Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (May 18, 2016)
B S PORTS Section B South Lane County Sports and Recreation Wednesday, May 18, 2016 Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail sports@cgsentinel.com Howard sweeps individual events, 18 qualify for state as Lions shine at districts The boys won the league title for the fi rst time in fi ve years; girls took second with Albrecht and Wright making statements Athlete of the Week Connor Howard: Most Valuable Track Athlete BY SAM WRIGHT The Cottage Grove Sentinel Rain came pouring down on the Wally Ciochetti track this past Saturday, as the Sky-Em district meet was wrapping up its fi nal day. Usually, the rain can be a huge hindrance on per- formances, but that was not the case for Cottage Grove. The Lions dominated a wide variety of events. The boys’ squad took fi rst place over an extremely competitive Junction City team that rivaled the Lions throughout the entire meet. The girls’ team placed second and just under Sisters, the defend- ing champs, and fi nished 59.5 points ahead of Junction City in third place. It was the fi rst time in fi ve years that the boys have won the league title, and Head Coach Ricky Knutson said it was one of the best district champion- ships Cottage Grove has ever seen. Despite the disagreeable weather, the Lions saw person- al records set and a total of 18 athletes (11 boys, seven girls) qualify for the state meet. Perhaps the story of the sea- son came from senior sprinter Connor Howard, who won the most valuable track athlete for the district championship. Howard took fi rst place in the 100, 200 and 400-meter sprints Photo by Sam Wright Connor Howard gains the edge in the 100-meter fi nal, the senior broke records while qualifying for state. and took second place in the The 400-meter run had a did on Saturday,” Knutson said. 14.98 seconds. He also placed 4x100-meter relay. His original similar pattern. Howard lost to “Not only how he placed, but fourth in the 100-meter sprints, personal best in the 100-meter Trey Reed of Sweet Home in the fact that he did it in a league qualifying for state with a time was 11.22 seconds, a time that the preliminary races, yet he that has a crop of some of the of 11.30 seconds (the automatic was the third-fastest in Cottage still managed to take fi rst in the best sprinters in the state,” he qualifying time is 11.37 sec- Grove history. On Saturday, fi nals. Both Howard and Reed added. onds). Howard fi nished the fi nal race improved their times from the And Knutson is right. Four On the girls’ side, Hannah in 11.15 seconds, 0.03 seconds preliminary run; however, How- sprinters from the Sky-Em Albrecht took home four silver slower than his preliminary ard improved a whole lot more. League are ranked in the top 10 medals by placing second in the time. In Howard’s fourth and fi nal for 100-meter sprinters. 100, 200 and 400-meter races as In the 200-meter preliminary, event, the 4x100-meter relay, Howard stole the spotlight, well as the 4x400-meter relay. Howard actually placed third be- his team took second place, but but that is not to say that other Although she didn’t take any hind two of Junction City’s best, their time of 43.72 seconds still Cottage Grove athletes didn’t gold medals, the junior Lion Zach Rogers and James Palodi- broke a Cottage Grove record shine. was well decorated with her chuk. But in the fi nals, Howard that had been standing for 12 Michael Tharpe took fi rst wide range of medals. gained the slightest edge on years. place in the high hurdles, break- Rogers and managed to steal “Howard should be named ing his personal best and the Please see TRACK & FIELD, Page 2B fi rst place in 22.95 seconds. athlete of the year for what he 15-second mark for a time of Pitch, Hit and Run winners head to Portland Sat. Cottage Grove secures Sky-Em League title after Elmira rout BY SAM WRIGHT The Cottage Grove Sentinel On May 7, the MLB’s Pitch Hit and Run program came to Cottage Grove for area youth to test their fundamental baseball skills and earn a trip to Portland for the sectional competition. For the girls, only one age group competed ,and it was Addie Ruckwardt that came away as the all-around champion with a score of 444. Ruckwardt scored 150 in the pitch event, 134 in the hit event and 160 in the run event. The boys’ side saw a little more competition but still only had nine participants in total. In the age 9-10 group, Christian Spear was the all-around champion across the board, scor- ing 225 in pitching, 214 in hitting and 310 in running for a