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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 2018)
Sports & recreation Cottage Grove Sentinel Wednesday, December 12, 2018 South Lane County Sports and Recreation The pain of second place Section B Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail zsilva@cgsentinel.com Mustangs ride defense to victory An unintentionally dramatic reaction to a good season By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com Quietly sitting on a bench in a bar, people around me exited into the rainy Port- land night last Saturday. With heads hanging low, those around me went through the vicious cycle when your be- loved team loses: they com- forted loved ones, made their way to the back of the bar for another drink and uttered empty words about next year being diff erent. But this time, that wasn’t me. I went for a fourth option as I blissfully dreamed of a better world: a world where I didn’t care about sports. I pictured no football on Saturday. Or Sunday. Or even Monday, Th ursday or Friday. Th e 82-game NBA season (not including playoff s!) is meaningless. March is not a basketball month but just another month. Th e soccer season that stretches from March to December is out the window. You just, like, hang out and that’s your whole life. No missed shots, dropped passes or inept clock man- agement can slow you down. Your emotions are not tied to a group of individuals playing a game. I longed for this simpler reality aft er the Portland Timbers played in the MLS Cup and, as you can probably guess, they didn’t quite win. In fact, they even lost. Th e boys in green fell to Atlanta United 2-0 on the road and it was not enjoyable. Zero-out- of-10 would recommend. Sitting there, I remembered the ever-wise Hermione Granger saying, “Maybe [I don’t understand Quidditch], but at least my happiness doesn’t depend on Ron’s goal- keeping ability.” Th is fi ction- al character talking about a game played on broomsticks, makes a great point but for some terrible reason (enter- tainment, excitement, cama- raderie, my literal job, friend- ship, human connection, etc.) here I am still dependent as ever. Just continuing to care about things such as Damian Lillard’s scoring ability, Jamal Adams’ defensive ability (or any other form of [player] + [skillset] + ability) season af- ter season. Surrounded by fellow fans of the team I have loved since a fateful evening when my un- cle took me to a game before the Timbers had achieved MLS status, I was pained as I stared blankly at the projec- tor and watched as Atlanta celebrated their great fortune. Th eir fans had everything I wanted: the cup, happiness and Darlington Nagbe. And I, with Timbers fans across the room, in Atlanta and all around the world, just had the pain that is second place. When a team you cheer for fi nishes in last place – an all-too familiar reality I face being a New York Jets fan – it certainly doesn’t feel great but you never expected to have a great season. You nev- er believed and convinced yourself that this was going to be the year. When a team you cheer for is good but not good enough – here’s looking at you Portland Trail Blazers – you have to believe, for your own sanity, that next year will be better but you are still con- tent with what you have. It is the idea that something will SECOND see B3 Cottage Grove's Reilly Kelty is met with a double-team against Hidden Valley at home last Thursday. Hidden Valley gets mid-week win over Cottage Grove; Lions defeat North Valley over the weekend By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com Plagued by injuries and a scoring drought, the Cottage Grove girls bas- ketball team lost to Hidden Valley last Th ursday night at home 35-20. “Drought? Wow. What was that when the Midwest, when they had that famine? Th e Dust Bowl,” said Cottage Grove head coach Steve Eastburn aft er the game. “We had 10 points at halft ime, 11 mid- way through the fourth quarter.” Over a 23-minute stretch of game time from the end of the fi rst quarter to the fi nal min- utes of the fourth, the Lions scored fi ve points. Cottage Grove was dealt a blow early on when senior point guard Tara Child suff ered a knee injury halfway through the fi rst quarter and had to be helped off the court. Child did not return to the game and is currently being ruled out for the next “couple weeks” with a bone bruise. “I just know that it is very traumat- ic for her,” said Eastburn. “You know, something you might hear pop and it’s just scary. You just hope for the best.” In the fourth quarter Cottage Grove’s Reilly Kelty suff ered a head injury aft er a three-person collision near the basket. In the fi rst quarter, it was defensive pressure for the visiting Mustangs that gave them an edge early and throughout the game. It was coming from all sides as Jenelle Hurley recorded seven steals while the 5-foot-seven senior Kylee Lyon wreaked havoc on the Cottage Grove bigs as she recorded four of the team’s seven blocks. “I was impressed with all the shots they blocked. I was surprised. I knew they were very fast, I knew they were ath- letic and long but boy, they had a ton of blocked shocks,” said Eastburn. For Hidden Valley head coach Joel Jessee, he was pleased with the defensive production but not surprised by what they accomplished. “Th at’s how we play. Th at is