After being named 1-4A All-Conference, 4A All-State, KURM Dream team and Northwest Arkansas Small School Offensive Player of the Year, senior tailback Dayton Winn has been named to the first team of the Northwest Arkansas All-Classification Offensive Team.

Winn was the only non 7A-6A athlete to be named to the starting team. The schools included in the Northwest Arkansas selection area goes as far south as Greenwood and as far east as Harrison, dozens of teams in all.

Only two running backs were included in the honor with the other back being Tearris Wallace, 7A All-State performer for the Bentonville Tigers. Although losing to Fayetteville in the state 7A final, the Tigers still ended 2012 as the state’s top-ranked and only nationally ranked team. Bentonville only placed one athlete on the All-Star offensive team, the same as Pea Ridge.

The starting tailback since his sophomore year, Winn rushed for 2,184 yards this year while scoring 21 touchdowns. He rushed for more yards than any other running back in any classification in the state of Arkansas.

The affable senior will go down as perhaps the most decorated player in Pea Ridge’s football history and coach Tony Travis will have a tough job replacing him in 2013.

’Hawk boys rank 7th in state

Coach Charley Clark’s basketball boys defended their lofty position in the state polls, taking second place inthe Southwest Holiday Invitational Tournament, losing only to Billings, Mo., No. 1 Division II basketball team.

Though a loss, the close battle in the game against a Missouri powerhouse probably helped the ’Hawks in the MaxPreps/CBS Freeman State High School Poll. The week previous, Pea Ridge was holding the No. 8 position.

The ’Hawks are in a virtual tie with Farmington, the states’ No. 6 ranked team.

The Cardinals have a 12.3 rating with the ’Hawks having a 12.2 evaluation. The Max-Preps polling system takes into consideration won/loss record, margin of victory, and strength of schedule. The ’Hawks have played almost half their games against higher classification schools, winning five of seven. Pea Ridge has not lost to an Arkansas 4A or 3A school this season.

Farmington has run up the score on several opponents to raise their scoring average, thereby boosting their ranking points.

Of course, the most important ranking that will be decided is when the schools get into district, regional and state playoffs. All the games, tournaments, etc., up to that point will be just serving as the prelude.

State 4A boys basketball poll

1). Pine Bluff Dollarway

2). Monticello

3). Cave City

4). Pottsville

5). Brookland

6). Farmington

7). Pea Ridge

8). Dumas

9). Maumelle

10). Gosnell

Other 4A-1 schools

21). Gravette

24). Lincoln

28). Berryville

29). Ozark

35). Prairie Grove

43). Gentry

Northwest Region boys 4A poll

1). Pottsville

2). Farmington

3). Pea Ridge

4). Waldron

5). Dardanelle

6). Subiaco

7). Gravette

8). Lincoln

9). Berryville

10). Ozark

4A-1 boys conference standings

1). Pea Ridge 4-0

2). Farmington 3-0

3). Ozark 2-1

4).Lincoln 2-1

5). Gravette 1-2

6). Berryville 1-3

7). Gentry 0-3

8.) Prairie Grove 0-3

The standings above did not reflect the Lincoln/Farmington, Ozark/Gravette, or Gentry/Prairie Grove games last Friday. Those scores were not reported to any newspaper or website in the state of Arkansas as of Monday.

Last night Lincoln invaded Berryville, Ozark hosted Gentry, and Farmington traveled to Gravette. This Friday, besides the ’Hawks traveling to Ozark, Farmington visits Prairie Grove, Gentry plays host to Berryville, while Gravette will go to Lincoln.

Girls’ conference toughest in the state

Membership in the 4A-1 girls basketball district is a tough thing with five of the state’s top 12 teams playing in our local conference.

Among the state’s top 12, the 4A-7 district has only three teams listed, with the 4A-3 having just two. Only one girls team in the 4A-2 and 4A-8 districts have a representative in the top 12. The 4A-4 district, the other half of our region, has no team listed at all. The highest ranked team in the 4A-4 (Pottsville) is currently 14th, two spots below our districts’ fifth best team. This looks like it might be a banner year for the 4A-1 in the regional playoffs.

