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By KEITH WORRELL

Contributor

AHOSKIE – Ridgecroft School has earned a long-standing reputation as one of North Carolina’s strongest soccer programs as a small school. It has competed for many titles throughout North Carolina, claiming its first NCISAA 1A state championship in 2004 (girls) and again in 2011 (boys).

This year, Ridgecroft celebrates the program’s 50th anniversary of its first-ever soccer team from 1974. The program was born back in the days when all the public and private high schools — regardless of enrollment — played for one soccer championship.

Today, several members of Ridgecroft’s 1974 team recount their experiences from this historic first soccer program in the Roanoke-Chowan area.

It began in the summer of 1974 when Headmaster Doug Bowers and Athletic Director Dennis Everett decided it was time to expand the school’s athletic program. Ridgecroft was coming off a year of having just won its first-ever basketball and baseball championships and graduating its first senior class. Football was the fall sport of choice in the Roanoke-Chowan, but clearly out of reach for the small private school of only 300 students.

Soccer was an up-and-coming sport in the 1970s, but only popular at the largest high schools across the state. It prospered most in the areas surrounding successful college soccer programs, such as Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham, but there were only a few programs east of Buies Creek (the home of what is now Campbell University). Throughout northeastern North Carolina, very few athletes in the more rural areas were even remotely familiar with the sport.

But on a hot August 19 afternoon in 1974, a group of about 20 curious students circled the school’s freshly mowed baseball outfield for conditioning drills and the opportunity to learn about the new sport. The invitation was even extended to eighth graders to include enough players to participate in a full, 11-on-11 scrimmage.

Without the Internet and cell phones back then, the summer tryout news traveled slowly in 1974. About five more players joined during the next week leaving just 20 days remaining to be ready for the team’s first competition.

“We started from scratch,” says Doug Doughtie, senior co-captain in 1974 and current Dare County Sheriff. “It was a new experience for all of us. None of us had played the sport before but we had the good fortune of learning from a home-town hero.”

Bowers and Everett persuaded Winston King, a former high school teammate of Everett, to coach the new team. He had been a star halfback of the famed Ahoskie High School state championship football team in 1966. King, fresh out of college himself, had learned how to translate his elite athletic talent to soccer for North Carolina Wesleyan College, where he became an All-Conference midfielder.

“I think he was exactly what was needed at that time,” says Cliff Sexton, a senior midfielder on the 1974 team, who today owns C&S Automotive in Ahoskie and serves as an active deputy sheriff. “He pushed us hard. It was like basic training.”

Each workout started with a 2-mile run, and King would join in alongside his players. He ran wind sprints at the end of each practice and dared anyone to beat him. He wanted all to know that he was willing to endure anything he asked of his players.

“He was cocky and could back it up,” said Sexton. “He was faster than any of us on the field.”

Doughtie, a life-long friend of Coach King who now lives in Currituck, neighboring Dare County, says that even at age 73, King still runs 5k every other day. Doughtie also remembers that he luckily missed much of the running in practice while he trained to be goalkeeper. King had consulted with Everett on the various field positions saying that playing goalkeeper will require someone with good hands.

“Dennis told Winston that I played first base for him in baseball and to give me a shot [at goalie]. That was a blessing to me and got me out of a lot of running,” laughed Doughtie.

Soccer proved to be a sport that helped “level the playing field” in more ways than one and brought opportunity to many more student athletes. Senior Ronnie Storey and his younger brother Jerry were two of the volunteers who did some of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

“I remember the summer of 1974, hauling loads of topsoil using our family’s farm equipment to get the field started,” says Ronnie. “It was pretty rough in some areas, so Coach King met us early that summer to oversee the job of getting it leveled and sloped slightly from the middle for good drainage.”

The Storey brothers had previously served as team managers for both the basketball and baseball teams, but found soccer as a good way to showcase their speed and quickness.

“It was the only sport I was big enough to play,” Jerry said with a chuckle.

“None of us were familiar with the rules,” says Sexton. “But Coach King instilled in us the desire to learn. More importantly, he inspired toughness.”

Toughness proved to be the hallmark of that inaugural season. It was never embodied more than in its two matches that year with Greenfield School, an established soccer powerhouse from Wilson who would become Ridgecroft’s most storied soccer rival over the next 49 years.

In just the second game of the season, the Ridgecroft Rams traveled to Wilson to meet the heavily favored Greenfield Knights. Greenfield controlled the ball throughout most of the game, outshooting the Rams 31-4 in shots on goal. But less than 12 minutes into the game, junior Tommy Merritt made good on Ridgecroft’s only offensive threat of the first half and gave the Rams a 1-0 lead. The lead held throughout the long defensive struggle until the last nine minutes of the 80-minute contest when Greenfield converted on a controversial penalty kick to even the score, which ended in a 1-1 tie.

That tie kept Ridgecroft in contention the entire season for the conference title until the final match of the year when Greenfield traveled to Ahoskie late in November. Greenfield scored in the closing minutes of the game to edge the Rams 1-0.

With the Greenfield win, the Knights secured the Tarheel Independent Conference regular season championship to advance to the state playoffs. Greenfield also posted its best record to date at 11-5-3 in 1974 but were only two plays away from not even making the state tournament because of a very determined first-year team from Ahoskie.

Ridgecroft finished its first season with a winning record (4-3-1), competing against some of the top teams in both North Carolina and Virginia, including 4A power Vance Senior High School and Walsingham Academy, an elite team from Williamsburg, Virginia.

Frank Jones, Merritt, and sophomore Warren Newton were All-Conference selections, while Doughtie, Sexton and Ronnie Story received All-Conference honorable mention.

“I’m not saying we were great, but people couldn’t take us lightly,” states Jones, senior co-captain from 1974. “I’m just still amazed at how well we did. Primarily it was because everyone was all in. We didn’t want to let each other down. If there was a loose ball, two of our players were on it. To me, the effort, teamwork, communication and encouragement that we got from each other, whether you were in the game or on the bench, was what made the team special. I would take our team anywhere, anytime.”

“Coach King taught us how to come together as a team,” Sexton remembers. “And that’s something that in any line of work you’ve got to have. When we were playing soccer, our objective was to score points and to defend our net. What we learned on the field 50 years ago is what we put into practice now, and every day — earning a living for our families, comforting those in need, and keeping our communities safe.”