On April 2, 1968, the Turner Ashby High School baseball team – after a one-run loss to Fort Defiance to start the season – beat Page County, 2-0, behind the pitching of Jodie Wampler.
The Knights would not lose again until May 19, 1970 – a span of 40 games without a defeat. TA did not win a state title in any of those three years, since the Virginia High School League did not begin regional and state playoffs until 1971. TA then won state titles in 1971, 1973 and 1974.
“We were just steady. We knew how to play the game,” Wampler, who graduated in 1969, said in a recent phone interview from his home in Rockingham County.
“We always had two frontline starting pitchers,” Fred Hill, a key pitcher during much of the streak, said in March during a game at Bridgewater College.
In that three-year span from 1968-1970, the Knights were 41-2 as the pitching staff posted 19 shutouts and allowed one run in nine of the contests, with five shutouts in a row for games 10 through 14 of the winning streak.
“We all know that is what gets you wins,” Wampler said of pitching.
The streak came to an end with a 4-3 loss in eight innings at Luray on May 19, 1970 in a game that Steve Lough, a senior all-district outfielder that season, recalls vividly.
“It was an afternoon game at the old stadium in Luray,” Lough said. “We were up by a run going into the last inning, the seventh inning.”
Luray tied the game and had the winning run on second when a batter got a hit to the outfield.
“The ball went past shortstop and into left-center. I made the best throw of my high school career” to retire the possible winning run at home plate and force extra innings, said Lough, in an interview at his home in Bridgewater.
TA did not score in the eighth, and Luray won in the last of the frame on a similar hit to Lough in center.
“I threw the ball 20 feet over the head of our catcher, Sam Hess. That is one I will never forget,” said Lough, who was consoled by coach Jim Upperman on the bus ride back to the old high school in Dayton.
TA allowed just 58 runs in the 40 games. It was one of the longest winning streaks in VHSL baseball history.
A.J. Botkin was the head coach of the 1968 and 1969 clubs, and Upperman took over in 1970, with the first game of that season a win at James Madison High in Vienna – the alma mater of Upperman. More than 50 years later, TA and James Madison remain two of the most storied baseball programs in the state.
It was Upperman, a standout athlete at Bridgewater College, who led the Knights to their first state crown in 1971 – the first of seven for the school that opened in Dayton in 1956 and is now located in Bridgewater.
James Madison High has won six state titles and sent five alums to the Majors.
Upperman graduated from Bridgewater in 1968 and went into the school’s Hall of Fame in 1997.
“Upperman had us in shape. We trained like we were running track, but we were playing baseball,” Hill said.
The only players to appear on the roster for all three TA teams were Doug Heatwole, Bob Newman and Hess.
A catcher, Hess was drafted in the 10th round in 1970 by the Minnesota Twins, and he played in the minors through 1972 with the club, then appeared in one game in the minors for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1973.
Wampler, the pitcher, starred at George Washington University and is in the school’s Hall of Fame. He pitched in six straight games for TA in 1969 – and won them all and was 11-0 that year.
Hill is perplexed at why no team MLB drafted Wampler out of GW.
At GW, he was roommates with future Major Leaguer Sam Perlozzo, who would manage the Baltimore Orioles in 2005-2006.
Another teammate at GW with Wampler was Mike Toomey, a long-time scout for several MLB teams who won a World Series ring with the Kansas City Royals in 2015 as an assistant to general Dayton Moore – a member of the Valley Baseball League Hall of Fame.
Larry Erbaugh, teammates with Wampler on the 1968 squad, pitched at the University of South Carolina for coach Bobby Richardson, a star second baseman for the New York Yankees who was later the coach at Liberty University.
“I am not sure why Jodie and Larry were not drafted (by the Majors). They were both great pitchers and good students, and there were no discipline problems. Larry had a better fastball, and Jodi had a good curve,” said Lough, who played American Legion in high school for Staunton.
That Staunton American Legion team won two state titles in the late 1960s with a core of TA players.
Erbaugh threw two no-hitters for the Knights in 1968 and had 128 strikeouts, third on the single-season list at TA back of former minor leaguer Jimmy Hamilton (146) and Rusty Cornwell, who had 131 in 1997.
Erbaugh was the pitching coach for the Harrisonburg Turks of the Valley Baseball League in 2021. His brother, Doug, pitched at TA (class of 1979) and for the University of Virginia.
At least four members of those TA teams from 1968-1970 eventually went into the RCBL Hall of Fame: Hill (2013), Hess (2022), Lough (2013) and J.D. McCurdy, the EMU softball coach who went in 2015.
Hill, Hess, and Lough played for Clover Hill, and McCurdy starred for Bridgewater. McCurdy announced in early March that this would be his last season as the EMU softball coach after 23 years.
Denise Wampler Lough, a long-time employee of JMU Athletics, is the daughter of Wampler and the daughter-in-law of Lough. Her husband, Aaron Lough, 48, also played baseball at TA and in the minor leagues in 1998-1999 for Minnesota Twins after starring at Potomac State in West Virginia.
Wampler and Hill posted two of the lowest ERAs for pitchers in VHSL history. Hill, a lefty, did not allow a run in 27.3 innings pitched in 1970, and Heatwole went 25.2 innings in 1969 without yielding a run.
Heatwole had 19 career wins, Wampler had 17, and Larry Erbaugh had 14. Heatwole recorded 270 strikeouts in his prep career – a TA record.
Hill had a career ERA of 0.17, the best in school history. McCurdy was second at 0.32 and Wampler was fourth at 0.85. Alan Knicely, a 1974 grad, had an ERA of 1.03 in his career, but became a catcher/infielder in the Major Leagues from 1979-1986.
From 1968-1970, the Knights did not lose a game by more than one run.
Note: Credit to former TA athletics director Bob Stevens for much of the information for this story, thanks to his yearly updated record book.
Turner Ashby notes
- TA entered the 2026 season with an overall record of 1,012-349-2. The 1,000th win came on March 25, 2025, against Wilson Memorial by a score of 7-6 at home.
- The second-year coach for the Knights this year is Travis Knight – it is the 70th season for the school. The TA softball coach is Clint Curry, a 1982 graduate of TA who played in the minor leagues for the Texas Rangers.
- Four coaches have won a state title at TA: Upperman (1971), Ray Heatwole (1973, 1974, 2002), Richie Anderson (2006, 2007) and Andrew Armstrong (2017). A grad of TA, Armstrong played at Ohio State and in pro indy ball. Heatwole is in the VHSL, Bridgewater College and Virginia Baseball Coaches Association Halls of Fame.
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David Driver
