By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY —  Payne Stolsworth is a first team All-America.

The West Rowan graduate found out about it the modern way — by scrolling on Twitter. Still, when he saw his name, he no doubt felt that same rush of emotions that All-America athletes felt 50 years ago when they found out from their coach.

“Being an All-American, that’s not something that is easy to put into words,” Stolsworth said. “But when I saw my name, there was joy, there was pride, there was excitement. It’s been a great year for me.”

The journey started for Stolsworth at West Rowan, where he was a three-sport athlete.

He had quite a senior basketball season, drilling 3-pointers for the Falcons to finish with a 16.3 points per game scoring average and 734 career points.

He was most successful athletically on the football field as a quarterback, where he benefited from connecting with game-breaking receivers in Kortez Weeks and Jalen Houston. The were burners who could turn a 10-yard slant into a 70-yard sprint, and Stolsworth, a three-year starter, racked up passing seasons of 1,946, 2,047 and 2,101 yards. He wasn’t a runner, but he could sling it. He broke the school record with 68 career touchdown passes.

His senior baseball season in the spring of 2019 was quiet compared to football. West had a lot of pitching, so Stolsworth was used as a middle of the lineup hitter and as the closer.

When it came time to make a decision about the next level, football certainly looked like his best shot and he had offers. A handwritten letter from the N.C. Wesleyan coaching staff  won him over, and Stolsworth headed to Rocky Mount, hoping to compete for playing time with the Division III Battling Bishops as a freshman.

A few weeks into football practice, reality started to set in. Stolsworth was going to be well down the depth chart at quarterback. It was going to be years before he played and it was no sure thing that he ever would.

“After two weeks, I’m calling my dad (Bruce) and we’re talking about maybe switching to baseball,” Stolsworth said. “I didn’t feel like I getting much of an opportunity at quarterback, and I had planned to try out for N.C. Wesleyan’s baseball team, anyway. About three weeks into college football, I was ready to see what I could do in baseball. Switching to baseball was the best decision I ever made.”

Focusing on baseball for the first time in his life and working on baseball every day, Stolsworth’s pitching velocity increased. He went from a mid-80s hurler to a high-80s hurler pretty quickly. Thomas St. Clair,a former Lenoir-Rhyne pitcher and now a pitching instructor in MLB, worked with Stolsworth. He helped him add  movement as well as velocity.

“Don’t count the days; make the days count,” St. Clair told him. Those words became Stolsworth’s mantra.

But the obstacles in front of him were piling up.

Stolsworth underwent Tommy John surgery to repair his right elbow in February 2020, the second semester of his freshman year.

The shutdowns caused by COVID came soon after that, so Stolsworth was away from the mound for a long time.

When he got back into action in 2021, he struggled. There are some efficient hitters in Division III, and Stolsworth took his lumps.

“I didn’t get to pitch to a lot as a sophomore,” Stolsworth said. “Junior season, I felt good and was throwing harder and got some chances, but I couldn’t find the strike zone.”

He had plenty of reasons to give up sports by that point and success had been elusive, but he desperately wanted to succeed for the N.C. Wesleyan coaches in what he believed would be his final year of baseball.

“I worked harder in the off-season than I ever had and put everything I had into having a good senior season,” Stolsworth said. “I had a tougher mindset than I had before. When something went wrong on the mound I didn’t lose focus, Nothing bothered me. I just kept right on pitching. Physically, I felt great, and my velocity continued to tick up.  I was usually working in the low 90s — even 93 or 94 on my best days — and I had good command of all my pitches.”

The 2023 season began for Stolsworth in mid-February with five shutout innings, and he never slowed down. He didn’t allow more than three earned runs in any of his starts.

He set a program record with an ERA of 1.96. He struck out 100 batters in 101 innings, while walking 37 and allowing only three homers.

He came out of nowhere and never lost. Not once. He went 12-0, beating the weak teams, the average teams and the good teams.  He used two different fastballs (sinker and four-seamer), a slider, a curve and a changeup.

“Probably the best game I had all season was a 1-0, nine-inning win against a very good Methodist team,” Stolsworth said.

N.C. Wesleyan also got some mound innings from local products Cord Butler (A.L. Brown) and Clayton Gilmore (Carson) in a banner 36-10 season.

Stolsworth was the USA South Conference Pitcher of the Week four times. He was the USA South Pitcher of the Year and the Region Pitcher of the Year. He was the first N.C. Wesleyan player since 2008 to make first team All-America on the American Baseball Coaches Association squad.

Besides being an All-American, Stolsworth is now a college graduate. He handled a double major in Healthcare Administration and Organizational Leadership between shutouts.

He has 190 pounds on that 6-foot-3 frame now and he still has a year of college baseball eligbility. He hopes to prove himself at a higher level next year as a graduate student.

He’s put his name in the transfer portal and is anxious to see what the future holds.

“It’s all about finding the right fit,” Stolsworth said. “The goal is to have another season like this one, and then I’ll see how far I can go.”