PEA RIDGE — The senior boys Blackhawk basketball squad saw their season come to an end after losing a very close battle with the Clarksville Panthers in the first round of the regional tournament. After leading for much of the game, the ’Hawks fell behind the No.

2 seed from the 4A-4 District in the second half and eventually lost by a 56-53 count.

The Panthers went on to lose to Huntsville in a very tight 72-68 semi-final game but came back to edge Subiaco 74-72 in the third place game. Subiaco has spent time ranked as the No. 1 team in the state in 4A this season.

Farmington, after losing the district championship to Huntsville previously, took the Eagles by 8 points in a 53-45 conquest to earn the regional title. The Cardinals just nipped West Fork 62-59 in a first round game, before upsetting Subiaco 68-63 in the semifinals. Huntsville routed Ozark 75-52 in the firstround before just squeezing by Clarksville in the semis.

Aside from Subiaco’s sound thrashing of Shiloh in the first round (59-34) and Huntsville’s crushing of Ozark in the same round, all the other games in the region were evenly matched affairs pitting six of the state’s top nine ranked teams against each other. While Pea Ridge and West Fork didn’t advance to the state tournament, both teams are better than the great majority of teams who will be playing this week at the State Tournament being held at Highland High School in Hardy.

Had the ’Hawks played in the east or south regions, they would easily qualified for state competition. The power of 4A basketballthis season clearly rests in northwest Arkansas.

Our own 4A-1 took first and second in the region (Farmington and Huntsville) and both received first round byes at state, thereby placing them into the final eight automatically. Farmington will play the winner of the Arkadelphia/Valley View game, with neither team expected to be much of a threat to the Cards. Huntsville will play the winner of Gosnell/ DeQueen, with the Eagles expected to be heavy favorites in that battle.

Clarksville will play the No. 4 seed from the south in McGehee with the winner of that game advancing to play Jonesboro Westside, the winner of the east region. The other qualifier from our region, Subiaco, has the toughest row to hoe. Themselves a No.1 ranked team this year at one point, Subiaco will take on lightly regarded Marianna in the first round, but will then have to play the state’s current No.

1-rankedteam in Dumas.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if our region winds up with all four semifinal berths by the end of the week. The semi-finals are set for 1:30 p.m. Saturday with the two survivors playing next week in the championship final.

Meanwhile, ’Hawk round ballers are packing it in, some trading the big orange ball for the little white ones used by John King’s diamond ’Hawks who start play this week. With all the hard work put in this school year by this determined crew, the baseball ’Hawks may be looking for big things this season.

The region for baseball will be held in Berryville this year with the state tournament being held all the way down at ... Rogers!

The 4A state will be held at Veteran’s Park in Rogers with the final state championship game being held at Baum Stadium in Fayetteville, the home field of the Razorbacks. For ’Hawk fans, this would indeed be a great year for Pea Ridge togo all the way.

Arkansas gets another coach of the year

Although one of the smaller states in the U.S., Arkansas has garnered yet another award for having the nation’s best coach in a particular sport. Last year, Huntsville’s coach Charlie Berry was named the national girls’ basketball coach of the year, and this year Lake Hamilton’s Karl Koonce has been named the national track coach of the year. Both coaches were honored by the National Federation of State High School Associations, the group that oversees all the athletic state associations in the country.

I am real familiar with coach Koonce, since I have known him since competing against him in track and cross country in the early ’70s. Koonce was the best track athlete to ever come out of Henderson State and is an incredibly nice guy.

I ran for Harding in those days and as a team, we were just about unbeatablein cross country although not many of us could beat Koonce individually even once in a while. While Harding was winning an unbroken string of conference championships when Koonce was competing, he was well known to my teammates as someone who was tough to beat, and even tougher to “not like.”

He put his drive into coaching where he has been named the state’s coach of the year more times than I can count. He has sent countless young athletes into college with scholarships, both boys and girls.

The track facility at his school is second in the state only to the University of Arkansas, largely through Koonce’s influence and leadership.

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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 03/03/2010