WEDDINGTON, N.C. — 18-0 last season, 30-0 this season, but it’s been far from easy for Weddington, especially in last weekend’s 4A regional final. Down by 6 with 52 seconds left to play the Warriors stormed back to beat North Meck by three, an unlikely outcome but not a surprising one for Gary Ellington and his team.
“I think what you’re seeing is just the culmination of, especially our seniors, four years of really hard work and commitment to one another,” Weddington head coach Gary Ellington said. “It’s coming in times when other people would think, this is impossible, well these guys have worked so hard leading up to it that nothing’s impossible.”
The word family gets thrown around a lot in sports but when Weddington says it, it just feels real.
“I just love these guys,” senior forward Kyle Frazier said. “This is my family, and I love this community, it’s just amazing.”
“We just can’t give up,” senior guard Chase Lowe said. “We’re a real tight knit group, and we love each other. We set a goal at the beginning of the season to win a state championship and we’re not going to give up on that, ever.”
Weddington made the move up to 4A this year after winning it all in 3A last season, while the competition has been harder and the target square on their back, to this point they’ve answered every call.
“We know we can beat any team that comes in our way,” Frazier said. “Through our hard work and through everything we’ve gone through.”
“Coach made an effort to tell us that we were every team’s Super Bowl,” Lowe recalled. “And that going into the game we were going to get every team’s best shot.”
That shot won’t get any bigger than Saturday’s against Panther Creek inside the Dean Dome on UNC’s campus.
“It’d mean the world to me to win it for my school,” Lowe pondered. “My coaches, my teammates.”