Stiles: Top 5 HS games of 2023-24

As friends and families gather for grilled grub and skies filled with fireworks on this week of July 4, the topics of conversation will be wide-ranging — but in communities like ours, high school sports will probably be near the top of the list, even in the midst of the offseason.

Those conversations will probably include a good amount of looking ahead to the fall and winter, with football, basketball and other sports on the horizon. But they could also include recollections of memorable moments from the school year we’ve just completed.

In that spirit — and with games that count still a few weeks away from resuming — it’s a good time to look back at the best Robeson County high school sporting events I covered during the 2023-24 school year.

I was live on location at all of these except one, and that one I watched intently through a livestream; there were likely plenty more great games that I didn’t see. I’ll recall the best of here in chronological order.

Fairmont vs. St. Pauls girls basketball (Jan. 19, Feb. 6)

I’ll cheat slightly here (but hey, it’s my list) and include two games in one on this top-five (six?) list. Fairmont and St. Pauls girls basketball met four times last season, and all four were hugely consequential, including the Robeson County Shootout championship game in December and the Southeastern Athletic Conference tournament final in February, both won by Fairmont.

Here, though, I’ll focus on two terrific regular-season meetings, in which each team won once en route to a 9-1 conference record and a shared Southeastern title.

On Jan. 19 at Fairmont, Taniya Simms hit a go-ahead layup with 12 seconds left for a 46-45 lead and the Golden Tornadoes held on to win as a Bulldogs putback try missed at the buzzer. The game was back-and-forth throughout; Simms scored 22 points, including 11 in the fourth quarter, with 14 rebounds.

“We’re a team, and we worked hard for it,” Simms said. “We didn’t give up one time. Even though in some quarters they may have got in our head a little bit, but we’re a team, we had to come back together.”

It looked like more of the same for three-plus quarters on Feb. 6 at St. Pauls as Fairmont led 41-25 with seven minutes remaining. But St. Pauls finished on a 19-3 run to force overtime, then won 52-48 in overtime behind key baskets from Zhariana Shipman and Zalaya Gardner.

St. Pauls’ Jashontae Harris didn’t have a field goal through the first three quarters before sparking the comeback with two triples; she finished with 17 points and four assists.

“All I could tell them was fight,” St. Pauls coach Jaymar Thompson said. “When you’re down 16, there’s no X’s and O’s because you don’t want to waste the time; I’m like, we’ve got to push the tempo.”

Wrestling state championships (Feb. 17)

When I look back at the most chaotic moments of my career, a three-minute span on the floor of the Greensboro Coliseum this February will certainly be in the conversation.

As the wrestling State Championships unfolded , Lumberton’s Jackson Buck competed for the 4A 190-pound title while Pirates teammate Wyntergale Oxendine went for the girls 235-pound title — at the exact same time.

Buck pinned Athens Drive’s Zaid Marjan late in the first round of the bout, earning the state title and completing an undefeated season at 53-0. After photographing Buck’s state-winning celebration, I quickly got up and ran to the other mat — this drew a dirty look from a security guard, but c’mon dude, I’ve got to get over there imminently — and was there to also capture the moment of Oxendine pinning Havelock’s Nyema George in the second round of the match to win the title. Oxendine finished the season 38-0, with pins in all 31 contested matches.

“It feels amazing,” Oxendine said. “I’ve been working so hard for that title this year, it just means so much to me to finally get it.”

Lumberton had three individual state champions that day, with Travelian Hall winning the 4A 106-pound title by forfeit after his championship-match opponent failed to make weight. Teresa Canady also reached a final for the Lumberton girls, but lost to East Rowan’s Leah Edwards.

Behind Oxendine, Canady and the tournament runs of Janya Rolland and Kylie Brigman, the Lumberton girls won the team championship for the second straight year. Lumberton’s boys also finished in second in the team standings.

