Archive for October, 2008
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Let’s dance
It wasn’t that long ago that the Cheyenne East volleyball team held post-practice choreography sessions for its celebratory dances.
For nearly every possible way to score a point in a match there was a corresponding dance. Digs that fall in for points are celebrated by six players pantomiming using a shovel. The Lady Thunderbirds also have cheers for tips, service aces, blocks and kills.
The dig celebration is one of the few that remains pre-choreographed. The rest, it seems, come about spontaneously.
“Someone will do something stupid in practice and we’ll be making fun of them for it,” senior setter Chelsie Olsen said. “After a while somebody says, ‘We should use that to celebrate a point.’ Next thing you know it’s our new cheer.
“We used to meet early in the season to figure out what we were going to do. But this year, it’s just been silly stuff that’s happened.”
Some teams have celebrations, while others merely exchange high fives after points. Still, the dances are just as much of a part of volleyball as nets, sets and knee pads.
“It brings us up, puts us in a good mood and helps us get ready for the next point,” senior Ashley Woods said. “It can help break the tension in a close match. When we get a big point, we all get really excited, come together and do our cheer.
“It’s just a part of what we do.”
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
What sports are made of
There are times in sports things just come together and you can do no wrong. In a sense, you have become invincible. There are times in sports things happen to remind you of why you love sports so much. And when they do, you simply smile. Covering this Burns football team this season, I have gotten to see both of these come to fruition. I have been able to watch a group of young men do what they love to do and have tons of success doing so. Accomplishing things on the football field they hoped to accomplish, but were still a skosh hesitant. This is one of those moments things just came together for this team. But more than this success, I have seen a group of young men remember why they love football. Sure, it’s easy to remember why you love a game when you win. Winning is just a heck of a lot more fun than losing. But even when you lose that’s my point: it’s fun. Today in sports – at every level – we get so worked up about winning and losing. But particularly in prep sports this is a disturbing sight. Prep sports are meant to be used as an avenue to have fun and nothing more. And no matter what happens over the course of the next few weeks to the Broncs, I hope this football team remembers that. Fun in prep sports has nothing to do with winning or losing.
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
Playoff game times
Cheyenne East will host Rock Springs at 6 Friday night in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs.
According to a story posted on the Gillette News-Record’s Web site, the Cheyenne Central at Gillette game will kickoff at 7 Friday night.
Burns will host Rocky Mountain at 7 Friday night in the first round of the Class 2A playoffs.
Saturday, October 25th, 2008
Playoffs, PLAYOFFS?!?!?
Yes, we’re talking about playoffs. Talking to coaches from both Central and East, it sounds like the unofficial speculation Central will be playing at Gillette and of East hosting Rock Springs in the first round of the Class 5A bracket is true.
Also, Burns will most likely host Rocky Mountain on Friday. The Broncs last hosted a playoff game in 2006. They topped Big Horn 27-13 in that contest.
The Wyoming High School Activities Association will most likely release its official pairings this afternoon. I’ll post them here as soon as I see them.
UPDATE: Here are the official playoff pairings from the WHSAA. Times, dates and locations will be added later.
CLASS 5A
Evanston (3-5) at Sheridan (7-1)
Casper Natrona County (6-2) at Green River (6-2)
Cheyenne Central (3-5) at Gillette (7-1)
Rock Springs (3-5) at Cheyenne East (6-2)
CLASS 4A
Rawlins (2-6) at Douglas (6-2)
Powell (5-3) at Lander (4-4)
Worland (4-4) at Buffalo (6-2)
Torrington (3-5) at Cody (6-2)
CLASS 3A
Thermopolis (2-6) at Glenrock (8-0)
Lovell (4-4) at Pinedale (5-3)
Wright (4-4) vs Moorcroft (6-2), in Sundance
Mountain View (3-5) at Kemmerer (8-0)
CLASS 2A
Rocky Mountain (3-5) at Burns (8-0)
Lingle-Fort Laramie (6-2) vs. Wind River (7-1), in Riverton
Riverside (4-4) at Lusk (6-2)
Greybull (4-4) at Big Horn (8-0)
CLASS 1A
Normative Services (1-6) at Burlington (7-1)
Shoshoni (3-4) at Hulett (4-3)
Guernsey-Sunrise (2-5) at Cokeville (6-1)
Upton (3-4) at Southeast (5-2)
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
What’s up with that?
I’m not always the most observant person when it comes to blatantly obvious things. So I’m not surprised I didn’t notice the little tent and camera on a high pole in the south end zone at Cheyenne East’s Okie Blanchard Stadium until the T-Birds 47-7 loss to Casper Natrona County in Week 4. That was East’s third home game.
I then noticed the tent and camera also made their way to Cheyenne Central’s Riske Field for that game. The camera was being used in addition to the normally positioned sideline camera high in the bleachers, so I asked third-year East coach Chad Goff, “What’s up with that?”
“We used to film from a lift in the end zone for a few years (when I was an assistant for East coach John Schroff),” he said. “(The end zone camera) gives you a better look at what is going on up front. Where the shades are, if we’re stepping right, what gap the blitz came through.
“We take it everywhere. It is a great thing and gives us some great teaching opportunities.”
And there you have it.
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Thoughts on Central-Evanston
Last week I wrote Central was capable of being a top five team if it could find a way to hold on to the football. The Indians (2-4) proved me right when — for the first time all season — they went without a turnover in a 35-6 win over visiting Evanston.
