Polk County Sports

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PHOTO BY BRIAN BESCH I PCE Jamya Garrett shoots a jumper in the first half Tuesday.

By Brian Besch

The Big Sandy Lady Cats came back from their turkey-day break by defeating intra-county foe Goodrich 71-15 Tuesday night in Dallardsville.

The game was never in doubt, as the Lady Cats scored just a few seconds after the tip and held the lead throughout the competition. Big Sandy was led by sophomore Alexis Thompson, who scored 13 points in the first quarter, on her way to 28 for the game.

Despite the large difference, Lady Cat head coach Ryan Alec sees room for improvement from his bunch.

“We didn't shoot the ball very well tonight as much as I would like for us to,” he said. “Offensively, I thought we executed as best we could. We had good ball movement around the perimeter, but I thought we missed our post players on the inside a little bit. In the second half, we tried to fix that a little more and go inside. I thought we did a better job going to our bigs and trying to score down low. Early in the first half, I thought we were trying to settle for too many 3-pointers on the outside. We weren't making them, so we have to figure out something else to do.”

The home team outscored the Lady Hornets 21-2 in the first quarter and led 37-4 at the half. Savannah Hoffman had 13 points for the Lady Cats and Faith Geller added a dozen. For Goodrich, Aralyn Angel led with seven points, Latrina Morgan had five and Jamya Garrett ended with three.

The Big Sandy boss liked what he saw on the defensive end, holding the Lady Hornets to minimal success.

“We played our zone defense and we tried to be aggressive out of it,” Alec said. “In the second half, we played a little bit of man. We are trying to figure out who we are and figure out our identity and what type of defense we are better at. I thought our first half defense was much better than our second half, but we still have a lot of work that we have to do in order for us to run both defenses to perfection. It's one of those things that we have to work on every day.”

For Goodrich, the Lady Hornets are coming off a hard-fought win just before the Thanksgiving holidays.

“I feel like the last game they played a lot better,” Goodrich coach Khadijah Carter said. “We played the Livingston game against the freshmen. We've just got to get more competitive.”

In the game with Livingston, Goodrich played with only four on the court for the entire fourth quarter. Carter said the team was up 10 or 15 points to begin the period and Livingston closed the gap to four points before the Lady Hornets took the win.

“(Versus Livingston,) we actually moved the ball around and we were getting open shots,” Carter said. “Most of our points came from in the paint. It was a lot of high-low and stuff like that. We had a girl foul out, so we just had to get in a box set. We managed with that for a little bit and our sophomore stepped up, bringing the ball down the court, because they doubled our point guard.”

The coach believes that confidence is a factor with her team and she wants to build in that area during non-district before heading into league play, which begins next week.

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PHOTO BY BRIAN BESCH I PCE Weston Mayer puts up two of his game-leading 17 points for the Big Sandy Wildcats.

By Brian Besch

The Big Sandy Wildcats had no trouble disposing of Goodrich Tuesday with a 79-4 win.

The ‘Cats were dominant from the beginning, establishing a 40-0 advantage before Goodrich could get on the board late in the second quarter. It was the Hornets’ first game of the year and a tough draw against a team that has a running start and has played a few large schools.

“I told our kids it was going to be like this,” Goodrich coach Lester King said. “You have to play hard and I just wanted to see some hustle. They are young and they are freshmen.”

King's lone senior went down in the first half with an apparent ankle injury, leaving five inexperienced Hornets on the floor to fend for themselves. With Garzon down, Goodrich had four freshmen and a sophomore that did not play last year on the floor without a bench.

“Garzon is the only senior and we have to get ready for January,” King said. “Some kids have to learn the hard way and they think they are ready to play and really good, but it is all about defense and hustle. We didn't have any defense out there tonight and we didn't have any hustle. We are going to get better at that. This is just embarrassing, but we are going to get better at defense and hustle. You got to work at this game. This is good for them. Now they see.”

For Big Sandy, they have played up in classification versus southeast Texas schools in Orangefield and, most recently, Bridge City.

“It was our first game back since a loss on Tuesday and coming off of Thanksgiving, so it was good to knock off the rust a little bit,” Big Sandy coach Kevin Foster said. “With Covid, I've kind of broken everything into small seasons. We had five games before Thanksgiving, this is our first of seven before christmas, so we are trying to break everything down into small seasons.”

