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Sports & recreation Cottage Grove Sentinel Wednesday, September 12, 2018 South Lane County Sports and Recreation CGHS survive turnovers, capture win Section B Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail zsilva@cgsentinel.com Lions start season with winning streak By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com While it wasn’t the prettiest game, it was still a win. Last Friday at Crook County (1-1), Cottage Grove (2-0) football prevailed 28-7 despite cough- ing up four turnovers and not scoring in the second half. “We probably won’t win very many games moving for- ward if we have four turnovers in the game,” said head coach Gary Roberts. The Cottage Grove of- fense was clicking early and stalwarts of the team Dylan Graves and Erick Giffen put their imprint on the game. Graves went 22-for-28 with 256 yards passing and three touchdowns while Giffen add- ing 12 receptions for 111 yards and a touchdown. Giffen also added in a 15-yard touch- down pass to Jaden Doolittle for good measure. The pair were not immune to the turnover bug as Graves threw an interception and Giffen had a fumble. The Lions were further buoyed by the presence of receiver Matt Zumwalt. Zum- walt got the game started with a 45-yard touchdown on the opening drive for the Lions and ended the half with a 17- yard reception as the clock struck zero. “Matt Zumwalt did a great job both on offense and de- fense. I think his confidence is getting better and he made a great adjustment on the last touchdown before the half where it wasn’t, it certainly wasn’t how it was drawn up but he made an adjustment on his route and Dylan did a good job at getting it to him and giving him a chance,” said Roberts. In the second half, the Li- ons to put together drives but were unable to finish. “The biggest thing in the second half, those turnovers bogged us down and really hurt us. Every time we made a big play we turned the ball over. Defense would get a stop, we would recover a fum- ble and then we would turn it right back over to them. That’s the main thing that we have to do a better job of,” said Rob- erts. A bright spot in the second half was freshman running back Fernando Giffen who had 10 carries for 43 yards. “He did a great job for us and he’s earning, with every week his confidence is getting better and he’s earning more and more playing time both on offense and on defense,” said Roberts. “And as long as he’ll continue to have the right mentality and keep working to get better, he could be a re- ally good player when it’s all said and done.” While sitting on a 2-0 re- cord, Roberts and his players freely admit they have room to grow and plenty to work on to get to the level of success that they want to achieve. De- spite that, the OSAA Coach- es’ poll, that came out before last Friday’s game, has Lions ranked in the top spot. “We’re being ranked based on last year. That’s not fair to these kids. It shows the re- spect that people have for us but it means nothing. It’s al- most, I don’t to say laughable because that’s not right, but you just look at it and kind of roll your eyes,” said Roberts. “We’re not even close to where we need to be, we’re not at that level at this point. Who knows what happens at the end of the year.” This Friday the Lions take on Stayton (0-2) at home. PHOTOS BY ZACH SILVA/CG SENTINEL Cottage Grove’s Reilly Kelty sends home a spike against Banks on Thursday night. Cottage Grove starts season strong, ranked number one By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com The Cottage Grove volleyball team remembers how last season started. A season ago, the Lions began the year 2-5 before eventually righting the ship and making it to the state quarterfinals. This year, they are picking up where they ended last season and are, as of Monday morning, ranked number one 4A with a red-hot 6-1 record to start the year off. “It feels really, really good because this time last year we were not,” said senior Cassidy Herbert before trailing off. “It makes me feel really good and I’m super excited for the season.” Last Thursday, the team had their home opener as they hosted Banks and Klamath Union. The visiting sides played each other first before each facing Cot- tage Grove. The Lions handled their busi- ness and took down the Braves (25-12, 25-20, 20-25, 25-14) and swept the Pel- icans (25-16, 25-22, 25-14). Against Banks, ranked 12th at the time of the match, the Lions came out dom- inant early. The Lions closed out the opening set on a 12-3 run powered by Herbert’s serve which was creating prob- lems for the visiting side. Reilly Kelty led the team with 19 kills while Herbert added 11. Lauren Witty dished out 31 assists. In the third set, it was the Braves com- ing up big late in the set to force Cottage Grove’s first lost set of the season. “Banks was like a good competition for us. We dropped a set to them, which I mean we shouldn’t have… but I feel like we can clean up some stuff. I think we did good overall,” said Herbert. Matty Ladd added four kills and four blocks against the Braves. Against the Pelicans, ranked sixth at the time of the game, Cottage Grove put their talent on display as Kelty had 20 kills along with 10 digs. Herbert added nine kills and four aces as Izzy Hirst had three aces and three kills. “We’re deep and we have lots of dif- ferent weapons. So it depends on what weapon we need to use and it’s nice be- cause if one weapon needs a little time off, we can go on to the next one,” said head coach Kendra Anderson. It wasn’t just the one-two punch of Kelty and Herbert as Izzy Hirst had three aces and three kills; Matty Ladd had a pair of kills and three blocks; and Sam May had two aces and nine digs. Witty had 31 assists and eight digs. Herbert noted that her setter, Witty, is a staple of the team and is currently play- ing through a host of injuries. “She messed up her elbow, her thumb is purple, she has an ankle problem, her knee is purple. If you saw her hip, it’s like this big purple, green, yellow