The championship ECU built
The hometown team winning the 2024 Little League Softball World Series was a community effort, but ECU and its alumni played a big part.
Brooke Rose bats against Louisiana in the championship game Aug. 11. Photos by Aaron Hines on Aug. 11 at Max R. Joyner Family Stadium at East Carolina University, 13-year-old Anna Rose of the Pitt County team belted a single to right field in the top of the last inning of a scoreless championship game in the Little League Softball World Series.
Teammate Candace Lynn came to the plate. As their assistant coach Brandon Peebles ’00 would say later, the left-hander had been struggling at the plate.
“Coach Percy (Edwards ’87) told me to steal, so I was just focusing on getting to second base,” Anna said. “I had confidence in Candace hitting me in, but at the same time, it was a difficult pitcher to hit.”
She might have been focused, but among the fans who packed the stands and stood in the trees beyond the outfield fence and the TV audience watching on ABC, the situation was tense.
From alumni coaches, to staff and alumni parents, organizers, volunteers and supporters, to the teams riding ECU buses, staying and eating on campus and the finals being played on campus, this would be the championship ECU played a key role in if just one run could cross the plate.
It was a big change from August 2023, when Anna and her mom, Petula Rose ’00, a business systems analyst in financial services at ECU, cheered Anna’s twin sister, Brooke, from the stands at Stallings Stadium at Elm Street Park. That Pitt County all-star team, representing the Southeast Region, would fall to New York in the title game. Anna played the regular season, but didn’t make the all-star team.
“I didn’t really practice over the summer last year,” Anna said. “I just kind of hung out at the beach and focused on the things that I enjoy and came back and was trying to make the team this year.”
So during the Pitt County Girls Softball League regular season, she showed something had changed from 2023, Brooke said.
“She hit the ball better; she was more determined,” Brooke said. She earned her spot, and this year’s team ran roughshod through the district and state tournaments, earning the automatic bid to the World Series as host state champion and representing North Carolina.
The path to this point
Assistant coaches Percy Edwards ’87, left, and Brandon Peebles ’00, watch from the dugout. Their daughters Aurora and Emery played on the team.
In February 2020, Little League announced it was bringing its Softball World Series to Greenville after 26 years at Alpenrose Dairy in Portland, Oregon. The excitement was tempered, however, when Little League canceled that year’s tournament due to COVID-19. The series made its debut in Greenville the following year, but with spectator restrictions.
In 2021, players stayed in local hotels. But the next year, Mark Phillips, who has been a volunteer helping Greenville Little Leagues and the city organize and host the nearly two-week event, contacted Peter Groenendyk, associate vice chancellor for student affairs at ECU, to check about the university’s ability to house and feed the teams. ECU agreed to it.
“The players can walk to the stadium on Elm Street from our campus, and we can accommodate lodging and meals in one neighborhood,” Groenendyk said in an email. “We take great pride in serving as a host site for the teams. It’s especially exciting to see them arrive from RDU in our ECU motorcoach showcasing our Pirate pride. Hopefully, many of the players will remember the unforgettable experience they had in Greenville and consider returning as a future Pirate.”
In addition to providing housing and meals for players, ECU opened its College Hill parking lots for spectator parking. Fans walked the greenway to the city-owned Elm Street Park or rode golf cart shuttles.
Emery Peebles, daughter of Brandon Peebles ‘00, autographs helmets during a community celebration at the Murphy Center on Aug. 21. The team was also recognized during an ECU football game in September, a visit to the White House in October and at the Musial Awards in St. Louis in November. Coverage from that event aired Dec. 29 on CBS.
Andrew Schmidt ’90, president and CEO of the Greenville Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the tournament has an estimated $1.3 million economic impact for the city in terms of lodging, shopping and dining. During the series, the bureau ran 30-second videos about Greenville on ESPN for households from Georgia to Washington, D.C.
The exposure means as much to the community as the revenue the event generates, he said.
“When you have your championship game … on ABC all over the U.S. and Canada, that’s a big deal,” Schmidt said. “It’s an international event.”
And while Greenville might not be a major city, it’s proved to be the right city.
“We’re big enough, but we’re still small enough,” said Ann Weingartz ’91, director of university printing and graphics. Her husband, Brian, is commissioner of Greenville Little Leagues, and she’s heavily involved. “They were out in Portland where their hotel might be an hour from the field. We have a lot to offer, Greenville as a whole, it being a university town.”
Little League International agreed, announcing last April it was extending the contract to host the series in Greenville through 2027.
A history of championship softball
Candace Lynn talks with Brad Medhus, team manager, after the championship game.
