Polk County Sports

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The Leggett Pirates will play in Hudson Tuesday versus Martinsville.

By Brian Besch
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With a three-way tie for the district’s third place, Onalaska, Coldspring and Tarkington participated in a play-in tournament. After defeating Coldspring 74-66 in the final game of the regular season, Onalaska dropped the play-in game Thursday versus the Trojans 73-60, ending their season.

“We finished with 17-19 overall record,” Onalaska coach Nicholas Tyerman said. I am very proud of these young men and how they have grown the foundation of the program. These seniors are responsible for two seasons in the top five overall best records in school history. The 16 wins last year was the fifth best record in school history and 17 wins this year is fourth. We have a huge opportunity to continue with our young foundation coming up. I will forever be grateful for these seniors and what they have done.”

Graduating Onalaska this year will be Austin Duncan, Bryan Wyatt, Lucas Jackson, Johnny Byrd and Ryder Humbird-Smith.

On Thursday, Corrigan Camden defeated Big Sandy in a warm-up exhibition at Dallardsville 58-54 in overtime. They will play Timpson in the bi-district round on Monday at 7 p.m. in Hudson.

Big Sandy will challenge district champion Somerville in the opening round at Willis High School Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

District runners-up Leggett will also play at Hudson in a battle of Pirates. Their game versus Martinsville is Tuesday at 8 p.m.

After finishing the district race in third place, the Livingston Lions will travel to Lumberton for the bi-district round to face the Cardinals of Bridge City Tuesday at 6 p.m.

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Big Sandy coach Ryan Alec goes over strategy with the team in the fourth quarter.

By Brian Besch
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The Big Sandy girls are bi-district hoops champions after a 57-45 victory over Iola Tuesday night at Conroe High School.

The Lady Cats took a 10-point lead in the first quarter, led by the shooting of Faith Geller and Yaheira Battise. The senior Geller collected 11 points in the period, including a buzzer-beating 3-pointer at the top of the key. Battise had eight, going 4-for-4 at the line.

Iola did a better job of rebounding in the second quarter, cutting into the Lady Cat advantage. However, a few late buckets kept the difference at seven going into the break, 29-22.

“Any win at this point of the season makes us happy. The main thing is just to survive and advance,” Big Sandy coach Ryan Alec said. “I thought we played well in spurts. We got off to a good start and knocked down some shots. We kind of went cold in the second quarter and I thought there were times defensively when we could have been better. We game planned into this trying to shade everything and move them more to the left side. From the scouting report we got and the film that we watched, they are right-hand dominant. We didn’t do that as well as I would like throughout the course of the game. We talked about rebounding, which is key against them, because they crashed the board so hard. We managed as well as we could. Offensively, we moved the ball well, but I don’t think we were looking to score at times on a lot of pick-and-roll looks. I thought those were open quite a bit and we missed those.”

Leading by as much as 15 in the third quarter, the ‘Cats got buckets from five different players.

Iola worked the boards to get back down to a five-point difference with just 3:41 in the game. They held Big Sandy without a field goal in the fourth quarter, but the ‘Cats made 12-of-17 at the free-throw line to clinch it.

“We made some adjustments in the second half and the very first time we executed our offense we had a layup. Execution is big at this point in the season. You have to be able to run your offense.”

Geller led the Lady Cats with 18 points, and Battise and Savanna Poncho had 14 each. Iola spread their scoring more, with four girls totaling eight points each.

Big Sandy has turned things around since the midway point in district play. A fringe playoff team after the first round of district, the Lady Cats defeated a few opponents they fell short against the first time. Alec believes the defense has been the key.

“Evadale in West Hardin both beat us in the first round, and we made some adjustments in the second round,” he said. “We thought that we had a chance to go undefeated in the second round, but our defense had to be better. We made some changes defensively and we went with a defensive lineup. I thought that picked us up quite a bit. I thought we played tremendous defense down the stretch. We were hoping that would transfer into the playoffs.”

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Lion soccer claimed a 6-0 victory over Hamshire-Fannett  Tuesday. Fredy Chica Luna led with two goals and an assist, while Brayden Vickery had a goal and two assists. Alexis Rosas, Jose Olivares, and Alessandro Lopez each added a goal. Chris Carreon had an assist, and goalkeeper Bon Vera did not allow anything past him. Livingston now carries 2-0-1 district mark, good for for place currently. They have an overall record of 8-3-2.

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Livingston High School had seven athletes participate in National Signing Day by inking with the college of their choice.

In baseball, J.T. Smith and Copeland Bush will attend Arlington Baptist, and Jordan Bush heads to Incarnate Word. Softball players Jaycee Knighton signed with University of Texas at Arlington, and Allison Lytle with Navarro College. Golfer Brandon Munson will swing for Texas Lutheran University, and Jace Morris will play for Centenary College on the gridiron (athletes are pictured left to right as listed above).

The athletes were joined by their coaches on the back row, and include (L-R) baseball head coach David Miller, softball head coach Heather Mosser, golf head coach Frank Brister, and LISD athletic director Finis Vanover.