Cottage Grove Sentinel
Sports & Recreation
SOUTH LANE COUNTY SPORTS AND RECREATION
Calendar
Feb. 7
• CGHS girls wres-
tling: Southern Div.
Girls State Regional
@ Thurston HS
• CGHS swimming,
North Bend dual
meet @ Warren H.
Daugherty Aquatic
Center, 3 p.m.
• CGHS bball vs.
Marshfield (girls @
5:45 p.m., boys @
7:15 p.m.)
• NDHS girls bball vs.
Pacific/Powers @ 6
p.m.
• Elkton bball @
Riddle (girls @ 6
p.m., boys @ 7:30
p.m.)
• Yoncalla bball vs.
Camas Valley (girls @
6 p.m., boys @ 7:30
p.m.)
•
•
THURSDAY | FEBRUARY 6, 2020
CONTACT SPORTS REPORTER NICK SNYDER AT
942-3325 OR NSNYDER@CGSENTINEL.COM
Lions sit alone atop Sky-Em
By Nick Snyder
nsnyder@cgsentinel.com
The Cottage Grove girls’ basketball team had
won their first four Sky-Em games by an average
margin of nearly 25 points. A game at Marist — in
a hostile away environment, against a team peren-
nially at the top of most sports standings — was
shaping up to be a solid test of the girls’ mettle.
As the buzzer sounded last Friday, Jan. 31 in Eu-
gene, the Lions (14-5, 5-0) had once again won a
league contest by double digits, beating the Spar-
tans (9-7, 4-1) 47-37 and — after an earlier win
in the week against Junction City — taking over
sole possession of first place in the Sky-Em league
standings.
“Marist played really, really hard. We knew they
would. They always do,” said Lions’ head coach
Steve Eastburn after the game. “It was just two
teams battling for first place, which makes it even
more exciting.”
However, the relatively comfortable final mar-
gin of victory belies how close the game truly was.
See LIONS 3B
By Ben Deatherage
Guest Contribution
PHOTO BY NICK SNYDER/COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL
From the tipoff to the fourth quarter,
junior Matty Ladd used her height advan-
tage against the Spartans.
Wrestlers ready for regionals
PHOTO BY NICK SNYDER/COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL
Cottage Grove High School senior Levi Boitz (black top) was one of hundreds of wrestlers
to take to the mat over the weekend at CGHS. Boitz is seen here against McKay’s Melvin
Gonzalez. Boitz would go on to win the match by fall.
CG wrestling impresses as hosts, competitors with regionals looming
By Nick Snyder
nsnyder@cgsentinel.com
ODFW R ECREATION
R EPORT
www.dfw.state.or.us/RR
BEST BETS FOR FISHING
• Ana Reservoir offers a unique
fishing experience for hybrid bass
throughout the winter. Fishing has
been fair. See 12 tips for catching
wipers.
• Fishing for native redband
trout has been fair to good in the
Klamath River between the Power-
house and CA state line.
• The trout bite continues to be
good in the Holy Water, the stretch
of the upper Rogue between the
hatchery and the Lost Creek Lake
spillway.
AND IF YOU’RE AFTER WIN-
TER STEELHEAD…
• Almost all west side loca-
tions are reporting high flows in
popular steelhead rivers thanks to
recent rains. These flows will put
fish on the move, but can make
fishing challenging. However,
many of our biologists report
some rivers might be in shape for
the weekend – depending on how
much rain we get.
• The best steelhead fishing on
the mid-coast continues to be the
bank fishery on the North Fork
Alsea.
• In the Coos and Coquille
basins, there are steelhead in the
systems and some locations could
be fishable by the weekend.
• Before the last week’s bump
in river flow, anglers were starting
to run into winter steelhead in the
Galice area of the middle Rogue.
• The South Umpqua and Smith
rivers have been running high, but
should be falling back in shape for
some weekend steelhead fishing.
It was quite the crowded
scene last weekend at Cottage
Grove High School (CGHS),
though thanks to the local
wrestling community, it was a
decidedly controlled chao.
On Friday and Saturday, Jan.
31 and Feb. 1 CGHS played host
to the Cottage Grove Invitation-
al wrestling tournament, a 31-
team event that featured some
LMS Wrestling
Places Third
At Regionals
Team success
buoyed by titles for
Bengtson, Abrams
Feb. 8
• CGHS girls wres-
tling: Southern Div.
