YEATESVILLE — A team of destiny? Maybe. One of the best groups of players and people Larry Anderson has ever been around? Definitely.
On Saturday Northside High School put its annual Easter tournament on pause to honor its 1994 NCHSAA 2-A state championship team, and though its been 18 years since the group took the state by storm, then-coach Larry Anderson feels just as proud of his players now as he did then.
“I can tell you without any reservation that this is the best bunch of people I ever coached,” Anderson said. “They were a talented group of people and they had the most character of any group of people I ever worked with. They never caused me a bench problem in my four years of coaching them. They always showed up ready to work, ready to play and they weren’t like a lot of people who needed some time off. All they wanted to do was play baseball.”
The 1994 team consisted of Joel Smith, Steve Ebron, David Elliot, Wayne Waters, Chip Edwards, Scott Selby, Doug Dixon, Stephen Andreoli, John Everett, Eric Cox and the late Bryan Woolard and was managed by Anderson and his assistant coaches Rick Anderson, Skipper Edwards and Joe Womble.
The Panthers started off that historic season with a less than stellar beginning as they took a 5-7 record into the D.H. Conley Easter tournament, but from that point on the team caught fire and finished out the year going 15-2.
Northside stormed through the playoffs topping Manteo, East Duplin and C.B. Aycock before it beat Southwest Guilford to get into the state title game where it swept C.D. Owen to lock up the state crown.
“The biggest thing we did was just play hard every time we went out,” Anderson said. “With this group there was never a game where we were behind and I felt like we were beat. We always felt like we could come back and win even if it was 10-1 in the bottom of the seventh.”