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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Payan happy with Eagle starters in scrimmage
By JON FULBRIGHT
Staff Writer
PECOS, Feb. 11, 2003 - The Pecos Eagles' varsity baseball team still needs to work on its
hitting, coach Elias Payan said, but both the pitching and defense looked
OK Monday night, in the Eagles' final pre-season scrimmage game.
The Eagles scrimmaged Midland Christian at home Monday
evening, and while they ended up losing by a 13-5 final score, 10 of those runs
were unearned and came after Payan had replaced most of his starters
with freshman and junior varsity players in the sixth inning of the game.
Pitchers Matthew Levario and Edward Valencia were victimized
by the late mistakes, but before then Payan said Levario and
starter Barney Rodriguez did all right against the Mustangs, with
Rodriguez allowing two runs in three innings of work, including a solo home
run and Levario one run on back-to-back doubles in the fourth inning.
"We looked decent," Payan said. "Again our hitting is still a
little behind, but Barney and Freddy (Torres) hit the ball a couple of
times, and Matthew hit the ball hard."
Torres and Matthew Vasquez had early RBI hits for Pecos, while
thanks to the freer rules in scrimmage play, Rodriguez managed to get hit
twice in the same at-bat in the fifth inning, which ended up starting a
two-run rally that included a walk and two run-scoring wild pitches.
Payan said he was still trying to get his pitchers to get ahead of
the hitters with their off-speed pitches, while at the same time the Eagles
gave new catcher Ruvel Carrasco a chance to get in more work behind the plate.
"Ruvel looked good except for a couple of times catching the ball,
but he did a good job throwing," Payan said. Carrasco threw one of
two runners out trying to steal before leaving the game along with
Levario in the sixth inning.
Levario did struggle at times to get his early pitches over the plate,
though he didn't get hurt until Pecos' younger players began making errors
behind him. "Matthew's got to learn he can't throw pure fastballs. He's got to
get those off-speed pitches over the plate, and I think tonight he saw that."
Payan said he gave his sub-varsity players more playing time
than expected because the scheduled scrimmage today for the freshman
and JV players at Fort Davis has been canceled. "Fort Davis made it to
the playoffs, so they don't have enough kids to play the scrimmage.
That's why I put the younger players in," Payan said.
The Eagles' next action will be their season openers _ the varsity
a week from today at home against Odessa High, while the freshmen
and JV teams begin their seasons on Feb. 21 at home against Monahans.
Playoff conflict forces delay in softball opener
PECOS, Feb. 11, 2003 - The 2003 softball season will be opening three days later
than scheduled for the Pecos Eagles, but coach Tammy Walls is hoping
to make up today's scheduled game against the Alpine Bucks
next week.
The Eagles were set to travel to Alpine for their season
opener today, but Walls said that because the Bucks qualified for the
Class 2A girls basketball playoffs, they can't play Pecos this afternoon.
"Alpine only has eight girls right now, so we my reschedule it for
next week as a doubleheader with Presidio and Alpine," she
said, pending clearance under UIL rules.
Pecos doesn't have a game scheduled as of now for
next Tuesday, but they will be in the Midland Softball Tournament
next weekend.
This weekend, the Eagles will open their season in Andrews
with the Andrews High School Softball Tournament.
They'll play a pool round game Friday morning against El
Paso Eastwood that won't count in the tournament bracket, and then
will take on the Midland Christian Mustangs in their opening
round match-up Friday afternoon.
The winner of that game will either face Odessa High or
Pecos' former District 2-4A rival, Fabens, in a tournament quarterfinal
round game Friday evening.
Among the Eagles new District 4-3A rivals, Monahans is the
only other team in the tournament, and will face Andrews' `B' team in
their opening round match-up.
Walls said bad weather forced Pecos to cancel their
scheduled scrimmage games this past Saturday against Kermit and Sweetwater,
so she didn't get a chance to look at her new players or some of
her returning players in new positions.
She said that at Andrews, she hopes to get a look at
freshman Hillary Hinojos as a pitcher, though Stephanie Herrera would start
the tournament opener, while at catcher, she said, "We'll start with
Kelsey Flores but we'll probably look at different candidates."
Flores, a sophomore, and freshmen Jessica Flores
and Savanna Ewing played catcher in the Eagles' scrimmages
last Thursday against Kermit and Crane.
Aside from the Eagles and Loboes, second year team Denver City
and Lubbock Cooper are the other Class 3A teams the Eagles could meet in
the Andrews Tournament, though both are in the other half of the
tournament bracket.
Monahans and Andrews `B' are in the bracket with the Eagles,
who could face the Loboes on Saturday. El Paso Del Valle and Lubbock
High round out that half of the bracket.
Eagles end basketball season against Panthers
PECOS, Feb. 11, 2003 - One last game, one last chance for the Pecos Eagles
boys' basketball team to pick up a win in the 2003 district season.
The Eagles, who went into district two games over .500, will
try to end a nine game slide at home tonight, when they end the
season against the Fort Stockton Panthers, who assured themselves of
finishing ahead of the Eagles with their second district win of the season this
past Friday, against Presidio, which knocked the Blue Devils out of a
tie for the third and final District 4-3A playoff spot with Monahans.
The Loboes, who had lost at home to Presidio a week ago, regained
third place by beating Pecos on Friday, 70-48. The Loboes used four
3-point baskets in the opening period to jump out to a 23-6 lead after one
quarter and cruised from there,
That was similar to what happened in the Eagles' last meeting with
Fort Stockton. Pecos had beaten the Panthers on their home court in
early January, but three weeks later missed their first 11 shots of the game
and fell behind by an 18-6 score after one period. They eventually did get
the lead down to one point in the third quarter, but could never go ahead
of the Panthers and eventually lost by a 61-51 final score.
The Panthers connected on seven 3-pointers in the game,
including baskets by Angel Marquez and Isai Rojas in the third period, after
Pecos had cut the margin to one point. Isaiah Armendariz led Pecos with
20 points and John Parent had 14 in the losing effort for the Eagles.
"We can beat Fort Stockton if we'll get out there and play,"
said coach Joe Flores. "I hope we still want to give a good effort for
one more game, and I hope we'll have a little pride in ourselves, and
won't be lackadaisical because we're getting ready for other sports."
Play opens with the final regular season game for the freshman
Eagles and Loboes at 4:30 p.m., followed by the junior varsity match-up at 6 p.m.
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 2003 by Pecos Enterprise
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