Ridger Sports | Coaches’ poll picks Blackhawks for 7th

— The annual pre-season Hooten’s 4A-1 coaches’ poll has picked Pea Ridge to finish in the seventh spot among the eight conference schools that will be playing for football supremacy this fall.

As expected, defending state champion Shiloh is the overwhelmingly heavy favorite to retain the district crown they won in 2009. Not only are they defending champions, they also return the most starters of any team in the league, with 15 starters back on offense and defense.

The rest of the predictions pretty much read like last year’s final standings.

The coaches pick Prairie Grove to take second followed by Farmington then Gravette. Newcomer to the league, Ozark, gets the fifth spot with a veteran Gentry team slated for sixth. Pea Ridge was tabbed seventh ahead of last year’s last place team, Berryville.

Shiloh is headlined by Kiehl Frazier and Sam Harvill. Quarterback Frazier has been touted as the best player in the state regardless of classification with lineman Harvill ranked as the number four best overall player in the state.

As a matter of fact, among recruiting circles, Shiloh has four of the states top 14 ranked players. As has been oftentimes pointed out, Shiloh’s recruiting is second to none.

Prairie Grove will begin the 2010 season in a markedly different stance. The Tigers got caught up in the passing game fervor last year, abandoning their ground attack tradition.

The result was a poor 1-4 record in the first half of the season. When the Tigers went back to relying on their running game, their success returned and they actually made it into the playoffs by season’s end. Prairie Grove returns only eight starters on offense/defense but they do have a sophomore classthat went undefeated in junior high last year.

Farmington, being Farmington, is always a threat.

They have the fourth most returning starters (10) and they are actually ranked ahead of Prairie Grove in the state poll. (Farmington is 12th, Prairie Grove 17th).

Districtwise, Gravette is just behind the Cardinals in the fourth slot and they also return 10 starters. The Lions lost a ton of speed to graduation but their success of the past couple of years has Gravette’s players thinking more success and the importance of that can’t be overstated.

Enter the Hillbillies of Ozark, 40 miles east of Fort Smith. This team is the long distance date on every other district team’s dance card. The ’Billies are an average 92 miles from their district competitors. Their “close” game is Farmington (75 miles) with Gravette being the farthest (115 miles).

The longest trip will probably be the 85 miles up Arkansas Highway 23 to Berryville. I can’t imagine how long it would take a school bus to negotiate allthose curves.

Ozark came into the league when Huntsville bounced back up into class 5A this fall. With former 4A member West Fork dropping down to 3A this year where Greenland dropped to an earlier reclassification, the next closest 4A school was Ozark. Ozark’s replacement of Huntsville paved the way for the 4A-1 to be able to drop Shiloh from the junior high league in order to retain Huntsville which would have had a worse driving scenario than Ozark as far as junior high games were concerned.

Ozark returns only eight starters from last year’s 3-6 squad. The ’Billies are as down as they have ever been but they have a great tradition and could be a dark horse.

Gentry had their best year in a while last season, finishing 4-6 and actually had a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. They lost their all-star quarterback Caleb Ramsey to graduation but his younger brother Eathen is poised to have a big year leading15 starters who return for the Pioneers. If they can shore up the quarterback position, they could have a good year.

Pea Ridge, as has been the case recently, returns the least starters. Only six of the 22 spots will be manned by starters from ’09. On the bright side, coach Tony Travis has reignited the pride in Blackhawk football with 44 kids taking part in spring drills. Handicapping the ’Hawks’ rise back to contention is the lack of senior players with five years experience under their belts.

Travis is still rebuilding, a long process in a team sport like football. They will be better this year in many ways, and the program is definitely on the upswing. When the day comes that they can field 50 plus players with strong experienced and battle hardened senior athletes, that’s the day when the ’Hawks will be fully back.

The rebuilding started last year with a good seventh grade class and a competent junior high squad.

Lately the league basement resident Berryville, the Bobcats will likely remain in the cellar. Berryville acquired a new head coach in the off-season so the ’Cats will be learning a new system and will also be hampered with lack of numbers. On the upside, Berryville returns the most starters along with Shiloh and Gentry.

The 15 veterans will try to improve on their 1-9 campaign of a year ago.

So it appears than the 2010 pre-season outlook is not a whole lot different than the outlook for 2009. However, this is high school so you can never tell what might happen.

Unexpected transfers, unfortunate injuries and emergence of heretofore unknown players can skew the best of predictions. It will be fun to see how it all plays out.

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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 [email protected].

Sports, Pages 8 on 07/21/2010