Sports

Senior Oscar Medina opened up the 2019-20 wrestling season with a third-place finish, in action at the Harvard Invitational Saturday, Dec. 7.

Medina earned three wins in five matches of round robin wrestling in the 126-pound class. He opened with a 57-second pin over William Twogood of Nebraska Christian, before dropping a 7-2 decision to Lane Barton of Meridian.

In quarterfinals, Medina downed Sam Tourney of Shelton, 5-0, before falling to Drake Belville of Doniphan-Trumbull in 4:56. The final match of the day would produce a 1:03 pinfall win over Gabriel Heunefeld of Nebraska Christian to gain third-place honors.

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The Sandy Creek Cougars got the 2019-20 basketball season off to a flying start, opening the season at 2-0 with a 50-44 win over Wood River, Dec. 5, while holding off the David City Scouts 41-34, Dec. 7.

Thursday’s home bout with the Eagles would see senior Wyatt Mach and junior Keifer Anderson pace the scoring for the Cougars, as Mach hit for 17 and Anderson, 12, while Josh Shaw added nine in the win.

The Eagles, behind runs of 16-10 and 12-9 in the first half, claimed a 28-19 halftime lead, but a strong defensive effort by the Cougars in the second half, along with a steady scoring threat, produced a 31-16 second half run to produce the sixpoint win over the Eagles.

The Cougars shot just over 41 percent from the field, sinking 17 of 41 shots, while at the foul line, Sandy Creek was 13-26, 50 percent.

The magical run to the Class D-6 state championship, with a 50-33 win over McCool Junction Nov. 22, brought to an end an undefeated 12-0 football season for the Harvard Cardinals and an unbelievable 40-4 record over the course of the past four football seasons for the Harvard program.

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Nebraska-Kearney senior Corbin Hansen, a native of Deweese and graduate of Sandy Creek High School, placed 160th at the 2019 NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships Saturday, Nov. 23, in Sacramento, CA.

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Nebraska’s playoff system this year has been a beneficial sort for the Sutton Mustangs and Harvard Cardinals in 2019. Both teams punched their tickets to the state championship games in their respective classes.

Sutton will battle for the Class C-2 title, pitting them against Oakland-Craig next Tuesday in Memorial Stadium at 2:45 p.m.

Harvard travels to Foster Field and the Ron & Carol Cope Stadium at the University of Nebraska-Kearney this Friday night, where they will take on the Mustangs of McCool Junction at 7 p.m., for the Class D-6 state championship

I happened to do a little research regarding both football teams, and took a look into the recent history of both programs.

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Sutton’s football team opened the C-2 state playoffs with what many people thought could be a dangerous first round challenge in the Yutan Chieftains.

In 2017, the Chieftains went into the C-2 state playoffs as the No. 16 seed and ran the table to claim the C-2 state title.

This year, after a year away from the playoffs for Yutan, the very same scenario stood, as the Mustangs, the top seed in the post-season, hosted the No. 16 seed Chieftains.

A determined and powerful running game, however, made sure that history wouldn’t repeat itself, as the Mustangs, behind a strong stable of backfield mates, rolled up 462 rushing yards on 52 carries and crushed Yutan, 46-7, to advance to the quarterfinal round of the playoffs.