Sports

After a long and grueling spring Track & Field season the athletes have finally arrived at the end of the season with the “Last Chance” Meet in Limon held last Saturday giving them one more time to qualify for the 1A State Track & Field Championships which will be held this weekend, May 18-20.

Beginning next year, high school basketball teams will shoot two free throws for common fouls when in the “bonus.” This change to Rule 4-8-1 eliminates the one-and-one scenario and sets new foul limits each quarter for awarding the bonus free throw.

The junior high league track meet was held in McClave on a pleasant spring day that included sun and little wind. That set the scene for some excellent performances from the athletes from Eads, McClave, Granada, Cheraw Cheyenne Wells, and Wiley.

The area track teams found themselves in Burlington on Saturday and enjoyed strong competition in decent weather, except for the wind that caused some exceptional performances to be considered “wind aided” and therefore not qualifiable for the state meet. Nevertheless, Cheyenne Wells, McClave and Eads girls continue to battle it out against the bigger schools.

Twenty-five golfers were on hand on Saturday, May 6 for the first tournament of the summer season at the Eads Golf Club as golfers from across the region were anxious to get back on the links again and compete in some friendly competition. Judging from the turn-out there is a lot of interest in the sport of golf, and it should be a highly competitive upcoming season.

The Holly Wildcats’ Baseball program continues to standout in the 1A ranks as they won their third straight District 4 crown on Saturday getting the victory over an athletic and feisty Cheyenne Wells group, 10-7. In 2021 the Wildcats went on to win the state championship and in 2022 they lost that game in extra innings.

In their first season out of the Rivals co-op, the Wiley Panthers have enjoyed tremendous success as they are carrying a 13-5 record and, even better, have won timely games that have helped to put them in a good position to go deep into the post-season.

The Holly Wildcats, who have enjoyed a prolific baseball dynasty for the past few years, continues to roll along in one of the toughest Districts in the state—District 4. But, in the final series of the regular season, they hit a little road bump as they traveled to McClave and had to settle with a split in the double header.

The Rocky Ford Invitational was held on Friday on a blustery day with low temperatures that affected the overall performances. However, some 36 teams would compete in a facility that Eads Coach Stephanie Bohalnder described as, “The best facility we’ve seen this year except it just has six lanes, which slows things down quite a bit.

The Cheyenne Wells Tigers spent their time up north over the past week as they played two double headers including a key conference date with Stratton and then finished off with Otis.

Numerous area track & field teams traveled to an exceeding competitive La Junta Relays Meet on Friday including Eads, McClave, Granada, and Wiley. Large schools were on the menu as a number of Pueblo teams and other Ark Valley teams competed well.

Both teams have good records. Wiley, with five Eads kids playing key roles on the team, is sporting a 10-5 record suffering defeats by McClave and Holly within the conference.

Case Nelson, a sophomore at Eads High School and one of the five Eads players who were welcomed onto the Wiley Panthers’ baseball team after Eads failed to field a team this year, put together the game of his life from the hill throwing a perfect game on Friday and getting the 19-0 league win over Manzanola. The southpaw worked through four innings giving up no hits, no runs, and no walks.

It’s good to know there is still interest in playing Baseball in Eads as was evident in a history-making game on Thursday. Oddly enough, their first opponent was Wiley—where the remaining players of a broken Eads High Shool team went to play.

Saturday was blustery and cold, but the Cheyenne Wells Tigers, girls’ and boys’ teams, burned up the track and the pits in Holly on their way to a double league championship.

The Colorado U.S. Kids Spring Tour got underway on Sunday at Cheyenne Shadows Golf Club in Colorado Springs.