Three of the five playoff spots from the 4A-1 District have been locked away by Prairie Grove, Lincoln and Farmington with Gentry, Gravette and Ozark scrambling for the the other positions.
Farmington put Ozark away 31-23 to ice their position while putting the ’Billies on the bubble to making the playoff field. Ozark must beat either Lincoln this week or Gentry the next to have any chance of getting back to the postseason for the fourth year in a row. I don’t believe Ozark has the speed or the depth to overcome the Wolves and will have to take Gentry at home to punch their ticket for the No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the season’s last regular game.
Should the Wolves take care of business this week, it will set up a showdown with Farmington in the season’s fi nale. Farmington has to travel to Pea Ridge this week and if the ’Hawks can replicate the success they had at Prairie Grove, the Cards may go into the final battle a game down.
However, even if the Cards lose this week, beating Lincoln will give them the No. 2 seed regardless. Tied teams use the regular season game outcome to break the tie for seeding. Oddly enough, it doesn’t matter if Lincoln or Farmington win or lose this week as far as getting the No. 2 seed.
It will all boil down to thewinner of next week’s game anyway.
Gentry is in line to get a No. 4 seed, but they have to play Prairie Grove this week. The Pioneers crushed Berryville 34-12 last week and are looking strong, but not strong enough to take the Tigers this week.
Gravette was run over by Lincoln 41-7 last week but get to play at Berryville this week. With the Pioneers likely to lose at Prairie Grove and the Lions the likely winner at Berryville, Gentry will be likely tied with Gravette for the No. 4 seed this week. If Gravette loses to Prairie Grove in the final game of the regular season, Gentry will get a playo◊seed as they won the game between the two schools earlier even if they lose to Ozark. Should all three teams end the season tied at 3-4. it looks like Gravette will be the odd man out with Ozark and Gentry to continue.
With an 0-5 conference record with just two games left, Pea Ridge and Berryville have been mathematically eliminated. However, the ’Hawks played well in their 35-28 loss to Prairie Grove. The Tigers were averaging 40 points a game up to the Pea Ridgegame, giving up only 9 points per contest. In their fi rst five league games, Prairie Grove won by at least three touchdowns in each contest. The ’Hawks actually led the Tigers on the Tigers home fi eld and lost by just 7 in the Tigers’ closest game of the year.
If the ’Hawks can keep to their path of improvement, they could win their last two games of the season and have some momentum for next season.
Is winning a form of bullying?
For the past few years, I have noticed an emerging type of mentality involving youth sports that shows where rational thought goes (or rather, disappears) when everything is viewed through the prism of socialistic thought.
Recently, a very good Texas high school football team, Aledo High School, made the news when they whipped Western Hills High School 91-0 in a district game. The day after the game, a parent from Western Hills filed a criminal complaint against Aledo alleging that the coaching staff of that school were guilty of bullying. Because of the serious and potentially dangerous problem with bullying in our country, every complaint that gets filed alleging bullying, by law, has to be investigated.
Meanwhile, the story hit the national media and it set off;a firestorm.
Naturally, those with leftist leanings were “outraged” and demanded something be done. Interestingly enough, 95 percent of the folks who responded in a nationwide poll disagreed that a football score could be considered bullying. To me, it demonstrated that 5 percent of the people who responded to that poll were insane.
If you read the game account, the Aledo coach pulled his starters after 21 plays. The pulled their second string during the second quarter, and even their third string players in the third period. Even though there is no mercy rule in Texas, the Aledo coach suggested letting the clock run in the second half with the other coach agreeing. It seemed that the worst players that Aledo suited out were better than Western’s best.
Aledo is a defending state champion and Western Hills rarely wins a game. Western Hills was put on Aledo’ schedule when the state of Texas began requiring their teams play teams closer to home and realigned districts.
Everyone familiar with the two schools knew before the game that Western’s chances of winning were less than zero.
