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.
BANGS — The good news for the Bangs Lady Dragons was that they outhit visiting Comanche 12-5 on Friday. Also, Bangs’ starting pitcher, Abby Wolf, carried a no-hitter into the fourth inning before finishing with a five-hitter and nine strikeouts.
The bad news for the Lady Dragons, was that they committed six errors, allowed nine unearned runs and eventually fell 11-10 at home on Friday as Comanche picked up a crucial league win.
Riley Riordan went the distance in the circle and was 1 for 2 with a double, two walks and three runs scored to lead Comanche (13-11, 4-6 District 8-3A), which stays in the playoff hunt with the win.
While scoring and rebounding garner much of the attention in basketball, there are other elements, crucial to success, that seldom grab headlines.
Behind the scenes is where character, effort and sacrifice set the foundation for teams to reach their full potential. And it is with our Big Country Preps Gym Rat Team that we salute the individuals who bring these elements to the table.
This team isn’t about who the best players are — though some of the area’s top players are on this list.
The Gym Rat Team is about outworking, outhustling and outgiving everyone around you, both on the floor and off. Hard-working, honest, selfless, tough, coachable kids are what we seek for this roster.
A Gym Rat Team member can be your best player or the last player off the bench. But the one thing all of them bring is an uncompromisingly good attitude.
It is for that reason that our Gym Rat Team is selected entirely by area coaches. And Big Country Preps is truly honored to present these individuals to you — the best “team players” (boys and girls) that the area had to offer during the 2020-21 season.
Players are listed in no particular order.
Enjoy.
Comanche Athletic Director–Head Football Coach Stephen Hermesmeyer has been named as the new AD-head football coach at Troy High School.
Hermesmeyer has posted an 84-64 career mark in 13 years of coaching, including a four-year stint at Winters from 2008-2011.
At Comanche, Hermesmeyer was 61-42 in nine seasons, including three straight district titles between 2016-2018. His most recent club finished the 2020 season at 8-3.
“It’s been a tremendous nine years,” Hermesmeyer said. “Comanche is a great community with a great staff, hard-working kids and tremendous support from everyone and I’m very thankful for that.
“I enjoyed being able to raise my kids there.”
At Troy, he will inherit a 5-5 club while replacing coach Ronnie Porter, who stepped down in January.
“I’m leaving a great job and great community for a new opportunity in my career,” Hermesmeyer said. “Sometimes in life you’re ready to turn the page to a new chapter.
“Change isn’t always something that people enjoy, but you have a choice with change. You can either make it great, or figure out what’s wrong with it. But I’m just excited about having an opportunity to go and prove myself again — to get it going at a place I’m not familiar with.
“There’s great football played along the I-35 corridor and we’ll be playing some bigtime opponents. It’s a new chapter in my life as far as the coaching part of it.
“It will more than likely be my last stop in the coaching ranks and I’m ready to get it started.”
Hermesmeyer has remained a wing-T coach throughout his coaching career and intends to retain a ball control style of offense at THS.
The challenge ahead is, by all accounts, quite difficult.
Based in District 11-3A DI, the Trojans have a league slate with the likes of Lorena, Cameron Yoe, Rockdale and Little River-Academy in the mix.
A year ago, Troy’s non-district schedule was murderous, with powerhouses such as Salado (11-2) and Class 3A DII state runner-up Franklin (12-3) both on the menu.
“I’ve always been a wing-T guy, a power-run guy with hard-nosed defense,” Hermesmeyer said. “It’s hard to have a physical defense without having a physical offense. … We’re still going to have that same mentality of being hard-nosed, grind the football, make the clock run and play great defense.
“We’ll definitely be the oddball down there, because there’s a lot of spread offenses and a lot of great athletes. But sometimes being the oddball isn’t a bad thing.”
THIS WEEK: Comanche girls coach Diana Salinas visits with Evan Ren and Dan Youngblood.
COMANCHE — Harrison Kolb isn’t a complainer. He’s not an excuse maker.
He’s a doer.
The 17-year-old Comanche senior could easily sit back and wait for the world to pity him, having been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 8. Kolb however, pursues life and pursues goals, as evidenced by his choice to play football with a potentially dangerous ailment.
“He’s a good student-athlete for us and does things right,” Comanche coach Stephen Hermesmeyer said. “But he’s had some obstacles that not all kids have to face.
“Some kids may not have wanted to deal with this consistently like he has, but that’s what separates him.”
Coming off a 5-6 rebuilding season that saw his team fall in the bi-district round, coach Stephen Hermesmeyer’s Indians are poised for what could be a very solid 2020 campaign. 
With a whopping 20 lettermen back from last year’s club, including nearly all of its offensive production in the skill department, Comanche is viewed by many as one of the favorites in a newly formed District 5-3A DII with Eastland, Jacksboro, Merkel, Dublin and Millsap.
The key question, as with many teams at the Class 3A level, will be if the Indians can stay healthy enough for a successful stretch run through district.
Football is fast approaching, 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 Friday, Aug. 14. 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. 3, we’ll be spotlighting each 11-man team in the area and posing some of the key questions they’ll face in 2019 as part of our “Countdown to Two-a-Days” series.
After featuring Coahoma on Thursday, we move to District 5-3A Division II with the Comanche Bulldogs. On Saturday, we will take a look at the Dublin Lions followed by the Eastland Mavericks on Sunday.
The “What Might Have Been” feature series is Big Country Preps’ effort to celebrate area athletes who have seen their seasons affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The series will continue through June 15. If you have a suggested story for the “What Might Have Been” series, please contact Big Country Preps at Evan.Ren@BigCountryPreps.com.
This spring was supposed to be Kasey Middleton’s fourth trip to the state golf tournament as he hoped to bookend his high school career with a second title.
It was supposed to be Bryce Hermesmeyer’s triumphant return to golf after missing last year with a shoulder injury.
And with a couple freshmen helping step up and a low score of 316 despite playing in only three tournaments, it was supposed to end with a second state berth in three years for Comanche’s boys golf team.
But before the Indians could find a groove, their promising season came to an end after the COVID-19 pandemic altered the University Interscholastic League high school sports landscape. That’s hard for Comanche golf coach Richard Pringle to stomach.
The “What Might Have Been” feature series is Big Country Preps’ effort to celebrate area athletes who have seen their seasons affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The series will continue through June 15 or until the UIL rules that high school athletics statewide may resume. If you have a suggested story for the “What might have been” series, please contact Big Country Preps at Evan.Ren@BigCountryPreps.com.
Tucked away in their homes in Comanche County, a group of teenagers and their coach are waiting to see if they’ll have the chance to finish something special.
The Comanche softball team (15-2), off to its best start since its 2015 state semifinalist club, is sidelined with every other program in Texas by the COVID-19 lockdown until further notice.
The objective in the Comanche camp is to remain positive. But the numbers aren’t making that easy, with 226,374 confirmed cases of COVID-19 nationwide and 5,316 deaths at the time of this writing.
COMANCHE — At 5-foot-10 and 280 pounds, Comanche offensive lineman Jeron Conine isn’t someone you’d associate with the quarterback position.
Yet for a time in the eighth grade and his freshman season in high school, that is the position Conine played before the natural progression of things steered him up front. For those who know him, it comes as no surprise that the senior spent time behind center, given his athleticism and knowledge of the Comanche’s wing-T offense.
He is now a key element in the Comanche attack as a senior lineman on a junior-dominated team. He will not only be leaned upon for leadership, but for expertise in the scheme itself.
COMANCHE — After six successful years at the helm at Comanche, coach Stephen Hermesmeyer may be facing the single biggest test his program has seen since his arrival there in 2013.
With three straight district titles under his belt, Hermesmeyer returns only three starters on both sides of the ball this year among 11 lettermen,
This is the second straight year the Indians have had absorb a large graduating class — virtually depleting them of varsity experience. It is at this point, however, where the foundation of the program can be tested.
Are the Indians capable of enduring a difficult non-district schedule with a junior-heavy roster, then capturing a seventh-straight playoff berth?
Put simply, rebuild or reload?
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COMANCHE — For four full innings, the Comanche Maidens looked poised to piece together a season sweep of ninth-ranked Eastland on Tuesday, leading the Lady Mavericks 2-0 heading into the fifth.
It didn’t happen.
Plagued by a series of fielding miscues down the stretch, Comanche saw Eastland take the lead for good with three unearned runs over the fifth and sixth frames and escape CHS with a 4-2 win.
SPRINGTOWN — The Comanche Indians saw their season come to an end one game shy of the Region II-3A Division II finals, falling 53-14 to Gunter in a region semifinal matchup at Porcupine Stadium.
The Tigers (13-0) raced out to a 14-0 first-quarter lead and extended their advantage to 36-7 by halftime in advancing to face Holliday for the II-3A DII crown.
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CLYDE — After 16 combined years of working as a varsity assistant and junior high coach, along with an 0-3 start this year, first-year Clyde girls basketball coach Nellie Parrish was more than ready to get her first career varsity win.
It came Tuesday night in a 45-26 win over Comanche in a Class-3A nondistrict matchup at the Bulldog gym.
Comanche football coach Stephen Hermesmeyer has turned a struggling Indian program into a perennial playoff contender during his seven seasons at the school. And though he experienced significant graduation losses from last year’s 12-2 squad, his Indians can clinch their second straight district title with a win over Dublin on Friday.
Hermesmeyer recently took some time to chat with Big Country Preps’ Evan Ren and Daniel Youngblood about this year’s team, his wing-T offensive scheme and the status of his program for this week’s Capital Farm Credit Wednesday Night Podcast.
Also in this episode, Evan and Daniel discuss the area’s top games from Week 9 and how those outcomes are shaping the Big Country district races.
Jacksboro 42, Dublin 29 — Landon Davenport rushed for 130 yards and Ethan Fudge added three rushing touchdowns to help Jacksboro hand Dublin its first loss of the year.
JHS, which didn’t pass for a single yard, finished with 468 yards rushing.
While football theories and philosophies may vary, there are a couple of truisms in the sport that have remained a constant.
First, when a team is lacking in depth, it is generally a good idea to slow your games down and limit possessions.
Second, when entering a season with few returning starters, it’s generally advantageous to have a system firmly in place, so varsity newcomers can quickly fill the vacancies.
In a nutshell, that makes Stephen Hermesmeyer’s Comanche Indians ideally suited (in theory) to take on the set of challenges facing them in 2018. Not only are the Indians short on returning starters, but they are woefully thin behind those few regulars they do have coming back.
With a slew of new faces dotting Comanche’s varsity landscape, the one consolation coach Stephen Hermesmeyer has is that his guys will be bigger than most of their opposition. And with the Indians’ preference for keeping the ball on the ground, this could bode well for CHS, which will have at least five front-line players who tip the scales at 225 or more.
Injuries, however, could present a problem.
“Depth is going to be a major issue, but we do have some good-size kids,” Hermesmeyer said. “And we’ve got some good quality kids coming back.”