Page 9 - Sanger Herald 9-6-18 E-edition

SangerSports
SANGER HERALD * PAGE 1B * THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
Girls golf team works to create the magic of previous years
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
Jasmine Awad completed the ninth hole at Sherwood Forest Golf Club with a win and celebrated.
By taking off her shoes.
‘I’m tired,” she said and then kidded with her partner on the Apache girls golf team. “Emilee did a really great job of finding my golf balls.”
Awad said she doesn’t mind walking barefoot.
The team faced off against the Kingsburg Vikings on Aug. 30. Sanger is coming off a couple of strong performances in the past two years. In 2017, the Apaches won the Central Area Championship tournament in Lemoore. The team shot 473, seven strokes ahead of second place Lemoore.
The tournament champion, Hannah Steagall, graduated as did Eliza Hernandez who got 10th in the event.
But that left four returners, including
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Jasmine Awad chips the ball from the rough onto the green at Sherwood Forest.
encourage other girls to take up the sport.
Emilee Perez, also a junior, said she enjoys her team. “We all get along,” she said. And she’s got her sights set on playing full rounds. The match against the Vikings included nine holes and took less than three hours. “I’m excited for the 18-hole matches every Thursday.
“That’s six hours.”
Perez said her goal this year is to break 100. As for her teammates, she said, “I love them. They’re so fun. We try to encourage the eighth-graders to come out.”
Schmidt said the team has bonded well. Two freshman have joined and played against Kingsburg, Bella Vega and Riley Severson.
“The girls are really tight,” he said. “They hang out with each other on weekends and are friends (off the course).”
Berry agreed that the team does get along quite well. “I’m looking forward
to the rest of the season,” she said. As for goals, she added, “I would like to qualify individually for Valley and maybe even regionals.”
Berry and Grunberg also won their rounds against the top two Viking girls that afternoon.
Berry said she would like to continue to improve her game over the season. She said the team remains competitive. “It will be interesting to see what happens,” she said.
“Today I thought we as a team did pretty well,” Grunberg said. “We’re learning. So every time is a good experience.”
Grunberg had one of her personal bests, playing a 41. “So I’m pretty happy,” she said. Her season’s goal was modest. “I want to be a consistent player and just a team leader.”
The reporter can be contacted by email at sangerheraldsports@gmail. com or by phone at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
Maddie Berry, a senior this year who placed second in last year’s tournament, and Kyana Grunberg, a junior.
“They’re veterans,” said Trevor Schmidt, who took over coaching duties this season from Jacob Houston. Schmidt is also
the boys’ coach. “They’re very encouraging to the other players.”
The team remains tightly knit. There are eight players.
Awad said she felt pretty good about the match. “I feel confident,” she said.
“I’m doing better than last year.”
And as for the sport? “I love it,” she said. Awad also competed on the track team but said she found her calling on the fairways. “It’s the greatest thing.”
And she said she’d
Hoping for redemption with Lemoore
By Mike Nemeth
Sanger Herald
Morgan Privett ignited the Apache offense at the start of the second half against the Timberwolves with a 44-yard kickoff return.
The sophomore running back broke through a tough Clovis East defense and rallied student in the Tribe section and those packed bleachers on either side. Fans roared approval and ramped it up when senior running back David Ayala subsequently rushed into the end zone with 11 minutes remaining.
And they didn’t stop when a bad snap for the extra point sent the football skittering away. After all, the game was tied 6-6. Clovis East’s hard charging Ryan Hunt, a reported Quail Lake Environmental Charter School product, put up the first score to start the game.
But Ayala, Sanger High’s expert kicker, in a move that exemplified quick thinking and even quicker reaction, scooped up the football, spotted a hole in the Timberwolves’ defense and arced to the right and through for a 2 point conversion.
Score: 8-6 Sanger.
And the Apaches weren’t finished. Senior Damian Duarte recovered a fumble at a little more than 4 minutes remaining in the third quarter to give Sanger possession. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said (or something very close) as he left the field amped up, passing along that adrenaline to his teammates on the sideline.
Had that momentum not
Mike Nemeth / Sanger Herald
Quarterback Noel Collazo pitches the ball to running back David Ayala against Clovis East on Friday.
do,wedotowin.Inmy eyes, you’re winners. But we really have to look at tonight and what happened.
“Penalties.”
Ayala didn’t really want to reflect on the night’s outcome. “That’s all it is,” he said. “It’s always a couple of plays. We’re going to have to do what we do. It never changes on a week-to-week basis.
“We can’t take them for granted. Anybody would be excited (to get that win). They definitely came out and played. We did, too.”
Senior defender Gabriel Webb had 21 tackles for a school record, junior Pierce Jones had 14 and Kosi Agina 10.
Senior running back Orlando Douglas carried the ball six times for 88 yards. Jake Boust had three receptions for 24 yards. Quarterback Noel Collazo completed four of eight attempts for 28 yards.
Pena told his team to stick together. “There’s a lot of season left,” he said. “We’re going to show up for Lemoore to redeem ourselves.”
Lemoore plays at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Tom Flores Stadium. The week after that is the big trip to Paso Robles, and some Apache fans plan to drive there and back on the same night.
The freshman team is 3-0 after a 25-6 win last week, and the junior varsity team is the same after a 35-28 thriller against Clovis East's JV squad.
The reporter can be contacted by email at sangerheraldsports@gmail. com or by phone at the Herald at (559) 875-2511.
come crashing down soon after, Sanger likely would have pulled out a win. But a combination of penalties and a Timberwolf offense derailed the Apaches’ best intentions. That offense was aligned behind the constant clock-consuming chipping away by ball- carrying Hunt, who almost single-handedly pushed his linemen down the field 3 yards at a time
Reality wound up with a Clovis East touchdown in the fourth quarter by junior Elias Mart and a Hunt- carried, 2-point conversion to bring the score to 14-8. And there it stayed.
Privett’s frustration
showed through his anguished expression sitting on the sideline with abagoficeonhisleg. Likewise, defensive end Aaron Salcido grimaced in pain from an injury to his shoulder suffered late in the contest.
“They just played harder out there, man,” he said.
Duarte, like the rest of the team, felt the sting. “I got the fumble,” he said. “It should have been a scoop and score. But we couldn’t execute.”
Duarte credited his opponent. “Their physicality and their will to win,” he said. “They’re trying to turn that program
around.”
Hunt carried the ball
48 times for 277 yards. Timberwolves coach Ryan Reynolds stuck to his game plan of mostly giving Hunt the ball and he moved it just enough each play.
Ron Blackwood, Sanger’s master statistician, tallied time of possession, and his accounting showed a lopsided 37 minutes and 68 plays for Clovis East compared with the Apaches’ 11 minutes and 28 plays. The Timberwolves completed their first touchdown in 16 plays and 82 yards. That meant Sanger had to make each possession count. No
mistakes.
Sanger coach Jorge Pena
said the loss boiled down to a couple things: penalties and discipline. He wrote the word “penalties” three times on the white board in the locker room, where a heavy silence was broken only by his voice.
“We let them get back into the game,” he said. “It’s a game. If you don’t play it right, you don’t win.”
Pena didn’t berate his athletes. They felt his disappointment. He felt theirs.
“Sometimes you can try as hard as you can and you won’t get what you want,” he said. “Everything we
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