Sports
Cottage Grove Sentinel
South Lane County Sports and Recreation
Warriors
prepare for
playoff s
Section B
Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail zsilva@cgsentinel.com
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Woods takes home two titles
Th e defending state
champions squeeze
their way into the
postseason
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
Th e Warriors are heading
back to the state soft ball tour-
nament.
Heading into the fi nal week
of play, it was all but a guar-
antee as North Douglas sat
in third place in league play
with a weeklong series against
the second-place team in
league, Oakland. With only
two teams making it out of
the league, it was the Warriors
who stepped up.
“We’ve come back strong
the last one and a half weeks
are starting to peak at the
right time,” head coach Jesse
Rice told Th e News-Review on
Saturday.
In the fi rst game of last
week’s series, the Warriors fell
8-7 on the road to put the team
in a hole in the standings. On
Th ursday things started to
look up for the team. But not
before they found themselves
in some trouble.
In the fi rst game of a dou-
ble-header at home with the
Oakers on Th ursday, it was
Oakland striking fi rst as they
went up 4-0 in the fi rst inning.
It was then the North Douglas
off ense there to pull the team
together as they turned three
doubles and smart base run-
ning in the bottom of the fi rst
inning into fi ve runs to take
the lead. A pair of runs for
North Douglas in the second
inning kept the off ense fl ow-
ing.
On the defensive side, be-
sides a passed ball that led
to a run in the fourth in-
ning, the rest of the game the
Warriors kept the Oakers in
check. Pitcher Hope Morgan
fi nished the game with eight
strikeouts.
In the second game, the
team fought for a 5-4 victory
to secure the two-seed, and
home fi eld, going into the
weekend’s league tournament.
In the league tournament,
the top seed, Monroe, has an
automatic berth in the play-
off s while teams two through
four in the standing battle
for the fi nal spot. Th is meant
Oakland faced North Douglas
for the fourth time in six days
on Saturday with the playoff s
on the line.
With Whitney Anderson
and Joanna Alcantar both
recording a pair of hits, the
Warriors were able to hold on
to a 3-2 victory.
Morgan fi nished the day
with fi ve strikeouts.
With the win, North Doug-
las secured a spot in the 16-
team state playoff tourna-
ment. Ranked eighth in the
state, the Warriors will enter
the postseason as a 10-seed.
Th e defending-state cham-
pions will begin their play-
off run later (May 23) on the
road at Knappa. Th e Loggers
fi nished the season 14-8 and
have won 10 of their last 11
games.
Stay
connected!
Follow
@sports_cgs
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for updates
throughout
the week.
PHOTOS BY ZACH SILVA/CG SENTINEL
Jacob Woods speeds ahead of the fi eld and to a victory in the 200 at Hayward Field on Saturday.
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
Cottage Grove fi nishes sixth
as a team behind big weekend
from Jacob Woods
It's been a constant for Cottage Grove
sports all year long. Jacob Woods: state
champion.
“He is awesome under the biggest
spotlight… You just know he’s going to
perform. He did at the state champion-
ship football game, he did it on his last
jump in the long jump at the district
meet,” said Cottage Grove High School
head track and fi eld coach Ricky Knut-
son. “You know, when the stage is huge,
that’s when he’s his best.”
Instead of on the football fi eld, this
time it was Woods winning the 200 and
long jump while taking second in the 100
at last weekend’s State Track and Field
Championships at Hayward Field. He
was also named 4A athlete of the meet.
With the pair of wins, Woods, who
holds the CGHS all-time record in the
100 and has the second fastest time in
the 200, further cemented himself into
the school’s history by being the fourth
male to win two individual track titles in
a year, and the fi rst to do it since 1962.
“It’s really hard to put into words. You
don’t get to be around young people like
that very oft en,” said an emotional Knut-
son of Woods. “I don’t know what else to
say. It’s been a crazy ride.”
In the fi rst day of state competition, it
was Woods starting his weekend off with
a win in the long jump behind a 21-foot
leap.
“Honestly, the mindset was just try to
get a [personal record] and score high
points for my team. I wasn’t fully expect-
ing to win. Everybody was having a pret-
ty bad day because of the headwind and
everything,” said Woods. “Had a kind of
fl at mark, it was a decent mark, 21-feet,
but nobody ended up beating it.”
With the second fastest time in both
the 100 and 200 prelims, he went into
Saturday looking to score. In the 100 fi -
nal, it was North Bend’s Jonathan Chil-
cote just edging Woods out at the line by
.11 seconds. Determined not to fall to
second again, Woods was ready for the
200.