All nine Wildcats put up points Tuesday, led by Weston Mayer with 17, Dante Williams with 14 and Kaden Foster with 10. For Goodrich, Exavier Henderson had both buckets.

Big Sandy as a group looked polished after a more uneven performance in Onalaska a few weeks before. Jumpers were falling, passes were crisp and the defense fought hard to keep the Hornets off the scoreboard.

“In the second half, we really try to focus on the execution side of things. I thought we did some of that,” Foster said. “We will keep practicing and getting better and we’ve got a lot of improvement to make.”

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LARRY LAMB I HCC Onalaska seniors Brady Neuman (left) and William Boyce will compete in the Class 3A cross country meet Monday afternoon in Round Rock. Boyce is aiming for the state championship, while Neuman, the front-runner for OHS’s Class of 2021 Valedictorian, is aiming for his personal-best time.

By Jason Chlapek

ONALASKA – William Boyce and Brady Neuman have a few things in common.

They’re both members of Onalaska High School’s Class of 2021, the OHS cross country program, OHS track and field program, and OHS FFA, to name a few. Speaking of cross country, both Boyce and Neuman will represent OHS at the state cross country meet Monday afternoon in Round Rock.

Boyce and Neuman each want to be at the top of their field, but this is where things begin to differ. Boyce wants to be the top male runner in Class 3A and has plans on winning Monday’s race, but Neuman wants to be the top student in OHS’s 2021 senior class.

“I’m currently ranked in the top of the class,” Neuman said.

Neuman plans to go to Texas A&M and major in biomedical and become a physician. During district FFA competition on Nov. 12, Neuman and his ag issues team finished first and his public relations team finished second.

Boyce also finished third in job interview at the district FFA competition. Onalaska finished second overall in district FFA, and the top two finishers in each category advanced to the area competition which took place Thursday.

Neuman also won the FFA wildfire competition last month for the third year in a row. He earned a belt buckle and scholarship money.

Neuman qualified for the state cross country meet by finishing as the eighth competitor not attached to a top-3 finishing team. The top three teams and top 10 individuals not attached to a top-3 team qualified for state.

“This is my second trip to state,” Neuman said. “Last year we went as a team. If we hadn’t qualified as a team, I actually wouldn’t have advanced. I knew I had to run for my life this year if I was going to make it to state.”

The Onalaska boys cross country team won its seventh consecutive district championship in October as well. Boyce and Neuman were the top finishers for the Wildcats in both the region and district meets.

“The state course is my favorite course that I’ve run on,” Neuman said. “I’m going to show up and run my best race. I don’t go in there to race everybody else, I go in there to race myself. I worry about myself instead of the people around me or the people in front of me.”

Boyce has one goal in mind Monday afternoon – first place. He is a three-time district champion and two-time region champion individually, and won both titles this year.

“When I look at the Round Rock course, I think of Texas as a whole,” Boyce said. “There’s all sorts of terrain on that course. Each region has different soil textures. With Austin being smack-dab in the middle of Texas, I feel like you have all of Texas in one spot. The course itself has hills, sand, rocks, holes, ditches, everything. It’s definitely an all-terrain course and it represents Texas terrain.”

Boyce plans to attend college on a track and field or cross country scholarship. He wants to become a teacher and coach with plans to enter into administration.

Boyce believes the courses he and his teammates ran on in district (Anderson) and regional (Huntsville) will have him ready for Old Settler’s Park’s course in Round Rock. He also has it in his mind that he will be the first one to cross the finish line.

“I have to have self-motivation and go in there like I know I’m going to win,” Boyce said. “If I go in there thinking I’m going to lose, I’ve already beaten myself. I feel like cross country as a whole is a mindset game. You have to push yourself to your limits.”

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by Brian Beusch

Onalaska scored in the final seconds to take a two-point advantage and eventually the game over Big Sandy 47-45 in a Monday matinee by the lake.

With a 45-43 lead, Onalaska held a possession for over a minute draining it to 1:30. Once Big Sandy regained the basketball, sophomore Alexis Thompson was fouled and made two free throws to tie the game at 45. 

Onalaska (3-3) made their final opportunity count, as Kierra Anstee’s missed layup was followed by Maddie Stelck with eight seconds to go for the game winner. 

After being down for the majority of the game, Onalaska took a one-point lead with 4:20 remaining in the third quarter at 29-28. The lead would change hands a few more times before the final whistle.

