High Five: Northside’s Samantha Braddy signs with Montreat

Published 1:57 am Thursday, November 21, 2024

By Jason O. Boyd

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YEATESVILLE, N.C. — Samantha Braddy now has one less thing to worry about during her senior year at Northside High School.

The three-year catcher signed Tuesday to continue her career at Montreat College, a private, Christian college located in the North Carolina mountains. Now, she can focus more on the things that seniors have to deal with like tests and graduation.

She’ll also be working to build upon Northside’s success last season where it advanced to the Class 1-A state championship before losing in the title series.

“Very smart, knows the game, hard worker, character’s real thick and they’re getting a leader, a person that you can build a team around,” said Keith Boyd, Northside’s softball coach.

“Yeah, I mean, everybody’s more secure when they know what their future is going to be. And now she can just not worry about stats and where am I gonna go and if I have a bad year that’s all I do it you know. So now she can just settle in on enjoying her senior year and seeing how far Northside softball can go this year and you know and enjoy it instead of worrying about the future.”

Braddy talked about the choice of college, the weight off her shoulders and helping Northside get back to the Class 1-A state title series.

1. So tell me when the process began as far as your interest in trying to pick a college and interest coming back from colleges that wanted you to play for?

Well, I knew like all my life that I wanted to play in college, so then they can’t start actually looking at you till junior year. So junior year it just began, like I made a Twitter account. I was posting my practices, my game footage, I was emailing coaches like every week and then Montreat reached out to me and we planned a visit. On the visit, I just knew that that was home for the next four years I guess.

2. What did the process go back from there as far as how soon you made the visit, how soon they made the offer, you made a decision?

We, my visit was in, I want to say, September, and then, like two days later, they texted me and made the offer. Then you can’t actually sign until the grace period. So I was just waiting and then we planned today for signing.

3. What kind of a burden does this lift off of you because you’ve got softball coming up, you’ve got prom and graduation and there’s a million things that seniors have to deal with. This is one less thing to worry about.

It’s very not stressful anymore because I mean I’m basically already enrolled now to college (she’s taking classes through Beaufort County Community College) so I don’t have to worry about any applications. I know that I’m going for what I want to do and I want to play softball because, like, all my friends they’re worried about their applications right now and I’m just sitting there like while they’re talking about it I’m just like ‘yep’ because I don’t have nothing to worry about anymore. I’m already a college student, basically.

4. What are you going to be majoring in?

I’m really undecided with that right now. It’s either criminal justice or psychology, probably, but that’s what I’m leaning towards.

5. Obviously the focus now kind of turns from what you did here today to softball will start in the spring and you obviously want to capitalize on what y’all did last year and kind of build upon that and reach greater heights. So how does the focus change to that and what will you be doing to get ready?

Well, we just got to work. We really need to work on finding the right fit in the field, I guess, because our hitting is gonna be there because we’re getting a lot of new girls and they all are ballers. They know what to do and then we just got to find the right fit in the field for everyone and then we’ll be good. We just have to have our defense on and our hitting because our pitching … we lost two pitchers last year so we’re only gonna have a few this year and we just got to make sure that we just can hold our own with our offense and that’s how we’ll be able to win games.

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