High School Baseball and Softball Saturday Morning Notebook:Games scheduled today, but do you think they will play?(Most likely NOT!)/Making a Point, about “The Point”(High Point Andrews)

Here are some of the games scheduled for today/Saturday April 13, but the logical thinking says none of these games will be played today, but since we are not always of the logical sense here, who’s to say they won’t sneak one in today….I have think both N.C. A&T and UNCG will also see their games washed out this afternoon..Some of these high school games are morning affairs, so let’s go ahead and get this posted and we will come back and add in more key talking points to this post…How does that work for you, sort of saying, how does that sit with ya????

*****These baseball games were scheduled for today and we did not see any softball games on today’s slate for the plate….*****
Northern Guilford(11-4/10-2) at Northwest Guilford(13-6/6-1) Saturday at 11am…This was set to be our “Game of the Day”…..
Western Alamance at Eastern Guilford Saturday at 11am
Chapel Hill at Page Saturday at 1:30pm
Western Guilford Alumni Game Saturday at 3:00pm, assuming field conditions are playable.

Here is part of our post from Friday and we were not handing disrespect on anyone, when we laid out this key talking point, we were just making a point and these numbers do get readers attention and we are all sure up for that….

Here are those numbers we posted again, from Friday…
#####An interesting number, but yet maybe an alarming number, High Andrews baseball has been out-scored 191-2 this season…Only two runs for Andrews over the entire 2019 season…That’s and eye-opener…#####

Getting readers attention, but at whose expense???

Well again, no Dis, but just some points, coming in from High Point…And as I told someone last night, I have all the respect in the world for Coach Randy Norris for keeping this HP Andrews baseball program going/alive, but he must be hitting his head against the batting cage some days, wondering what it is going to take to turn this program around and to be able to build a true foundation for baseball, at High Point Andrews High School…

This is a tough nut to crack…Since most of the kids on the team have limited baseball experience of any sort, you are basically coaching high school baseball, and you are really teaching Little League baseball, since the kids do not have the proper baseball background, when they show up for the first day of practice…

At Andrews this is Baseball 101, with a twist that would make most coaches pull or twist all of their hair out, but Coach Norris was smart enough to cut all of his hair off, before he took over this program….

You could say all of the baseball talent in High Point is over at Central/High Point Central, but the HP Central Bison are (4-11)….Southwest Guilford is loaded with talent year-in, year-out, and they are strong again this season, with the SWG Cowboys sitting at (12-4) and they are currently in first place in the Piedmont Triad 3-A Conference…SWG Cowboys tough every year, and they have a coaching staff that is second-to-none, with head coach Reid Holmes, plus his assistants, John Gann and Ken Morgan…Coach Morgan and Coach Gann could be head coaches at any school in the county…

But it is not all about SWG in High Point….

You have the powerhouses on the private school level, with High Point Christian Academy riding a (14-2/6-0) run right now on their season, and not too far behind the HPCA Cougars, you have perennial power Wesleyan Christian Academy at (8-3) overall…In recent years WES has come out on top, in the battle for the private schools’ overall #1 spot in the state, but this year, HPCA is giving the WES Trojans a good run for their money…HPCA topped WES in their first meeting of the season, back on March 19, with the Cougars getting the best of the Trojans, 4-0…The two teams will meet again, as they both close out their regular season play on May 3, at WES, with WES vs. HPCA, Round Two…

So you have very strong and competitive baseball at Southwest Guilford, at Wesleyan Christian Academy and at High Point Christian Academy, and they are lucky to score any runs at all, over at High Point Andrews….

Are we missing the point and what can be done to help HP Andrews get back on some sort of playing field, where they can at least compete on the high school baseball level here in the Triad…Andrews can show up and play and they have continued to do, but you’d like to see them be able to compete…

By studying the other teams in and around High Point, we have to make the point that there is talent over there in High Point….

Then why is baseball not working at Andrews???

The kids that they draw from are not baseball blue bloods, but maybe kids from other parts of High Point would be interested in coming to Andrews if they had the option, but Andrews would need to hit some sort of Academy status, to start drawing kids from other parts of High Point and do you create that sort of distinction, just to boost and save a baseball program???

