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Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Pecos track teams open seasons on Friday
The Pecos Eagles track teams will be opening up their 2005 seasons this weekend at the Comanche Relays in Fort Stockton, before hosting their own meet the following weekend on the just-refurbished Eagle Stadium track.
Some final work is still to be done on the high jump pit, but the resurfacing of the track and the other jump areas have been completed, as part of the final part of the $522,000 renovation of Eagle Stadium, which included the installation of artificial turf last summer.
The track will actually get its first test this coming Friday, when Pecos hosts seventh and eighth grade teams from the area in the West of the Pecos Junior Relays. The meet is also the season opener for the Crockett boys and girls squads.
Pecos’ boys will be entered in the West Texas Relays at Ratliff Stadium in Odessa on March 11-12, following the West of the Pecos Relays n March 4, while the girls take the week off. Both teams will then go to the Cotton Patch Relays in Wall, and the boys will return to the Concho Valley the following weekend for the San Angelo Relays.
Pecos’ girls will go to Seminole that weekend, and both teams will then travel to Crane before going back to where they started the season, for the District 3-3A meet in San Angelo on April 14-15. The Region I-3A meet will be the final weekend of April in Odessa, while the Class 3A state meet will be on May 13-14 at the University of Texas in Austin.
Golfers place fifth in Stockton tournament
The Pecos Eagles boys golf team improved their spot in the standings some over the weekend at Fort Stockton, placing fifth out of 12 teams at the Fort Stockton Invitational.
The Eagles shot a 359-324-701 in the tournament, which was won by Midland Lee with a 324-318-642 score. Defending district champ Monahans was next with a 349-342-691, while Midland Christian broke a tie for fourth with the Eagles on Saturday with a 336 round and placed six shots in front of Pecos in the final standings.
“We getting closer to Stockton, and we beat Seminole, but they didn’t have their No. 1 and 2 golfers, they’re still in basketball,” said Eagles’ coach Kim Anderson. “That Brady Shivers who Mikey (Nichols) tied at regional is their forward, but they should be out soon.”
Seminole shot a 366-353-718, while the other district team at the tournament, Greenwood, finished with a 396-381-777 total.
Individually, Nichols wound up as the tournament’s runner-up medalist for the second time in three weeks, shooting an 82-75-159 score. “Mikey’s still a little inconsistent with his putting, and the others also are having problems. I saw a lot of three- and four-putts out there,” Anderson said.
Joseph Tarin was next for Pecos, shooting 85s both days for a 170 score, while Jake Weinacht shot a 96-93-189, Zack Morton shot a 96-89-185, and Jesse Prieto had a 125-129-254.
“I need to get a better score out of my senior (Weinacht),” Anderson said. “Zack’s getting better after getting out of basketball along with Joseph, but Jesse’s still struggling a little bit. We’ve got to get him down under 100.”
“The kids are hitting the ball well, it’s mainly our putting that’s hurting us. This week we’re going to try and work on getting our first putts closer. We’re going to putt and chip until we’re blue in the face.”
The Eagles will be in Midland for the Tall City Invitational this coming weekend, while Pecos’ girls, who were off this past weekend, will go down to Fort Stockton for the girls’ invitational meet.
Eagles struggle in scrimmage at OHS
It took a while for the Pecos Eagles’ baseball team to get things together last season, and coach Elias Payan hopes the progress is a lot faster this time around, after his team struggled on Friday against Odessa High in their only pre-season scrimmage.
The Eagles were shut out by the Bronchos, who Payan said took advantage more against his team’s defense than they did against Pecos’ pitchers at the Odessa High baseball field.
“We looked a lot like a team that hadn’t played. The main thing I was disappointed in was the defense,” Payan said. “The last two weeks that’s mainly what we worked on, but we booted the ball around and made some errors we shouldn’t have made.
“The pitching was the bright spot. Josh (Anchondo) was able to get his slider over, we just struggled on defense and didn’t back him up,” he said, adding that Eddie Vela and freshman Geno Leos also did OK on the mound against the Bronchos.
“Odessa High has got kids who play all year round and they’ve got a lot of speed. They took advantage and a couple of times they took an extra base and got doubles on balls that should have been singles,” Payan said. He also said the Bronchos also took advantage of some defensive problems at catcher, which is the main hole the Eagles are looking to fill off last year’s team on defense.
“We had a hard time catching behind the plate. We had a lot of passed balls,” Payan said. “We really haven’t worked with our catchers, but they were missing balls they need to catch. But we will get better.”
