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Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Friday, September 15, 2006
Seventh grade game site changed
Crockett Middle School seventh grade football games on Thursday have been moved to Eagle Stadium, Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD athletic director Chris Henson said on Wednesday.
Pecos faces Kermit on Thursday, and Henson said, “Kermit only has enough kids for one eighth grade team, so we moved the seventh grade games from Crockett to the stadium, and they’ll play before the eighth graders.”
Pecos’ seventh grade purple team lost their season opener to Andrews last week, 16-0, while the gold team won over the Mustangs, 8-6. The eighth grade purple team fell by a 24-14 score to Andrews in their first game, while the gold team lost 20-6.
Pecos’ junior varsity and ninth grade teams play in Kermit on Thursday. The JV is 1-1 after a 12-7 win in Andrews, while the ninth graders lost, 18-7, and are 0-2 on the season.
Crockett 7th, 8th volleyball squads hosting tournament
The Crockett Junior High seventh and eighth grade volleyball teams will be hosting their own tournament on Saturday at the Pecos High School gym. The date for the tournament was listed incorrectly in last Friday’s Enterprise.
Crockett’s eighth grade purple team will face Kermit and the seventh grade gold team will take on Wink at 8 a.m., while the eighth grade gold team will take on the winner of the Odessa Crockett-Crane match at 10:30 a.m. and the seventh grade purple team will also play the winner of the Odessa-Crane match in their half of the bracket at that time.
Van Horn faces Presidio, Marfa takes on Odessa Bowie and Wink faces Fort Stockton in the other opening round matches for the eighth graders. The other seventh grade matches have Kermit facing Marfa, Odessa Bowie against Presidio and Van Horn facing Fort Stockton.
Bears make third try for first win, face Chargers
The Balmorhea Bears will be in El Paso Saturday afternoon, seeking their first win of the season against El Paso Jesus Chapel. The game will start at 12 noon CDT.
The Bears dropped to 0-2 on the season last Friday with a 46-0 loss in their road opener at Fort Davis. The Indians scored on their first offensive play of the game, took a 12-0 lead at halftime and then upped their margin to 34-0 in the second period, before ending the game under the 45-point rule in the third quarter.
Jesus Chapel dropped their season opener to Fort Davis by a 42-26 score, then bounced back to defeat Sierra Blanca last Friday by a score of 34-18. Fort Davis did have a big halftime lead over the Chargers in their opening win, going up 30-6 before Jesus Chapel outscored the Indians 20-12 in the second half.
The Bears, who have just 13 players on their roster this season for new coach Debiasie Mendoza, also have to deal with a knee injury suffered by starter Ryan Woodruff in their season opening 58-13 loss to El Paso Faith Christian. Saturday’s game is the second of three straight road games for the Bears, who’ll go to Midland Trinity next week, before returning home on Sept. 29 to host Imperial.
Pecos hopes home woes end with win
The lone team the Pecos Eagles were able to defeat in 2005, and the team that began the Eagles “official” current home losing streak in 2004, is the team the Eagles will be facing this Friday night, when they host the Kermit Yellowjackets in a 7:30 p.m. game .
The Eagles already own a win this season, in their opener two weeks ago against Alpine, but come off a 35-10 loss at home this past Friday to the Andrews Mustangs. It was their 10th straight loss at home officially, and 14th in reality, since their only home win since the opening game of the 2003 season came against Denver City two years ago in Monahans, where Pecos had to move its 2004 home opener due to delays in installing the new artificial turf surface at Eagle Stadium.
Pecos debuted the new field the following week against Kermit, and lost by a 23-8 score. But the Eagles came back a year ago at Walton Field and shut out the Jackets, 7-0. Pecos ended up winning the game on a recovery of an Eagle fumble by Aaron Urias that he was able to take 16 yards for a touchdown, as fumbles and penalties plagued Pecos throughout the game.
Kermit comes into the game with an 0-2 record, but came close to getting a victory last week in their home opener against Lamesa, losing by a 19-13 score in overtime. “They were up 13-0 at the half,” said Eagles’ coach Chris Henson, who said the Jackets had made some changes after their season-opening loss at Forsan.
“They ran a ‘29’ versus Forsan (on defense), but came out against Lamesa in a ‘50’ and played a lot better,” he said. “They had two new linebackers, and moved their big linebacker (James Moreno) to nose guard, and he played a lot better.
“They also played better pass defense against Lamesa. Forsan had a some taller receivers, which hurt them, but what impressed me more was their linebackers. They’re a lot faster getting downhill,” Henson said.
Luis Ortega ran for 156 yards against Kermit last season, and had 143 yards a week ago versus Andrews. But he lost 30 yards off his rushing total and ended up with a pass interception due to a trio of botched punts, two of which ended up leading to Mustang touchdowns.
Aside from the punt snaps, the short snaps also will be a focus for Pecos on Friday, after center Ruben Salgado suffered a broken hand against Andrews. “Isaac Salgado will be the center this week,” Henson said. “He’s a junior, and if we didn’t have Ruben he’d be starting for us. I don’t think we’ll lose much.”
Offensively, Kermit gained 201 of their 252 yards on the ground against Lamesa, though Henson expects the Jackets to pass more on Friday, after the Eagles allowed nearly 300 yards passing over their first two games.