State 4A girls poll

1). Malvern

2). Prairie Grove

3). Farmington

4). Star City

5). Central Arkansas

6). Ozark

7). Bauxite

8). Valley View

9). Brookland

10). Berryville

Other 4A-1 schools

12). Lincoln

17). Gentry

18). Gravette

37). Pea Ridge

Northwest 4A Region girls poll

1). Prairie Grove

2). Farmington

3). Ozark

4). Berryville

5). Lincoln

6). Pottsville

7). Dover

8). Gentry

9). Gravette

10). Dardanelle

4A-1 girls conference standings

1). Prairie Grove 3-0

2). Farmington 3-0

3). Lincoln 2-1

4). Berryville 2-2

5). Gravette 1-2

6). Gentry 1-2

7). Ozark 1-2

8). Pea Ridge 0-4

Will there ever be wrestling in the ’Hawks future?

At one of the local basketball games, a parent approached me, asking my opinion concerning whether or not introducing wrestling into the Blackhawk athletic program would be a good thing.

Of course, as far as I know, there are no plans to add wrestling to Pea Ridge. I think it is a great sport for a variety of reasons and would potentially be a good thing, but there would be a lot more to it than just saying “Let’s start a program.”

Although the sport is notparticularly expensive to operate, it does have start-up costs. There also needs to be available space for them to practice, although probably much less than most sports.

Most important than anything would be getting a seasoned, knowledgeable coach to run it. That would most likely mean going up into Missouri or Kansas or over into Oklahoma to snare one of those coaches.

I was a freshman at Monett, Mo., High School in the fall of 1967 when the school board offered a football contract to the coach at Seneca, Mo., High School, one Burl Fowler. He said he would only come if the school added wrestling because that was one of the ways he built his football program.

My prior impression of wrestling was one that came from watching some of it on TV as in “professional” wrestling.” I ended up wrestling some and realized that comparing real wrestling and the stuff you see on TV is like comparing paint ball battles with actually military combat. One is fake and the otheris real.

In real wrestling, you don’t punch, you don’t throw, and you don’t make your opponent feel pain. Actually, doing those things would get you disqualified.

Wrestling involves three 2-minute periods. Opponents try to bring their opposition to the mat and pin their shoulder blades to the mat to get a pin. There is no “1...2...3... you’re out!” stuff in real wrestling. The moment, I mean the very instant both your shoulders are flat on the mat, you are pinned, game over.

In the event there is no pin by the end of the third period, whichever wrestler has the most points will be declared the winner. Points are accumulated by taking a player down, nearly pinning him, and you also get points for escaping as well. You can get penalty points assessed against you for breaking rules.

Hanging onto another person for that long takes a lot of strength and stamina, as well as quickness. Slow wrestlers are also known as losing wrestlers.

Wrestlers have to learn holds and counterholds and how to recognize what your opponent is trying to do to win. That means knowing and understanding a lot of things and being able to think quickly and clearly, traits that have great crossover to other sports. It was no coincidence that nearly all of our all-state wrestlers were also honor students with high ACT schools.

An honest-to-goodness serious well directed wrestling program can produce quality linemen and defensive players. To me, the most important aspect is that it allows athletes of small stature a way to seek athletic success.

We had a kid who was 120 pounds during football season and wrestled in the 112 class in the winter. He won bunches of medals, was allstate and was also an all-district starting guard on a state championship football team.

If not for wrestling, he would have never made the field in any sport.

Arkansas as a state was one of the last two to embrace wrestling as a sport. Thesouthern region of the United States was the last place for the sport to take hold, and it was mostly for purely racial reasons. My first coaching job was in Alabama back in 1976 and I noticed that nobody wrestled anywhere and I asked an older experienced coach why that was.

He replied, “Are you kidding?

Having black boys and white boys wrestling each other in public? No school board would allow that.”

Thankfully, those times have passed and all states in the U.S. now offer the sport.

Bentonville was the pioneer in this sport as they were wrestling long before the state recognized it as a real sport. Maybe someday the sport might make its way to Pea Ridge. All the bigger schools have it and Gentry is one of a growing list of smaller schools that have adopted the sport.

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Editor’s note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track .

Sports, Pages 8 on 01/09/2013