SILOAM SPRINGS — After years and years of having a Benton County Basketball Tournament, the athletic competition this year has “officially” turned into the Northwest Arkansas Invitational Basketball Tournament.

Before the student population explosion at Rogers and Bentonville high schools, the seven schools that made up the Benton County Tournament were Rogers, Bentonville, Siloam Springs, Gravette, Gentry, Pea Ridge and Decatur. While generally dominated by the Tigers and Mounties, there have been notable runs made by the smaller schools in years gone by.

Rogers was the first Benton County school to cease attending the high school portion of the tournament as it no longer fit into their competition plans. While a large high school could pick up some easy wins against smaller ones in a tourney like the BC Tournament, there would be no real gain for a squad looking to sharpen their skills for competition in their own large school league. Bentonville came to the same decision not too long after that.

Siloam Springs, a 5A school on the cusp of ascending into the 6A classification, dwarfs the other teams entered into the tournament as far as student enrollment is concerned, and usually make the finals on any given year. For the past few years, the team that has been most likely to alsomade it to the finals has been Pea Ridge among the boys teams.

The odd thing about the Benton County Tournament over the past few years has been the inclusion of teams who are located nowhere near Benton County. There have even been out of state teams to make up part of the field. Fayetteville Christian had some success playing in the tournament with the numerous foreign and transferred in players it boasted of.

With Pea Ridge this year’s host of the five Benton County schools left to compete in the festivities, the decision was made to rename the event and find three other teams to fit into the brackets. In the high school competition this year, the three non-Benton County teams will be Elkins, Booneville and Hartford, the latter two being pretty far removed from this area located on the other side of the Arkansas River.

Since his arrival on the Pea Ridge, coach Charley Clark’s charges have been a top two team and this year is no different as they are picked second behind Siloam Springs. The third ranked boys team is the Gentry Pioneers with Elkins being voted the fourth seed. Gravette is ranked fifth coming in with Booneville ranked sixth, Hartford seventh and Decatur eighth. The high school action started Monday with Siloam taking on Decatur. Last night, the Blackhawks took on Hartford with other firstround action to be completed tonight with Elkins battling Gravette at 5:30 and Gentry and Booneville tipping it off at 8:30.

On the girls side, the Lady ’Hawks came up with a sixth seed and they play the No. 3 seed Hartford team tonight at 7 p.m. The top seed for the girls is Siloam with Gentry seeded second, while the fourth and fifth seeds went to Elkins and Gravette, respectively. Decatur has the seventh seed and there is no eighth seed as Booneville will not be participating in the high school girls division.

Led by high scoring Cameron Thompson, the high school boys come into the game with a 2-1 mark with the lone loss being to the Rogers Mounties, a 7A school.

While the high school boy have several scorers on the floor, the ’Hawks’ big man in the middle will key this year’s offense. The Lady ’Hawks are being led by Jordan Winn with the Ladies already logging two victories on the young campaign.

If the boys got by Hartford last night, they will take on the winner of Booneville/Gentry Friday 5:15. If the girls win tonight, they will play at 5:30 p.m. Thursday against the winner of the Gentry/Decatur game.

The Lady Pioneers will be an interesting team to watch this year as they are being coached by former Ozark All-Stater and six year Lady Razorback letterman Sarah Pfeifer. Having known coach Pfiefer since she was a third grader, if she can imprint her dedication and will to win on her players ,then look out, the Pioneers will be a force to reckon with.

The championship game for the girls will be 7 p.m.

Saturday night with the boys game to follow at 8:30 p.m., time approximate.

Shiloh coach tossed in playoffs

While continuing their march to the 4A State Championship to be held next week in Little Rock, the Shiloh gridders might well be without their head coach in their semi-final matchup this week as Pulaski Robinson comes to Springdale.

Robinson was the league runner-up to Pulaski Academy, the states other 4A super-power. Robinson upset the District 4 champion Booneville 14-9 in the second round then crushed Mena 50-22 in the quarterfinals. Mena, a fourth seed from District 4, upset two second seeds in their two game streak.

While Shiloh pretty much had their way with Nashville 48-10, the third seed out of District 7, head Shiloh coach Josh Floyd was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct in the fourth quarter, and when the first flag failed to calm or dissuade him, the second flag/penalty ended with his being escorted off the field. Unless Shiloh winsits appeal on the call this week, coach Floyd will be barred from coaching at the Shiloh/Robinson game this Friday.

Meanwhile, Pulaski Academy was sharpening its skill with a 38-0drubbing of Ashdown.

Ashdown’s zero was a bigger zero than most zeros.

At game’s end, Ashdown total yardage was a minus 43. According to the local sports news, Ashdown didn’t gain a single yard on any play until the third quarter.

If you remember, Pulaski Academy got up on Ozark 43-0 in the second round then played all their freshmen and deep reserves in the last quarter, allowing the Hillbillies to run off four straight touchdowns and make the score kind of respectable at 43-27.

Pulaski Academy is a heavy favorite to whip Star City Friday in their semifinal matchup this Friday with Shiloh, of course, a heavy favorite to defeat Robinson. If Pulaski Academy makes the finals as expected, and Shiloh gets there also as expected, the final result in the championship final may not be what most expect.

Incidentally, since I have been covering sports and attending athletics competitions, I have only known about two high school coaches being ejected from games because of personal behavior. Besides the one previously mentioned, I also witnessed that kind of occurrence when the’Hawks hosted a district game basketball game two years, with it involving a visiting coach physically grabbing a Pea Ridge player. That was a Shiloh coach as well.

Speaking of the playoffs, beside Shiloh and Bentonville’s and Fayetteville’s 7A squads, the only other northwest Arkansas football team still playing is West Fork. They hammered a very good Glen Rose team 27-7 last week to gain home field advantage for the semi-finals. This would have been Kiel Frazier’s senior year at West Fork if he hadn’t been enticed to transfer to Shiloh. One could imagine how good West Fork would have been with Frazier still onthe squad. They play Rivercrest in the semi-finals and, if they win, they will play the winner of Harding Academy/Fountain Lake in the finals.

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Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The TIMES. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com. The opinions of the writer are his own, and are not necessarily those of The TIMES.

Sports, Pages 8 on 12/01/2010