PEA RIDGE — Two teams from the 4A-1 District got past their first round opponents with three others falling by the wayside as as expected. What wasn’t expected was some of the teams that lost and won.

Shiloh was an easy 49-7 winner over Warren, the fifth place finisher in the 4A-8 District, but the league’s second place finisher in the Gravette Lions were surprised in their home game. Gravette was completely shut down by Truman as they lost 16-3 in the Lions’ worst offensive night of the year. Truman was the third place finisher from the 4A-3 District (northeast Arkansas).

Gentry played state power Nashville, which completely overwhelmed the Pioneers in an 84-20 pasting. Nashville is coached by former Bentonville athlete and former Siloam Springs coach Billy Dawson. Dawson took a very moribund Panther squad and made them into state playoff participants in an almost astonishingly fast fashion before moving on to Nashville. Dawson received overtures to coach at Bentonville, but turned the Tigers down in order to return to the school where he spent most of his growing up years. Dawson moved to Bentonville when his dad got a teaching job there.

Also as expected, Farmington got crunched by Pulaski Academy 42-12. Pulaski is expected to reach the championship game where some think they have a good chance to dethrone Shiloh as state champions. Should the Pulaski Bruins whip Shiloh in the finals, it would give the Springdale private school their fourth secondplace team trophy this fall as they already settled for second in volleyball, boys cross country and girls cross country.

The bright spot for the league was Ozark’s 28-7 drubbing of Stuttgart. The Ricebirds are known for their speed and were ranked ahead of Ozark in the polls.

However, since Ozark finished higher (third) in theirleague than Stuttgart did in theirs (fourth in the 4A-2), the game was held in Ozark where the Hillbillies prevailed on their home turf.

Shiloh will host the Mc-Gehee Owls this week, the third place finisher in the 4A-8 District (southeast Arkansas). Outside of Pulaski, anyone that Shiloh plays will be considered a heavy underdog. Ozark will test their luck this week as they “get” to take on Pulaski Academy in Little Rock.

The only other upset in the first round was Mena’s 14-6 win over Marianna Lee.

The rest of the games all played to form.

The only other local team still in it is the Bentonville Tigers, the state’s No. 1 overall state-ranked team. They will be playing a good Bryant team which earned their spot in the quarterfinals with a conquest of Springdale. The Tigers have won the 7A state title twice and both years were a surprise.

Three times the Tigers have been pre-season state champion picks only to see their season end in an early upset. They weren’t picked early on to have much of a chance to take top honors, but this year they have all the tools.

With the football team putting up their gear till the next campaign and with fall coming on with chill in the air, its time once again to start playing some ... baseball and softball. With the nice weather we have been having, the diamond men (and women) have been drilling, working and planning to have great seasons this spring.

Basketball teams launch season

The Blackhawk roundballers kicked off their 2010-2011 basketball season Monday hosting Eureka Springs.

I had planned to attend the games until a member of our family had to be taken to Mercy Hospital in an emergency situation. I heard from a player’s mother during the girls’ game, so I knew thatcontest was a battle.

The boys’ team, while probably not getting a lot of respect due to the loss of several fine players from a year ago, has the makings of another good team with five solid players back in the fold. Senior Cameron Thompson was a great post player last year and led the scoring on several occasions, and senior Kasey Cooper, while fighting off injuries last year, could really light it up from long distance. A trio of sophomores (Dakota Woodward, Levi Roughton and Ethan Higgins) got a lot of playing time last year and were instrumental in a lot of the ’Hawks’ victories. Other squadmen return as well with fresh blood in some sophomores and transfer students in addition.

Charley Clark has never had a bad team in his stint as head coach with this year looking to me to be one with a lot of opportunity. There will be a lot more chances to see both the Hawks and Lady ’Hawks as Pea Ridge will host both the Benton County Tournament as well as the 4A-1 District meet.

In holiday tournaments, the ladies will be going over to Berryville again with the boys going back up into Missouri to try to keep their title streak goingat the Southwest Classic in Washburn, Mo., one of my favorite tournaments.

American youth set record

For the 21st year in a row, more students than ever are participating in school athletics with 7.6 million suiting up in a variety of sporting competitions.

There were 4,455,740 boys to go “out” last year with 3,172,637 girls doing the same. As I have reported in the past, the girls are steadily catching up to the boys in sports participation.

Last year’s numbers saw 33,078 more boys participate than ever before with girls increasing their total by 58,546.

Fifty-five percent of all students enrolled in high school participate in some kind of sport, also a record.

Student participation percentages in medium and smaller sized schools is often much higher than the 55 percent benchmark, especially in schools with well developed and successful programs. Larger schools have much smaller participation numbers percentage wise than do smaller schools, as there are many more students competing for spots on athletic teams than there is room available.

The greatest thing about the smaller school experience is that anyone who wants to participate in sports here can do so. The football teams and track and cross country teams could take in many more athletes due to the nature of their sport with all the sports having some room for additions

Statistics also revealed that once again, football is again the most popular sport in the land with 1,1089.278 players, dwarfing the second most popular sport, track and field.

Track gets 572,123 athletes, just ahead of basketball’s 540,207.

Among girls, track is still the most popular sport with 469,177 athletes. Basketball is close behind with 439,550 with volleyball coming up with 403,985.

In terms of schools playing sports, basketball ranks tops in boys and girls with over 17,000 schools playing roundball. Track and field has the second most schools entered in the sport with around 16,000 participating in both boys and girls.

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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 [email protected].

Sports, Pages 8 on 11/17/2010