Page 15 - Mid Valley Times 11-28-19 E-edition

Orosi to play for Valley title
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Sanger, Dinuba
girls take 2nd, 3rd
place in preseason
tournament
Cardinals will make long journey to take on No. 1 Bishop Union
By George M. Villagrana
Mid Valley Times
Orosi football coach Ben White predicted the Cardinals’ style of foot- ball was something Cali- fornia City had not seen this season.
White was spot on.
Orosi’s rushing tan- dem of junior running back Dominic Martinez and bruising senior full- back Freddi Arciga ac- counted for 227 yards as the Cardinals downed No. 2 California City, 23-12, in a Central Section Divi- sion VI semifinals playoff game Friday evening.
The No. 3 Cardinals (11-3) will now play for the championship at No. 1 Bishop Union this Fri- day at 7 p.m. Bishop de- feated Lindsay, 22-16, in the other semifinal game.
“They (California City) were a really fast team, so we had to play an extremely physical brand of football to take them out of their comfort zone,” White said. “Cal City was used to all these shotgun spread teams, but not used to our smash mouth style.”
White called the first half a chess match as they were tied at 6-all.
Mid Valley Times file photo
By Rick Curiel
Mid Valley Times
The Lady Apaches basketball team went 7-20 last season, winning just two of their ten league games. But if this year’s start is any indicator of to what’s to come, you can expect those numbers to improve.
Last week, Sanger par- ticipated in the 2019 Lady Emps Preseason Tip-Off tournament and made it all the way to the champi- onship game before fall- ing to Fresno High, 58-42.
To get to the Nov. 23 championship game, the Lady Apaches won their first three games of the season, and in convincing fashion.
On Wednesday, Nov. 20, Sanger beat Woodlake by a score of 59-4 in the first round of the tourna- ment, held at Dinuba High School. Their dominance continued the next day as they defeated Immanuel High School, 60-18, earn- ing them a third-round game against 2-0 Golden Valley of Bakersfield.
In their Nov. 22 match- up with the Lady Bull- dogs, Sanger trailed only once in the game when the score was 3-2 in favor
of Golden Valley. From then on, it was a com- manding performance by Sanger, turning a 12-7 first quarter lead into 20 point advantage at the half, leading 33-13.
The Lady Apaches then continued their mo- mentum in the third quar- ter and, coupled with a sti- fling Sanger defense, held the Lady Bulldogs score- less as they rallied off 28 unanswered points to take a 50-13 lead into the final quarter.
Their loss to the Lady Warriors in the champi-
See PRESEASON on page B2
Rick Curiel / Mid Valley Times
Sanger High's Natali Her- rera was named to the All- Tournament team as the Apaches took second place in the 2019 Lady Emps Pre- season Tip-Off.
A steady dose of the Cardinals run game, led by junior tailback Dominic Martinez and senior Freddi Arciga, earned the Orosi High football team a chance to play for the Central Section's Division VI title after they beat California City 23-12 on Friday.
Pirates fall in championship game of Tip- Off Classic
Reedley Tigers are State champs
Danny Jimenez / Photo contributed
The Reedley College Tigers football team posed for a photo after beating Foothill College, 23-12, on Saturday to become the 2019 Northern California Football Association American Division Champions. The Tigers finished the season 10-1, avenging their only loss this season, to the Owls, in the championship game.
Cal City had scored the game’s first TD on a 12-yard run by wide re- ceiver Marquise McK- enzie in the first quarter. The Cardinals answered with an 11-yard TD run by Arciga with 9:45 in the second quarter. Both teams were unable to score the remaining of the first half.
Orosi responded in the second half behind Martinez and Arciga.
“They had no answer for our running game,”
White said. “Freddi and Dominic were gashing them for a big run after big run.”
White credited the of- fensive line and lineman Brian Ventura for paving the way.
“Our O-line led by Ventura were opening bigger and bigger holes as the game wore on. Dominic showed why he’s the best running back in the Valley.”
Martinez had 28 car- ries with 165 yards and
Arciga finished the game with 12 carries for 62 yards and three touch- downs.
Kicker Aidan Rodri- guez’s 25-yard field goal late in the game sealed the game against the Ra- vens.
With the game tied 6-all at the half, Orosi went ahead on a 14-yard run by Arciga. The Ra- vens used a 73-yard pass play from quarterback
See OROSI page B11
By Jon Earnest
Mid Valley Times
The Reedley High Pirate boys used a ear- ly fourth quarter rally to put themselves in a position to capture the annual Reedley Tip-Off Classic basketball tour- nament on Nov. 23 at RHS gym.
But the Fowler Red- cats combined critical baskets, defensive stops and clutch free throw shooting in the final eight minutes to post a 69-59 victory and claim the championship. Tourna- ment MVP Joshua Bare- la scored 18 points — in- cluding a perfect 8-for-8 from the foul line in the final quarter — while fellow all-tourney selec- tions Amneet Basara and Japnaam Kahlon each scored 17 points.
Reedley’s Aaron Todd led all scorers with 24 points; 20 coming in
the second half as the Pirates rallied from a nine-point deficit. Todd’s 3-point basket with 6 minutes, 3 seconds re- maining gave the hosts just their second lead of the night. He hit four 3-pointers in the second half and had 11 points in the final quarter.
But while free throws were a key to Fowler’s pulling away at the end, they were just as damag- ing to the Pirates’ chance at victory. Reedley made just 4 of 11 from the stripe in the second half, 3 of 8 in the final quarter. The Redcats, meanwhile, were a sizzling 18 of 19 down the stretch as RHS was forced to foul in the final two minutes.
Augie Villarreal, who joined Todd on the all- tourney squad, scored eight points in the sec- ond quarter and finished
See PIRATES on page B2
By Will Goldbeck
Special to the Times
When it comes to community college football in Reedley, nobody is perfect.
Foothill College came into Sal Gonzalez Field on Saturday with a 10-0 record. They left for Los Altos Hills with a 10-1 record after the 10- 1 Reedley College Tigers recorded a 23-14 victory in the Northern Cali- fornia Football Association Ameri- can Division Championship Game.
Last year, it was Reedley Col- lege that came into the same con-
test with a 10-0 record and left with a 10-1 record after a 42-41 loss to the DeAnza College Dons.
This year, it was the Tigers’ turn to celebrate after a second straight 10-1 season.
“Going 10-0 and losing the cham- pionship, I would rather do it this way,” said Tiger head coach Eric Marty after the final gun sounded. “It is hard to beat a team twice. The other thing, when you catch that loss, you are so much hungrier that a team that is 10-0. I think we had some variables in our favor there. We just knew it was about us com-
peting with and competing harder than we did the first time against them. Our staff, our kids believe in what we do. They believe in the program and believe in what we do schematically. If we just trust one another, we are going to be OK. With those variables, we just know that it is about us and how hard we are going to compete and how we are going to focus. That’s what we did time and that’s why the outcome was different.”
Both teams lost their starting
SeeTIGERSonpage B12