Girls State Regional
@ Thurston HS
• NDHS bball vs.
Glendale (girls @ 6
p.m., boys @ 7:30
p.m.)
• Elkton bball vs.
New Hope (girls @ 6
p.m., boys @ 7:30
p.m.)
B1
of the best high school wrestlers
across the state of Oregon. The
Lions’ boys team finished 11th
overall and the girls took an
impressive third behind three
total first-place finishes, but the
event in itself was a logistical
and community-wide accom-
plishment for the world of Cot-
tage Grove wrestling.
“I think first and foremost,
we as a staff work together to
make sure all the moving parts
come together,” said wrestling
coach Christina Kent. “Between
accounting for how many teams
are coming, knowing when we
set up mats, that all comes to-
gether with the team itself, not
just the coaching staff.”
The scene over the weekend at
the high school was one awash
with hundreds of wrestlers, par-
ents, volunteers and spectators.
Both gyms were packed to the
brim, lined wall-to-wall with all
See INVITE 2B
After a successful
season of dual meets -
and an impressive sec-
ond-place fi nish at the
Central Linn Invitational
on Jan. 25 - the Lincoln
Middle School (LMS)
wrestling team headed
into the Valley League
South Regionals tourna-
ment on Saturday, Feb.
1 and fi nished third over-
all.
The tournament was
held at Pleasant Hill High
School and pitted the Ti-
gers against competition
from Crow, North Doug-
las, Oakridge, Thurston,
Pleasant Hill, Creswell
and Lowell.
The team walked away
with seven grapplers
in the fi nals and had
two emerge as champi-
ons. Carter Bengtson
(104-pound class) and
Nathan Abrams (265)
both went undefeated
in their matches. Earn-
ing second-place honors
were Jeffrey Conklin
(70), Seazar Ibarra (74),
Micah Spear (136), Rog-
elio Soto-Cruz (187) and
Zane White (265).
Shawn
McKinnon
(165) was the lone third-
place fi nisher while Sun-
ni James (92), Cian Merz
(98), Cameron Mander-
scheid (108), Luke Fery
(119), Jack Barr (130),
Johnny Reilly (149) and
Joe Bottorff (265) all
earned fourth-place in
their weight classifi ca-
tions.
Fifteen representatives
from LMS will head to
the Valley League Dis-
trict Championships on
Sat., Feb. 8 at Creswell
High School. In other
news, the LMS Wres-
tling team will be having
a special fundraiser with
a Father/Daughter Dance
and Mother/Son Video
Game Tournament at the
Cottage Grove Armory
on Sat., Feb. 15. Admis-
sion is $12 for Adults and
$10 for Kids.
Warriors set for final stretch
By Nick Snyder
nsnyder@cgsentinel.com
Last weekend, the North Douglas
girls’ basketball team may have done
just about all they needed to wrap
up the Skyline league.
After handily beating Yoncalla on
Fri., Jan. 31 67-23, the Warriors (18-
2, 8-0) took down their Highway 38
rivals, Elkton (15-5, 7-2), the very
next night by a final of 39-33. It was
the Warriors’ second win over Elk-
ton this year, their seventh victory
in their last eight games, and gave
them a two-game cushion atop the
Skyline standings with just three
league games remaining.
“I talk a lot about faceless oppo-
nents,” said North Douglas head
coach Jody Cyr about looking for-
ward to districts and state playoffs.
“If we can do what we want to do,
it doesn’t really matter who we play,
so really just gotta stick to what we
know and get better at that.”
As evidenced by the final score
— a much tighter margin than the
two teams’ initial Jan. 18 meeting
in which North Douglas won 54-39
Athlete of
the Week
See SKYLINE 3B
PHOTO C/O BECKY GERRARD
North Douglas head coach Jody Cyr, seen here doing
some late-game coaching, preaches an intense
defensive philosophy to his team.
Th is week’s athlete of
the week is Cottage
Grove High School
senior basketball player
Ema Gardner. As one of
only two seniors on the
team, her experience
and leadership are
invaluable.
The Lions
may not
have gotten
the win
against
Marist last
week if not
for Gardner’s
four clutch,
game-seal-
ing free
throws in the
fi nal minute.
PHOTO BY NICK SNY-
DER/CG SENTINEL