As the Cary Academy baseball team gathered around home plate, coach Ray Pope told them to be proud of the perfect regular season they had just completed with a 7-0 Monday night victory against Greensboro Day.

There is hardly a school record that hasn’t been broken. The Chargers are 23-0, hitting .465 as a team and averaging 15 hits a game.

“We’ve pretty much beat most of them up,” Pope said. “There might be one or two – walks or something – that’s left.”

But the reflection part of Pope’s postgame talk soon gave way to looking ahead. The N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association playoffs start Friday, and – for once – a Triangle team is expected to compete for the title.

“I told them to be real happy with the season,” Pope said. "But come Friday, it’s one-and-done and the 23-0 season is gone and it starts over.”

It hasn’t been as easy as it sounds for the state’s top-ranked team, and it’s not expected to get easier as it tries for success not seen at the school or the area among NCISAA teams.

“The last two weeks I haven’t slept,” Pope said. “My blood pressure’s been up because everyone’s got a target on your back going ‘OK we want to beat you guys.’ ”

Although the Triangle has produced some of the top N.C. High School Athletic Association teams – like last year’s 4A champ Holly Springs – and has a N.C. Christian Schools Association powerhouse in Wake Christian, the same can’t be said of the local NCISAA programs.

An area NCISAA 3A team hasn’t won a state tournament game since 2009. Those teams – which also include Ravenscroft and Durham Academy – are 3-12 in the last six postseasons (11-24 if area 2A and 1A programs are included).

But Cary Academy knew this season was going to be different – if not after having several of its players be part of a runner-up finish in the Central Carolina Summer Scholastic League last July, then certainly after the season opener in March. The Chargers walloped NCISAA 3A preseason No. 1 High Point Wesleyan Christian Academy, now ranked No. 2 in the state, by a 14-3 score.

“That’s when it hit us that we can do something really good this year,” said senior pitcher/third baseman Tyler Holt.

And it was after a three-game series sweep of rival Durham Academy where Cary Academy players began realizing a perfect season was a possibility.

“Usually against Durham Academy is when we always falter. Last season we had our only two conference losses against them – they always come up and bite us,” said senior pitcher/first baseman Keenan Szulik. “But that week we didn’t play our best ball and we still managed to come out 3-0, and I think that said it all in our mind.”

Pope says although he’s been stressed by the pursuit of perfection – wanting it for the kids who helped him win his 100th game at the school this year – his players will be ready for the postseason run.

Should the Chargers, expected to be seeded No. 1 in the 3A bracket, win a home playoff game Friday, the team will advance to the state quarterfinals hosted by Charlotte Christian School – where Cary Academy lost in last year’s first round – on May 15. The state championship game, set for May 19, is a best-of-three.

Cary Academy has never advanced past the state quarterfinals.

And that’s the school record most worth breaking.