PITTSBORO — The Northwood-Seaforth split is taking sibling rivalries to the next level.
Growing up, your siblings are often your in-house rivals, adding a healthy dose of competition into your day-to-day life — especially in sports, whether they’re taking place in the backyard or on the neighborhood basketball court.
Those rivalries, however, typically find themselves transitioning to teamwork when siblings begin playing school-sanctioned sports together in middle and high school.
But student-athletes in Pittsboro are finding themselves in the midst of a unique situation with last fall’s opening of Seaforth High School — a school housing only freshmen and sophomores this year: divided households.
On March 15, the Northwood Chargers trounced the Seaforth Hawks, 17-3, in the first-ever men’s lacrosse matchup between the two schools.
While the first game between the two programs had been on everyone’s minds since the schedule’s release, it was circled a little more prominently on the Armstrong family calendar.
“There was a rivalry inside of the rivalry,” Seaforth Head Coach Joe Hubbard said with a chuckle after the loss, referring to the matchup between Seaforth freshman midfielder Layne Armstrong and his brother, Northwood junior goalkeeper Kyler Armstrong.
“I have three brothers,” he continued, “so there’s obviously a competitive spirit there.”
The competitive spirit between the Armstrongs was alive and well in the Chargers’ win, where the two brothers dealt out a generous amount of trash talk as they both had standout performances.
Through 24 minutes in net, Kyler allowed just a single goal — on a point-blank shot from Hawks sophomore Andrew Parker — and proceeded to stop everything else that came his way.
When he went to the sideline to start the third period in favor of senior Robbie Delgado, his Chargers held onto a 10-1 lead and were well in position to earn the blowout win.
On the other side of the rivalry, Layne — who has scored 4 goals so far this season — went scoreless in his first game against his brother’s team, but showcased his knack for winning face-offs and his ability to enforce a physical presence despite his 5-foot-7 frame.
“Layne was certainly focused and you could see it in his action,” Hubbard said. “His energy on the field — not so much verbally — but he was much more focused and ready to play and get after it.”
The two only connected twice in the game’s first half, the first of which came early on, when Kyler stuffed Layne’s left-handed shot attempt, getting the best of his little brother in the only chance Layne had all evening.
But there was no remorse on Kyler’s end.
“I stuffed him, I stuffed him,” Kyler said energetically after the win. “As soon as I stuffed him, I was like, ‘Not today, bud. I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’”
Later, Layne would repay the favor on a downfield check after Kyler came out of net, knocking him out of bounds with a strong bump.
It was a familiar sight for Ryan Armstrong, the father of Layne and Kyler and the head wrestling coach at Seaforth, who’s seen his kids involved in a mixture of football, lacrosse and wrestling — arguably the three toughest, most contact-laden high school sports there are.
Ryan also helps out with the Seaforth men’s lacrosse team, coaching the goalies, but in the game against Northwood, he opted to sit in the stands so he wouldn’t have to coach against his oldest son.
“(Hubbard and I) had already talked and if they were both midfielders, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but since one’s a middy and one’s a goalie, I was just like, ‘I want to be a parent,’” Ryan said. “That’s why I stayed up in the Hawks Nest and watched from afar.”
Ryan was walking around the concourse with a t-shirt that was a visual representation of his divided household: a simply drawn house split down the middle with one side sporting the Hawks’ logo while the other had the Chargers’.
He said it was a last-minute addition to his wardrobe.
As atypical as it may seem, this situation is not unique to the Armstrongs.
The sudden split between the two schools has bred familial competition across all sports — even if the players and coaches on either side aren’t biological relatives.
“I’ve coached a lot of these boys,” Randy Cox, Northwood’s head coach, said after the win. “I talk about it all the time, each one of these boys, if this high school didn’t exist, would be part of Northwood. … The Chatham Cardinals is the feeder program for both the Northwood team and Seaforth team and so to have players that came through the Cardinals … competing against each other is really sort of bringing it full circle. I think it’s going to be a great rivalry for years to come.”
Ryan, who was the wrestling coach at Northwood before accepting the Seaforth job last summer, struggled when it came time for Seaforth to wrestle Northwood this season because “all of those kids are my kids.”
The same could be said for Seaforth cross country coach Duncan Murrell, whose team faced off against Northwood and his daughter, senior Caroline Murrell, last fall.
“I thought it would be no big deal for me to be out here coaching another team and see my daughter run for the other team, but I felt a little weird about it,” he told the News + Record after the meet on Aug. 26. “Some of my happiest moments have been cheering her … it’s hard to get when you’re also having to coach at the same time.”
That’s why, even in the budding rivalry’s first year, the passion is already there.
When athletes take the field, court or track for either Northwood or Seaforth, they’re suiting up against former teammates and coaches, middle-school classmates, siblings and even parents.
And while the results may not always indicate a hard-fought battle, the Northwood-Seaforth men’s lacrosse game is an indicator that the competitiveness of the rivalry is staring us right in the face.
The Chargers dominated the Hawks from the opening face-off, scoring five goals before Seaforth even made its way onto the board with Parker’s goal late in the first period.
Two goals by Chargers junior William Johnson in the second period’s first four minutes propelled Northwood to a 7-0 lead, followed by a pair of goals from juniors Will Smith and Taylor Laberge to make it 9-0.
On Smith’s goal, the Chargers passed the ball around the field, patiently waiting to find an open man. When the ball came to Smith, he slotted it to the right corner of the net, making it look easy.
“We really wanted to make sure we emphasized discipline and doing the right things with the ball,” Cox said. “I saw them moving the ball off-ball, moving themselves off-ball and I think we did that reasonably well.”
The third period was much of the same for the Chargers, who scored 6 goals to the Hawks’ zero — including two more from Laberge, who led the team with 6 goals on the evening — to put them up, 16-1, after 36 minutes of play.
Seaforth got goals from sophomore Ethan Hughes and sophomore James Swenson in the final period, but it was much too little, much too late as the Chargers secured the 17-3 win and improved to 4-1 on the season (now 5-1 after a win over Union Pines last Friday).
Despite the final score, it was obvious the Hawks weren’t a pushover.
They often didn’t shy away from contact — as seen in Layne’s face-off wins — but they struggled when it came to some of the game’s fundamentals: namely ground balls.
The Chargers scooped up a whopping 47 ground balls on the night.
“After we sat there and looked at the film and we showed them, ‘Hey, Seaforth actually played them better than what we would expect against a team that’s been together a lot longer than we have,’” Ryan Armstrong said. “Seaforth won all of the initial face-offs, but they couldn’t control ground balls.”
The general consensus from those involved in the rivalry is that Seaforth may be inexperienced now, as illustrated by its 1-6 record through its first seven games, but it won’t be that way forever.
It’s just part of the growing pain that comes with starting a brand new program.
“We’re not really looking at the scoreboard right now, as a new program,” Hubbard said. “We’re looking more at those little things that we can control and small details, things that we can impact and help each other with. … It shows in the grit and the competitive spirit.”
After the game, Kyler appeared giddy as he walked toward the post-game huddle with his team.
A lot of his excitement not only came from earning a 14-goal win, but having done so against his little brother, one that’s actually been playing lacrosse longer than him.
“It was fun, it was really fun,” Kyler said with a smile. “There was a competitive nature there. We talked a lot before the game. We’re not teammates on the field, but we’re teammates off the field. We’re family, that’s all that matters.”
Reporter Victor Hensley can be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.