our game. Th at’s what we do, we did that last year and the year before. Th at’s our style of defense to be tenacious, not back down,” he said. While Hidden Valley defense was in seemingly every passing lane, the team got cooking on the off ensive end early hitting four threes in the opening quar- ter. Th e team went seven-of-sixteen on the night. Hurley recording three on the night and fi nished with 14 point on the night while teammate Hallee Jessee went four-of-six from downtown, with three in the fi rst quarter, to fi nish with 15 points to lead all scorers. Head coach Joel Jessee, Hallee’s father, was thrilled with is daughter’s production on the night and played a role in making sure she had a good game. “My daughter has been a big problem this year for us in not hitting shots. So I took her out on a daddy-daughter date and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ We talk- ed about it and I told her all day today that this is going to be her game so it was just kind of one of those things that she couldn’t miss,” said Jessee. Aft er a slow start on the year, Hallee was pleased to fi nd her shot. “Th is game, it was a big game chang- er for me,” said Halle. “I was focused on PHOTOS BY JADEN DOOLITTLE/CGHS PHOTOGRAPHY Junior guard Kate Bachelder was called upon after starting point guard Tara Child went out with an injury. my scoring (in past games) so coming in focusing on my defense fi rst, defi nitely helped me gain my shot getting into the game. Not focusing on scoring. It defi - nitely came naturally.” COTTAGE GROVE see B2 Triad hangs on for overtime victory North Douglas puts together a 21-2 run to secure overtime before falling to the Timberwolves By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com It was the ultimate comeback that fell just short. Playing in the Lowell Tournament on Friday night, the North Douglas boys basketball team rallied from an 18-point third quarter defi cit to force overtime against Triad before falling 60-57. “It sucks to lose one like that. But it’s nice (because) that’s what preseason is for. Now I know what my team is capa- ble of doing in spurts like that. If you put four quarters together like that, you’ll be a pretty good team,” said North Douglas head coach Tyler Vancil. Aft er off ensive stagnation in the fi rst half that saw eight points in the fi rst quarter and nine in the second, the War- riors switched to a 1-3-1 defense that uti- lized Lowell’s court – 12-feet shorter than a regulation court. “So a 1-3-1 on this court is really tough because you can’t spread the defense out as much as you want,” said Triad head coach Jason Young. Th e Warriors cut the lead to 11 early in the second half before the Timberwolves rallied back to a 47- 29 lead in the fi nal minutes of the third quarter. But then the defense clicked for North Douglas and the shots that had been missing started falling as the team put together a relentless fi ve-minute stretch of basketball – starting at the end of the third quarter through the fi rst half of the fourth quarter – that saw them go on a 20-2 run. Th is gave the Warriors the lead at 50-49 with 4:00 minutes left to play in the game. “Th at fourth quarter was the best de- fensive eff ort that I’ve seen out of them all year. I mean, it was fantastic,” said Athlete of the Week Vancil. “We had a couple mishaps in our 1-3-1 that just, a couple mental break- downs and they got it down low and scored some easy baskets in the third quarter. But aft er that, they tightened it up in the fourth quarter and they didn’t get those anymore.” Th e lineup that featured Koldan Frieze, Cal Parks, Tanner Parks, Justin Smith and Killian Bond brought the team back and, with sparing substitutions, that unit played the majority of the third quar- ter, all of the fourth and overtime. Th at group, led by 15 points from Frieze, scored 52 of North Douglas’ 57 points on the game. Tanner and Cal Parks were each in double-fi gures with 12 and 11 points respectively. “Th ey were gelling so well that I couldn’t break them up,” said Vancil. Adding, “Th ey were dying out there. Th ey were dying but we couldn’t break up that chemistry because they were so intact together that it was working out so Th is week’s athlete of the week is Kaleigh Soto who had 23 points in the team’s 54-9 victory over Canyonville Academy. For more on how area teams performed last week, see B3. well.” In the second half of the fourth, the off ense stalled for North Douglas as they scored just three points in the fi nal four minutes. Triad, who had not had any off ense in the fourth quarter, hit their second fi eld goal of the quarter, a three-pointer from Ethan Roe, with less than 10-seconds to play to push the game into overtime. Th e Warriors outscored the Timberwolves 20-6 in the quarter. But it wasn’t over yet. “I said, ‘Forget everything that just happened. We get some extra basketball, can’t worry about the last four quarters,’” Lowell’s Young told his team heading to overtime. “Th at’s all I said, ‘We can’t wor- ry about everything that just happened.’ With kids, it’s emotional. You give up the lead and kids are mad at themselves, can’t believe they gave up the lead. So you’ve got to forget about it.” Th e overtime period started with the NORTH DOUGLAS see B3 Kaleigh Soto runs the off ense last year against North Doug- las. PHOTO BY BECKY GERRARD