More with Gore

There is an impressive list of jamborees going on this week:

August 21

West Point, Saltillo, Houston @ Tupelo
Quitman, Raleigh, Mize @ North Forrest

Wayne County Jamboree

5:00 Laurel vs Brookhaven
6:15 Laurel vs McComb
7:30 Wayne Co vs Brookhaven
8:45 Wayne Co vs McComb

August 22

South Panola, Meridian, @ Louisville – Dandy Dozen Showcase!!!
Aberdeen @ Vardaman
Eupora @ Calhoun City
North Panola @ Bruce
Water Valley @ South Pontotoc
Gulfport, Blount (AL) @ Moss Point
Greene Co @ Ocean Springs
S.V. Marshall, West Tallahatchie @ Durant
Velma Jackson, Kociusko, Grenada @ Winona
West Jones, Mendenhall, Tylertown @ Lawrence County
Purvis, Sumrall @ Oak Grove
 

Friday

4 p.m., Senatobia vs. North Pontotoc
6 p.m., Clarksdale vs. Itawamba AHS
8 p.m., Olive Branch vs. Shannon

Saturday

8 a.m., Oxford vs. DeSoto Central
10 a.m., Southaven vs. Noxubee Co.
Noon, Center Hill vs. Ripley

North Pontotoc Tournament
Admission: $5 per day – team coolers only

Friday

4:30 p.m. - North Pontotoc vs Baldwyn

5:40 p.m. – Houlka vs Ripley

6:50 p.m. – South Pontotoc vs New Albany

8:00 p.m. – Ripley vs Pontotoc

Saturday

10:00 a.m. – Belmont vs Ripley

11:10 a.m. – North Pontotoc vs Houlka

12:20 p.m. – New Albany vs Houlka

1:30 p.m. – Baldwyn vs New Albany

2:40 p.m. – Pontotoc vs Baldwyn

3:50 p.m. – Wheeler vs Pontotoc

5:00 p.m. – South Pontotoc vs Wheeler

6:10 p.m. – North Pontotoc vs South Pontotoc

*** Please Note *** Games could start earlier if/when possible.

Marietta 6  Wheeler 0

Jumpertown 6  Wheeler 0

Thrasher 16  Jumpertown 0

Marietta 8  Thrasher 6

It was a good day of football and looks like New Site has a promising future in football once they get their program established.

On a side note:  New Site will host Houlka in a high school jamboree this Friday night at Marietta.

Tyler Blount gets directions from Bro. Chrestman against Macon Road

Nearly 100 fans got their first taste of 8-Man football this past Friday night in Pittsboro as the Calhoun Academy Cougars and Macon Road Kingsmen (Memphis, TN) squared off in a controlled scrimmage at Billy D Cook Field.

Score was not kept, but both teams made numerous trips to the end zone on quick hit plays and long sustained drives in a scrimmage that proved to be a good measuring sticks for both squads.

“I think the guys saw they are not in the kind of shape it is going to take for us to be successful,” Coach Charlie Driskell. 

While the Cougars will be looking to work on conditioning the coaches were excited about how the team looked.

“I did see some good things once we got use to the speed of the game,” Driskell.  “We will know what we need to focus on this week a little more while we are getting ready for North Sunflower.”

Calhoun will hit the road to open the season this Friday at 7:30 p.m. against North Sunflower Academy.

Photos from the Calhoun Academy vs Macon Road Scrimmage

Lyndi Kidd - 3 for 4 with a walk, 2 1B, 2B, 4 RBI, and 2 R

Ingomar – The Lady Falcons improved to 5-2 on the season, but more importantly picked up that all-important first region victory of the season when they downed the Okolona Lady Chieftains 16-1 in four innings of play this past Tuesday.

Ingomar got things started with an inside-the-park home run from Brittany Edwards followed by a solo home run to left by Natalie Frenn. Sixteen hits and thirteen runs later Marti Wray slapped a single to left to score Courtney Thompson from second to give the Lady Falcons a 16-1 lead to invoke the mercy rule with one out in the bottom of the fourth.

Up 2-0, Ingomar continued to crush the softball as a trio of doubles from Shauna Grisham, Samantha Mayo, and Haley Taylor lifted the girls to a 4-0 advantage before Suzanne Hill singled to left and Amy Fooshee reached on an error to tack on two more runs from Mayo and Lauren Koon in the inning as they Lady Falcons batted around to start off the contest.