total score of 749. In the 11 and 12 age group, Luke Horn- ick came away as the all-around champion but was only the hitting champion for his age group. Hornick hit off of a tee for a score of 224. Logan Ruckwardt (Addie’s brother) was the pitching champion with a score of 225, and Walker Williams was the running cham- pion who ran the bases for a score of 303. Matthew Zumwalt put on an impressive performance in the 13 and 14 age group, as he won the age group and swept the board. His combined score as all-around champion added up for 817, the highest score of the day. Spear, Hornick, Zumwalt and Ruckwardt will make their way to Portland on Saturday to compete in the sectional competition. The sectional competition will take place at Sun- set High School and will determine who will head to Seattle to compete at the Mariners’ stadium. Winners from that regional tourna- ment will be invited to compete in the com- petition at the All-Star game in San Diego. Photo by Sam Wright TJ Bellamy gets the forced out at third and tries for the double play at fi rst against Elmira on Friday. Lions see season-high batting average as they demolish Elmira on the road BY SAM WRIGHT The Cottage Grove Sentinel Throughout the season, Elmira seemed to be the only Sky-Em oppo- nent that could topple Cottage Grove. The Falcons were ranked higher in the state rankings and statistically out- matched the Lions in most areas of the game (even bases stolen). But the Li- ons did not shudder. They had already beaten Elmira in April, and there was nothing to say that they couldn’t repeat that once more. And Cottage Grove didn’t even need to beat them twice. One win would have secured the Sky-Em, but that won’t stop the competitive instincts of these athletes. Tuesday’s matchup made it clear who the real dominant program of the Sky-Em was. The Lions marched in to Falcon territory and blew them away, 17-5, with a season-high score and a season-high batting average of .514. The team scored in every inning except for one, and three players had an aver- age of .750 (Lukas Ward, Brett Ollivant and Ryan East), six out of the 10 batters hit for an average of .500 or better. The team totaled 19 hits. This is the type of hitting perfor- mance Head Coach Dan Geiszler has been looking for throughout the season. The Lions rely heavily on their ability to steal once on base, but their batting averages have sometimes been on the slightly lower side of average. Brett Ollivant showed that he can Please see BASEBALL, Page 2B Howard had consistently placed high in previous meets throughout the season, but at the district meet, he put on one of the best performances of any athlete. Howard won three gold medals in the 100, 200 and 400-meter sprints and then contrib- uted to take second place in the 4x100-meter relay, breaking a Cottage Grove record with a time of 43.72 seconds. Boys' Golf takes third at districts, state results to come Junction City is this year’s Sky-Em boys’ golf champion, Sutherlin is the runner up and Cottage Grove reached its goal of taking third place in the dis- trict tournament. The Lions, headed by coach Kent Russo, have placed well enough to qualify for the 4A state tourna- ment. The state tournament was held this Monday and Tuesday, but results have yet to be re- leased. In the district tournament, Nick Russo fi nished third over- all in individual scoring and was the only medalist for the Lions. A few uncharacteristic holes put him in a tough spot, but Coach Russo said that his “mental toughness kept his round from exploding because he struggled on the front and started the back double bogey and triple bogey.” Russo ended up scoring 86 and 89 to take his third place. Another strong performance came from Jeramy Hall, who shot a 95 on day two of districts. Russo explained that the greens at Tokatee golf course are ex- tremely fast, making things like putts and chips more diffi cult. Trey Husko then shot 99, breaking 100 for the fi rst time. On the front nine, Husko shot 42, however he struggled on the back nine and hit 57. “He has some rough stretches and those will lessen with time,” Russo said. Overall, the team was very satisfi ed with their third place fi nish. As mentioned earlier, the state tournament fi nished up early Tuesday afternoon, and the results will be in next week’s issue. 541-942-7561 Join us May 21st for www.cottagegrovespeedway.com ARMED FORCES NIGHT ALL MILITARY $5.00 ADMISSION NWWT Sprints: North West Wingless Tour with ODSS-Oregon Double Shot Series IMCA Modifi eds, IMCA SportMods, Quality RV Repair Hornets
