We're Set for Another Week of Football Friday

I got a nice letter from a viewer in Moore County (yes, complaints can be made nicely) who encouraged us to cover more Union Pines games. Union Pines is enjoying a 5-1 season and at the moment is tied for the lead in the Cape Fear Valley 3A conference.

Well, we planned to cover the Union Pines at Southern Lee game, but as I said last week, what we plan on Monday is seldom what happens on Friday.

The first thing I found out when I came to work last Friday was that the photographer who was scheduled to shoot the Union Pines-Southern Lee game had a conflict and couldn’t work. So we had to reconfigure things, and that was a game we had to drop for geographical reasons.

This week, though, we plan to send a crew to Union Pines’ home game with Gray’s Creek. That will be paired with Richmond County at Pinecrest for travel purposes. One of our best, Robert Meikle, is scheduled to cover those games.

Now last Friday, Mike Charbonneau had an interesting day. Mike got his start working in our Sports Department during his senior year at N.C. State. He graduated in May 2001, and in June of that year got a job as a news reporter at WNCT in Greenville. He came back to WRAL a few years ago and works out of our Wilson bureau, and we are very grateful that he hasn’t forgotten his roots and still likes to work on Football Friday. I’m very proud of Mike, who’s always worked extremely hard.

For some reason, Mike had to work news in Raleigh last Friday instead of the Wilson area. We had him scheduled to go all the way to Northampton County to cover North Edgecombe at Northampton West. His second game was Southeast Halifax and Northwest Halifax.

I walked by an editing booth at about 5 p.m. and Mike was still editing his story for the news. I said, “Charby, are you gonna be okay?” (In other words, are you going to make it to Northampton County on time?) He assured me he would, and he did – and if you’ve ever made that drive, you know it’s a long way from Raleigh.

Anyway, at about 8:45, I’m sitting at my desk as the calls from our crews are coming fast and furious, and I get one from Mike. “Tom, I’ve got some bad news,” Mike says. My reaction is “Gaaaaaah!”

His bad news was that he arrived at a dark and empty stadium at Northwest Halifax. A lonely custodian told him that it was a tradition that Southeast Halifax and Northwest Halifax played on Saturday.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a tradition of which we were aware, and the schedules that we had certainly didn’t call for a Saturday game. We will be more diligent next season.

Mike said he would go back to Northampton West, which turned out to be a good idea because he got the overtime of North Edgecombe’s 20-14 win.

So, Mike had a day of working news in Raleigh, then driving to Northampton West high school. From there, he went to Northwest Halifax, then back to Northampton West and finally all the way to the Wilson Bureau to edit his game package. Whew! As I said, what we plan on Monday always seems to change by Friday.

Hopefully, Mike will have better luck this week. He is slated to cover Northampton East at North Edgecombe and then the big one in Nash County between undefeated Southwest Edgecombe and undefeated Rocky Mount.

This week, we plan to send crews to 27 football games involving schools from 22 counties.

Here’s our wish list:

As always, keep those phone calls coming in with the scores. The only score we had trouble with last week was from Warren County. Our toll free number is 1-888-472-9725. Calling in your school’s score is the best way to ensure that it makes Football Friday. The more calls we get, the better.

So, see you Friday night 11:35 on Football Friday.

Please watch. We need the viewers. :-)