“You know, aft er the 100, I was a lit-
tle upset. I knew it was my last time ever
competing for high school and my team
needed the points and I just really want-
ed it. So my legs hurt, shaking before the
race, I just had to give it everything I got
though,” he said.
With a fast start, he came around the
turn in fi rst place and was able to hold off
the competition and sprint to a time of
22.34 to take the title.
“I just tried to keep the pace and I knew
if I was going to win I had to beat that
corner and make everyone feel a little un-
easy. And then that last bit I just had to
try not to die and then that last 10 meters
everything was on fi re,” said Woods.
Th e other top performance of the
weekend for Cottage Grove was from
sophomore Jimmy Talley, whose 19-sec-
ond PR propelled him to a second-place
fi nish in the 3,000 in a time of 8:57.
“It felt really fast but it didn’t feel like
breaking nine fast. So I was kind of sur-
prised when I looked at the clock and I
was pretty pumped up when it happened,
too,” he said.
Coming into the race, fi rst place fi n-
isher John Kavulich was the only racer
to have broken the nine-minute barrier
with his previous best of 8:43. With that
in mind, Talley knew that the real race
would be fi ghting for that second spot.
“So I was talking to my coach and he
was telling me not to stay up in the front
pack for like the fi rst few laps because it
was going to go out fast. State meets al-
ways do,” he said.
Biding his time, Talley moved up
TRACK see B2
Jumping into a headwind, Woods did enough to take fi rst place in the long jump.
Eastburn named head basketball coach
By Zach Silva
zsilva@cgsentinel.com
Th e Cottage Grove girls’ basketball
coaching job has been fi lled.
Aft er Kevin Yoss resigned from the
position last month, a press release from
South Lane School District last Friday
announced that Steve Eastburn, 61, will
be taking over the program.
“We are so excited to get a coach of
Steve’s experience and background. He
has had a lot of success coaching basket-
ball at diff erent levels in Oregon. He has
shown tremendous leadership and abili-
ty in building a successful program and
helping kids develop into great players,”
said CGHS athletic director Gary Rob-
erts via the press release.
Eastburn has coached, as either assis-
tant or head coach, across classifi cations
around the state for over 20 years. Aft er
being a youth coach for eight years in
South Eugene, he was an assistant coach
and head JV coach for 11 years before
taking over as head varsity girls coach for
nine.
In 2009 (the year South fi nished sec-
ond in state) and 2011 he was named 6A
state coach of the year. Aft er averaging
six wins a game from the 2013-14 season
to the 2015-16 season, his contract was
not renewed. He then was an assistant
at 5A Marist Catholic High School for a
year before being the head coach at 2A
Crow where the team fi nished 14-10 last
season.
“It was a new experience working at
the 2A level, a smaller school. But it was
very rewarding. I really enjoyed my time
Athlete of
the Week
there and the kids out there are absolute-
ly wonderful,” he said.
But now Eastburn is making his fi rst
foray into 4A where he will be greeted
with a team that fi nished 13-10, tied for
fi rst in league and are returning a num-
ber of impact players.
“Looking at the roster, the returning
players they have, it’s really exciting. Th ey
have a lot of good kids and a lot of good
size. So I’m really excited to have the op-
portunity to coach there. I’m looking at
that as a real privilege,” he said.
More than what happens on the court,
Eastburn prides himself on building rela-
tionships with his players.
“When you’ve coached for a long time
you fi gure out wins and losses take care
of themselves. So basketball is going to
take care of itself, also. If you can coach,
Th is week’s athlete of the
week is Cottage Grove’s
Jimmy Talley. Running a
19-second personal best,
Talley took second in the
4A 3,000 at the OSAA
State Track and Field
Championships.
you can coach… It’s the other intangi-
bles,” he said. “It’s the relationships you
build with the players and let them know
that you care about them and take an in-
terest in them and support them in their
other activities and support them being
student athletes.”
Eastburn got to do exactly that last
week as he went to Hayward Field to
watch freshman Matty Ladd compete in
the high jump at the state meet.
“Th at was exciting to go out and see
one of the basketball players participat-
ing in the state track meet. It doesn’t hap-
pen every day. You just do those things
as a coach, you go out and support those
kids. Th at’s the plan for the program. Let
them know you care and they will go out
and work hard for you and that’s all you
can ask of them,” said Eastburn.
Talley
lets out a
celebratory
scream after
fi nishing
second in
the 3,000.
PHOTO BY ZACH SILVA