PEA RIDGE — While the Blackhawk diamond boys lost Saturday, they did make the 2010 season last all the way to the final week of play.

Pea Ridge placed fourth in the 4A West Region and drew the state’s thirdranked team in the Stuttgart Ricebirds. The Ricebirds lost the East Region to the state’s top-ranked team in Valley View, located southwest of Jonesboro. Valley View is athletically and academically, one of the finest schools in Arkansas.

Three of the four state tournament semi-final teams are from the 4A-1 as Shiloh defeated DeQueen 13-3, Prairie Grove upset number-1 ranked Valley View 1-0, and Farmington upset Nashville 6-0.

The other semifinalist is Malvern who outslugged Stuttgart 10-4. Shiloh played Prairie Grove last night with Farmington playing Malvern for a spot in the state championship game Saturday in Fayetteville.

The ’Hawks lost 10-8 in a see saw battle they could have won but just didn’t.

They got ahead of Stuttgart early on, fell behind, then got out in front again before late inning offense by the Ricebirds turned the tide for the boys from the land of rice and ducks.

I don’t know of any teamthat practiced as long and as hard as this years Diamond Hawks. They had the daunting challenge of playing in the toughest baseball conference in the state and they were the only team to have a lead over the undefeated Shiloh team, ranked second in the state. The 4A-1 sent four teams to the state tournament (the only one to do so) with three of them making the quarterfinals which were played Monday night with the semis being scheduled for last night.

Sometimes in sports, once the season is over, a team might wonder what might have happened if they had just worked a little harder, or if they had just been a little more dedicated. Watching the boys practicing through the fall and winter in nasty weather and putting in time when perhaps very few others in the sport were doing so is commendable.

A lot of folks come to points in their lives when they regret a lack of action or effort that could havechanged their situation, whether it concerned sports or something else.

Those who have grown into adulthood and have begun going to class reunions might get into reminiscing about someone or with someone about something that “might have been.”

I was in a class in school considered to be athletically gifted, the team of the future. We ran roughshod over all our competition in football, basketball and track and we thought we had arrived ... in the eighth grade. We were going to be the best, the class that was going to give our school its greatest memories.

Along the road to the senior year, however, we lost guys to alcohol problems, drug problems, academic problems and just poor attitude problems. We did OK in team sports but just OK. While we were wasting our talents, the class behind us, considered hopeless in junior high with very poor records in all their sports, decided to change their situation.

They worked hard, kept their guys together, and eventually won a state title in football, leading to state-ranked teams in other sports as well. What I have heard about the class behind us since is that theguys have had extremely successful lives and have been difference makers where they have lived and worked.

I remember talking with our head coach the spring of my graduation about the condition of the trophies we had won earlier in our school careers.

They were tarnished, cob webbed and looking kind of forlorn in the gym trophy case. The coach pointed out to me that the trophies were no big deal.

“The big deal in sports is not what you win, it’s what you become.”

The Diamond ’Hawks of 2010, while having a good season, might not have won as many games as they would have liked.

Having said that, no one doubts that they gave it their best shot. Developing a mindset and attitude of always giving it your best shot no matter what is a lesson learned that will reach well into the future.

Boiling it all down, isn’t education in general pretty much the same thing?

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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 prtnews@ nwaonline.com.

Sports, Pages 9 on 05/19/2010