If you have the talent you can be successful and you can win…High Point Central had talent and they finished (15-9) in 2013, back when Ken Morgan was leading the program….

You know the program is way under the baseball survival radar, when Coach Randy Norris had to get his own son out of Andrews and over to Dudley HS, in order for Randy Norris Jr. to have a decent chance to get to the next level and fortunately he did, landing a ride to Winston-Salem State coming out of Dudley…

Randy Norris Jr. did survive, but his dad Randy Norris Sr. is barely hanging on, over at HP Andrews…And this is a crazy curve, and maybe it is a swerve, when you look at all of the particulars in this equation…

Andrews is still fielding a baseball program, but that point may be in jeopardy, if the HPA Red Raiders don’t get some help soon….Andrews more than struggling, going (5-81) over the past five seasons…Then you have the Dudley program sitting at (20-40) over the past three seasons, then you see Winston-Salem State in the process of closing down their baseball program….

One way to put it might be, “The picture ain’t pretty coming out of “The Point”…

So to offer up some solutions for the High Point Andrews baseball program, and to look at options on which way this should go, we need to start getting to “The Point”…

Here is one saying that can get us in here and we have looked at this Andrews situation before/previously, but as we peer inside this time, the current conditions are more than troubling and something more than just talk, needs to be done…

And with a brief quote to get us to our options, here we go with, “Little Joe from Kokomo, roll the dice and away we go”…

Option One for HP Andrews baseball….Open up the Andrews enrollment so they can draw more than just the inner city students, and help Andrews in their attempts to diversify and land some baseball talent…Whether it be by adding Academy status to Andrews or doing something in that order…

Option Two for HP Andrews….Shut down the baseball program and even the softball programs and just do away with/discontinue baseball and softball, at High Point Andrews High School….

Option Three for HP Andrews….This one really gets down to the heart of the matter, and it may seem a bit drastic, but I have heard this option batted around….Shut down High Point Andrews High School and consolidate all of the Andrews students into High Point Central and Southwest Guilford High Schools….Andrews would close, with Central and Southwest becoming large 4-A high schools…

Those are your three concrete options and they may not make any sense at all to some of you, but we have given you some key talking points, for “The Point”…

In one variation that I have begun to like over the past few minutes, we could send a large number of current Andrews students over to Central and Southwest Guilford and in turn, make High Point Andrews a much smaller school, and rebrand High Point Andrews High School, as the High Point Andrews Academy….

With the High Point Andrews Academy, you can be a specialty high school and you can draw students from any part/territory of the county…This would probably catapulte Andrews down into 1-A high school status, but you would have a fresh start and with sports like basketball and baseball and even softball, wrestling, cross country, tennis, golf; with all of those you should be able to compete….It might just change the way you do football, but with the draw of an academy, and the ability to now draw from all over the county, you ought to be able to field a very good football team…

As for the part about football, just look no further than over at the High Point Christian Academy…They are getting kids from all over the place and they are having kids sign with DI schools, like it is just another everyday occurrence for them…HPCA is doing great with football and they are a very small school/academy..

I really like the Option Three/Plan B….

Rebrand High Point Andrews High School as High Point Andrews Academy and this might save the day and it might save all of the sports teams at “The Point”, as in High Point Andrews High Academy….

I never dreamed when I first started writing this, this morning, that I might strike gold, but I do think I have….I thought High Point Andrews High School was doomed, but I may have just saved the day and it least I have hit on an idea worth looking into….I am all about saving any of our high schools in Guilford County, and if we can help any of our sports/athletic programs, that is Priority A/Numero Uno for me…

Now if I can just get the County to buy into this idea, we may be able to save the High Point Andrews Red Raiders…..

For what we are trying to accomplish here, I am not above looking more into what High Point Christian Academy is doing with their football and baseball programs and then we could draw from those ideas…

What do you think?????

Are we on to something, or do you think we have been over-using/exceeding our daily medications?????

It is not easy to put all of these options and ideas into print, but when you are trying to make a point, for “The Point”, you have to go all-out/”All-In”….

Again, any thoughts on these suggested measures?????

High Point Andrews Academy, have we made “The Point”?????