The Tri-Nine Conference tournament is set to start next Tuesday. First round games will be played at the higher seed, while Thursday's semifinals and Friday's finals will all be played at Green Hope High.
As you can read in this game story, Green Hope manager Nitin Reddy -- who has special needs -- got a chance to play on senior night in the Falcons' 61-34 win Tuesday night.
The Green Hope students were chanting for Nitin to get into the game.
He did with 1:42 left.
It takes for Reddy (#24) awhile to get his bearings.
He first lines up in a wrong spot at the free throw line. His first two shots were well off the mark (he usually shoots from straightaway, but took all six of his 3-pointers from the left wing against Cary).
But his fourth 3-point attempt -- after almost hitting the shot clock on a high bounce off the rim -- fell straight through.
What resulted, was pandemonium (around the 2:50 mark).
Around the 3:48 mark, the Green Hope students chant his name.
After the game (around the 4:50 mark) his teammates carry him on their shoulders off the floor.
Some familiar names are on the list of people being nominated Tuesday for placement on Wake County school board advisory councils.
The nominees for school board member Jim Martin's BAC include former Assistant Superintendent Mike Burriss and Ann Overton. Diana Bader has been nominated to serve on school board member Debra Goldman's BAC. Karey Harwood has been nominated for board vice chairman Keith Sutton's BAC.
Some of the new BAC members were nominated by other people.
CORRECTION
Harwood was nominated to school board vice chairman Keith Sutton's BAC.
Kristen Gaffney needed 12 points to make history Wednesday night -- and she wasted no time in doing it.
The Green Hope senior girls basketball player became Wake County's all-time leader in points -- among N.C. High School Athletic Association member schools -- in the first quarter of a 75-46 defeat of visiting Wilson Hunt.
Gaffney made a layup with 2:41 left in the first, and the game was paused for the announcement and recognition of the feat. Green Hope athletics director Wayne Bragg said that the game ball will be retired.
Green Hope and Panther Creek made requests to the N.C. High School Athletic Associaton on Tuesday to place the schools in a league with other current Tri-Nine 4A schools.
Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata found himself being challenged Saturday by the new school board members on his idea of giving school autonomy based on student achievement.
Tata supports using what's called "managed performance empowerment," a hybrid between giving principals no control and total control over how they run their schools. It's part of his draft strategic plan that he's hoping the board will adopt.
"Called Managed Performance Empowerment (MPE), the theory of action grants flexibility and decision-making authority to schools based on successful performance," says Tata's draft strategic plan. "From a school support perspective, we will measure our school performance based first and foremost on student achievement and place schools along a continuum of performance to best target our support and resources as a district."
The Green Hope senior and Vanderbilt recruit scored her 2,000th point in the third quarter in the Falcons' 51-44 win against Holly Springs. Gaffney scored 18 in the win and now has 2,006 in her career.
Below is video of Gaffney's 12th and 13th points of the night (Nos. 2,000 and 2,0001 for her career), which came from the free throw line.
CARY The Sanderson girls basketball team did something Monday night that no other Triangle-area girls basketball team had done since January of 2009.
They handed Green Hope a regular-season loss.
The Lady Spartans defeated Green Hope 55-52.
It was the second time the two sides have played a close game this season, as the first meeting between the two went down to the wire in a five-point Green Hope win. That first game also helped remove some of the mystique of the Falcons' success, according to Sanderson coach Marcus Davis.
"When Green Hope walked in (last week), we looked at them like some kind of machine that couldn't be stopped," Davis said.