I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: Coastal Carolina Chanticleers

  • The Dreams Came True!


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    Cinderella Coastal Carolina Celebrates...

    The “sugar” game in the College World Series that was scheduled for the night of June 29th. had to be re-scheduled for the following day due to inclement weather, and the crowd that was able to stay for the game the next day at noon was much smaller than the ones on hand for the two previous night games.  But what a treat for baseball fans whether in the TD Ameritrade Park or watching from their living rooms via the magic of ESPN!

    Coastal relied on three pitchers throughout the nine innings to throw strikes that left the Arizona Wildcats stranded on bases  when the chips were down. An unexpected bonus was a  young man named G.K. Young, a local boy from the little town of Conway down the road from the Coastal campus, who hit a two-run homer that made the final score 4 – 3. The game was a barn-burner, as my daddy would have called it.

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    G. K. Young a Hero

    During a post-game interview with the slugger, G. K. Young said he had dreamed of one day hitting a game-winning home run but that hitting one in the College World Series was more than a dream come true.

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    As for Coach Gilmore, his tears of joy spoke for him. Twenty-one years of keeping on keeping on and believing in himself and his program, his coaches and his players…big dreams of one day taking a team to Omaha and playing in the World Series had already been fulfilled. But to actually win…unbelievable…a miracle. His only regret was that his father wasn’t there to share the moment with him. His father had died two years earlier, and the coach pointed skyward as he said he knew his father was watching.

    When the team returned home the next day, more than 8,000 people greeted them as the conquering heroes, and Coach Gilmore again was near tears. “I came here twenty-one years ago and spent the first six months in a trailer with no indoor plumbing”, he said. “And these guys behind me have made my dreams come true.” They also helped him be recognized as the national coach of the year.

    And so we say good-bye to the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers and to college baseball one more time. Theirs was a Cinderella story with a Hollywood ending. Thank goodness Wimbledon dreams are still alive for another week of drama and underdogs like Sam Querry who defeated Novak Djokovic, the #1 player in the world, move on to the next round. Casa de Canterbury will be tuned in.

    As the Fourth of July approaches, I am reminded of another group of unlikely young men who became heroes as they fought and won our independence to establish a great nation that continues to grant me life, liberty and my personal pursuit of happiness two hundred and forty years later.  I am indebted to those early freedom fighters – flawed as we all are – who never lost faith in their dreams.

  • It’s About Dreams Coming True


    The Grand Slam tennis tournaments are big deals at Casa de Canterbury and this week marks the beginning of the Wimbledon grass courts championships in London, England; so Teresa and I are listening to and half-way watching the ESPN and Tennis Channel coverage of the matches from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily. Wimbledon is always held the last week of June and the first week of July which signifies half of the year is gone and Christmas is only 179 days away. It feels like yesterday was New Year’s Eve and the beginning of 2016, but when Wimbledon is upon us, I can’t argue with the calendar.

    Last night we watched Game Two of the College World Series in Omaha because we have a South Carolina team hanging on by a thread to play for the NCAA National Championship tonight.  The Coastal Carolina Chanticleers lost the first game of the three-game title series, but in a must-win game last night, they prevailed 5 – 4 in a fairy tale finish that signed off at midnight in our time zone. The “sugar” game as we used to call the decisive contest in a tie situation, will be played tonight and we will watch if our nerves can stand it. We will tune in to see if our version of a Cinderella team can put together the pitching and hitting necessary to win one for the Gipper, or in this case, their coach Gary Gilmore who has been coaching at Coastal Carolina for twenty-one years… a coach who took over a program that practiced and played on a baseball field covered by hole-digging moles when he was hired.

    Tonight his team will play under the lights at TD Ameritrade Park in one of the most storied events  in American sports to find out if they can make his – and their- dreams come true. High drama. Great story lines.

    No better story lines than the one today, though, that took place an ocean and continent away in the second round play at Wimbledon.  For a young man named Marcus Willis ranked number 772 in the world, his dreams came true as he had his day in the sun (or in this case under a closed roof) when he played the living tennis legend Roger Federer.  Willis’s road to this moment wasn’t easy. He had to win three pre-qualifying , then three qualifying matches to be admitted to the tournament where he played a first-round match Monday against a much higher-ranked opponent; he won for his seventh win in a row on the grass courts.

     

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    Pinch me, I’m playing Roger Federer…

    Wimbledon Matches Played:

    Federer 90, Willis 01

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    …on Center Court at Wimbledon

    Grand Slam Matches Played:

    Federer 303, Willis 01

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    Willis’s Army – his friends who came to cheer him on

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    Roger easily advanced to the third round

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    The records will read Federer defeated the Brit Willis, 6 – 0, 6 – 3, 6 – 4; but don’t ever suggest to Marcus Willis that he was a loser today.  As ESPN commentator Chrissie Evert said with a smile in the post-game analysis, “To me, this is what sports is all about…it’s about dreams coming true.” I couldn’t agree more.

    Tomorrow, June 30th., the man who taught me to love sports will have been gone for forty years. I particularly remember my high school and college years when my dad and I watched anything related to sports covered by our ABC, NBC and CBS television networks in Houston, Texas. My daddy loved sports as much as anyone I’ve ever known – he was at his happiest when he saw dreams come true in a sporting event.  I miss him to this day.

    Luckily, I married a woman who shares my passion for sports and the underdogs as she shares the rest of my life for better or worse. She makes my dreams come true every day, and I feel like a winner.