The Pea Ridge Blackhawk girls varsity track team brought home 14 ribbons from the State 4A Track and Field Championships to cap one of the best track seasons for the local tracksters in school history. All three relay teams scored in the state finals with a pair of individuals also earning points that placed Pea Ridge 14th overall in the state standings among the 48 schools in the classification.
Vanessa Wing was the highest finisher as she stepped off the 400 meters in 62 seconds to take fourth place ribbon. Mikhaela Cochran flung the discus 88'2" to finish seventh in that event for the other individual points.
The 4x800 relay team of Casi Caton, Wing, Rilee Patrick and Lexi Bradrick grabbed sixth in their race in a season's best time of 11:02.9 to lead the relay squads. The 'Hawks also got eighth place finishes in both the 4x100 and 4x400 sprint relays. The 4x100 quartet of Wing, Emma Pitts, Gloria Vargas and Ashtyn Mondy ran the finals in 54.11 for their place with the 4x400 relay team of Wing, Vargas, Mondy and Melissa Landis teaming up to run the four-lap relay in 4:29.4.
Only Pea Ridge High School and Crossett High had teams that placed in all three relay competitions. Crossett was far and away the winner of the meet, piling up 131 points to outdistance second place Ashdown which finished with 65. Crossett's Eagles, a long time track power in the state, won eight events outright as well as placing second in three more venues to make the meet non-competitive early-on.
Pea Ridge finished 14th in the state's final tabulations, one point behind conference rival Berryville who took 13th place with 12 points. By scoring in five events, this year's squad has done something no Blackhawk team has done in recent memory. The 'Hawks scored 18 points in 2000 in the Class 2A state meet behind a first and second place finish in the 3,200 and 1,600 meter runs by Diane Miller.
Nine separate Lady 'Hawk runners brought back state awards, something that also hasn't been done lately, if ever.
The season isn't over quite yet as the Arkansas State High School Girls Heptathalon is coming up next week. Last year's entries Mikhaela Cochran and Emma Pitts will again try their hand at the two-day competition that sees athletes compete in four field events and three running events with scores given to each participant in each event. Point totals are kept with the top 10 overall finishers awarded Arkansas Activities Association Multi-Event medals. All classifications of athletes will be all lumped together for one big competition.
Cochran had the distinction of having the longest discus throw in last year's competitions while finishing in the top 20 overall. There are 89 girls listed on the AAA website as having entered the competition set for next week in Cabot.
Derek Jeter stands tall
The tornado that ripped through Mayflower and Vilonia last week took apart one particular house, taking off the roof and sucking contents out of cabinets and closets and knocked just about everything down except in this particular house, there was a life size cardboard cutout of Yankee baseball player Derek Jeter. When folks came to survey the damage, Jeter was standing tall and untouched.
Extra baseball game
Last week, the Arkansas Activities Association permitted and promoted a special baseball game between Mayflower and Vilonia, a game that was held in North Little Rock at the Arkansas Travelers home field in their new professional baseball park. Almost 5,000 folks were in attendance and a lot of funds were raised to help the storm victims. Strictly speaking, these kind of games are not ordinarily allowed under AAA rules but with what happened last week in Faulkner County, having it happen helped a whole lot of people in more ways than you might think.
No extra soccer game
Springdale's soccer hopes took a hit last week when one of their best players got red carded, when meant that he had to sit out the next game that Springdale played. According to AAA rules, if a soccer player gets a red card, it is for a rather major infraction usually dealing with violent, abusive play or profane or obscene language. Such behavior is punished by having the payer leave the game he committed the offense in, as well as the next game.
As Springdale really needed their star player, they quickly scheduled a meaningless game with another school immediately so the player could miss that game, and not the game next on their schedule, the one with playoff implications.
AAA got wind of what was transpiring and ruled that the school couldn't add a game with the intent of having it absorb player punishment, which meant the offending player could not play in the next "regularly" scheduled game.
I can understand why the AAA acted as it did, as it seems the school wasn't so much concerned with the athlete's bad behavior as it was with trying to find ways to circumvent AAA rules and regs. On the other hand, the way the rules are written, while the school seems to have misplaced priorities, what the school did was "legal" since the scenario was not dealt with by AAA rules makers. I imagine a written rule change is in the works for next year.
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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 and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].
Editorial on 05/14/2014