[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
His long journey has had its ups and downs, but on Wednesday afternoon at the weekly Thomasville Rotary meeting, he stood before Rotarians as a champion.
It all began several years ago at East Davidson, where his start was not all that glamorous. When times were tough, the thought of giving in crossed his mind. But valuable colleagues and supporters encouraged him to push on.
“I have a lot of respect for people in this community,” said Ridge. “When I was at East, my first three years we won a total of 15 games. It was a difficult time in my life, but there were people in my life that really encouraged me like Dan Tricarico (EDHS teacher/baseball coach) over here. If it weren’t for people like him that encouraged me to do what I was doing, I wouldn’t be standing up here as basketball coach at DCCC.
His success began to take center-stage at East with the emergence of Justin Strickland. The two have been together the last six seasons, but eligibility playing rules will finally break the two apart with Strickland moving on to a four-year school.
This past season the Storm began their inaugural campaign at the Division III level. Not knowing what would happen, the team excelled beyond anyone’s belief, as they shared the Tarheel Conference championship and came inches away from advancing to the regional finals. Ridge noted that it took everyone from top to bottom to accomplish what they did. Starting with President Dr. Mary Rittling, all the way down to the players and trainers. People behind the scenes were just as important to him, people like DCCC director of student life, Ken Kirk.
“It takes good people in an organization to be successful,” said Ridge. This is not all about Matt Ridge.”
Still, there had to be good players in place who would do anything to win.
“Our motto was ‘play hard, smart and together’ and we did that,” said Ridge.
DCCC had overwhelming support on the sidelines as well, and times at Brinkley Gymnasium were deafening. At the beginning of the season the players were found at the Lexington Barbecue Festival passing out flyers to advertise the team, but who could have guessed it would catch on so quickly.
“A lot of junior college’s only have 40-50 people show up and it is mostly family, but we typically filled the gym up, and for a first year program that made us proud,” said Ridge.
Strickland and teammate Landon Bowers attended the meeting, and were a perfect representation of the character and family that the team portrayed both on and off the court and in the classroom. Academics were not a problem for the Storm as it was for other teams in the league.
“We had really good players and people as well,” said Strickland. “As coach Ridge said, we had 13 players and nobody flunked off.”
Bowers for one was surprised at the chemistry of the upstart program, and offered a little hint as to what coach Ridge can be like in a practice.
“Coming into this season I didn’t know we were going to be as good as we were,” said Bowers. “He [Ridge] runs us a lot, but it paid off in the end.”
With exemplary gentleman and hard workers like Strickland and Bowers donning DCCC uniforms, Ridge will remain at the top for quite some time.