The Blackhawk basketball team will watch the state playoff of their team mates and peers from home as the Arkansas Athletic Association denied the school's appeal to hold basketball tournament games Friday morning. The Battle of the Ridge basketball tournament has been scheduled for a year, according to head coach Trent Loyd.
"We are very supportive of all of our teams," Kevin Ramey, athletic director said, explaining that the basketball athletes and their parents want to attend the football state playoff but are committed to the basketball tournament as well.
"We had the Battle of the Ridge scheduled, we knew it was a possibility that we would have two events on the same night. We don't want to appear unsupportive," Ramey said, explaining that all of the athletes and community support all of the Blackhawk teams. "It just overlapped. We looked at every angle we could trying to adjust the times and take into consideration the other seven teams committed to the tournament."
Ramey said the AAA denied the school's appeal. Games for the tournament begin Thursday and are set to continue through Saturday. School officials requested that the games set for Friday night be played Friday morning in order to allow the members of the basketball team to travel to Little Rock."We just weren't able to adjust the game time," Ramey said.
"Our Blackhawk basketball players desperately want to be down there supporting their classmates," he said.
The football game will be live streamed via RTV and Ramey said it will be shown in the hospitality room at the high school Friday night during the tournament with tournament game times adjusted to allow Pea Ridge students to watch the football game.
Eight Blackhawk basketball athletes are on the football team and have continued to compete in football. They are Chase Duncan, Garrett King, Carson Rhine, Ryan Sheppard, Hayden Holtgrewe, Britton Caudill, Mikey Mahoney and Denver Yates.
Sports on 12/07/2016