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Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Pecos opens grid practice with 59 out for varsity, JV

Preseason workouts began Monday for the Pecos Eagle football team, with a total of 59 varsity and JV players suiting up for the opening practice.

The Eagles are conducting two-a-days during the morning hours under new head coach Chris Henson, with varsity and JV players working out on the Eagle Stadium field while the ninth graders practice next to the PHS softball field.

Henson was hoping to have between 95 and 100 players out on all three teams for preseason drills. Most of the JV and varsity players did make it to the opening day, but trainer Joel Birch said the Eagles were still short a number of players on the freshmen level Monday morning.

Two-a-day drills will run for a week, while single session workouts will take place next week, around teacher in-service preparation for the start of school on Aug. 21. Two days before that, the Eagles will play the first of their two preseason scrimmages, against former district rival Seminole, on the Indians’ home field. Pecos then faces another former district foe on the road on Aug. 24, when they travel to Greenwood. Regular season play opens for Pecos in Odessa on Sept. 2 with a game against Alpine.

Athletes who did not make it to the opening day of workouts but still plan to play football have to have their physical forms filled out and signed by their doctors and returned to their coaches before they will be allowed to play.

Physical forms also have to be completed and returned for those in volleyball, swimming and cross-country, which also began on Monday. Off-season workouts for the Eagles in other sports will get underway on the first day of school, and players in those sports also need to have their physical forms completed and returned in order to participate.

Kimbrough begins work as new volleyball coach

Pecos Eagles volleyball players opened their first workouts under new head coach Helen Kimbrough on the track, as opposed to in the gym Monday morning.

Monday was the first day of workouts for the Eagles and for Kimbrough, who was named the Eagles’ new head volleyball coach last month, replacing Debbie Garcia, who moved over to be Pecos’ new head basketball coach. She has spent her coaching career until now with the Ector County ISD, including serving as head volleyball coach for Odessa Permian in the late 1990s, where she won the District 4-5A title in 1997 and was named the district’s Coach of the Year.

Kimbrough also has family connections by her former marriage to Pecos.

“I was married to Mike Sadler (PHS grad and former Eagles’ head basketball coach) for 17 years,” she said. “Billie Sadler is my former mother-in-law, and she remains a dear person to me, so I’m not that unfamiliar with Pecos. I’ve been here many times.”

Kimbrough has been working for the Ector County ISD, at the junior high and high school level. “When I was at Odessa High, I was JV basketball and track, but I helped out in volleyball and we went to the playoffs for the first time,” she said. Her JV basketball team was 24-0 and she said, “I just loved track. It’s such an individual sport to develop athletes through that. But my game is volleyball.”

She said going into the current summer break, she was looking at moving into a new position at OHS, but that changed when she found out about the Pecos job.

“Coach (Linda) McMillian from Permian was contacted by coach Garcia, and she said the job had come open,” Kimbrough said. Kimbrough’s name was given to Pecos- Barstow-Toyah ISD athletic director Chris Henson, and he called her about the job.

Kimbrough accepted the job in early July and was approved by the school board, giving her a few more weeks to get things ready than last year, when Garcia was named head volleyball coach only four days prior to the start of workouts. Kimbrough still had a contract with Odessa College for the summer driver’s education program to finish out before she could devote herself fulltime to her new job.

“Pecos has always had good players,” she said. “I just think it’s a great opportunity, and I’m thankful to God for letting me do this.”

The Eagles will be in the same four-team volleyball district, along with Monahans, Fort Stockton and Odessa Permian for the third year in a row. They missed the playoffs each of the past two seasons after eight consecutive playoff appearances, and have won just one of their 13 district matches during that span. But the Eagles do return most of their players off last year’s 11-22 squad, and Kimbrough said she plans on improving those results in 2006. “We’re going to go past just competitiveness. We’re going to win something,” she said.

“We’ve got a good group of girls. I watched them play this summer and they looked good. So I’m just pleased to be here.”

She said she was still adjusting her schedule for this week, to work around student orientation sessions between the start of practice on Monday and Saturday’s scrimmage in Monahans against the Loboes, Odessa High and Odessa Permian.

“Today we’ll do the mile (run) this morning and after that we’ll do agilities,” she said. “We’ll see how well we do.

“Of course they’re not going to be in the best shape right now, so I’m going to have to look at them over a couple of days and see where their abilities are the best, and see what team to put them on.”

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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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