“They base out of the wing-T like we do, but the do the spread a little, and I expect to see them pass more than we’ve seen them pass,” he said.
Former Eagle head coach Gary Grubbs son Austin is Kermit’s quarterback. “He’s a sophomore, so he’s young, but he runs as good as any quarterback we’ve seen. We’ll have to play better to contain him,” said Henson.
Grubbs was 5-for-15 passing with a touchdown. None of the completions were to tight end Cedric Thompson, but Henson said, “He could be a Division II athlete. He’ll be the key to containing them.”
Thompson will also be one of the blockers for Matt Wagner and Sergio Saenz, the Jackets’ running backs. Neither ran the ball last season against Pecos, but both gained around 80 yards last week, with Wagner scoring on a 28-yard run.
“(Saenz) is a hard-running running back who keeps his pads low and keeps his feet churning. We definitely can’t arm tackle. We’ll have to gang-tackle him and get people to the ball,” said Henson.
He added the Eagles may adjust their defense a little after last week’s loss, in which they allowed 374 yards overall to Andrews. “We may have a little different look secondary-wise for us, but otherwise we’ll stay in the same basic defense.”
A win on Friday will assure Pecos of at least a .500 record going into District 1-3A play at the end of the month. The Eagles go to Denver City next week, then host Anthony in their 1-3A opener on Sept. 29. Pecos hasn’t gotten to district play with a .500 or better record since the 2000 football season, Grubbs’ second year as head coach of the Eagles.
Crane’s rally snaps Eagles’ victory streak
Somebody’s double-digit winning streak was going to come to an end Tuesday night, when the Pecos Eagles traveled to Crane to take on the Golden Cranes. And unfortunately for the Eagles, who had posted a number of come-from-behind victories during their streak, they were victimized by a comeback by the Cranes, who kept their record perfect on the season with a five-game victory.
Pecos, which had won 12 straight matches after a 1-4 start, saw Crane come back to tie Tuesday’s match twice, then rally from match point in Game 5 for an 18-25, 25-23, 21-25, 25-19, 18-16 victory over the Eagles, to improve their record to 21-0 on the season.
“We were getting it, but we couldn’t pull it through,” said Eagles’ coach Helen Kimbrough, whose team will begin play on Friday in the Sul Ross Invitational in Alpine. “We were knocking on the door.”
Kimbrough said her team seemed to run out of gas at the end of Tuesday’s match, and said the string of road games is taking its toll on her players. Eight of the Eagles’ 12 straight wins had come on the road, and the Eagles won’t play again in Pecos until Oct. 10, at the halfway point of their District 2-3A schedule.
“We weren’t hitting the way we should,” she said. “We’re just tired from all this travel, so they’re just going to go home today (Wednesday) and rest.”
She said several of her girls are still suffering from colds that bothered the Eagles in last Saturday’s matches at Presidio. “The girls played well, but we can’t have lapses in thought,” Kimbrough said. “You’ve just got to keep playing and anticipating the next step, but we had a lot of kids who had brain freeze last night.”
Aside from her players’ problems reacting, she thought the officials had a bad night on set calls. “They called us for some, but they got away with a lot of sets they shouldn’t have,” she said. “They were inconsistent.”
Pecos held 10-6 and 14-10 leads in the deciding game, only to see the Cranes stage a four-point rally to tie things, before finally winning the match, which didn’t end until 10:30 p.m.
“We still should have taken it, but we had three lapses in coverage,” she said. “My girl didn’t come off the net (on a Crane tip attempt) and the ball fell right in the middle, so the refs didn’t have anything to do with that.”
The loss dropped Pecos to 13-5 on the season going into their 11 a.m. match on Friday against Marathon. The Eagles were scheduled to face McCamey on Tuesday but that match was cancelled, but they could face the Badgers in their second game on Friday in Alpine, and could see Crane again on Saturday. The winner between the Eagles and Mustangs will face the winner of the McCamey-Van Horn match at 3 p.m., while the losers will play at 1 p.m. at the Pete Gallegos Center on the Sul Ross State University campus.
The tournament is set up in two divisions similar to the earlier Monahans Sandhills Tournament, and the Eagles will play one more match on Friday to determine seedings for the championship and consolation bracket finals on Saturday. The host Bucks face Fort Hancock and Fort Davis takes on Comstock in the other half of Pecos’ bracket, while the Cranes are in other bracket against Midland Trinity.
Marfa faces Grandfalls, Sierra Blanca takes on El Paso New Horizon and the Balmorhea Bears will face the Eagles’ district rival Presidio in the other matches on Friday. Balmorhea plays at 9 a.m., and then will face either Sierra Blanca or New Horizon at 2 p.m. in the bracket semifinals, or at 12 noon in the consolation semifinals.
Tournament play resumes at 9 a.m. on Saturday and continues through the championship match at 7 p.m.
The Eagles freshman and junior varsity teams also played split set matches against Crane, but both came out winners on Tuesday. The ninth graders defeated the Cranes 25-14, 19-25, 25-16, while the JV pulled out a 20-25, 32-30, 25-21 win. The freshmen are now off until Sept. 26, while the JV and varsity will join the varsity for a non-district match against district rival Fort Stockton on Tuesday.
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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