Okolona went three up, three down for the second inning in a row opening the door for another scoring onslaught from Ingomar.

Lyndi Kidd tripled to center to lead off the inning and scored on a sacrifice fly to right by Edwards to take a 7-0 edge before a single from Mayo scored Frenn. Taylor reached on a fielder’s choice to plate Grisham before Hill cranked the fourth of five doubles on the day as the Lady Falcons bullied their way out to a 12-0 lead.

Hattie Head led off the third inning for the Lady Chieftains with a hard hit single to the gap in right center and sent the Okolona dugout into a frenzy as she raced around the bases all the way from first to score on a double to center by Quindella Ford.

Taylor stepped up and struck out three of the next four batters to end the Lady Chieftains rally. Ingomar answered with two runs in the bottom half of the third when Wray and Anna McCutchen both drew bases loaded walks to take a 14-1 edge.

Emily Hall led off the fourth with a double to left and scored on a single to center from Thompson. The game clinching run came when Thompson scored on a Wray single to left to give Ingomar the 16-1 region win.

Ingomar churned out 16 runs on 18 hits as Kidd, Edwards, Frenn, Grisham, Mayo, and Hill all had multiple hits on the day. Frenn finished three for three with two RBI and two runs scored while Mayo went two for two with two RBI and two runs scored.

Ingomar vs East Union Photos

BMC/Danny McKenzie

With four players earning a 4.0 grade point average, it was only fitting the Blue Mountain College Lady Toppers finished fourth in the nation among NAIA schools in the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association academic honor roll.

The Lady Toppers compiled a 3.608 GPA last year and finished behind only Concordia University-Nebraska (3.667), Westminster College (3.653) and Oklahoma Christian University (3.623) in the WBCA rankings. BMC was one of three TranSouth Athletic Conference members to make the Top 25: Freed-Hardeman University (3.485) was No. 10 and Trevecca Nazarene University (3.444) was No. 14.

Lavon Driskell - Blue Mt College

“Anytime your athletes can excel in an academic setting you have to be pleased,” said Lavon Driskell, BMC’s women’s basketball coach and athletics director. “To have a team GPA better than a 3.6 is very exciting and it says a lot about the quality of the young people that make up our program.

“When you’ve played a weekday night game away from home and don’t get back until two o’clock in the morning, then have to get up and go to an eight o’clock class, well, it’s challenging. It all comes down to dedication and time management and we’ve been blessed to have some good athletes who understand the importance of academics.”

The Lady Toppers also landed four players on the list of NAIA All-American Scholar Athletes: Bre Anna Heard of Myrtle, Lana Harris of Marietta, Jamie Harrison of Belmont, and Beth Short of New Albany.

They were the only BMC athletes eligible for the NAIA honor; the organization requires all student athletes to have participated in their sports for one year, be at least a junior and maintain at least a 3.5 GPA.

Thirteen BMC athletes earned spots on the TranSouth Conference Scholar Athlete Teams. In women’s basketball Heard, Harris, Harrison and Short were joined by teammates Keleshia Amos of Selmer, Tenn., Nicole Curtis of Savannah, Tenn., Shayla Stroud of Booneville, and Katelynn Wright of Oxford.

In men’s basketball, Shayne Adams of Sherman, Brad Pressley of Booneville and Kenny Whitis of Phoenix were named to the team. Sarah Leighty of Lake City, Fla., earned a spot on the women’s cross country team, and Kris Beville of Southaven was named to the men’s cross country team.

Erick Lofton (above) will rotate at QB this season with Tyler Blount for the Cougars.

North Mississippi can get their first taste of 8-Man football this Saturday night as Calhoun Academy is set to host a team from Memphis in a scrimmage around 6:00 p.m. at Billy D. Cook Field in Pittsboro.

Calhoun and Central Academy (Macon, MS) will be the only two teams that will officially participating in 8-Man football this season in North Mississippi, but the second year venture by the MPSA could become one of the hottest tickets for offensive driven football fans – just ask Kemper Academy.

The Kemper Rams (DeKalb, MS) went from a struggling 0-10 11-Man team in 2005 to a 10-0 8-Man juggernaut in 2008 where they averaged around 52.2 points per game in games that saw upwards of 70 to occassionally 90 points light up a handful of scoreboards across the state. 

