PEA RIDGE — A good showing by the Blackhawk Junior boys track team in the Pioneer Invitational placed them sixth in a 14-team field. The finish was the best one by a Pea Ridge track squad for the past several years.

The ’Hawks rang up 39.5 points, just behind Huntsville’s 46 points and not too far behind 5A school Siloam Springs, who finished fourth with 63 points. Pea Ridge was led by Daniel Beard and Austin Easterling who both rang up 12 points to provide most of the scoring. Beard cruised to a second place finish in the 100 meters (11.75) and also picked up fifth place in the shot put (38-3) while Easterling was copping third place in both the 400 (60.07) and the 800 meter runs (2:27.20).

Joseph Adams was the next highest point scorer, taking third in the long jump (16-10), and fifth in the 100 meters (12.13)

Two other Junior ’Hawks earned points and ribbons with Braxton Caudill taking fourth in the discus throw (102-8) while Logan Rose earning fifth in the high jump with a 4’8” effort.

The ’Hawks’ best finish in the 200 was Jarran Sainsbury’s 11th place in the 200 meters (29.02). No ’Hawks were entered in the 100 hurdles, 300 hurdles, triple jump or pole vault and no ’Hawk finished in the top 12 of the 1,600-meter run.

Three ’Hawk relay teams were close to scoring in three events. The 4x100 meter relay team finished ninth (52.1) with Rose, Beard, Kevin Gomez and Dayton Winn running legs.

The 4x400 relay team of Sainsbury, Zach Oldenbecken, Winn and Dalton Morgan was also ninth with a time of 4:34.9. The 4x800 relay team finished in the 10th spot (10:28) with Dylan McClellan, Dakota Duffy, Justin Stamps and Zach Earley running legs.

Prairie Grove handily won the meet with 140 points followed by Gentry, 119; Gravette, 73; Siloam Springs, 63; Huntsville, 46;

Pea Ridge, 39.5; Green Forest, 36.5; Elkins, 26.5; Berryville, 23; Farmington, 22;

Lincoln, 18; Eureka Springs,3; and Mountainburg, 0.5.

Riley Patrick leads Jr. girls

Riley Patrick was the only Pea Ridge girl to score in the Gentry Pioneer Invitational last week as she ran for seventh place in the 1,600 meter run with a good time of 6:39.5. The seventh-grader Patrick’s 2 points were all the tallies the girls could muster as they finished at the bottom of the 12-team competition.

Mountainburg, whose boys team scored but half of a point, captured the girls’ team title with 92 points. In second was Siloam Springs, 83; Elkins, 74; Gravette, 70; Berryville, 66; Green Forest, 62; Huntsville, 58; Decatur, 44; Prairie Grove, 29; Gentry, 25; Eureka Springs, 9; and Pea Ridge, 2.

Mikhaela Cochrane anchored the girls 4x100 meter relay team, passing several other teams in crossing the finish line in the third position but their effort was canceled when two of the previous ’Hawk relay runners ran outside the exchange zone in passing the baton thus resulting in a disqualification.

The Lady Blackhawks best finishers besidesPatrick were: Shot Put - Jerika Schooley, 10th (25-4); 4x400 relay, 10th (5:57) team of Bailey Lessenberry, Riley, Destani Bell and Felicia Walker; Long Jump - Cochrane 13th (12-11);

200 - Walker, 16th (31.95);

400 - Lessenberry, 16th (77:01); 100 Hurdles - Cochrane, 17th (23.71); and 100 - Walker, 19th (15.17).

None of the Lady ’Hawks could throw the discus 50 foot to qualify for a mark while no ’Hawk high jumper made the opening height. Pea Ridge entered no one in the pole vault, triple jump, 300 hurdles or 4x800 meter relay.

Sportsmanship still happens

In the basketball season just passed, an incident happened at a Melbourne junior high tournament involving the Highland Rebels and the Mt. View Yellow Jackets. Some details came out in the Arkansas Activities Association March newletter.

It seems that Mt. View had led for most of the game by a fairly substantial margin before Highland put together a fourth quarter rally to climb to within 7 points with two minutes left in the game.

Onlookers believed that Highland was set up to take the game until the game was stopped at two minutes when a Mt. View player collapsed onto the floor unconscious.

After a long delay, with fears that the young basketball player might have been dying, the ambulance came and whisked the player away. At this point, with many of the audience began leaving the gym to go to the hospital, Highland coach Stan Maag came over to the Mt. View side and told the stricken coach that Highland would accept the score as it was and let Mt. View have the victory. With the Jacket players in a state of shock, the Rebels coach felt that it would have been an unfair disadvantage for Mt. View to continue playing.

Highland has a coach with a great sense of fair play as well as having a handle on what the most important priorities are in athletics.

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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 7 on 03/24/2010