“This is the cherry on top to their hard work and the amount of time they’ve put in outside of wrestling season to get to this point,” Lumberton coach James Bell said. “They’re getting the rewards now.”

Purnell Swett’s Devon Connor also reached the 4A title bout at 126 pounds, but was pinned by Mallard Creek’s Cameron Stinson as he finished an undefeated four-year high school career. Connor’s second-place finished matched the best in Purnell Swett history.

St. Pauls at Fairmont boys basketball (Feb. 21)

St. Pauls and Fairmont’s semifinal game in the Southeastern Athletic Conference boys basketball tournament ended with one of the more frantic stretches of basketball you’ll ever see, ultimately resulting in a 48-45 upset win by the Bulldogs.

A continuous sequence of 25.8 seconds to end the game included: a game-tying putback by St. Pauls’ Markeon Fletcher after a missed free throw, a black by the Bulldogs’ Tyson Thompson on a Fairmont shot attempt at the other end of the floor; and a Tykeem Oxendine 3-pointer from the corner to beat the buzzer and win the game for St. Pauls.

“You’ve got so much action going on in that one segment,” St. Pauls coach Corey Thompson said. “You’ve got a missed free throw, you’ve got a putback, you’ve got Tyson walling up to block — there was just so much stuff that went on in that 20-something seconds, however long it was.”

Fairmont had beaten St. Pauls by 22 points in each regular-season meeting and entered the game with a seven-game winning streak. The Golden Tornadoes went on to a make a fourth-round 2A state playoff run over the following two weeks.

St. Pauls nearly upset West Bladen, too, in the SAC tournament final two nights later, but lost in overtime.

North Brunswick at Lumberton softball (March 30)

Lumberton’s Robeson County Slugfest championship came in the midst of a 16-game winning streak by the Pirates, who went on to a school-record 24 wins, a conference championship and a third-round playoff appearance. While the Pirates won the Slugfest title by beating East Columbus on April 2, the signature game of their Slugfest run — and perhaps their season — came in the first round on March 31.

Lumberton faced a stiff test against North Brunswick, and after a pitchers duel the Pirates earned a 2-1 win with a walkoff hit in the seventh inning.

Aniya Merritt got the walkoff triple just one day after the funeral for her brother , Jacoby, who died March 25 after battling cancer; this made the walkoff hit to drive home Leea Wilkins that much more memorable.

“I was just proud to have something great happen, especially after all that we had been through,” Merritt said.

Merritt scored both Pirate runs and stole three bases as part of a perfect night at the plate. She was ultimately named tournament MVP after a 10-for-12 clip over three Slugfest games.

“I wasn’t expecting her to play … and to come out and go 4-for-4 and get the game-winning hit, that’s something you write storybooks about,” Lumberton coach Mackie Register said.

Track state championships (May 17)

This is the event that I watched on a livestream, sitting at my desk in Lumberton as the event unfolded at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, but I was watching just as intently as I would have in person.

The St. Pauls 4x400 relay team of Quintell McNeill, Theophilus Setzer, Markeon Fletcher and Charles Johnson entered the state meet as the top seed in the event, and backed that up by winning the race to claim the 2A state championship .

“It’s a feeling that I can’t really explain unless you’ve felt it, and it just feels amazing to put all the work in, keep working on the little things and enjoying it, and then coming out on top,” Setzer said.

Johnson came from behind to beat Salisbury in the final leg of the relay, finishing in 3 minutes, 23.48 seconds.

“I knew if I got the baton close enough to him, I knew I could make it a good race,” Johnson said. “They gave me the inside, so I took it, and I leaned him at the line — I won.”

St. Pauls won its 19th state title in a track and field event, its first since 2018 and its first in outdoor track since 2015. It was the first 4x400 St. Pauls team to win state.

St. Pauls’ 4x200 team of Fletcher, Setzer, Johnson and Jakhi Purcell finished ninth earlier that day. Fairmont’s Travelius Leach took third in the 400 meters.