By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
It could be one of the greatest hours in Alamance County high school team sports history all within adjacent fields.
Consider it championship Saturday. For a pair of teams from the county, it will be ecstasy or heartbreak.
If nothing else, parking lots at UNC Greensboro might be jammed with vehicles from Alamance County.
By early Saturday afternoon, it could all come to a head.
Eastern Alamance’s girls’ soccer team will face South Point in the Class 3-A championship game at 11:00 a.m. at UNCG Soccer Stadium.
At the same athletics complex, Game 2 of the best-of-3 Class 3-A softball state finals between Western Alamance and East Lincoln begins at noon at UNCG Softball Stadium. If necessary, Game 3 would be at 3:00 p.m.
Western Alamance’s rabid fan base has been fired up for weeks about the Warriors and if the East Region finals are any indication, there could be more pom-pom waving from supporters.
Western and Wheatmore, with its girls’ soccer team in the mid-afternoon Class 2-A final, will have the shortest trip of any teams in the soccer or softball finals at UNCG. Both are listed at 24 miles away.
Eastern Alamance fans turned out Tuesday night for the regional final. That included a student section that could grow for the title game.
A year ago, when Eastern was in the soccer final in Cary, the school’s softball team was in Greensboro on the way to a state championship. This time, only the school’s soccer team will be playing, so Eagles fans won’t have to choose between different sports teams.
Western is in the softball finals for the first time. Eastern is 0-2 all-time in girls’ soccer title games, falling in 1998 in Class 1-A/2-A and last year in Class 3-A.
For schools from Alamance County, the last time there were two teams bidding for team state titles in games on the same day on the same campus came in 2007 at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill. Graham dropped the Class 2-A title game to Smoky Mountain in girls’ basketball, but the Cummings boys’ basketball team won the Class 2-A championship by defeating Starmount.
It also occurred in 2005 in football. On that December day at Duke, Western Alamance and Williams played in back-to-back games in the Class 3-A and Class 3-AA finals. Western Alamance lost to Asheville before Williams fell to Charlotte Catholic.
