some." He can save that karma request, because the Falcons didn't need any luck the way they played in a 28-0 win over Southwestern Randolph that snapped a three-game skid. Southeast has as much talent as anybody and could cause some major headaches down the stretch.

Now THAT was the Northwest Guilford I've been expecting to see for a while. The Vikings play defense well and run the ball well. Ask any coach how that usually turns out.

What's happened to Ragsdale's passing game? Quarterback Tim Romer had at least one touchdown in every game until tonight, when he went 1-of-3 for six yards. He's now thrown five interceptions in the last three games. When you run the ball as well as the Tigers do, though, there's no reason to get concerned. Yet.

Northern is putting together quite a playoff resume in its first season, adding tonight's 6-0 win over North Lincoln to a pile of credible victories. Too bad the Nighthawks aren't eligible for the postseason until next year. That's like giving your kid a Porsche on his 15th birthday.

With this Friday's football games stepping squarely on the toes of Halloween, how are y'all planning to balance your schedules?