At an Aug. 21 community celebration at ECU’s Murphy Center, ECU junior softball player Anna Sawyer and several teammates were there to support the Pitt County team.
“I know a few of these girls have attended some of my games,” she told Kim Grizzard of The Daily Reflector. “But it is really cool that I’m the one getting the autograph from them now. Roles reversed.”
Before signing to play at ECU, Sawyer got her start with the Pitt County Girls Softball League. Her team won the Babe Ruth World Series her 10-year-old year. It was one of 10 the league won during their Babe Ruth days.
The league changed from Babe Ruth to Little League in 2020, the same year Little League announced Elm Street Park as the new home of the Softball World Series.
“People don’t realize in 20 years, we won 10 World Series championships as Babe Ruth,” Bo Batts ’76, PGSL fundraising director, told The Reflector. He led the league for close to three decades and during its switch from Babe Ruth to Little League. “I can’t even count the number of state championships and regionals. I finally had to just pull the plates off (the trophies) and put them on a big board because we ran out of room to store all the trophies. It’s amazing how far it has come in 31 years.”
Batts said having a local team featured in the Softball World Series each of the last three years has benefits for the Pitt County league.
“Having those girls on TV for two weeks, it always results in a boost in our fall enrollment, which carries over to the spring,” he said.
Sawyer attended all the local team’s games in the series. She sees the series as a win for softball at every level.
“I feel like Greenville has always been a big softball town,” Sawyer told The Reflector. “But since this has happened, I think from here it’s just going to carry over to our games and high school. It’s definitely going to help softball in general here.”
Pirate spirit overcomes the storm
The team poses at the opening ceremonies Aug. 4. ECU Transit played a vital role in transporting players during the Little League Softball World Series.
Though the tournament got off to a good start at Stallings Stadium, after the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby dropped 3.5 inches of rain in four days, the field was unplayable. As a result, Little League canceled games on Wednesday and Thursday and moved the rest of the tournament to Max R. Joyner Family Stadium at ECU. Teams played a whopping six games Friday, two Saturday and three Sunday, including the championship. More rain poured shortly after the title game celebrations ended.
“Given the relationship with the city, Little League International and the institution, when Little League asked us about hosting games Friday and Saturday at Joyner Stadium to give Elm Street time to dry, we said yes,” said JJ McLamb ’01 ’06, executive associate athletic director at ECU. The university had already hosted the Athletes Unlimited pro softball game Aug. 7 as part of the World Series events. (It got rained out after two innings.) “When they realized Elm Street was not going to be playable on Sunday for the championship game, they asked us to host the championship game.
“It was wonderful. We’re looking forward to assisting and it returning to Stallings Stadium.”
“It’s such an amazing partnership,” said Batts. “I don’t know what they would have done without that gorgeous facility just a mile away.”
LaDarrius Madison, manager of the Louisiana team, praised ECU. “This campus here, it kind of reminds us of LSU with all the purple and gold,” he said. “But the campus is beautiful. The facilities, I mean, just the welcoming here, the workers here, everybody.”
Greenville Recreation and Parks had already planned drainage improvements at Elm Street once fall baseball ended. After the World Series, Don Octigan, executive director of city parks and recreation services, said those plans were still in place and may go further than originally planned.
Two-out rally
After not making the team in 2023, Anna Rose scored the winning runs in the semifinal and championship games.
Back to Anna at first. It wasn’t the first time that day she’d been in position to score the winning run. In the morning against Pennsylvania, she stood at third when Emma Pilgreen grounded out to second, scoring Anna and giving Pitt County a lead they wouldn’t relinquish in the 1-0 game.
So there she was, bottom of the fifth, two outs, focused on stealing second.
One pitch, and Candace stretched out and hammered it over the left fielder’s head.
“When she hit the ball, my legs felt like Jell-O, and I wanted just to like walk, but I didn’t,” Anna said. She rounded third and crossed the plate with ease. When Louisiana didn’t score in the top of the sixth inning, the celebration erupted.
Edwards, an assistant coach, said Anna missing the team in 2023 was reflected in her play in 2024. “It made her work harder. She came out with a big hit. She got on first base, and Candace drove her in. That was big. That was huge. Sometimes disappointment will make you jump up, dust off and go forward,” he said.
Candace had just two hits the whole tournament before that fateful one Sunday, against four strikeouts and two walks.
“I didn’t know where it was going to go. I was just trying my best to hit it for my team,” said Candace, who wants to be a doctor and has ECU on her list of colleges where she’ll pursue that dream. “We were really down, and our energy was really low. We were just trying to hype each other up just to get someone to step up and be big. I’m really proud. I’m proud of my team. The fact we represented our hometown means a lot.”
