You know you’re on a roll when you throw a no-hitter and it’s your second-best performance of the week.
That was the case for Hico junior pitcher Kiersten Fincannon, not only threw a no-hitter in a 24-0 win over Meridian, but also tossed a perfect game in a 22-0 rout of Itasca.
Softball tournaments can distort the significance of pitching accomplishments due to inning caps or time limits, rendering perfect games or no-hitters into half-versions of their true selves.
However, there is no denying that tournaments are work, especially for pitchers, and our Big Country Preps Player of the Week, Hamlin southpaw Zoe Moore, earned the accolade with a 4-0 record in the Wichita Falls Sunrise Optimist Tournament last week.
While Hawley’s Kason O’Shields is better known for his prowess on a football field, the HHS senior is actually a remarkable all-around athlete who is capable of having an impact in a variety of different sports.
This week is a prime example of that, as O’Shields takes our Big Country Preps Player of the Week award for the week ending February 18.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Albany-Hawley boys basketball (56 images)”
HAWLEY — They are bound to be partying like it’s the 1980s in Hawley this week after a 20-0 game-ending run gave Hawley a 65-47 win over Albany and the outright District 10-2A basketball championship.
It’s the first time the Bearcats have won a district title in boys basketball since 1987.
Kason O’Shields had 17 points in the first quarter and bookended a 37-point night with 12 more points in the fourth quarter to fuel HHS.
As Hawley was plowing through 16 opponents en route to the Class 2A Division I state football championship this past fall, there was only one setback of note attached to the historic season: The Bearcats basketball team had to wait until late December to get its varsity roster intact.
Even then, Mitch Ables, who coaches both sports at the school, had to wait a little while longer for some of his major prospective hoops contributors to recover from injuries sustained on the road to AT&T Stadium, where Hawley crushed Refugio 54-28 in the title game to claim the title.
Luckily for Ables, he didn’t have to wait a second for Teaghan Knight to be ready.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Cisco-Hawley basketball doubleheader (118 images)”
HAWLEY — Hosting Cisco with sole possession of the District 10-2A lead on the line, the Hawley boys basketball team rode a dominant first half to a 65-51 win Monday at Bearcat Gym.
The Bearcats outscored the Loboes 31-13 in the first 16 minutes and stretched their lead to 19 points on two occasions in the third quarter before holding off a furious Cisco rally over the final quarter and a half.
The victory, which followed a 60-41 Cisco win in the girls game, improved the Bearcats (10-4 overall) to 8-1 in 10-2A play, while the Loboes fell to 19-6 on the season and 7-2 in district action. That gives Hawley a one-game lead on CHS and Albany (11-3, 7-2) with three league games remaining.
STAMFORD — A pair of area rivals clashed twice on Friday as the Cisco girls and boys basketball teams paid a visit to Stamford for an important varsity doubleheader in District 10-2A.
The Stamford girls rallied to take the opener, 33-29 to force a first-place tie in the league race. The Cisco boys returned the favor, rallying from a 25-18 halftime deficit behind a brilliant performance from Gavin Landenberger to beat the Bulldogs 59-51 and remain in the district title hunt.
The Loboes remained within a game of first place behind league-leading Hawley with the win.
Due to UIL regulations, photo sales from state championship events are not permitted.
Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Refugio football (134 images)”
No one had to tell Hawley running back Austin Cumpton what he missed last year when he was unable to play in the Bearcats’ first-ever state championship game.
In street clothes for that one after fracturing a pair of vertebrae a few weeks earlier, the then-junior witnessed it firsthand as his teammates fell 47-12 to Shiner.
To say that experience was a motivator a year later — for both Cumpton and the Bearcats — might be an understatement. And healthy as a senior, Hawley’s 6-foot-1, 225-pound bowling ball back and his brothers made good on their mission of returning to AT&T Stadium and finishing the job this time.
ARLINGTON — When Hawley played for its first football state championship in school history on Dec. 15, 2021, Mitch Ables was focused on the action on the field.
Fast forward exactly one year.
Back at AT&T Stadium on Thursday, Ables had a different plan — but it was one that he had been working on for far longer than just one day.
ARLINGTON — Whatever doubts some people may have had about Hawley’s ability to overcome Refugio in Thursday’s Class 2A Division I state title game, they were answered by the third quarter at AT&T Stadium.
