2013: A sports year in review (part 1)

January 2013 started off with the winter season which is for wrestling and basketball. The year 2013 was the first season in the Division 1-A for these sports and the Trojans had high hopes.

Trojans Coach Brian Hayes finished his second and last season as the head basketball coach and it was a rough season.

The team finished 5-21 overall on the year and actually won two more games than the previous season, but failed to win more than one league game. The team had plenty of height with Adam Brand at 6 foot 4 inches tall and was led by outside shooters Billy Palmore and Dalton Beighley. Division 1-A was led by the Clark Chargers who eventually lost to the Desert Pines Jaguars who won the state title.

The Trojans women’s hoopsters had a similar problem to the boys, winning. Trojans Coach Jennifer Hagstrom said her team had problems holding on to the ball and also had problems in the rebounding category and just getting the ball into the basket. This resulted in a 5-19 overall record and 0-10 in league season. Last year’s lady Trojans were led by Kayla Skilling, Brittany Noel, Shayla Dance and Alyssa Murphy. This year’s Trojans are younger still, but Shayla Dance is coming of age and this should turn them around.

The Beatty Lady Hornets basketball team retired Aimee Senior last year only to see her come back this year because Coach Steve Sullivan is taking a year off.

The Hornets were hoping last year to make it back to the state tourney with the likes of Melynda Gross, Shankara Venezio, Lucero Hernandez and Christina Thompson. The Hornets made it through the first round of the playoffs against Lund, but couldn’t make it past Pahranagat Valley who won the Division IV state title last year.

In wrestling, the Division 1-A was up for grabs. It was something new and no one really knew how the chips would fall. The Trojans had a bunch of wrestlers that went to state and did pretty well: Levi Gundacker, Jace Clayton, Scott Maughan, Stephen McCormick, Aaron Alcaraz and Matt Hughes. Clayton finished in second place and Maughan finished in fourth place. This year the team has all of those wrestlers and more coming back. The team as a whole finished in tenth place at the state tourney and look forward to going back this year. The tourney was won by Lowry, who had taken five state titles in a row according to the Humbolt Sun.

Spring season came with the warming sun and the region’s softball, baseball, golf and track teams had some exciting times.

For the first time since 1982, the women’s Lady Hornets track team won state. The state meet was at Silverado High School in Las Vegas and the Hornets won it overwhelmingly 164 to Wells 111 points. The team said they dedicated the meet to Connie Adcox who has a disease called Five-Q Minus Syndrome. The syndrome prevents the body from making platelets and red and white blood cells.

It was definitely a team effort, but some of the members of the team who made a difference were: Zuri Pimentel, Ruth Pimentel, Christina Thompson, Melynda Gross, Carey Johnson. Gross was a double champion in the high jump and the long jump.

The Trojans women’s track team coached by Ed Kirkwood in his first year as the team’s head coach, finished second to Faith Lutheran at the state tourney. Faith edged out the girls at regionals also to make the state tourney even hurt more. The Lady Trojans had one state champion and that was Sydney Sladek who won the 800-meter run.

The Trojans women’s Achilles heel was distance running with just a handful of experienced runners. Stefanie Thelaner was an asset, but she was not be able to do it alone. What saved the Trojans last year was their field events led by senior Amanda Head. The shot put and discus thrower went to state and won second in shot and third in discus at the state tourney. Performances like this kept the girl’s team on top in most meets. The big question is will someone take Head’s place this year?

The Trojans men’s team finished in eighth place at the state tourney and should do even better this year. Prior to the state meet, Keenan Harris, the 100-meter dash runner for the Trojans who posted a personal best of 10.74 last year in this event, pulled a hamstring late in the season. This injury dashed the hopes of the men’s team from taking the regional championship and state because Harris was on all the relay teams. The boys had one state champion, Devon Montgomery, who won the title in the 110-meter hurdles with a 15.39 run for the gold.

Brian Hayes coached his first year as head baseball coach for the Trojans. He took the baseball team from a last-place finishing team to the playoffs with a third in league finish at 5-5 in league play and 14-16 overall.

The bottom line for the Trojans baseball was pitching and hitting. Trojans pitchers were able to get the ball under control. Josh Mortensen and Devin Rily both had a great year. Rily even threw a no-hit game. AJ Segura and Dylin Ault both led the Trojans in hitting.

The women’s Trojans softball team had another fabulous year under the coaching of Elias Armendariz in his second year as head coach. His team finished in third in the Sunset League. The Trojans went to the playoffs and did well. They lost the first playoff game to Chaparral 5-3 and won the second game against Moapa 12-6. The third game was against Cheyenne and it was there that the team ran out of gas and lost, but Armendariz will come back in 2014 with a team full of veterans. He lost a good shortstop in Sara Zinnecker, but coming back will be pitcher Whitney Roderick, Amanda Pryor, Bryana Soliwoda, Melanie Lawdensky, and Madison Hurley to name a few.