Broadway Star: LCH grad shines for UNC baseball

From the diamonds at Northview and Broadway Optimist Park to one of the best college pitching staffs in the nation, Lee County High School grad and UNC standout Walker McDuffie is having a dream season

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By Jonathan Owens

A 5-2 lead in the ninth inning is usually safe. But against the No. 2-ranked team in the country — a team with some of the most explosive 1-2-3 hitters in college baseball due up — a three-run cushion is far from comfortable. 

UNC Head Baseball Coach (and Sanford native) Scott Forbes didn’t hesitate on who would take the mound in the ninth on April 17 against Georgia Tech.

He called on a fellow Lee County boy.

Walker McDuffie jogged in from the left field bullpen — trademark black thick-rimmed glasses on — and struck out one while coaxing two popouts from a lineup that had spent all season punishing pitchers for mistakes, recording perhaps the biggest save of his young career.

“Against an offense like that, to be able to close it down and set the tone early on a Friday night,” McDuffie said afterward.

“That was big.”

He came back the next day and threw three more innings in a 14-4 rout that clinched the series and further cemented UNC’s standing among the nation’s elite with the postseason approaching.

There’s a reason you may see a few more “Walker Glasses“ in the Boshamer crowd these days, and it’s not fashion. With a big-league slider, a developing changeup, and a fastball in the mid-90s, McDuffie has become one of the most trusted arms in a UNC pitching staff that has ranked among the nation’s best for two straight seasons. He’s creeping up MLB prospect lists, too.

But to understand why Forbes handed him the ball against the Yellow Jackets, in front of 4,357 fans — the largest regular season crowd in Boshamer Stadium history — you have to go back.

BROADWAY DAYS

McDuffie’s love of baseball began early. His grandfather, Donnie Weaver, introduced him to the game and coached the family’s youngest kids — McDuffie always among them, always the smallest, always holding his own against older competition.

The pitch that would eventually carve up ACC lineups started at the lake on a summer afternoon that nobody involved probably remembers very clearly — except McDuffie.

“My uncle [Darryl Weaver] — he’s the one who taught me the slider grip,” he said. “I don’t even think he meant to. I just remember it when I was young, and it just kind of sat. It’s just all I could have remembered, the only thing I remembered from that. So I just rocked with it. And I mean, it’s honestly got me where I’m at.”

That uncle was almost certainly not thinking about MLB draft boards when he showed his nephew that grip. McDuffie was 6 years old. 

He has not changed it since.

His parents, Stephen and Donna McDuffie, hauled him wherever he needed to go. From Broadway Optimist and Northview youth leagues to travel ball tournaments with Rob Wooten’s C35 organization, McDuffie was a gamer.
He could play with anybody at any level, and he did.

Lee County has a rich baseball tradition, and McDuffie’s generation is no different. Everybody knows everybody, and rivalries are heated. McDuffie said that turned out to matter more than people realize.

“The competition in Lee County is really good,” he said. “Who I grew up playing against — all those guys — they push you, even if you don’t realize it. Everybody makes everybody better. And I think that’s why you see a lot of guys still playing ball from there, in our age group.”

MOM & DAD

Somebody had to make those camps, showcases, and travel ball tournaments possible. McDuffie doesn’t talk about his parents the way athletes sometimes can — in vague or obligatory ovations. He’s specific about their sacrifices. 

“I could go on and on about my mom,” McDuffie said, then paused. “She quit her job at the bank for 17-plus years and took a pay cut to be an assistant kindergarten teacher, just so she could be off to take me to travel ball tournaments in the summer.”

His father, Stephen, worked night shifts. Twelve hours. And if his son asked him to get to the field afterward — to throw, to take some BP, anything — he was there.

But what McDuffie kept going back to wasn’t the logistics. It’s something harder to quantify.

“They never pushed me to play baseball,” he said. “There was never a thing where my performance in baseball dictated how they were going to treat me. If I had a bad game, we’re still going to get ice cream. They’ve never treated me differently after I pitch badly.

His parents don’t love watching McDuffie play baseball because he is good at it, he said.

“They love it, because I love it. And that gives me all the motivation in the world, because it’s my choice and my decision. I’m not doing it for them — but they get to reap the benefits of it, which is the best part.”

HIGH SCHOOL RISE

As the ace for Lee County High School, McDuffie’s star brightened on the mound, in the field and at the plate. He’d always seen himself as a position player first — a shortstop, ideally — before an ACL tear and an honest look at college recruiting changed the equation. Pitching wasn’t a consolation prize. It was a calling he hadn’t fully focused on yet.

The results made the case. McDuffie was named the NCBCA’s 3A Pitcher of the Year in 2024, earned All-State honors twice, and was named Conference Pitcher of the Year his senior season.

Through all of it — youth leagues, travel ball, high school — McDuffie’s path never crossed with Forbes in any meaningful way. Forbes still often comes home to Sanford. Lee County is a small world, yet they missed each other until McDuffie attended a UNC camp as a junior at Wooten’s urging.

