It’s highly likely you’ve never heard of North Wilkes High School. It’s a little school tucked into the rolling hills of Wilkes County, about four and a half hours northwest of Kinston. It’s on a winding two-lane country road up a piece from a little community called Traphill.
It’s also my high school alma mater whose football team is doing some impressive things this season.
On Friday night, the Vikings of North Wilkes connected on a short field goal with 9 seconds remaining in the game to overcome a 15-point second-half deficit and defeat Brevard, 31-28, in the first round of the N.C. High School Athletic Association 2A playoffs.
I’m a 1987 graduate of North; I’ve only been back to the school a few times – you know how life keeps you busy. I hadn’t attended a North Wilkes sporting event since 1988 until a few weeks ago.
After graduating from North, I was in the Army, then lived in Charlotte, where I attended college. I started writing sports as a free-lancer in the Charlotte area, eventually becoming a full-time sportswriter in Lincolnton, Gastonia and Shelby before coming to Kinston in 2002.
But while covering hundreds and thousands of sporting events over the past couple of decades, I always kept one eye on North Wilkes. The Vikings have struggled through the years athletically. Since arriving here, I’ve always compared North Wilkes to South Lenoir High School; a pair of rural high schools with limited athletic talent in a county with “bigger” brothers (in Wilkes County, Wilkes Central is the equivalent to Kinston, West Wilkes is the North Lenoir comparison).
This has been an amazing season for the North Wilkes Vikings, though. After Friday’s heart-stopping win, they’ve won 10 of 12 games – a school-record for victories. They also did something that had never happened in school history earlier this year: defeat Boonville Starmount, a program North had never defeated in 26 previous attempts.
I was fortunate to be able to go to the Starmount game. Free Press Advertising Director Matt Holbrook and I jumped in his car for the Oct. 18 game and made a nine-hour roundtrip to watch the historic occasion – and North responded with a 13-10 victory.
In that game and again on Friday – in a driving, cold rain – hundreds of fans cheered on their Vikings. I was honored to attend that game, too, this time with my dad, a 1966 graduate of North Wilkes who had never attended a football game at his alma mater (which didn’t begin playing football until 1970).
I have a lot of deserved respect for North Wilkes coach Monty Chipman, who has come into that community and turned a perennial loser into a winner in a very short amount of time. I also want to thank him for helping an expatriate Viking – and his father – find pride again in his alma mater.
Bryan C. Hanks is the editor of The Free Press; his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCHanks.