After an 0-1 start in district play with a loss at Wall, the Clyde Lady Bulldogs were facing some pressure last week in tough league matchups against Jim Ned and San Angelo TLCA.
Clyde responded with a pair of wins and our Big Country Preps Player of the Week, junior setter Abby Carr was at the forefront of that effort.
Charting 38 assists, 19 kills and four aces, Carr was not only setting up the offense, but when rotating to the front line, she also did a pretty fair job of finishing it.
Breckenridge has surprised a few folks around the Big Country, racing off to a 3-0 start that includes wins over perennial powers Childress and Cisco.
But senior quarterback Chase Lehr isn’t one of them.
“I know all of the hard work we have put in,” Lehr said. “This is what we have been working up to for the past couple of years, and now it’s finally starting to show.”
LAST WEEK: 51-10, .836
SEASON TOTAL: 131-42, .757
Football picks are something I take pride in and it irritates me to no end when I stink it up. So let’s just say, I burned some midnight oil to get that situation corrected last week.
As a result, the column recovered with a solid .836 percentage in Week 3, salvaging my bruised ego after a disastrous Week 2 tally. In all, 51 of 61 area picks hit the mark last week, elevating my season’s record above 75 percent.
That’s more like it.
Week 4 in the meantime, presents a lineup of some of the most difficult area picks we’ve had this season — including an explosive Glen Rose team facing Brownwood in our BCP Game of the Week. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Here’s this week’s forecast:
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Cisco-Breckenridge football (72 images)”
BRECKENRIDGE — For three full quarters, the Breckenridge Buckaroos dominated the Big Country Preps Game of the Week, taking a 30-7 lead into the final period.
Then it happened: a 12-minute lesson given by Cisco on how to respond to adversity.
Not only did the Loboes respond, but they nearly won the game, scoring 20 unanswered points in the fourth quarter before falling 30-27 at Buckaroo Stadium.
After a week of highlighting area playmakers, we wrap up our eight-part preseason position rankings series with the Big Country’s best signal callers.
To complete our look at the area’s top players, we’ve ranked our top 10 quarterbacks with a list of others to watch in 2022.
We hope you enjoy this list and that you’ve enjoyed our position rankings as we get set to kick off a new season.
As we wind down our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we arrive finally at the Big Country’s top ball-carriers.
After breaking down this year’s crop of receivers and tight ends earlier today, we move now to the area’s top backs, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch in 2022. Don’t forget to check in Thursday when we conclude our series with the top 10 area quarterbacks.
We hope you enjoy tonight’s list and encourage you to check out the other position groups, which are linked below.
We’re approaching the final stretch of our eight-part preseason position rankings series, and it’s time to look at the Big Country’s top receivers.
After starting the offensive portion of our series Tuesday with the linemen, we now shift our attention to the playmakers on the perimeter, ranking our top 10 wideouts/tight ends with a list of others to watch in 2022.
We hope you enjoy our list and encourage you to check out the other position groups, which are linked below.
With the defensive and special teams rankings behind us, it’s time to look at the area’s top offensive players. And we’ll start with the foundation of any productive offense: the offensive line.
For the fifth installment of our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we turn our attention to the trenches, ranking the Big Country’s top 10 offensive linemen with a list of others to watch in 2022.
We hope you enjoy reading through our rankings.
After recognizing the top defensive players throughout the Big Country over the past three days, it’s time to honor the specialists.
We continue our eight-part preseason position rankings series by naming our top eight kickers and top eight punters to watch this fall.
We hope you enjoy this list and that you have enjoyed our position rankings as we get set to kickoff the 2022 season.
After starting with the linemen and linebackers, we turn to the defensive backfield to complete our look at the top defenders in the Big Country.
For the third installment in our eight-part preseason position rankings series, we shift our focus to the secondary, giving our list of the area’s top-10 defensive backs and others to look out for in 2022.
We hope you enjoy our list.
After taking a look at the Big Country’s top defensive linemen on Saturday, it’s now time to examine those who will backing them in 2022.
Continuing with Big Country Preps’ eight-part preseason position rankings series, here’s our top 10 linebackers to watch this fall, as well as a list of the others we’re expecting big things from.
We hope you enjoy our list.
With the start of football season around the corner, it’s time to take a look at the players who will be making the biggest impact in 2022.
For the first installment in an eight-part series that will cover all position groups, we’ll be taking a look at the area’s top defensive linemen, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this fall.
As with any such list, these rankings are subjective. We hope you enjoy reading through them.
Without further ado, it is time for us to make our Big Country predictions, district-by-district.
This is the culmination of several weeks of research and two solid months of summertime labor, so we’re more than ready to post it.
BRECKENRIDGE — Show me a team that is running a pre-district gauntlet and I’ll usually be able to show you a team that won 10 or more games in the previous year or went several rounds into the playoffs.
Teams that fall into that category generally have a difficult time finding non-district opposition and they end up saddled with one powerhouse after another.
That’s not the way it works in Breckenridge, Texas. At Breck, a difficult schedule is more of a tradition than a side effect. You could almost view it as a rite of passage for football players at BHS and it has nothing to do with last season’s results — good, bad or ugly.
Football is just around the corner, and we at BigCountryPreps.com are committed to bringing you the information you need to prepare for your favorite team’s season.
We’ll be releasing our Big Country Preps Preseason Football Preview, the most comprehensive look at the upcoming Big Country football season anywhere, on Wednesday, Aug. 17. But you won’t have to wait until then to sate your gridiron appetite.
Leading up to the first day of fall football practice on Aug. 1, we’ll be spotlighting each 11-man team in the area and posing some of the key questions they’ll face in 2022 as part of our annual “Countdown to Two-a-Days” series.
We move to Class 3A Division I with the Breckenridge Buckaroos. On Saturday we will take a look at the Clyde Bulldogs followed by the Jim Ned Indians on Sunday.
Continue reading “COUNTDOWN TO TWO-A-DAYS: Breckenridge Buckaroos”
OTHER 2022 ALL-BIG COUNTRY PREPS TEAMS
Character, grit and work ethic aren’t seen in a box score. And it is with our Big Country Preps All-Hustle Team that we wish to honor those players (male and female) who exemplify those qualities.
The All-Hustle team isn’t about who the best baseball and softball players were. It honors the best teammates.
It is here where effort, discipline and coachability — traits that coaches wish they had in every player and upon which championships are built — are honored.
It is for that reason that this team is largely selected by area coaches and described in their own words.
Big Country Preps is now honored to present these individuals to you — the best team players (boys and girls) that the Big Country had to offer during the 2022 baseball and softball seasons.
The players below are listed in no particular order.
Here are our superlative award winners for the 2022 All-Big Country Preps softball team. For the rest of this year’s selections, click the links below.
Four hits in one day is a great day for any hitter. But to get one hit of each kind – single, double, triple and a home run – is one of softball and baseball’s genuine rarities.
Yet that is exactly what Haskell senior Emma Roewe pulled off last week when she hit for the cycle in a 17-7 area round win over McCamey.
But there was an added bonus: Nearly all of her hits had huge impact, beginning with an RBI triple to bring in the first run of the game.
She later broke a 7-7 tie with a two-run homer in the fourth inning and brought down the curtain with a walk-off double to score Olivia Camacho to bring the mercy rule into play.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Breckenridge-Merkel softball playoff (67 images)”
TUSCOLA — It took 12 innings in 107-degree temperatures to decide it, but the Merkel Lady Badgers managed to close out their 3A area round series with Breckenridge on Saturday, edging the Lady Buckaroos 4-2 at Jim Ned High School.
Josie Whitehead outdueled Chloe Whitmire in a intense contest that saw both pitchers work the full 12 innings. And Merkel’s Kyleigh Mauldin provided the game-winning RBIs with a two-run homer in the 12th to lead Merkel (25-2), which advances to face Coahoma in the Region I-3A quarterfinals.
TUSCOLA — Locked in a scoreless pitcher’s duel between Breckenridge standout Chloe Whitmire and his own ace, Josie Whitehead, Merkel coach Bobby Williams elected to take the game in a different direction.
