Championships are 2017 top stories

State championships were in no short supply for local teams and athletes in 2017, and they are among the top of the list for The Leader’s top sports stories of the year. There were three team championships at the top the list. There were eight individual championships. There were also teams that fell just short of a championship, but beat the odds by getting that far. There were also some honors bestowed upon a few local athletes that went beyond the boundaries of the state, as well as some not-so-good news that make up some of the top headlines. The Cabot baseball state championship is at the top of the list because it was the first one in school history, but this year instead of a No. 1 and No. 2 story; it’s more like 1 and 1A. The Cabot girls’ bowling team won its third-straight and sixth overall state championship in February. Cabot’s 2017 seniors were freshmen when coach Ronnie Goodwin took over the team. He believed, and said frequently, that group had the talent to win a 7A state title. They proved him right in May when they beat Springdale Har-Ber 2-1 in the first and shortest of all the championship games that weekend. The game only took 88 minutes, but the journey there wasn’t altogether smooth. The team finished the year 25-7, which sets a new record for wins in a season. The old record was 21, which the team broke late in the regular season. Despite all that success, there were times when runs weren’t coming easily. There was a miserable outing in a 10-0 home loss to Oxford, Miss. that Goodwin said turned into a learning experience. In all but one conference game, when Cabot’s bats weren’t hot, the pitching came through and preserved wins. Cabot finished league play 13-1, but won four games in extra innings. That helped the team stay focused and positive during the very close championship game. The Lady Panthers’ third-straight championship also makes the seventh-straight year that either the Cabot boys or girls, or both, won a championship. Almost as big a story was that the 2017 Cabot boys didn’t win their sixth-straight championship, despite being heavy favorites with a team average much higher than any other 7A or 6A team. But the girls kept the Cabot run alive, beating second-place Mountain Home nearly 200 points. The silver lining for the boys was that Chase Imhoff was the top bowler in the tournament, bringing home the individual medalist award. The Sylvan Hills girls’ track team won the Class 5A state championship, marking the third one in school history and first in more than a decade. The only individual event the Lady Bears won was the last one, after the team trophy had already been secured. The 4X400-meter relay team didn’t have to score a single point, but Jordan Sanders, O’Shayla Muldrow, Daviunnia Jones and Aliya Hatton beat second place Alma by more than two seconds. Imhoff’s bowling medal was one of several for Cabot and other local athletes. Cabot wrestler Harris Sutton tops the list of individual award winners after earning his second-straight championship in the 220-pound division. Sutton was the only person or team on the list to go through the entire season undefeated. He went 45-0 last season, and his two championship runs were with a combined record of 73-3. Like the bowling team, the Cabot boys’ golf team lost narrowly to finish second overall, but senior Connor Gaunt was the individual medalist, and he also won the boys’ overall individual championship for the second year in a row. Lonoke senior swimmer Kayla McGee won her fourth career individual state championship this year, and LHS distance runner Gracie Hyde won five individual state championships in 2017 alone. Hyde won the 800-, 1,600-, and 3,200-meter races at the state indoor meet in February. That plus a third place finish in the 400-meter dash earned the junior Jackrabbit the high-point award for the meet. In May, Hyde narrowed her focus and won the Class 4A state championship in the 800- and 1,600-meter races. Her teammate, Keiunna Walker, won the Class 4A triple jump as well. Hyde, however, is a Jackrabbit no longer. She spent just one year in Lonoke after transferring from Brookland, and is spending her senior year in Class 6A at Benton. Cabot’ Casey Gore won the Class 7A 3,200-meter championship, as well as the 3,200-meter race in the Meet of Champions. Off the playing surfaces, another big story was the Arkansas High School Activities Association, for the second cycle in a row, knowingly and willingly forced Jacksonville student-athletes to compete in a classification higher than the one the school’s enrollment requires. That, by default, means the AHSAA knowingly and willingly allowed Sylvan Hills, which is larger than Jacksonville, to play in a classification below what its own rules require. The organizations pitiful excuse for doing such a thing was an easily avoidable technicality of calling the new Jacksonville-North Pulaski School District a “merger.” Rules state that when two school districts merge into one, total numbers from both schools are counted towards enrollment for classification purposes. The problem here was that North Pulaski High School was not its own district, and was simply ceasing to exist as part of the Pulaski County Special School District. Far more former NPHS students enrolled at Sylvan Hills rather than Jacksonville. The AHSAA knew that to be the case, but counted 100 percent of NPHS’ final enrollment numbers for JHS for classification. And because the AHSAA counts a three-year average instead of a snapshot of one year, JHS was stuck with that 100 percent count again for the next cycle. So the Titans will get two more years of being a 5A school forced to compete in 6A. Back on the field, Jacksonville graduate Ryan Mallison won the NJCAA Gold Glove as the best defensive second baseman in the nation. Mallison started all 57 games for Arkansas Baptist College and committed just two errors all season long. He had a .992 fielding percentage and led the nation with 44 double plays turned. He also had the third-highest batting average in ABC history at .410, and broke the school’s single-season record with 21 doubles. Combined with the 14 doubles as a freshman, Mallison also holds the school record for career doubles. In the professional ranks, another big story comes out of Tampa Bay, where JHS graduate Clinton McDonald was named the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Man of the Year, making him eligible for the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year Award. McDonald was an instrumental figure in helping Tampa Bay neighborhood recovery efforts after Hurricane Irma. He is also a regular contributor and volunteer for Care Channels and Ronald McDonald Houses all over the country. One other story worth noting, which might easily fall beneath the radar, was that of the Sylvan Hills boys’ basketball team’s postseason run. The Bears had an average regular-season record of 15-11, and a very sub par conference mark of 4-10. But they entered postseason play with confidence that it had been refined by far in the ridiculously difficult 5A/6A Central blended conference that included 21 Division I players. The Bears lost their regular-season finale in overtime to Little Rock Christian Academy, and that set up a rematch five days later in the first round of the 5A-Central Conference tournament. The Bears won that game to qualify for the state tournament in Magnolia. Entering as the No. 4 seed, the Bears easily beat 5A-South champion Hope 66-49, and then knocked off 5A-West two seed Morrilton in the second round 52-43. They joined Parkview and Mills in helping the 5A-Central make up 75 percent of the state semifinals, but ended up losing to Parkview, which had three DI prospects, 71-54 in that semifinal matchup. Jacksonville Lighthouse Charter School boys’ basketball team made history by advancing to the Class 2A semifinals in the school’s first-ever year as an AHSAA sanctioned team. The Wolves won its conference regular season title, finished second in its district tournament and then won the Regional championship. They also won their first two state tournament games before falling to eventual champion Earle in the semifinals. Staying in the news early this season, the Wolves lost a key player off the 2017 team. Leading scorer Gerald Doakes was ruled ineligible after transferring to North Little Rock and then going back to JLC. He is now at JHS, where he will be eligible in January because it is his home district. Lighthouse lost two more players after the season began, and had to forfeit four wins for playing ineligible players in those games before the issues were discovered.

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CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE 2017 TOP STORIES

RAY BENTON

The Arkansas Leader | 1/3/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: Cabot High School Athletics