bruise. She is one of the toughest girls I’ve ever played with,” said Herbert. Adding that there was the time last year when Witty broker her finger in warmups at a tour- nament and didn’t see a doctor until after the games were finished. “She is just one of the strongest players ever,” said Herbert. A key for Cottage Grove was their ability to stay energized in back-to-back games. “Some of it is just being in shape. It’s a lot easier to be up and excited when you’re in shape. And I think that their time in the summer, either on the court or in the weight room, and doing that stuff really helps them,” said Anderson. “We had a quick snack in between and a little dance party doesn’t hurt.” Over the weekend, the Lions played at the Cascade Tournament where they defeated Sweet Home (25-16, 25-24), Seaside (25-12, 25-18) and North Mari- on (25-10, 25-11) in pool play. In bracket play Cottage Grove beat Junction City (25-17, 25-13) before falling to tourna- ment winners, and top-2A team, Kenne- dy. The Lions begin the regular season Thursday on the road at Siuslaw before returning home next Tuesday to host Marshfield, who they knocked out of last year’s playoffs. The long road from Cottage Grove to Corvallis The journey of Mike Parker who has entered his 20th year as the voice of the Beavers By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com W hile visiting his neighbor’s house – more specifically the garage – seven-year-old Mike Parker heard something new. It was coming from the radio, a normal occurrence in 1965, but this particular noise was differ- ent: it was excited chatter; it was the voice of a legend. It became Parker’s portal into the wide world of sports. It was the legendary voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers play-by-play announc- er Vin Scully. While it may have been just another game for Scully, who was in the midst of his 15th season of an eventual 67-year career calling games for the Dodgers, it was a moment that stuck with the young Parker. “I wasn’t even a sports fan, I didn’t even grow up in a sports household, but I heard a game on the radio and it drew me in. Just the sound of his voice coming out of this box,” said Parker, now 60 and at the start of his 20th year as the voice of the Oregon State Beavers. This newfound love of sports and announcing became a driving force in Parker’s life. At the age of nine he was lis- tening to every broadcast in Los Angeles. By 11 he was calling games on his very own cassette recorder and, after his fam- ily moved to Cottage Grove at 13, he was soon working for the local radio station KNND. In 2018, some 53 years removed from that first run-in with the radio, Parker has turned this child-like sense of wonder and excitement, feelings he still harbors for the craft of play-by-play announcing, into a lifelong passion and career. here are not many cities in the United States that are more dif- ferent from each other than Los Angeles and Cottage Grove. And yet, the Parkers were leaving behind the City of Angels for Oregon’s Covered Bridge Capital. A collector of newspapers featuring his favorite teams – including a scrapbook of articles from the 1966 Dodgers season that he still looks at from time to time – Parker possesses an encyclopedic knowl- edge of seemingly all of sports history. When he moved north, his life re- T Athletes of the Week volved around Sandy Koufax’s Dodgers; Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor’s Lakers; the “Fearsome Four- some” (Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy, Mer- lin Olsen and Deacon Jones) of the Los Angeles Rams; in addition to all things UCLA and USC. Growing up, he wasn’t just a fan of those on the field but was equally interested in those familiar voices who were calling the games: Scully with the Dodgers, Chick Hearn with the Lak- ers and Dick Enberg with the Rams. “To be a fan of major league sports back then was to be essentially a fan of radio broadcasts with occasional games on TV but not many,” said Parker. “…to be a day-to-day sports fan, if you really wanted to follow your team closely, radio was the conveyer of all of that.” Carrying this knowledge, Parker en- tered eighth grade unsure of his new surroundings but knowing the hours he had dedicated to sports gave him cultural currency. Paired with the ability to hold his own on the basketball court at recess, he leveraged his knowledge of sports to fit in and make friends. “It’s such a common tongue, a com- mon language for so many, it can help ease transitions if you’re able to talk sports. Whether that says something – if that says we have an empty or shallow culture – I have no idea, I just know I’m grateful that sports have been something that, in a mixed group, you can find some common ground,” said Parker. In the summer of 1974, before his ju- nior year at Cottage Grove High School, Parker was on the search for a summer job. He felt like he had struck gold when he was put in charge of the recreation re- port for KNND’s morning show. “My job… was to take the results from the Cottage Grove Recreation Associa- tion from the day before with highlights,” he said. “So, ‘This is Mike Parker with the Cottage Grove recreation report. Yester- day,’ and whatever team it was, ‘Dwayne Perkins hit two home runs.’” Parker would record it on reel-to-reel tape at his house, bike it over to the sta- tion by 7 a.m. and then return home to listen to his voice coming out of the ra- dio. It was his first foray into being on the radio, a place that had previously been reserved for his idols. His work with KNND continued the next year as he started doing play-by- play for summer baseball. With teacher PARKER see B3 INSIDE: This week’s athletes of the week are Angelica Manuntag, Kyleigh Joseph and Zoey Bray who were named All- Americans by NCA. To read more, turn to B2. B2: -Elkton football cruises to 2-0 record B4: -Elkton, Yoncalla volleyball battle -North Douglas foot- ball prevails -High school sports roundup B10: -Photos Angelica, Zoey and Kylie (from left) with their awards.