Seeing that getting consistent base hits would be difficult against Whitmire, Williams gave Breckenridge a heavy dose of small ball, resulting in four runs over the final three innings and an eventual 4-1 win at Jim Ned High School.
Eva Rodriguez was 2 for 3 with a double and an RBI and Jacee Tumlinson was 1 for 3 with a triple to lead Merkel (24-2), which backed a three-hit, 13-strikeout effort from Whitehead with four bunt singles to take a 1-0 series lead. Game 2 is slated for noon Saturday at the same location.
By Zach Duncan, special to Big Country Preps
Chloe Whitmire isn’t afraid to challenge opposing batters.
The Breckenridge sophomore has always had the heat to back up that aggressive mindset. Now Whitmire also has tweaked her off-speed repertoire, making her one of the Big County’s toughest pitchers to hit.
“With my catcher in front of me and a solid defense behind me, it gives me the opportunity to really try some of the big bats,” Whitmire said. “Sometimes it gets us in trouble, but that’s just how we play.”
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EASTLAND — Two days earlier, in a Game 1 heartbreaker, the Breckenridge Lady Buckaroos saw a 1-0 lead vanish in a three-run Bangs fifth inning during a 3-1 loss.
Saturday, with the series tied a game apiece and Breckenridge leading 3-0, the fifth inning proved nightmarish again for the Lady Bucks, with Bangs striking for three runs in the frame to knot the game at 3-3.
This time, however, Breckenridge responded with three late runs over the final two innings to earn a 6-3 win and close out the Class 3A bi-district series at Eastland.
Chloe Whitmire fired a four-hitter with 12 strikeouts and Joni Jackson was 2 for 4 with a double and two RBIs to lead Breckenridge (20-8), which advances to face Merkel in the area round.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Bangs-Breckenridge softball playoff, Game 2 (58 images)”
EASTLAND — Breckenridge sophomore pitcher Chloe Whitmire had her second straight dominant effort as the Lady Buckaroos evened their Region I-3A bi-district softball series with Bangs at a game apiece with a 9-2 win on Friday night.
After getting 15 strikeouts in Bangs’ 3-1 win in the opener on Thursday, the sophomore carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning of Game 2 and added 14 more strikeouts as she pitched her team into a deciding third game at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
EASTLAND — For five straight innings, Breckenridge ace Chloe Whitmire challenged the Bangs Lady Dragons with high heat. And for five straight innings, she got away with it, holding a 1-0 lead with one hard riseball after another, allowing only two hits and fanning 12.
Then it happened.
Down a run with only six outs left, the Lady Dragons broke through with three runs on two hits, a walk and an error in the sixth inning and held on for a 3-1 win at Eastland softball field.
Merkel’s Alyssa O’Malley is no stranger to our Capital Farm Credit/BCP Player of the Week column.
If she’s not in the weekly mix during the basketball season as one of the area’s top players, she’s competing for our top spot during the spring in track and field.
Her latest exploit: How about four area championships in solo events, despite having a painful foot injury?
Photos courtesy of Breckenridge boys’ track coach Mark Young
It’s not unusual for one sprinter to lead the area in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes. Breckenridge has two such sprinters in juniors Sean Cooksey and Adrian Ruiz.
Cooksey leads the Big Country in the 100 with his fastest time of 10.75 seconds. Ruiz leads the Big Country in the 200 with his 22.38.
Even in high school baseball, perfect games are rare. Two perfect games in one week in the same league are extremely uncommon.
Two perfect games in one week, thrown by a pair of teammates are about as elusive as a Lochness Monster sighting.
And coincidentally, that’s about how often Big Country Preps names two players for the Capital Farm Credit/BCP Player of the Week.
Here are the updated Big Country boys basketball playoff pairings, results through March 5:
Continue reading “Big Country boys basketball playoff pairings, results (March 5)”
Below are the final regular season statistical leaders for Big Country boys basketball in 2022.
This database has been continually updated for our subscribers throughout the season, using only those statistics submitted by area coaches.
Breckenridge (5-0) — The Buckaroos were idle on Friday night but will see action again on Oct. 7 when they travel to Iowa Park in the district opener for both clubs.