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1/8/22
2021 Year End Financial Report
NCSCA’s financial report for 2021 is available for members to review in the Members’ Area. All past financial statements are also available for review in the Members’ Area.
12/27/21
Softball Needs Officials
In recent years we have seen a decline in the number of qualified individuals who participate in our sport through offering their services as game officials. Most notably, we see fewer younger people becoming umpires each year. This is a huge problem since we cannot play games without umpires. Statistics over the past ten years reveal that as umpires have become fewer, the number of high schools fielding softball teams in North Carolina has steadily grown with a corresponding increase in the number of games being played. In our state, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) governs, certifies, and manages officials for all high school sports. NCHSAA’s goal is to provide game officials all across the state who are competent, fair, and consistent in their craft. Officiating softball is an exciting profession to be part of as the overall skill level of our athletes continues to increase each year. We encourage anyone who would like to participate in our sport as an umpire to become an NCHSAA certified official. To find out how you can become a qualified softball umpire, you may access information here.
6/25/21
2021 North Carolina Post Season Awards
NCSCA is pleased to announce our All-District and All-State award recipients for 2021. This year’s standout athletes have proven themselves to be at the top of the game among the high school varsity players of North Carolina. We congratulate all recipients of these awards. The lists may be found in our Awards area on the All-District/All-State page.
Our organization, the North Carolina Softball Coaches Association, has been recognizing the notable athletes of high school fastpitch softball in our state with few changes since we began our process in 2005. That process begins with the team’s coach submitting nominations of players that he/she believes are worthy of recognition for their performance during the season, and doing so by long established deadlines. When outstanding players are omitted from an award, it is very likely that their coaches, for whatever reason, did not nominate them. It must be understood that even though the number of high school athletes participating in softball was down slightly because of Covid, the numbers likely still exceeded 5000 players on the 363 schools that fielded varsity teams this year. Unlike coach organizations in other sports, we choose to recognize more than just a tiny token handful of our top athletes. Recognition of the top players from such a large number of teams is an impossible task if the coach does not bring attention to the player. We urge all players, parents, and fans to make sure your coach is reminded of our post season awards process next year.
The North Carolina Softball Coaches Association (NCSCA) is an independent all-volunteer organization of high school softball coaches, and is not associated with the governing body of high school athletics in our state, the North Carolina High School Athletics Association (NCHSAA).
6/20/21
2021 Scholarship Winners Announced
NCSCA is pleased to announce the recipients of our 2021 scholarships. This year, our four winners are:
EAST
Colleen Quinlivan Cary High School Beloit College
Madeleine Kearns Falls Lake Academy NC State University
WEST
Rebekah Davis Weddington High School Appalachian State
Kara Lingvai Pine Lake Prep Clemson University
We extend all the best to our winners as well as all of our Class of ’21 graduating seniors. More information about our scholarship program can be found here.
5/19/21
2021 North Carolina High School Softball Playoff Winners
The 2021 softball playoff finishers are:
| State Champions 1A- Camden County 2A- West Stanly 3A- Southern Alamance 4A- Hoggard |
State Runners-up 1A- South Stanly 2A- South Granville 3A- Alexander Central 4A- East Forsyth |
| Regional Winners 1A East- Camden County (region 1) 1A West- South Stanly (region 6) 2A East- South Granville (region 3) 2A West- West Stanly (region 6) 3A East- Southern Alamance (region 5) 3A West- Alexander Central (region 7) 4A East- Hoggard (region 2) 4A West- East Forsyth (region 5) |
Regional Runners-up 1A East- Bear Grass (region 1) 1A West- Mountain Island (region 6) 2A East- Currituck County (region 1) 2A West- East Lincoln (region 6) 3A East- Gray’s Creek (region 4) 3A West- North Buncombe (region 8) 4A East- Fuquay-Varina (region 3) 4A West- South Caldwell (region 7) |
Congratulations are in order to all the teams who completed outstanding seasons and made it into the state tournament, as well as the many great teams who, after proving themselves through very successful seasons, were squeezed out of their chance to compete because of the changes to normal playoff practices that were purportedly aimed at Covid mitigation.
The reality is that although publicizing this year’s modified playoffs as their effort to reduce the spread of Covid, NCHSAA leadership made many big decisions in designing and seeding this year’s playoffs that likely were not pandemic related. These decisions left many deserving teams out in the cold and created significant sub-standard bracket pairings. The shortcomings of this year’s playoffs included undersizing the brackets in order to eliminate one round of playoff games; justifying the use of predetermined brackets by citing a necessity to reduce first-round travel, and then bracketing automatic qualifiers not by travel distance, but rather through random draw; throwing out Max Preps rankings, a superior tool for seeding brackets, in favor of using conference records alone (never a valid comparison of teams) to determine wild card qualifiers; and finally, without notice on seeding day, choosing to ignore the longstanding rule that guarantees a playoff berth to any team who wins their conference tournament.
The shortcomings of this year’s playoffs in no way diminish the accomplishments of neither those teams fortunate enough to be able to participate nor those worthy teams who were never given the chance to participate. Let us hope that lessons learned this year will lead to better decision-making about future playoff structure and that NCHSAA’s leadership will do a better job of both following their own rules, and avoiding ill-conceived guidelines with inferior playoff seeding practices.
Some of the more notable teams conspicuously absent from the 2021 playoffs who were displaced because of decisions surrounding the so-called “Covid modifications” to playoff rules are:
| 1A Lincoln Charter 2A Central Davidson Pisgah Providence Grove Wilkes Central |
3A Cape Fear Person Rockingham County 4A South Central Richmond |
3/19/19 revised 2/2/21
Illegal Equipment
NCHSAA no longer requires umpires to check players’ equipment prior to each game. This, in effect, puts more responsibility on you as coach to make sure your players’ equipment is both legal and game ready. Catcher’s gear with failing straps, cracked helmets, broken face masks, loose or missing attachment screws, cracked and out-of-round bats, and illegal bats, are all your responsibility to check for and not allow to be used in a contest. Remember, the penalty for using an altered bat or a bat that is NOT on the USA Softball legal bat list is: batter is out, batter is ejected, and head coach is ejected! The list of legal bats can be found here.
9/13/18 rev. 12/27/21
North Carolina High Schools… Need a Softball Game?
If you need to add games to your softball schedule, check out our listing. To add your team to the list, send your open dates and contact information to webmaster@ncfastpitch.org .
Advertise your Scrimmages, Tournaments, Camps and Clinics.
Send the information you want posted to webmaster@ncfastpitch.org and we will place it in our “Events” area.
Photo by Donnie Roberts www.the-dispatch.com