Offensively, he said Pecos also struggled at the plate, though they did make contact at times. “The bright spot was Kenny Rayos. He had a double and a single for us,” Payan said.
While several area teams will be starting their 2005 seasons on Monday or Tuesday this week, the Eagles’ first game won’t be until Thursday, when they take on Monahans in the opening round of the West Texas Classic at Christensen Stadium in Midland. The teams will play at 3:45 p.m. in one of six first round games, which will feature all seven District 3-3A teams.
“I’m kind of in-between Josh and Eddie right now,” Payan said of his pitching plans for Thursday. “I’ll probably go with Josh, because you want to start the season off with a good first game.”
The winner of the Eagles-Loboes game will play the final game on Friday, at 8:15 p.m., against either Fort Stockton, Lubbock Roosevelt, Grape Creek or the host Rangers. The loser of the Pecos-Monahans game will face one of those four teams in the consolation semifinals, at 3:45 p.m.
Eagles improve after rough tourney start
Things got better after an awful start for the Pecos Eagles softball team at the Andrews Invitational Tournament over the weekend, though coach Tammy Walls is still looking for a little better hitting and defense after Pecos went 1-4 in their five tournament games.
The Eagles opened play against eventual tournament champion Midland Christian on Thursday, and were routed by the Mustangs by a 22-0 final score. Things went better on Friday, when Pecos shut out El Paso Parkland, 5-0, then lost to El Paso Eastwood, 4-1, before falling to Lubbock Monterey on Saturday, 8-0, and to Andrews’ Black team, 4-2.
“We played better after the first game. I saw some marked improvement after Thursday, and we’re still a very, very young team,” said Walls. “But our batting was anemic all tournament long, although it looked better in the last game.”
“Our pitching also looked a little better. We were finally able to settle down,” she said, following Thursday’s opener, in which Midland Christian took a 3-0 lead in the first inning, widened that to 10-0 in the second and then scored 12 more times in the third.
Amalie Herrera took the loss in that game, but came back on Friday to allow just four runs in 12 innings of work against the two El Paso schools. Eastwood got three of their four runs in the first inning, while Monterey scored four times in each of the first two innings in their win on Saturday. Against Andrews, Hillery Hinojos pitched for the Eagles and gave up a run in the first inning and then two in the fourth and one more in the fifth inning.
“I really wanted to see what Amalie could do. As long as she said she felt comfortable pitching, I pitched her,” Walls said. “Before the (Andrews) game, she said she was tired, so I went with Hillery and Amalie got to play center field. She had never played out there for use and made a couple of good catches, and Bianca (Baeza) showed she could fill in for us at catcher, and her hitting was pretty good today.”
Herrera played in place of Baeza, while Hinojos’ spot at first base was taken by Danielle Garcia, who caught the first four games of the tournament. She went 2-for-2 in the loss to Eastwood, while Baeza was 3-for-3 against Andrews and had a double in the win over Parkland. Savannah Ewing and Jessica Florez also had doubles and Hinojos had a single to help the Eagles score their runs, as they put four across in the second inning and one in the fifth against the Matadors. Florez also had a double to go along with a single by Garcia to account for the Eagles’ lone run, in the fourth inning of their loss to the Troopers on Friday.
Jenny Palomino had the only hit in the loss to Monterey, while Walls said, “We didn’t play as good defense as we did on Friday.” The Plainswomen also took advantage of some early control problems by Herrera to score four times in each of the first two innings.
In the loss to Andrews, the Mustangs scored right away on an infield hit by Faith Hart and double by Erin Horn,. In the fourth a throwing error on a double-steal and a wild pitch scored two more runs, while a walk, hit batter and an infield single by Raylinn Ramirez made it 4-0.
Pecos had their baserunners against pitcher Crystal Molinar, but couldn’t score until their final at-bat, when Herrera and Hinojos singled and then scored on a ground outs by Cassandra Terrazas and Vanessa Valeriano. Baeza then singled to get the tying run to the plate, but Molinar got Ewing on a pop up to shortstop to end the game.
Midland Christian ended up defeating Andrews’ gold team by a 4-3 score to win the tournament title. The gold team came through a bracket that included Pecos’ district rival Greenwood, who will be the Eagles’ opening round opponent at the Midland Invitational Tournament, starting this coming Thursday with a 5 p.m. game against District 3-3A rival Fort Stockton. The Eagles’ first home game of the season won’t be for another week, when they host Alpine to complete their pre-district schedule.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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Copyright 2003-04 by Pecos Enterprise
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