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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Sports
Monday, August 26, 2002
Mistakes costly for Pecos girls at tournament
Slow starts continued to be a problem for the Pecos Eagles' volleyball
team over the weekend at the Monahans Sandhills Tournament, though coach
Becky Granado said she did see some signs of improvement in the two day tournament.
The Eagles went 1-2 in their pool round matches on Friday, before falling
to the host Loboes and Seminole Maidens in their regulation games on Saturday.
Pecos dropped a 15-4, 15-12 decision to Monahans, then were beaten by Seminole
in the tournament quarterfinals, 15-4, 15-6.
"We hurt ourselves so much. We made so many mental mistakes," Granado
said of Saturday morning's match against the Loboes. "They'd hit the ball
out but we'd stick our arms out and try to play it. We killed our own momentum.
We'd get in for while, but then we'd hit the ball into the net or out."
"Against Seminole we just did not play like we did earlier," said Granado,
whose team lost in pool round play the previous day to the Maidens, 15-7,
15-13. The Eagles were then beaten by Alpine, 15-13, 15-10, but in-between
shut out Frenship in their first match, 15-0, then scored a 15-7 win to advance
to the first round of the 13-team tournament's championship bracket.
"I did see some good things. We hustled a lot on defense, which I think
was what kept us in most of the games," Granado said.
The Eagles also had to play this weekend without senior hitter/middle
blocker Jennifer Martinez, which forced some changes in Pecos' front line.
"We didn't do badly. I was very pleased with Mindi (Harrison). It seems like
she's starting to get aggressive at the net," Granado said.
"Leslie (Rodriguez) and Stephanie (Herrera) also had a couple of blocks.
We don't have much height, so I guess we'll just have to rely on our vertical
jumps," she said.
Lubbock Trinity ended up winning the tournament, 17-15, 14-16, 15-2 over
Plainview. Monahans won third place, 14-16, 15-5, 15-11 over Alpine and Seminole
downed Midland Greenwood for fifth place, 10-15, 17-15, 17-15.
The Eagles will be in Odessa for the second Tuesday in a row, for their
next games, against Permian and Lubbock Estacado. Pecos will then play their
home openers on Friday, in pool round play at the Cantaloupe Classic.
Pecos' junior varsity team won consolation in their bracket of the tournament,
downing Alpine, 15-5, 16-14, while the freshman team took third place, defeating
Fort Davis 8-15, 16-14, 15-9. The JV had earlier downed Alpine in pool round
play, 15-12, 15-11, while losing to Kermit, 15-10, 15-14, and to Lubbock
Trinity, 15-4, 15-7.
Eagles shut down runners, survive Fabens' air attack
By JON FULBRIGHT
Staff Writer
The start and finish of Friday's scrimmage wasn't what Fred Carter
was hoping for, but the effort in the middle against the Fabens Wildcats
made the first-year Pecos Eagles head coach happy.
The Eagles started off their varsity scrimmage by watching their second
team players get burned for two touchdown passes by Van Horn's varsity, then
struggled on offense in their first team series against Fabens. But after
allowing Wildcats' quarterback Moses Escobar to break free on a 45-yard run,
the Eagles' defense shut Fabens down, and the second team made up for their
problems against Van Horn by dominating the Wildcats on the next series.
However, after scoring twice there, and two more times during the six
play goal line series, the Eagles then saw Fabens score three times in five
plays starting from the 10-yard-line, two on passes, before intercepting
Fabens' last pass _ but not before making a questionable defensive play in
the end zone.
"All in all I was pleased with the effort of the kids. They started slow,
but picked up their level of intensity," said Carter, whose team did suffer
another injury to a starter on Friday.
Senior Mathew Levario suffered a hyper-extended left knee during the Eagles'
first defensive series, joining quarterback Freddy Torres on the sidelines.
Both start in the offensive and defensive backfields, which Carter said hurt
Pecos during the goal line series.
"Levario is one of our starters. We were missing him along with Freddy,
and had some people back there who are a little weaker in that area," he
said.
The Eagles missed Levario less on offense than defense. His replacement,
junior Bino Barreno, scored twice during the second series against Fabens,
on runs of 66 and 10 yards, then scored the second of Pecos' two touchdowns
during the goal line series, off a seven-yard run following a four-yard pass
from Jose Reyes to tight end Chad Evans, who was also subbing for an injured
player, Joey Ortega.
"Bino did a really good job running the ball," said Carter. Barreno had
a couple of good runs in the first series against Van Horn, but an interception
of a John Parent pass ended the Eagles' only serious scoring threat.
Meanwhile, Van Horn caught Pecos' secondary getting out of the huddle
late, and burned them with a 41-yard touchdown pass, then connected on a
21-yard TD pass a few plays later. Combined with last week's 4-0 scrimmage
loss to El Paso Riverside, the Eagles allowed seven passes for touchdowns
in their two preseason scrimmages.
An interception of a deflected Reyes pass at the Fabens' 30 also killed
the first-team's initial scoring threat, but after the Eagles' first team
defense stopped Fabens opening series on downs at their own 15 Oscar Parada
picked off an Escobar pass after a 23-yard completion by the Wildcats. The
Eagles' defense then came up with a 12-yard sack to end the first series,
and then stopped Fabens for losses on five of the 15 plays on the second-team
series.
"The second team looked tremendous at the end," said Carter. "I guess
they thought Van Horn was just going to lay down for them, but they got a
rude awakening."
Carter said the scrimmage with Van Horn was a last-minute arrangement.
The two Eagle teams met after Van Horn faced Fort Hancock. Pecos' JV then
played Fort Hancock's varsity after facing the Wildcats' JV, while Fabens'
second team closed out the scrimmage by taking on Van Horn.
"It was real unorganized. We didn't know at first what was going on,"
said Carter. "We hadn't planned to play a scrimmage, but Van Horn's coach
wanted to know if we could go 15 plays."
Pecos' JV shut out Fabens, 5-0, then lost to Fort Hancock's varsity, 4-1,
in their scrimmage series, while the Eagles' freshman team only scrimmaged
the Wildcats, and came away with a 3-1 victory.
Fabens opens its 2002 season this week in Deming, N.M., while the Eagles
will wait until the following week to begin their season, when they go to
Alpine to face the Bucks.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 915-445-5475, FAX 915-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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Copyright 2002 by Pecos Enterprise
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