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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Sports
Friday, January 3, 2003
Swimmers take on 5A squads in district tune-up
The first meet of 2003 for the Pecos Eagles' swim team is also the last
meet for the Eagles before District 3-4A competition, and coach Terri Morse
hopes going against a group of Class 5A schools at this weekend's Lubbock
Invitational will be a good way to prepare for the 3-4A meet at the end of
this month.
Swimming preliminaries and diving competition got underway this afternoon
at the Pete Ragus Aquatic Center, which will be the site of the Region I-4A
Swimming and Diving Championships on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. The swimming finals
for this weekend's meet will begin Saturday at 1 p.m., following the girls'
1-meter diving competition.
Morse said district rivals Andrews and Monahans would be at this weekend's
meet, but the majority of schools would be from the 5A ranks, including schools
from Midland, El Paso, Amarillo, San Angelo and the host squads from Lubbock.
"It will be good for us to swim against the 5As, to see if we can hold
our own," Morse said. "We'll be challenged in areas we haven't been challenged
in before, and I hope our kids rise to the occasion instead of going in there
and acting like they've already been beaten because they're not ranked in
the Top 8 going in."
The Eagles are seeded first in one event, the boys' 200-yard medley relay,
and are seeded second on the boys' side in the 400-yard freestyle relay and
third in the same event on the girls' side. Morse said to improve the relay
teams' chances, "I'll probably pull Betsy (Lujan) from the 200 (freestyle)
and K.W. from the 200 medley and put them onto a third relay."
Individually, the highest seed on the boys' side is junior Will Oglesby,
who's ranked second going into both the 100-yard butterfly and the 500-yard
freestyle, while sophomore Susan Moore has the highest seeding on the girls'
side, going in ranked fourth in the 50-yard freestyle.
Morse said she would be taking 25 swimmers and divers to Lubbock, and
they would compete in their normal events. "They had to qualify for this
meet, so I couldn't put somebody in an event where they hadn't swam before."
The exception is in the boys' 3-meter diving competition, where Michael
Juarez, Miguel Estrada and Andrew Grant are entered, even though they've
only done 1-meter diving so far this season.
"I put all the divers in the 3-meter, because I felt we could score more
points, so we've been working on that a little bit," Morse said. The 3-meter
diving will be held at 1 p.m. today while the preliminaries are going on,
and will be followed by the 1-meter diving event, where Juarez, Grant and
Estrada also are entered.
After the Lubbock meet the Eagles will have two weeks off, before hosting
the District 3-4A meet on Jan. 24-25.
Eagles open 4-3A hoops play against Loboes
District 4-3A girls basketball play opens for the Pecos Eagles tonight
in Monahans, where they'll take on the Loboes in varsity and junior varsity
games at 4:30 and 6 p.m.
The Eagles come into district in much better shape than a year ago. They're
6-6 on the season following a 50-37 win last Saturday over Irion County at
the Iraan Alley Hoops Tournament. That came after losses to McCamey and to
Wink in their first two tournament games.
The Eagles lost to McCamey by a 55-36 score, then were beaten by Wink,
60-25, a week after Pecos won at home by two points over the Wildcats. "We
played a lot worse than we did the first time," said coach Veronica Valenzuela.
"They were the same aggressive team, but got away with a lot more fouls over
there, but we didn't help ourselves."
"We played a lot better on Saturday against Irion County. We moved around
better on the court. Friday we just didn't show up and they were beating
us downcourt. We didn't have our heads in it," she said.
Monahans got a late start to the 2002-03 basketball season after advancing
to the Class 3A state semifinals in volleyball. "Monahans is the only team
I haven't seen, but from what I've been told they've been struggling a little
at guard, although they've been playing some strong teams," Valenzuela said.
The Loboes figure to try and get the ball inside, where they'll have a
height advantage on the Eagles just as they did in volleyball. "They've been
relying on (Laura) Crumrine, but they've also had one guard scoring a little
bit," said Valenzuela.
The Eagles have gone the last five games without starting forward Leslie
Rodriguez, who sprained her ankle in mid-December at the Stanton Tournament.
"Leslie started practicing Monday, but she's still not 100 percent," said
Valenzuela. "I've got a couple of other girls who have some injuries, but
they're nothing too bad."
All of the Eagles varsity district games are scheduled for 6 p.m. starts,
including Tuesday's home opener against Fort Stockton. Pecos' boys don't
start 4-3A play for another week, but will be at home for a 7:30 p.m. game
on Tuesday against Big Spring in their final pre-district contest.
Midland, Monahans net wins over Pecos
The Pecos Eagles played a good game and a bad game on Thursday at the
Fort Stockton Tournament, coach Joe Flores said, though the results were
the same in both cases _ losses to the Midland Christian Mustangs and Monahans
Loboes.
The Eagles saw Midland Christian use a 25-13 advantage in the third period
to break open a two-point game at halftime and defeated Pecos by a 74-58
final score, then came back 90 minutes later and lost to their district rivals,
70-64, in a game in which Flores said his team played far worse than in their
wider loss to the Mustangs.
"We played well against Midland Christian. We shot the ball well, but
they made nine 3-pointers," he said. "Against Monahans we played like we
were scared to dribble the ball, and scared to shoot the ball … we
played probably one of our worst ballgames of the season."
Scoring wasn't available for the second game on Thursday, but in the opener
Midland Christian's Zac Schwartz scored 28 points, including three of the
Mustangs nine 3-pointers in the game.
"They started the third quarter and hit two 3-pointers in a row off transition,
and then we turned the ball over and they came down and made another basket
and we didn't recover."
The Eagles led 18-14 after one period, but went in at halftime down 33-31.
The Mustangs' big third period gave them a 58-44 advantage going into the
fourth quarter.
Pecos had three players in double figures in the game, with Joey Ortega
scoring 12 points, Bino Barreno 11 and Isaiah Armendariz 10. Jeff Bush also
was in double figures for Midland Christian with 13 points.
After their win over Pecos, Midland Christian then defeated Fort Stockton
by a 62-52 score on Thursday. The Eagles, who are now 8-8 on the season,
will take on Fort Stockton tonight in their final tournament game, which
is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
"They only hit two 3-pointers against Stockton," said Flores, who added
the Panthers were in the game until the closing moments. "I hope we play
a little bit better against Fort Stockton than we did yesterday. We should
be a little fresher than we were against Monahans, and that should help."
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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