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About two months ago, I got a call from an unknown area code and for some reason decided to pick up. It was David Brown, publisher and editor of the Cherokee Scout, wondering if I was interested in becoming the newspaper’s sports reporter.
I visited Murphy the next week and, after getting a good feel for the area, accepted the offer. I moved down to my apartment in Andrews on April 5, and it’s safe to say I’m still getting used to Cherokee County.
My high school graduating class was almost as big as the entire student body of Murphy High School. From there I attended the University of Maryland, a school with slightly more undergraduates than the entire population of Cherokee County.
Most of the high school sporting events I covered before Murphy were in schools along the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., corridor, with many less than an hour away from Baltimore or our nation’s capital. Even Carroll County, Md., one of the more rural counties in the Baltimore Metro area where I covered games, had a population of more than 168,000. That’s more than six times the population of Cherokee County.
High school sports in that area definitely meant something to the community, but not in the same way it does here. In many cases, the schools were too big, and the area too populated, to have the same lasting connection with the community the way it does in Andrews, Hiwassee Dam, Murphy and Nantahala. Friday night high school football games mostly served as a warmup to the Ravens or Washington Football Team game on Sunday.
As I dove into the job last month, I quickly realized the difference. The stands were packed at the first football game I covered for the Scout between Murphy and Robbinsville on April 9. The emotions on the field aren’t much different between Maryland and North Carolina, but what it means to the fans and community is. There’s no professional sports or big college team to gravitate to.
This is the first time I’ve really been able to reflect on this since coming to western North Carolina. With COVID-19 delaying and condensing sports seasons, I was focusing on taking it day by day.
Since coming here, I’ve witnessed Murphy’s run to a 10th football state championship, watching as the Bulldogs earned the right to be called a great team. It wasn’t a team that dominated opponents, instead focusing on the task at hand and doing exactly what it needed to do to win each week. In the state championship win over Northside-Pinetown that included being a throwing team, which usuallly is antithetical to “mountain football.”
I also covered the Murphy softball team’s deepest postseason run since 2011, a heartbreaking end to the Murphy girls soccer season and a golf county championship – and that’s only in Murphy. Hiwassee Dam baseball honored a fallen teammate with an emotional walkoff win, and Andrews football made the playoffs again while winning its most Smoky Mountain Conference games since 1985.
I’m doing my best to make it to games for each sport and school, but as a one-man band in the sports section, that can be a challenge. I’m looking forward to providing more game coverage and stories of athletes, especially as things get more normal in the coming months.
It’s been a good first month. I’m hoping to have more in the summer and as we head back into what’s, hopefully, just a typical fall season.
Justin Fitzgerald is the sports writer at the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 837-5122, Ext. 18;
or email, sports@cherokee-scout.com.