Here’s to one last victory ...

No, I am not talking about the win over Berryville last week although I will later. I am talking about the makeup of the 4A state football playoffs.

When the dust had settled on the 4A-1 season, three teams had tied for the third, fourth and fifth seeds - Farmington, Gravette and Shiloh. They had to go through the tiebreaker system, and wouldn’t you know it, the game with Pea Ridge became the deciding factor in Shiloh getting the fifth and worst seed from the league. The deciding factor was that Shiloh only won by 4 points over the ’Hawks as opposed to Farmington’s 30-point victory and Gravette’s 12-point victory. It was the Blackhawk’s best game of the year, a game we could have won, if breaks hadfallen a little different. The ’Hawks savaged Shiloh for 590 yards, and although Pea Ridge didn’t get the win, they did get the last laugh.

Since Shiloh had the fifth seed, they had to travel to Heber Springs last Friday.

That would be the same Heber Springs that pinned a 19-point defeat on Shiloh when the season began.

The Shiloh coach said at the time that if it hadn’t been so hot, if some of his players hadn’t been injured, etc., etc., that they would have taken care of Heber.

Well, he got his chance to take on the undefeatedPanthers on their home field, and while the game was closer, the boys from Springdale (well, actually several towns) lost again, this time by a 48-35 score.

The Panthers ripped Shiloh for 610 yards, a bit better than we did earlier and Shiloh had similar offensive numbers that it had against us.

In that first outing, Heber was without the services of its all-state tailback which they had Friday. I have to admit that Shiloh did play better than they did earlier, at least offensively. Their defense was and has been quite suspect. Well, their season had ended earlier that they expected and the next time they play they will be in the much tougher 5A West. Whether Shiloh bit off more than they can chew by requesting a moveinto 5A, we will be finding out next year. Either way, Pea Ridge will be shed of them.

In other games, Ozark suffered the consequence of illegal players. Not Ozark players, but ones from Dollarway, the team that dispatched our conference champion 34-31. Dollarway ended up with the fifth seed from their conference after having to forfeit some games. They are probably the best team in their league, which made this year a bad year to win the 4A-1 as far as advancing in the playoffs.

The three other teams found success in the playoffs with Prairie Griove beating Mena 43-27 to advance to the next round against Malvern this Friday. Prairie Grove had a terrific ground game going in theirvictory. I think the Tigers’ worst game of the year as far as their ground attack must have been against Pea Ridge, who forced them to win through the air. The ’Hawks did develop a good defense this season against the run.

Farmington crushed Dumas 42-6 and their reward is to face Heber Springs at Heber to see if they can have a better fate than did Shiloh. Fumble-plagued Gravette cruised higher seeded Pocahontas 30-8.

The Lions should have been the undefeated conference champions had they not fumbled games away to Farmington and Shiloh. The way things turned out, it might be that the bracket they landed in will be mucher better than the one they would have had if they had been inOzark’s place. I thought the Gravette seniors deserved a better finish than what it seemed like what they had.

Maybe their best is yet to come. They play Warren Friday, a usual state powerhouse that is down just a bit this season.

Those hills are looking a mite better

Knowing some of the girls on the cross country team, I know that they weren’t at all happy with all their hill running the past couple of weeks around the football stadium. The course at the state meet in Harrison was completely rolling hills with nary a flat spot and they were training in a similar environment.

As an ex-cross country coach myself, I always saw hilly or tough courses asbeing great opportunities. That was something I learned from my National Coaches Hall of Fame Ted Lloyd when I ran cross country for Harding University. Whenever the weather report was predicting freezing rain or some other horrible conditions, coach Lloyd would always go something like “Hot Dog! Now I know we’ll win!” And he was always right. We never lost a meet in inclement weather or rough, hilly terrain.

The way we were trained at Harding made us mentally tough, much more so than the majority of the teams we faced. Sure enough, when it was really cold or wet, I heard many teams and runners complain and gripe, letting us know they were in noframe of mind to compete successfully.

Once, when I was on a 4x400 meter relay team at the 2A high school meet in Columbia, Mo., we were the ninth-ranked team in the meet and we were going against three or four really good teams out of St. Louis. It was cold and blustery that day and I can remember our coach telling us that it was easy to run fast when it was warm and balmy, but it took someone with guts to run well in poor conditions. He had an opinion that not that many sprinters at the meet had that kind of “guts” and that we ought to do well. We ran 3:26.7, pretty fast for a small white high school. It was our best time ever and is still the school record in Monett, Mo. We didn’t winas we were edged out of first by a Kansas City team by one-tenth of a second but we were pretty happy anyway. Our coach said that had it been hot and dry, we would have been smoked and I think he was probably right. But, as he also said, it wasn’t, so it didn’t matter!

The Pea Ridge girls losing by a point in cross country at state is about as close a loss as you can get in sports. A 1-point lead in baseball can be a big deal, and a 1-point loss in football is a little less in importance. A 1-point loss in basketball makes the teams pretty well even but a 1-point loss in cross country is like razor thin. With all the variables present, that is almost dead even. Had any Pea Ridge runner justpassed any runner from any team in the last 20 to 30 yards that were ahead of them, they would have been state champions. Had they passed a DeQueen girl at the end, it would have been an undisputed championship, but had they passed someone from say, Ozark, that would have led to a scoring tie. In that case, the team’s fifth runner would decide the meet and our fifth runner (Anna Morgan) beat theirs which would have given us the title, had we tied in points.

At least some of the girls are now thinking about how they can work harder in 2012 to make up that 1 point and claim a state title. We will lose one senior this year and so will DeQueen and so will Heber Springs.

DeQueen’s best runners aremostly sophomores while the Blackhawk scorers this year were one senior, one junior and three freshman.

Next year will depend on who wants it more and what next year’s freshman class brings to each school. Anyone of the top three teams this year has the potential to win in 2012.

Maybe the 2012 Blackhawk girls cross country team will be the first girls athletic team to raise a state championship trophy in victory.

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Editor’s note: John Mc-Gee 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.