Pitching with Pritch
Congratulations to the Plainsmen boy’s cross-country team and to their coaches for an outstanding season and a strong finish at the state meet at Kearney last week.
The Class D State Champion was Malcolm, which is my second favorite high school team in Nebraska. They won the state championship with a team that only had one senior. The Plainsmen will also have a strong team returning next year as they too only had one senior on the state team.
Congratulations to Caden Waitley who medaled for the Plainsmen coming across the finish line in ninth place and also to Jaden Dietlein, Nathan Kemling, Evan Sestak, Jarin Tines and Matthew Hahn. Paula Wurst and her Assistant Lance Wurst will have a talented bunch of returning people to go with the others who got lots of valuable running experience this cross country season.
I have a lot of respect for cross country and track athletes. I don’t care how people spin it, competitive running is hard work and these people put in a lot of that commodity during the summer and during the season.
This season there seems to be a number of athletes joining the cross country ranks. It was reported in one of the Eastern Nebraska papers that at a junior varsity meet in Lincoln there were 438 runners in the JV portion of a meet.
At Lincoln East there were 128 kids out for cross country, 63 boys and 65 girls. Lincoln Southwest had more than 120 kids out for the sport. All the Lincoln schools had big squads with Pius having 90, Lincoln Southeast 75, and Lincoln North Star 60. Lincoln East coach Brian Kabourek commented that “I always joke, football has a lot of kids, and they’ve got more coaches per kid than what we do, but when they practice, at least their kids aren’t running away from them.”
Good luck football team
Congratulations are also in order for the Plainsmen football team and coaches as they have made the playoffs again this year. They have had a good season and only about 45 seconds or so separates them from being undefeated.
I have always said if you live out here in Western Nebraska you better be prepared to drive and the Plainsmen are going to put that to the test for themselves and Plainsmen fans as they are a ninth seed in the West and play at Clearwater-Orchard at Clearwater on Thursday at 2 p.m. MT.
That little jaunt is just somewhere around four hours and 40 minutes to the east of us according to Google Maps. There is just something very difficult about saying things like “We are in the west bracket but we are playing Clearwater at Clearwater and that is clear back east.” We have played a number of playoff games back east so this will just be another one. Good Luck to the Plainsmen.
Too many teams in playoffs
Now here is my short rant about the Class D1 football playoffs. There are too many teams in the playoff. Thirty-two teams are about 16 too many.
There are four teams that have won three or fewer games and they are in the playoffs. Those teams are 3-5, 3-5, 2-6 and 1-7. I find it hard to think that kind of record should get you into the playoffs.
If I am 1-7, I think I would be ready to check it in for the year. There are six teams that are 4-4, a little bit better but still, do they belong in a football playoff?
Then there are five teams that are 5-3. Maybe they started slow and won their last five games. I doubt that is the situation but I just think there are too many teams in the playoffs.
Would cutting the number to 16 teams make traveling any better? Probably not, but at this point I think you would want as much quality in the teams playing as possible. That is just my thoughts on the situation. I could be wrong. But…