Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

The final night of the regular season for football is now officially over. And what a finish it was.

I was at Derby at Heights, and I got a great game - no surprise. But there was a winner — Heights — who I didn’t expect. Heights wins 33-14 and takes the district title.

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by joanna

I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it. Heights’ defense handled Derby, forcing a fumble and intercepting Jake Snodgrass twice. Heights wins 33-14 and the Falcons win Class 6A-District 6. Southeast had the other surprise, beating East 44-26.

What a night. Too crazy. I didn’t pick Heights to win this game, and I’m not going to go back and try to justify. I didn’t expect this. But Heights played a great game.

Heights and Derby are both in the playoffs.

How about North getting in the playoffs? North beats Campus and gets in with 2 wins. Say what you want, but North won when it needed to.

by joanna

I won’t be able to update this with the later matches because I’ll be at football, so feel free to post. But here’s what I have:

Goddard and Heights both went 2-1 in their pools, sending them to Saturday’s semifinals in Topeka. Excellent job in a very tough state tournament. Excellent.

In 4A, Cheney went 3-0 in its pool, while Clearwater, in the same pool, went 2-1. Again, both are in the semifinals Saturday morning in Salina.

Some good representation by our area teams. It’s good to see. 5A and 3A are playing right now.

As we get them, we’ll post the results here.

http://www.kansas.com/sports/updates/story/581007.html

by joanna

A reminder to all those who want this to only be a sports blog — this is for fans of high school sports, and I like the idea of lots of different topics. If you don’t like it, skip it. My feelings won’t be hurt.

So one of the jokes in our sports department is never having Halloween leads or Friday the 13th leads — can you imagine if all eight or stories had those leads? But we did come up with some puns last night. Things like: So and so didn’t have a ghost of a chance to win that game, and In an eerie chain of events, or such-and-such  didn’t make the playoffs because they faced the Grim Reaper.

OK, they’re all pretty dumb, which is why we stay away from them.

But in the spirit of Halloween, I want to know when was the last time you dressed up and what were you?

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by joanna

You asked for it, here it is.

Anyone at that Goessel-Pretty Prairie game? Sounds like it was a good one. How about at Norwich-South Haven?

Let us know how they were.

by joanna

We’ve got our second straight night of football tonight, and there should be some good ones. The best of the night should be Derby at Heights. Derby’s in and Heights desperately needs to win to get into the 6A playoffs. Heights is a good team — a strong defense, a solid offense — and I think that the defense could give Heights what it needs to win this game. Not that it will be easy; Derby’s offense is one of the best around — balanced and it can grind it out or score quickly. Heights’ offense has to establish itself early for the Falcons to win.

North plays at Campus and Maize is at Goddard. Only the North-Campus game has playoff implications. Maize is already out, Goddard is in. Great Bend is at Hutchinson and Newton plays Kapaun at WSU. Kapaun’s already in, but Newton is still trying to get in. Liberal’s at Carroll. Some of you wondered why I didn’t mention the Liberal-Carroll game earlier in the week, and then some of you answered the question for me — this is not the Liberal-Carroll matchups of the 90s. Carroll wins with some ease. Hays is at McPherson, too.

So where will you be? What game will be the most exciting?

by joanna

Whew. What a night of football and futbol. Loving this time of year. Let’s get right into the recap.

Mulvane wins a thriller against Rose Hill to get into the Class 4A playoffs.

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By J. Long

I’ve heard the two arguements in regards to the Bond Issue. I’ve seen the billboards and read the articles and columns that have been written by Joanna, Mark McCormick, Lori Yount, and Bob Lutz. Honestly, I’ve heard enough about the issue at this point. However, there’s one thing about the issue that I don’t think has been addressed.

What about the average athlete?

See I’ve heard people say that the great athletes will be great athletes whether they train with weights or with auto parts. I’ve also heard people say that though sports sometimes do motivate kids to do better in school, adding these facilities won’t really help decrease the drop out rate. In all of this no one has really brought up the athletes in the middle tier.

I believe that it is this group that will be helped the most by the athletic additions that are part of the inicitive. With better facilities come a better athletic environment. If these middle kids who are fast are given a track to run on in middle school then that will only increase their ability and eagerness to want to workout.

The ultimate individual goal for any high school athlete should be to obtain a college scholarship. The great athletes will get those on natural ability alone. However, if you give the average athletes more opportunities to improve that will help aid their cause.

What do you think?

By J. Long

I was looking at one of my favorite sneaker websites today and they had a poll that asked what was the best basketball team shoe this year.

Since it’s about that time, I figured I would pose the same question here.

My personal favorite is the Hyperdunk, ultra-light and just a great looking shoe overall. In fact, I’ll be getting some to hoop in myself.

Probably these

by joanna

It’s a Thursday and it’s a full slate of events. Should be a fun one.

Let’s get it started with soccer:

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