Aledo coach Tim Buchanan remarked in an interview that “we couldhave beaten them 150-0. All our players put in at least six to seven hours a week practicing and I can’t tell those players that don’t often play that they have to take a knee when they get out there. The touchdowns they scored in the second half for some will be the only touchdowns they will probably ever score.”
Bullies don’t wear uniforms in front of thousands of witnesses with o◊cials watching their every move.
Even the Western Hills players were impressed with the sportsmanship and good conduct exhibited by the Aledo players.
Except for that one parent and those who view everyone in life as a victim of something, everybody else in Texas and the USA understood that the 91-0 score was a result of Western Hills being a really bad football team. They couldn’t tackle, hang on to the football or even run very well.
There are those who think that everyone should have the same income, live in the same kind of conditions, never have to face pressure, or have to live up to obligations. These are the kind of people that seek to eliminate scores from youth sports, and who would really love to see all sports matches end up in ties. I believe it stems from a mental dysfunction known as socialism.
People are di◊erent,talents vary and outcomes cannot be pre-determined.
Character cannot be formed and honed in a life devoid of challenges.
It is not the losing that determines one’s future.
It is how you react to it, or what you do about it.
Losing tells you individually that whatever you are doing may need to be changed. As has often been said, doing the same thing over and over but expecting di◊erent results is a form of insanity.
After a year of victory on the football fi eld, this year’s local high school has had little success as far as wins and losses are concerned. Of course, if you knew that the team on the field this year was the most inexperienced one in the state of Arkansas, you might have anticipated some di◊culties. However, with a program in place to develop young talent, and with talent-laden younger classes of athletes on the horizon, the losses of today will give way to the successes of tomorrow.
Calling a sporting event bullying because a participant was woefully unprepared tortures the meaning of bullying. It was said that the Aledo players were not happy with how the game played out, and were even a bit regretful. Not that they felt guilty about anything they did, but they felt badfor the other team. Interviews with the Western Hills players demonstrated that Aledo actually felt worse about the game than their opposition did.
When I was a ninth grader and running the 400 in the high 53s, I thought I was pretty good. After winning a bunch of ninthgrade meets, my coach moved me up and entered me in the Pittsburg Relays, back when 80 high schools would converge on a Saturday in April. When there was a late scratch in the fast heat of the 400, for some reason my coach got me into it. I ended up running two lanes away from Ken Randle, a Kansas City athlete who was a future Olympian with a best time that year of 46.9.
After the gun sounded, Randle went by me so fast, if I would have blinked I would have missed seeing him altogether. He won the race and meet and I wound up last in the heat. I thought my coach was crazy for putting me in there and told him I was embarrassed by coming in last. He replied by telling me that he knew I would be last, but that he wanted for me to see what a good 400 looks like. More importantly, he wanted to know how I would react to it.
I never forgot that race, making it all the more sweeter when I won that meet three years later.
Real winning almost always is built upon defeats.
Although this Randle fellow left me in the dust, he wasn’t bullying me, just showing me how its done.
Polls stay the same
Something peculiar happened this week.
The poll results of this week were nearly identical to last week. There were no upsets in the 4A-1 althoughthe ’Hawks nearly provided one. The top four teams in the league won and the bottom four teams lost.
As a result, seven of the eight teams have exactly the same ranking as they had a week ago. I have never seen that happen before. The ’Hawks’ close loss resulted in a net loss of one spot in the MaxPreps poll, dropping them from 38th to 39th place in the poll.
I would have thought that the ’Hawks’ good game last week would have raised them a little as they were heavy, heavy underdogs.
The past two seasons has seen the ’Hawks shut out the Tigers in the fi rst half, only to lose in the second.
For some reason, we always seem to play our best when playing with the league’s elite. Victories in our last two games ought to boost us up into the mid-20s.
Editor’s note: John McGee
is an award-winning colum
nist and sports writer. He is
the art teacher at Pea Ridge
elementary schools, coaches
elementary track and writes
a regular sports column for
The Times. He can be con
tacted through The Times at
Sports, Pages 8 on 10/30/2013