In lost season, coaches show off why Charlotte is the ‘baseball capital’ of N.C.
Barely a week after the 2020 high school baseball season began March 2, the burgeoning COVID-19 crisis took it away.
Everything the teams had worked for was gone in an instant.
“It was devastating,” Ardrey Kell coach Hal Bagwell said. “We had eight seniors. You go through an entire off-season and you do everything the coach asks you do to do ... and to have it taken away was really heartbreaking for them. Coaches say, ‘Play as if it’s your last game.’ I had four seniors where it was truly that. We played on a Friday night before the state put a stop to the season. And that’s the last game they’ll ever play.”
For those players, there’s not much coaches like Bagwell can do. But in a show of solidarity, many of the state’s coaches and members of the N.C Baseball Coaches Association are paying tribute to the game and to its players by paying extra attention to game fields, keeping them game-ready, and they’re showing them off in a series of videos on the NCBCA social media page.
Coaches from all over the state have participated in the project, which Bagwell said made him incredibly proud.
“Baseball in North Carolina is as good as there is in the country,” Bagwell said. “I think we’ve proven that through the (MLB) draft. I think the quality of coaching is off the charts. We have great coaches that develop young men in a great way.”
Bagwell said caring for his school’s field has helped him deal with his emotions during the pandemic, and how he’s felt about not playing games. For example, he said instead of using an edging tool, which helps line the edges of the field, he uses a shovel to do it because it takes longer.
“It gives you a sense of purpose,” Bagwell said. “There are more coaches doing phenomenal work with their facilities because they really care about their facilities, their kids. They care what people think when they see it. We could play tomorrow, and most coaches around the state feel the same way. I would ask anyone to try to compare, wherever they are, baseball in their state to ours — because of the quality of the people.”
A few miles down the street at Providence High School, Bagwell’s good friend and rival, Danny Hignight, spends a lot of time keeping his field up, too.
“It’s a matter of pride, really, for our kids,” he said. “I want our kids to walk down there, this year and every year, and be proud it’s theirs.”
But Hignight said doing the work and not playing the games is hard on him.
“To be honest,” said Hignight, who’s married with three kids, “it’s kind of sickening for me. It’s been a blessing to be at home with my family. I’ve never been home for all three birthdays. You go (working with your team) from August to June hopefully, and your wife raises your family. From that aspect, it’s been a blessing, but with what’s happened for our seniors? ... They worked so hard and they didn’t get to enjoy it.”
Hignight paused, collecting his thoughts: “Next year is another year for me, another year to be with kids and coaching baseball. The players only get four, if they are lucky. And even though we have a ton of them going to play college, for most kids, in most programs, their high school team is it.”
Bagwell said that’s why it hurts so much to have no season. Some kids will never play organized baseball again.
State championship coaches like Bagwell and Hignight, they know they’ll be back soon, doing what they love to do, but they also know what this class of seniors is missing and what they will never get back.
So they mow.
“Obviously,” Bagwell said, “Mecklenburg County football is off the chart. It is what it is. Basketball, same thing. But you take Mecklenburg County, Union County, the surrounding counties, just a small area, but this is the baseball capital right here, buddy. It really is.”