‘Something bigger’
Stallings Stadium at Elm Street Park.
Clark ’89 and Lisa Stallings ’91
More than 70 years ago, Elm Street Park in Greenville opened with a baseball field and other park amenities. Even a miniature train and a static fighter jet were among the attractions along the way.
But Little League baseball games were the main events.
In 1999, however, Hurricane Floyd washed away the field and inundated the bleachers and concession stand. Volunteers pitched in and rebuilt the field.
But more was coming. Ann Weingartz ’91, whose husband, Brian, serves as Greenville Little Leagues commissioner, tells the story.
“We were hosting a state tournament, and we had just added the inning-by-inning scoreboard. So Clark Stallings had come down in August after that state tournament and just happened to be down at the park, saw Brian … and he says, ‘Brian, what’s next? What do you want to do next?’
Players watch during a Little League game at Elm Street Park in 1954. In addition to the baseball stadium, the park now features six lighted pickleball courts, three lighted tennis courts, two playgrounds and more.
“Brian’s like, ‘Maybe we’ll brick in the columns like ECU has.’
“And (Stallings) goes, ‘Well, I’m thinking something bigger than that. Anything else?’
“And Brian said, ‘I always envisioned a mini-Guy Smith Stadium here.’” (Guy Smith Stadium is the old-school brick baseball stadium on Memorial Drive in Greenville where Rose High plays its games.)
“And Clark said, ‘Well, that might be something our family would be interested in.’ And (he) literally came back that day with his brother and his mother. That’s kind of how the stadium started.”
The brick stadium with a roof, 234 folding seats and a press box opened in 2012, thanks to the four Stallings brothers – Clark ’89, Jeff ’89, Blake and Billy ’88 – and their $1.14 million donation.
Weingartz says Stallings Stadium was a key selling point in Little League selecting Greenville to host its Softball World Series. None of the other cities that approached Little League had a stadium at their field, she says.
Remembering Raymie Styons ’84
Uniform appeal
A lot of what it takes to put on a softball world series is obvious: players, coaches, umpires, announcers, concessions staff, a grounds crew, the TV crew. Less obvious is what happens to all those uniforms every night.
Josh Lilley ’07 is pictured at the UNX facility in the old E.B. Ficklen tobacco warehouse on Ninth Street. The company plans to move to a recently acquired property in the Industrial Park on Staton Road. Photo by Steven Mantilla
That’s where Josh Lilley ’07 and his company, UNX-Christeyns, a global manufacturer of detergents, cleaning supplies and equipment, came in at the Little League Softball World Series.
After each day’s games, his volunteer crew would collect uniforms of the players, coaches and umpires, take them to the Ward Sports Medicine Building at ECU, wash them and then return them.
“Not only do we make the chemicals, we have the expertise of how to get the uniforms clean,” Lilley said.
His wasn’t the usual route to corporate leadership. Founded in Greenville in 1958, UNX grew and prospered, and a few years ago Edwin Clark Jr. ’79 acquired it. At the time, Lilley, who has a music degree from ECU, was a pastor at Ignite Church in Greenville, taught music at South Central and D.H. Conley high schools and coached tennis at Conley. He also started the Fuse ministry at ECU in 2011.
When TideLand Construction, partly owned by members of the Clark family, did some renovations at Ignite, Clark saw how Lilley ran things and offered him the head role at UNX. “There was this business mindset that I wasn’t aware of,” Lilley said.
In 2022, the company merged with Christeyns USA, part of the Belgium-based manufacturer of cleaning supplies, and became UNX-Christeyns.
The laundry equipment in Ward is already programmed for UNX-Christeyns products, so that made it a little easier. Still, on days like Aug. 9, when six games were played on a clay infield that had gotten two days of rain – and some teams played twice – there were challenges.
“They did require some scrubbing,” Lilley said of the uniforms. His group worked past midnight getting everything clean and back to the teams.
The latest product from UNX-Christeyns is Hook and Hand, a hand-hygiene product that’s being distributed around ECU facilities. Fifty percent of the net proceeds go the Boneyard Collective NIL organization.
UNX-Christeyns supplies its products and technologies to half of Major League Baseball teams and 20% of NFL and NBA teams. That means a lot of eyeballs are seeing the company’s results almost every day, giving them a lot of motivation to get results.
“If someone’s talking about laundry, it’s probably not good,” Lilley said.
Watch highlights of Pitt County’s semifinal against Pennsylvania and the championship against Louisiana.