2008 Calhoun Academy Schedule

August 22 @ North Sunflower
August 29 @ Russell *
September 5 vs Immanuel Christian
September 12 @ Mt Salus
September 19 vs Bens Ford *
September 26 @ Winona Chrisitan
October 3 vs Calvary *
October 10 @ Central *
October 17 vs Hebron Christian
October 24 vs Kemper *

* – denotes region games
all games scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m.

Photos from 2008 Calhoun County Football

Calhoun Academy and Calhoun City practice photos

More 2008 football photos

If you are not ready for football then you did not attend the Calhoun City Wildcats’ Midnight Madness or Vardaman’s Meet the Rams a few hours later this past Saturday.

Midnight Madness

A crowd of nearly two hundred football fans from all across Calhoun County attended the first full contact practice held by the 2006 North State Champions and were not disappointed as they were treated to a hard hitting atmosphere of long awaited football action.

“It was awesome,” W07BN’s Steven Whitten. “It felt like an organized street fight the way everyone was crowded around the players and how crazy they were going after each hit.”

The highlight of the night was the “Oklahoma Drill” that saw the hardest hits of the event that more often than not spilled into the ruckus crowd of fans, coaches, and surrounding players crowded around the practice area.

The Wildcats are counting down the days until their final pre-season warm-up against the Eupora Eagles on August 22^nd at D.L. Harrison Field before kicking off the season on the road against county rival Vardaman on Thursday August 28^th in a game with playoff seeding and bragging rights on the line.

Meet the Rams

A mere six hours later another large crowd of almost 200 football hungry fans showed up to meet the players that will make up the 2008 roster, cheerleaders, and coaches before watching the team run through their first and second team offensive and defensive schemes.

“I was excited because we had a really good turn out for it being that early in the morning,” Coach Justin Hollis. “Saturday the guys really weren’t themselves… and we know it, but today (Monday) they came out and practiced hard.”

The Rams will look to get refocused this week as they prepare for their season opener against Calhoun City.

“Execution wise we are where I thought we should have been Saturday, but I was wanting our emotion to be higher than what it was… today (Monday) it was a lot higher and I told them it are days like today we have to build from and keep taking it to a high level,” Hollis.

Vardaman has a big task waiting for them when the high octane and hard hitting Aberdeen Bulldogs come to town on August 22^nd for their final pre-season scrimmage.

In 2004, Mariel Zagunis became the first American woman ever to win a medal in Olympic fencing when she won the gold medal in the women’s individual sabre competition just a week before starting her freshman year at Notre Dame.

In 2008, she defended her gold medal by defeating fellow American and top-seeded Sada Jacobson 8-4 in the three minute and thirty-four second bout.

In the opening round the fifth seed Zagunis defeated Canada’s Sandra Sassine 15-10 to advance to the Sweet 16 of Olympic fencing where she squeaked by Poland’s Bogan Jozwiak 15-13 before dominating China’s Yingying Bao 15-9 to advance to the semifinals. 

Zagunis defeated incoming Duke freshman and fellow American Becca Ward 15-11 in the bronze medal round as the American’s swept the podium.

Eight other Notre Dame student-athletes or alumni will participate in the 2008 Games:

Soccer:  Kate Markgraf and Shannon Boxx - United States.  Melissa Tancredi and Candace Chapman – Canada.

Fencing: Gerek Meinhardt – United States.  Kelley Hurley - United States

Track and Field: Thomas Chamney - 800 M – Ireland.  Selim Nurudeen - 110 M High Hurdles – Nigera.

While it has long been old news in Calhoun County, Fred Thomas has officially announced his retirement after 12 seasons in the NFL.

Thomas was a second round draft pick by the Seattle Seahawks in 1996, but after four seasons in the Emerald City he signed a free agent contract the New Orleans Saints where he would eventually finish his NFL career.

During his career Thomas was faced against some of the best of the best the NFL had to offer including his first time stepping on the field against Jerry Rice.  The star-struck Bruce native was so focused on making a play against the future hall of famer that he lined up two yards offsides on the very first play, but he later left his mark on NFL trivia when he came up with the first interception of Super Bowl Champ and NFL MVP Petyon Manning’s career.

In 2002, Thomas was voted All-Pro by Sports Illustrated and was honored with the Ed Block Courage Award after playing an entire season with a broken hand.  He was also voted team captain by his teammates four times with the Saints.