It was a complete effort. Brad Ramsey rushed for more than 150 yards and two touchdowns and Connor Long threw for 117 yards, which was enough to keep the Red Devils defense honest. Not only that, the Indians’ defense limited Class 5A’s top rusher — Cory Anthos — to just 26 yards until the final two possessions. Anthos finished with 134 yards, with 54 coming on an inconsequential touchdown run.
The Indians are capable of playing with the state’s best teams and they’ll get a chance to prove it Friday at Sheridan. The top-ranked Broncs have surprised plenty of people by toppling perennial powers Casper Natrona County and Gillette on successive Fridays. They hung on against Class 4A No. 2 Cody, but have done more than enough to set themselves apart from the field in 5A.
Sheridan will be a very stern test for Central. But if the Indians play like they did against Evanston, they should be in position to win.
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
Task not an easy one for Burns
There are always going to be circumstances that arise throughout the course of a season – at any level of competition. Some you expect. Some you don’t. How you respond to those circumstances that arise will ultimately determine how successful any given team will be. Take the Burns football team as an example. Because of a tragic accident last week to Saratoga, the Broncs’ game was postponed to this coming Monday. Meaning in the course of one week Burns will have to play three games. Not any task for an NFL team, let alone a high-school team that really isn’t accustomed to something like this. It’s hard to imagine this team winning all three games, but if Burns can walk away 2-1 from this stretch it will be a major accomplishment, and something that will send this team on the path to its ultimate goal: winning a state title. With how well this team has started the season, and how well it is coached, if any team can clear this unexpected hurdle it is this one. It just might not be how these Broncs drew it up.
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
Selection process
The Prep Athlete of the Week is one of the tougher decisions we have to make as a sports staff. Narrowing the pool of candidates for Prep Athlete of the Year also is tough, but there’s an entire newsroom voting on that award, so the the selection actually is easier.
State championships almost always trump other regular season accomplishments. Firsts also are given a lot of consideration, such as Cheyenne East junior Kelli Cordell winning the Laramie Invitational golf tournament and helping her team win what by many people’s recollection is the Lady T-Birds first-ever victory in a two-day event.
One problem is there are certain athletes — Burns’ Duell Petsch, former Cheyenne East standouts James Johnson and Megan McGuffey, former Cheyenne Central standouts Hillary Carlson and Brendan Ames just to name a few — who warrant heavy performance-based attention each and every week.
These types of studs fall into their own special category at our office: The “We Could Do a Prep Athlete of the Week Feature on That Kid Every Week” category. Often times what happens is those athletes end up being victims of their own success and every now and then we actually don’t get around to doing a feature on someone who rushes for 243 yards and three touchdowns.
It’s an imperfect process, but I think the area’s athletes, coaches and even fans understand we can’t always do features on the same kids. Many times the kids are uncomfortable talking about themselves and I’m sure they’d grow to dread our Monday or Tuesday calls saying, “Congrats, you’re our Prep Athlete of the Week.”
No calls or e-mails spurred this post. However, I did promise an insight to some of the inner-workings of the WTE sports staff would be posted on this blog. It’s not nearly as exciting as seeing how a combination lock is put together on the Science Channel’s “How It’s Made.” But now you know, and as G.I. Joe used to say, “Knowing is half the battle.”
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Emptying the notebook . . . almost
In terms of mere excitement, Friday’s 37-34 Cheyenne East victory over Cheyenne Central ranks at the top in terms of excitement. Central’s 23-20 come-from-behind win at Casper Natrona County in the 2005 semifinals is a close second. Friday’s contest takes the cake because of the swings in momentum and the amount of offense the teams combined for (861 yards and 71 points!).
Here are some observations that made it into my notebook, but never made it into print because of space concerns:
1.) Central’s Brad Ramsey is a north-south runner in every sense of the word. The senior doesn’t try and get flashy, shake people out of their shoes or go side-to-side waiting for something to develop. He hits the hole and — as two East defensive backs found out — will try and lower his shoulder and plow over any defender who gets in his way.
2.) Central lost Nicholias Espinoza to a broken left collarbone on the game’s first play.
3.) On Connor Long’s 61-yard touchdown run, it almost looked like East’s defenders expected him to run out of bounds — or thought he ran out of bounds — and pulled up. Watching a highlight on Friday night’s news broadcast, Long wasn’t nearly as close to the sideline as he looked from across the field.
4.) Central could be a top five team in Class 5A if it found a way to hold onto the football.
5.) I know I sound like a broken record, but East probably can be 5A’s best team if it finds a way to hold onto its big leads. The T-Birds have gone a long way towards replacing many of the weapons they lost from last year’s title team and are capable of putting a lot of points on the board. Now they need to figure out how to finish teams off.
6.) East’s final drive proves it has the ability to keep the ball out of the other team’s hands. It would have been interesting to see how much more time the T-Birds could have run off the clock if Cody Fertig hadn’t broken a 37-yard run down to the Central one-yard line. My guess would be at least 90 more seconds.
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
An inadvertent omission
In the Oct. 3 story about doubles teams, I neglected to mention that the No. 1 boys pairing of Austin Fermelia and Patrick Schum isn’t the lone returning team for Cheyenne Central. The No. 3 girls team of Emily Lindly and Valerie Boone also played together last fall.
I had the duo in my list of names, titles and spellings at the beginning of the story I turned into my editors, but neglected to include the ladies in the body of my actual story.