Graham, Cummings High Schools Drop Baseball This Season Due to Low Participation

Two of Alamance County's Mid-Carolina Conference baseball programs went dark before the season's first pitch, with Graham High School and Cummings High School both withdrawing from varsity play this spring due to insufficient player commitment.

Graham athletics director Kyle Ward notified conference schools of his program's decision last week, just ahead of the opening round of league games. "It just didn't work out," Ward said. "Just not enough athletes to commit to play."

Graham had drawn somewhere between 10 and 14 players interested in suiting up, but Ward said concerns about roster stability and the limited baseball experience of some would-be players made fielding a competitive team impractical. He framed the early withdrawal as a matter of fairness to opponents. "You're not wanting to hold conference teams hostage," Ward said, acknowledging that other schools could use the advance notice to fill their schedules with non-conference opponents.

Cummings had already pulled out before Graham's announcement. The withdrawal marks Cummings' third consecutive season without a baseball team. Graham's situation carries its own troubling pattern: the Red Devils also went without a team in 2021 and 2022, then returned to field squads in 2023 and 2024 while managing a combined one victory across both seasons. That single win came against Cummings in 2023, and Cummings' lone victory that season came against Graham.

The back-to-back absences leave a noticeable gap in the Mid-Carolina Conference schedule. Southern Alamance coach Jason Smith had anticipated exactly this scenario. He built a 26-game slate, exceeding the North Carolina High School Athletic Association's standard 24-game regular-season limit, knowing that if Cummings and Graham ultimately fielded teams, the Patriots would simply drop two non-league games. With both programs now out, Smith is left with four fewer conference games and said he is searching for two additional non-conference opponents to fill the void. As of last week, his inquiries had not produced any positive responses.

With baseball off the table, the only spring boys' sports available to students at Graham and Cummings will be track and field and golf.