Opening the game with 28 unanswered points, the Bearcats raced to a 34-7 halftime lead and were never seriously threatened beyond that point in a 54-28 win.
Offensive MVP Austin Cumpton rushed for 151 yards and four scores and Rodey Hooper threw for 279 yards and three more TDs to lift Hawley, which finished a perfect 16-0 while grabbing the first-ever football state championship for HHS.
The Bearcats avenged last season’s title loss to Shiner with the win.
LAST WEEK: 3-0, 1.000
SEASON TOTAL: 540-120, .818
Far be it from me to point out that this column has been absolutely on fire throughout postseason play.
Actually, I will point it out.
Over the last three weeks alone, pick accuracy has seen marks of 11-1, 8-0 and 3-0 for an overall pick record of 22-1 (.956) during that span. And with six-man teams returning from a one-week hiatus, there are five state championship games involving six teams from our coverage area left to pick.
Albany, Hawley, Brock, Westbrook, Benjamin and Loraine have all retained a pulse into Week 17. Not too shabby.
It’s been a great year, a lot of fun and it’s difficult to believe it all ends this week.
Here’s the final forecast for the 2022 season:
When Mitch Ables took over the Hawley football program in 2014, the Bearcats had posted more winless campaigns (eight) than winning seasons (six) in their history.
Despite fielding a team for 46 years to that point and being led by 15 different coaches, Hawley had managed only three playoff appearances — all since 2005 — and the Bearcats had never won a playoff game until the year before Ables arrived, when Brad Schoonmaker led them to a bi-district win over Alpine on the way to a 6-6 record.
So for HHS to be spoken about now among the Big Country’s elite, in the same breath as perennial small-school powers Albany and Cisco, is no small feat. In fact, it’s the product of a coaching effort that has been nothing short of legendary — and deserves to be viewed as such.
Continue reading “DANIEL YOUNGBLOOD: Ables’ tenure at longsuffering Hawley the stuff of legend”
NOTE: This will be our final Player of the Week column for 2022. It will return on Monday, Jan. 9.
It’s always a significant accomplishment to chart a double-double. But when one averages a double-double over the course of five straight games, you begin to put a blip on the area radar screen.
Munday senior Jaxon Bowman did precisely that last week, helping the Moguls to a 5-0 record and the tournament championship at Blackwell. Aside from averaging 11.2 points per game, the senior grabbed a whopping 13 boards per contest to along with a combined 12 steals as Munday improved to 12-2.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Crawford football playoff (88 images)”
MINERAL WELLS — After having a back injury cost him a chance to play in Hawley’s first state championship game last season, senior running back Austin Cumpton took the challenge of leading the Bearcats back to Arlington personally in Thursday’s Class 2A Division I state semifinal matchup with Crawford.
The 6-foot-1, 225-pound bruiser, who missed the final three games of last year’s run with a pair of fractured vertebrae, was nothing short of dazzling against CHS, pounding the previously unbeaten Pirates for 175 yards and four touchdowns in a 34-20 win at Ram Stadium.
That performance, which came in a strong all-around effort by the Bearcats, earned Hawley (15-0) a return trip to AT&T Stadium, where it will face off with fellow state power Refugio next week for the 2A DI state championship.
LAST WEEK: 8-0, 1.000
SEASON TOTAL: 537-120, .817
The Big Country Preps coverage area took a few hits last week, with Wylie, Wall and Cisco all seeing their seasons end in the regional championship round.
However, six of our teams remain active heading into this week, half of which are six-man teams (Loraine, Benjamin and Westbrook) that have already qualified for state and are taking this week off.
The other half are 3A DI Brock, 2A DI Hawley and 2A DII Albany, all of which advanced to this week’s state semifinals.
As for pick accuracy, the column is on fire, going 8-0 last week and 11-1 the week before for a 19-1 mark (.950) over a two-week span.
Alright, enough said, let’s dive in.
Here’s this week’s forecast:
Consistency and versatility always score big in our Big Country Preps Player of the Week column.
Add a few extras to your stat sheet and play well over several games and you’ll generally end up at or near the top of our weekly list.
That is precisely why Comanche sophomore guard Kinsey Glasgow has earned our Player of the Week award for the Week ending December 3.
ABILENE — It was not only billed as a rematch of a superb Big Country Preps Game of the Week from Week 11, but also of a nail-biting Region I-2A Division I title game last year. Cisco and Hawley had produced back-to-back classics and the entire Big Country was expecting to see another one.