“Honestly, we are just looking for some consistency,” Onalaska coach Ashley Sustaita said. “We have been pushing and asking for some consistency in their play. I kind of took some roles away from some kids in the first half to kind of prove some points. We went back to our original substitution for our third quarter, so we saw some things that we were used to. They have definitely formed some bonds with their groups, as far as subbing. They looked a little more comfortable in the second half. We know what they can do, I just want them to believe they can do the same thing.”

The catalyst in starting the Onalaska offense was the press, which began to create points off of turnovers in the second half.

“Our biggest thing is starting to adjust, based off of what teams give us,” Sustaita said. “I thought that we did a good job finally today of adjusting our press to fit what they had. That is something they're going to have to do every single night. That is our bread and butter and what we want to do.”

Leading for a large portion of the game, a lack of depth for the visitors seemed to begin taking its toll. The Lady Cats had just seven suited up in purple for the contest, with a handful of players out for various reasons.

“We should have gotten a stop at the end, but they (Onalaska) are a good team and they work hard,” Big Sandy coach Ryan Alec said. “I knew coming into the game that they were going to do a good job defensively. It is always a battle when you come to Onalaska and they are going to get after us and play hard and work hard. We had to earn all the points that we had with the players we had on the floor.”

Onalaska’s Anstee led all scores with 17 points, Kylie Sisk and Stelck each had eight, and Jordyn Shutter scored six. Savannah Hoffman led Big Sandy with 15 points, Faith Geller had 11, Thompson had nine and Baili Mitchell added eight.

For Big Sandy (3-1), the loss Monday was the first of their season.

“We've played really well over the past three games,” Alec said. “We played at Coldspring and then we played at home versus East Chambers and on Saturday we played at Kirbyville. We won all three games by a pretty good margin and in those three games, we played extremely well. In this game, points were hard to come by and we didn't score as many as we did over there. We shot the ball really well in those games and didn't execuWinning on last shot

Onalaska scored in the final seconds to take a two-point advantage and eventually the game over Big Sandy 47-45 in a Monday matinee by the lake.

With a 45-43 lead, Onalaska held a possession for over a minute draining it to 1:30. Once Big Sandy regained the basketball, sophomore Alexis Thompson was fouled and made two free throws to tie the game at 45. 

Onalaska (3-3) made their final opportunity count, as Kierra Anstee’s missed layup was followed by Maddie Stelck with eight seconds to go for the game winner. 

After being down for the majority of the game, Onalaska took a one-point lead with 4:20 remaining in the third quarter at 29-28. The lead would change hands a few more times before the final whistle.

“Honestly, we are just looking for some consistency,” Onalaska coach Ashley Sustaita said. “We have been pushing and asking for some consistency in their play. I kind of took some roles away from some kids in the first half to kind of prove some points. We went back to our original substitution for our third quarter, so we saw some things that we were used to. They have definitely formed some bonds with their groups, as far as subbing. They looked a little more comfortable in the second half. We know what they can do, I just want them to believe they can do the same thing.”

The catalyst in starting the Onalaska offense was the press, which began to create points off of turnovers in the second half.

“Our biggest thing is starting to adjust, based off of what teams give us,” Sustaita said. “I thought that we did a good job finally today of adjusting our press to fit what they had. That is something they're going to have to do every single night. That is our bread and butter and what we want to do.”

Leading for a large portion of the game, a lack of depth for the visitors seemed to begin taking its toll. The Lady Cats had just seven suited up in purple for the contest, with a handful of players out for various reasons.

“We should have gotten a stop at the end, but they (Onalaska) are a good team and they work hard,” Big Sandy coach Ryan Alec said. “I knew coming into the game that they were going to do a good job defensively. It is always a battle when you come to Onalaska and they are going to get after us and play hard and work hard. We had to earn all the points that we had with the players we had on the floor.”

Onalaska’s Anstee led all scores with 17 points, Kylie Sisk and Stelck each had eight, and Jordyn Shutter scored six. Savannah Hoffman led Big Sandy with 15 points, Faith Geller had 11, Thompson had nine and Baili Mitchell added eight.

For Big Sandy (3-1), the loss Monday was the first of their season.

“We've played really well over the past three games,” Alec said. “We played at Coldspring and then we played at home versus East Chambers and on Saturday we played at Kirbyville. We won all three games by a pretty good margin and in those three games, we played extremely well. In this game, points were hard to come by and we didn't score as many as we did over there. We shot the ball really well in those games and didn't execte quite as well today.”