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Prep Final Four details to be released today

By Chris Hobbs | Hickory Daily Record

Published: June 1, 2009

Alexander Central's softball team and Patton's baseball team should get the details today about their trips later this week to Raleigh to play for state high school championships.

The Cougars and Panthers know who their next opponents will be and that their next games are Friday, but the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) will deliver the game times and other details today.

Alexander Central (28-1) will be in a four-team double-elimination softball tournament at the Walnut Creek Softball Complex with North Davidson (27-1), New Bern (17-7) and Fuquay-Varina (20-4) that continues through Saturday.

Late Saturday, the NCHSAA assigned best-of-three baseball title series to locations and put the 2A and 4A teams at N.C. State's Doak Stadium and the 1A and 3A teams at Five County Stadium in Zebulon.

Patton (27-7), the No. 2 2A seed from the Catawba Valley Athletic 2A-3A Conference, will meet McMichael (24-6, top seed from the North State 2A) for Game 1 on Friday. The series continues on Saturday.

In the softball tournaments, the first round games are always East and West title games, so Alexander Central will meet North Davidson on Friday and New Bern will play Fuquay-Varina.

Head coach Brandon Scott's Patton baseball team had won 13 straight games before falling 4-1 at Mount Pleasant in Game 2 of the West 2A title series on Friday.

The Panthers won the West series with a 3-2 home victory on Saturday to reach the state championships as a second-year program.

Patton, whose roster has nine players who were part of a Morganton Little League team that reached the World Series, is 42-18 under Scott.

Alexander Central's softball team is headed to Walnut Creek for the sixth time. The Cougars haven't been there, though, since 2001.

Five previous Alexander Central teams -1979, 1991, 1994, 1995 and 1996 -won slo-pitch or fast-pitch state titles and three teams (1999, 2000, 2001) finished second.

Head coach Monte Sherrill's Cougars last met North Davidson at Walnut Creek in a slow-pitch game in 1995. The Cougars sandwiched victories over Greenville Rose around a second round 3-2 victory over North Davidson to win the state 4A title.

Alexander Central is the No. 1 seed from the Northwestern 4A and North Davidson, the top seed from the Central Piedmont 4A, is headed to Raleigh for the fourth straight year.

The Black Knights have been second in 4A in two of the last three seasons, falling twice to Butler in 2006 and in 2008 to finish No. 2. In 2007, North Davidson lost to Butler, beat Pine Forest and was then eliminated by Chapel Hill.

Alexander Central assured the state of a new 4A champion by knocking off Butler, which had won three consecutive titles, 3-2 in the third round. That game started last Tuesday and, because of bad weather, was finally completed on Friday.

The last Unifour team to win a state baseball title was South Caldwell, which swept Wilmington Ashley in two games in 2007 in Zebulon, and Maiden won the 1A title in 1999 by beating Bladenboro two games to one.

The most recent state softball title by a Unifour school was Fred T. Foard's 1998 3A fast-pitch title. Foard won slo-pitch titles in 1991 (3A) and 1997 (3A/2A/1A) and Bandys won the state 1A/2A slo-pitch title in 1985.