“I had never talked to him before,” McDuffie said. “But, I went to their camp, and then they offered me the next day. So that was the first time I’d ever talked to him.”

Forbes loved that slider and offered him immediately. McDuffie didn’t need long to think about it. A lifelong Tar Heel fan with good grades, he may have ended up in Chapel Hill with or without baseball.

“Carolina is the only school I ever wanted to go to,” he said. “My recruiting story is kind of boring.”

INTO THE FIRE

College has been a different animal. McDuffie arrived on campus in the summer of 2024, not knowing what to expect, confident he could pitch but realistic about the learning curve.

Forbes had other plans for him.

McDuffie appeared in 28 games as a freshman — more than any other pitcher on the roster. He went 3-3 with seven saves, struck out 72 batters in 55.1 innings, and posted a 3.74 ERA. He ranked fourth in the ACC in appearances and fifth in saves. He was the first Carolina true freshman to earn more than one save since Trent Thornton in 2013, and was named a second-team Freshman All-American by every major publication that covers college baseball.

None of it was the plan, exactly.

“I’m just a freshman coming in,” he said. “You don’t really know what to expect. But as we continued to practice and scrimmage and play each other and then play other teams, I started to kind of understand where I fit in best and what I needed to do to help us win.”

What clicked came in his second career appearance — a save at East Carolina in late February 2025. He threw a hitless 2.1 innings with three strikeouts. After that, something settled.

“That one really kind of helped me solidify myself,” he said. “Pitching against college hitters — it’s a lot different than high school.”

Forbes watched all of it from the dugout. His assessment, repeated after nearly every outing: “He’s definitely got it.”

After a dominating performance from McDuffie against Oklahoma in the NCAA Regional, Forbes had another great line: “Not bad for an ol’ Sanford boy.”

McDuffie said he later corrected his coach. “I keep telling him I’m from Broadway. There’s a big difference.”

The Tar Heels advanced to the Super Regional last year before falling just short of the College World Series. McDuffie pitched in two of those postseason games. He’s been thinking about Omaha ever since.

THIS SEASON

Sophomore seasons are harder than freshman seasons. The opposition has film. The element of surprise — the kid with the glasses jogging in from the bullpen that nobody has seen before — is mostly gone.

“Last year, I didn’t know anything that was going on,” McDuffie said. “I just went out there and pitched. But this year, it’s almost like you set an expectation on yourself after having a season like that. Now people know what you bring, and you have to bring that every day — or else it’s a failure.”

He pressed early. The numbers dipped. He found his way back to the same mindset he carried as a freshman: just go out and have fun.

The results have been among the best of any reliever in the ACC. He’s made 18 appearances, going 6-1 with a 2.45 ERA. He was once again among the team’s leaders with 57 strikeouts as of April 27, following a commanding performance against rival Duke. At one stretch, he went 16 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run.

The coaching staff has played a major role in the development, he said. Before arriving at UNC, McDuffie had largely figured pitching out on his own; high school hitters don’t require the full arsenal. Now, he has a full staff of coaches who can take as much time as needed to help him.

“I can ask a question, and they will sit there for 30 minutes and explain it to me in a way that I’ll understand,” he said. “They have the answer to absolutely everything. And even if it’s not about me, I ask questions about other people, just because I want to learn as much as I can — because eventually, something someone else does might affect me later down the road, and then I’ll know exactly how to approach it.”

He’s built trust with Forbes and its staff, allowing him to walk into big games with their confidence, thanks to one simple thing: honesty.

“If he asks me if I’m good and I say yeah, I prove that I’m good,” McDuffie said. “And once he sees that, and once it happens a few times, now we’ve got a system going. He knows I’m honest with him. Even on the flip side, if I don’t feel good, I’ll tell him that. It’s not a ’I’m soft’ thing. If I pitch today and I don’t give us the best chance to win compared to one of the other 20 guys waiting, that matters.”

BEYOND CHAPEL HILL

Baseball America recently ranked McDuffie among the top 100 prospects for the 2027 MLB Draft, citing his ability to get ahead of hitters, induce ground balls, and avoid extra-base hits — and, of course, that slider. 

McDuffie isn’t eligible for this year’s draft. That means another season of development, including a possible starting role next year.

For now, his focus is singular.

“That’s why you come to UNC,” he said. “At this point, you look at the recent history — that’s the standard. The standard isn’t to get to Omaha, tour around, and just check the box of ’hey, we made it.’ For us, making it to the conference tournament is just another box to check before we get to our ultimate goal, which is to win the national championship. And I think that’s very, very doable.”

On a Friday night in April, in front of a record crowd, with the second-best team in college baseball due up in the ninth, the Sanford native Forbes handed the ball to a fellow Lee County baseball star.

McDuffie got three outs. The Heels won, which will mean the world for their postseason seeding and dreams of the school’s first national championship. 

Not bad for an ol’ boy from Broadway.