Unfortunately, Hawley never received the memo.
Rather than producing another dogfight, Hawley dominated the Loboes on Friday, handing Cisco a 40-7 loss at Wildcat Stadium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX1CZcov2Wk&t=4s
7 p.m. Friday, Abilene’s Wildcat Stadium
LAST WEEK: 11-1, .916
SEASON TOTAL: 529-120, .815
As December football arrives so will nine — count’em, nine — Big Country Preps teams retain a playoff pulse and are still hopeful of winning a state championship.
Wylie, Brock, Wall, Cisco, Hawley, Albany, Westbrook, Benjamin and Loraine will all take the field this week.
Not too shabby.
Also doing pretty well: this column, which hit with 91-percent accuracy last week despite a difficult slate of games to pick.
That said, let’s dive into this week’s games.
Here’s this week’s forecast:
Having fought his way through a mid-season injury, Albany quarterback Cole Chapman is back in form.
Our Big Country Preps Player of the Week was the dual threat we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on Saturday, leading the Lions (11-2) to a 35-18 whipping of formerly unbeaten Wink in the Region II-2A Division II semifinals.
SAN ANGELO — Hawley head football coach Mitch Ables wasn’t happy about the way his team played in the first quarter Saturday in their Region I-2A Division I semifinal playoff game.
He couldn’t complain after that.
Hawley woke up with a 30-point second quarter on the way to a 57-26 rout of Sonora at San Angelo Stadium.
HAWLEY — It wasn’t exactly the ‘shot heard round the world’, but in Hawley it certainly created a noticeable tremor.
The loss of do-everything receiver-defensive back-kicker Kason O’Shields had a far-reaching impact on the Hawley roster the moment it occurred on Oct. 29.
O’Shields, who suffered a broken right fibula early in the second half at Stamford, had made himself so valuable in so many different ways, that his loss was the equivalent of losing six players rather than one.
“He was our kicker, punter, kicker returner, punt returner and played offense and defense,” Hawley coach Mitch Ables said. “I don’t know how much more you could have a kid do for you, but he was a do-all for us for sure.”
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Hawley-Christoval football playoff (53 images)”
Cisco 55, Reagan County 0 — The Loboes dominated Reagan County, rolling up 555 yards in total offense, of which 378 were on the round.
Hunter Long and Trent Huston combined for 263 yards rushing and four touchdowns to lead Cisco (9-2), which led 42-0 at the break.
SAN ANGELO — The Hawley football team opened its playoff run by losing the coin toss to Christoval and seeing the Cougars elect to defer to the second half.
That’s the only thing that didn’t go the Bearcats way Thursday at San Angelo Stadium.
Chandlin Myers fielded the opening kickoff and raced 86 yards untouched through the middle of the field, and the Bearcats never looked back on their way to a 52-8 win in a Region I-2A Division I bi-district matchup.
After highlighting the Big Country’s top guards and forwards the past two nights, we now take a look at the area’s best big men.
For the final installment in our three-part boys basketball position rankings series, we rank the Big Country’s top 10 post players.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading through our rankings, and make sure to check back for all our boys and girls basketball coverage this season.
After kicking off our boys basketball position rankings series on Tuesday with the guards, we now shift our attention to the forwards.
For the second installment in our three-part series, we rank the area’s top-10 players at that position for 2022-23.
We hope you enjoy our list.
With boys basketball season beginning this week, it’s time to shine a spotlight on some of the players you’ll be reading about throughout the 2022-23 season.
For the first installment in a three-part series that will cover all positions on the area boys basketball scene, we’ll be taking a look at the Big Country’s top guards, ranking our top 10 with a list of others to watch this winter.
We hope you enjoy reading through our list.
If it’s true that big-time players make big-time plays in big moments, few had a stronger claim to that “big-time” title this past week than Wylie sophomore Hayden Wright.
The Bulldogs free safety not only came through with three interceptions in his team’s 20-10 District 2-5A Division I title-clinching win over crosstown rival Cooper, he recorded all three picks in the fourth quarter as Wylie was trying to hold off a late Cougar rally.
For that effort, which saw him snatch his fourth, fifth and sixth interceptions of the season, the young playmaker has been named the Big Country Preps Player of the Week for the week ending Nov. 5.
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Continue reading “PHOTO GALLERY: Cisco-Hawley football (48 images)”