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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (March 15, 2017)
B S PORTS Section B WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2017 South Lane County Sports and Recreation Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail sports@cgsentinel.com Big shoes to fi ll for Lions' baseball With last year's seniors gone, can Cottage Grove snag another Sky-Em title with the help of Coach Geiszler? By Sam Wright sports@cgsentinel.com Lions baseball returns this spring on Friday, March 17, and Cottage Grove will look to put on another historic season like it did in 2016. With the departure of a lot of strong and impact- ful seniors, Cottage Grove will have to step up if the team hopes to take home another league ti- tle. Big names like Payton Pres- ley, Hunter Harris, Bryce Allen, Lucas Ward and Ryan East will no longer be on the roster, leav- ing it up to the younger, but now more veteran players, to lead the way. But before we jump into the upcoming season, it’s import- ant to look back on last season to see what the Lions will miss this year and also what they will retain. Last year, Cottage Grove swept the special awards in the All-League roster, meaning that the Lions took home the Sky- Em Coach of the Year, Pitcher of the Year and Player of the Year awards. Head Coach Dan Geiszler was the 2016 Sky-Em Coach of the Year, an honor which, more often than not, comes with a league title. But that is not to dismiss or devalue the impact of Geiszler. The head coach in- stilled an aggressive mindset in which stealing bases became a The Lions' baseball team gathers around home plate to congratulate Payton Presley on his second home run of the year. Cottage Grove will be without Presley this year, and the team will look for the next impactful player on the roster. top priority once runners were and foremost, you have to get on and Ward had a .329, both play- on base. Cottage Grove led the base. The Lions held an overall ers had 25 RBIs each. But now that the players with league with 108 stolen bases in batting average of .286, on par just 28 games over the course with the national average. How- the strongest batting perfor- of the season. That’s more than ever, stars on the team such as mances are no longer eligible, double the national average for Presley consistently boosted the there will need to be someone team. else to fi ll those shoes. That high school baseball teams. Presley fi nished his last sea- someone could potentially be “It’s something we really fo- cus on and we’ll take any op- son at Cottage Grove with a current senior Brett Ollivant. Ollivant fi nished his junior portunity given to us,” Geiszler .500 batting average (getting 48 hits on 96 at-bats). This includ- year with a batting average of said last year. But it wasn’t just base run- ed two homeruns, 12 doubles .308, the highest average after ning that gave Cottage Grove its and 27 RBIs. Please see BASEBALL, Page 2B Harris batted a .366 average, numerous runs each game. First Athletes of the Week South Valley Athletic's fi fth and sixth-grade basketball champions Track returns after last year's historic title-winning season Team Orange Crush Front row: Kalen Rinck and Rylan Springer Back row: Coach Boyd Rinck, Jaedon Lindsay, Tristan Kane, Bryent Baros, Jordan Wilson, Javin Hemenway, Coach Brian Kane. Team: Navy Seals Left to right: Coach Tom Perkins, Izzy Stere, Eliana Piltz, Selena Matney, Jerzie Epperson, Payton Bickford, Summer Lebow, Haylee Sowa and Coach Dewey Epperson. Hanna Albrecht qualifi ed for state in four different races last season. The senior will now look to out-perform herself this year. The girls' strongest runners have returned, but can the boys take another Sky-Em title with- out the record-setting seniors that graduated? By Sam Wright sports@cgsentinel.com Around 80 athletes are on the roster for Cottage Grove’s track and fi eld team, an accomplish- ment that Head Coach Ricky Knutson calls “a great start.” These 80 athletes fi nd them- selves in one of the greatest eras for CGHS track and fi eld, and last year’s record-setting season has placed a tall order for the team. The boys are coming off of the best team fi nish since 1977. The 2016 boys track and fi eld team took fi rst place in the Sky- Em League and fi nished in fi fth place in the state meet at Hay- ward Field. Cottage Grove will be miss- ing several strong contributors that were seniors last year. At the district meet, then-senior Connor Howard broke records and put on the story of the sea- son by taking gold in the 100, 200 and 400-meter sprints, not to mention a silver medal in the 4x100-meter relay. Howard held the third-fast- est 100-meter sprint time with 11.22 seconds before going into last year’s district meet, and he broke his personal record by running 11.12 in the prelimi- naries and 11.15 in the fi nals. After fi nishing third in the pre- liminary race for the 200-meter dash, Howard burst back out and took fi rst place in the fi nals with a time of 22.95 seconds. “He should be named athlete of the year for what he did,” Knutson said of Howard’s per- formance. Although Howard’s relay team took second place in the 4x100, the team fi nished in 43.72 seconds and broke a Cot- tage Grove record that had been standing for 12 years. Howard accomplished all of this in a league that had four sprinters ranked in the top 10 for 4A schools. Cottage Grove will also miss its dominance in high hurdles, where Michael Tharpe fl our- ished in his fi nal year at Cottage Grove. Tharpe won gold in the 110-meter high hurdles with a time of 14.98 seconds, achiev- ing his goal of breaking the 15-second mark. He also joined Howard in the 100-meter sprint with a time of 11.30 seconds (automatically qualifying for state). But Knutson and his team do not despair without these key athletes. “We are hoping to have more of a reload mentality as op- posed to a rebuilding one,” he said. The Lions will return with Tucker Porter, who placed at state in the triple jump, along with others such as Konrad Raum who qualifi ed for state in the 3000-meter race. The record-setting relay team will only bring back Jacob Woods, but Knutson says he will have help from sprinters and jumpers such as Chad Bottorff, Hayden Glenn, Cooper Ladd, Erik Giff- en and Juice Clafl en. Many of these names were prevalent Please see TRACK & FIELD, Page 2B Roseburg football team looks to Cottage Grove to establish roster The Roseburg Valley Thun- der football team is an opportu- nity for football athletes to play at the semi-pro level during the winter and summer. With less daylight during the winter, the team’s roster dwindled. “People weren’t getting off of work until after it was dark, so a lot of them weren’t able to play,” said Rick Winkley. The team had about 40 players at one point, but as winter came, the Thunder were playing with only 14 players. To buff up the roster, Winkley has taken to Cottage Grove, where he hopes to garner inter- est and participation from CG football players. “This is a man’s league; it’s not for the weak or pretenders,” the team posted on its Facebook page. “Players come and go on these teams because they start out thinking it’s high school. I assure you, it’s not.” The team plays in a full-con- tact semi-pro league and Win- kley is looking to create a powerhouse within the state of Oregon. “I challenge the young men to come out and help build the power house team that has elud- ed us since semi-pro was in- troduced back in the mid 90s,” Winkley wrote. The team is now accepting summer league sign-ups and daily conditioning is scheduled to start on April 3. Interested football enthusiasts are encour- aged to contact Winkley at 541- 817-6065.