Northern Guilford High School Athletic Director Darrell Force said today in an exclusive one-on-one interview that:
“We are spread very thin”.
“I don’t know how these kids do it”.
“This has been tougher than we thought but we are going to make it”.
The Nighthawks AD told us that NGHS is battling travel problems, practice and game headaches and a number of other hicoughs. The JV football team has thrived under the direction of Johnny Roscoe and they sport a first-ever season record of 3-1. The only Nighthawk loss came in last week’s game at Northeast.
The Nighthawks will play their next three games under the lights at the newly renovated Armfield Athletic Center and on Herb Appenzeller Field at Guilford College. The Nighthawks will play all of their football games on the road this season and Force says they are very pleased to have the chance to be playing at Guilford where NGHS head coach Johnny Roscoe attended and played football for the Quakers back in the 1960’s. This Thursday’s game will be at 7pm against Southern Alamance. The Nighthawks try to catch the opposing teams during their open week in their schedules when at all possible.
Force tells us the boys soccer team, coached by former Grimsley leader Herk DeGraw, is playing most of their games at Page and that Pirate AD Rusty Lee has been a huge help in providing space for the Nighthawks. Force says the same thing goes for tennis and Lee is allowing NGHS to use the courts at Page, where super-star John Isner made his mark, for the Nighthawks tennis matches.
Force says the hardest part is having to bus all the players to practices and to different acitvities. “We’re sending two bus loads over to Southwest Guilford for volleyball practices this afternoon”. Force also told us that the Cross-Country team uses the Bur-Mill Park as their home course. Travel-Travel-Travel, that’s been the Nighthawks motto this year.
Right now Northern is a two-year school with only freshmen and sophomores enrolled and they won’t even enter the new NGHS buildings until January 2008. Until then, half are housed at Northwest and the other half at Northeast in modular buildings.
“We are busing students everywhere, says Force”. They go from home to NWG and to NEG and then from NEG and NWG to NGHS and then from NGHS to Page and SWG or to Guilford College…..You get the picture that this is one hard road trip but in the fall of 2008 all of the Nighthawks athletic teams will have a permanent home.
The baseball team coached by Johnny and Justin Smith will have a home at NGHS this spring and a new $10,000 scoreboard donated today by Chris Gunter. Thirty thousand dollars went into the preparation of the baseball facilities at the beginning of last spring.
You gotta believe the Northern Guilford Nighthawks are going to make it and when they do they will have earned their wings.