CRB Ends East Greene's Season

HAWKS FALL IN DISTRICT OPENER, 54-36

Coon Rapids-Bayard ended the Hawks’ basketball season on Feb. 18 with a 54-36 first-round win in district action in Coon Rapids. East Greene ended the season at 9-12. The Hawks had concluded the regular season on a high note, downing Adair-Casey 61-39 in Rippey on Friday, Feb. 12. EG’s final West Conference game against Madrid had been postponed due to weather from Tuesday, Feb. 9, to Monday, Feb. 15, and then cancelled due to more bad weather that night.

Cancellations and postponements were the watchword for the 2009-10 basketball season throughout the state. Despite all the missed days of school due to bad weather, the Hawks were able to play all the games on their schedule except the final home tilt with league foe Madrid.

EG finished in seventh place in the West Central Conference at 7-10, showing considerable improvement from last year’s 4-14 mark, which tied them for eighth place with Madrid. This year’s 9-12 mark is a step ahead from the 2008-09 record of 5-17.

EG and Coon Rapids-Bayard had split during the season, with the Hawks squeaking by the Crusaders in Rippey, 39-37, and CRB getting the win on its home court in the second half of the season, 49-38.

The “rubber match” between the two teams proved to be another defensive struggle. The Hawks got out of the gate strong, taking a 17-13 lead after the first quarter, but CRB put on the defensive clamps, holding the Hawks to just 4 points in the second period while scoring 19. The 32-21 halftime lead would hold up as the Hawks could not mount a challenge, although they played even with CRB in the third quarter with each team scoring 10 points. EG got just 5 points on the board in the last stanza, and the Crusaders moved on to a semifinal round match-up against Glidden-Ralston.

CRB and GR had locked horns in the first game of the season with GR prevailing in a defensive struggle, 40-32. GR went on to post one of its better seasons in recent years, finishing 11-9 and tying with Exira for fifth place at 8-9 in the Rolling Hills Conference. GR had secured the No. 2 seed in District 13 and drew Rolling Hills foe Adair-Casey in a first round (quarterfinal) game in Glidden. The two teams had split during the regular season, but this game was all GR as the Wildcats got the win, 53-41.

Coon Rapids-Bayard got off to a sluggish start in the early part of the season. After losing the season opener to GR, the Crusaders struggled to a 3-4 mark in the West Central and 4-6 overall. But after a loss to Panorama, a Class 2A team that went on to finish second in the conference, the Crusaders went on to win 8 of their next 11 games, including a five-game winning streak. CRB’s only losses came at the hands of 2A teams Guthrie Center and Des Moines Christian. DMC is the state’s undefeated top-ranked 2A team and West Central champion, while perennial power Guthrie finished third in the league just behind DMC and Panorama. Each team was crowned champion of its 2A district tournament on Tuesday and has advanced to the substate round on Saturday night. Guthrie (19-5) takes on IKM-Manning (23-0) in Council Bluffs for the Substate 8 championship, while DMC (25-0) tangles with West Marshall (22-3) in Johnston for the Substate 7 crown. The winners advance to the State Tournament March 8-13 at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

CRB MOVES ON: The Crusaders got revenge for that season opening loss with a big 40-28 win over GR last night on the Wildcats home court. CRB takes on Rockwell City-Lytton (15-4) tonight for the district championship in Guthrie Center. RCL opened tourney play with a 69-44 win over Southern Cal and then sidelined Southeast Webster-Grand last night in a semifinal game in Rockwell City, 67-54. SWG had advanced with an opening round squeaker over Paton-Churdan, 54-52, which ended PC’s season at 2-19.

RCL finished third in the tough Twin Lakes Conference at 8-4 just behind East Sac (8-3). Manson-Northwest Webster won the Twin Lakes with an 11-1 mark while Pocahontas/Pomeroy-Palmer was fourth at 7-4. RCL was the only 1A school among those upper division teams, finishing ahead of 2A Prairie Valley (3-9) and the only other 1A schools in the conference, Southeast Webster-Grand (3-9) and Southern Cal (1-11).

One of RCL’s seven non-conference wins came against East Greene, 63-53, on Jan. 30 in Rockwell City. Comparatively, CRB has two home court wins over EG of 11 and 18 points. CRB racked up a fourth-place finish in a league dominated by 2A schools as well, including the top-ranked team in the state.

The winner of tonight’s District 13 championship takes on the District 14 champion in the Substate 7 championship game on Saturday night in Denison. CAM (Anita) upset Rolling Hills foe Elk Horn-Kimballton last night in Elk Horn 32-30 to advance to the D14 championship game tonight against Boyer Valley (Dunlap) in Missouri Valley.

EG SENIOR NIGHT VS. AC: Six Hawk basketball seniors were honored at the Friday, Feb. 12, game against Adair-Casey in Rippey which was the final scheduled home game for the season, although a makeup game with Madrid was planned for the following Monday but cancelled due to the weather. Tom Beger, Zach Beyerink, Tyler Gathercoal, Josh Neese, Jesse Priest, and Joe Swanson made their last appearance on the EG court. Also honored were senior cheerleaders Kelsey Hatfield and Leah Perry along with senior girls basketball players Jessie Beaman and Malarie Gilley. The Hawkettes had already ended their regular season and had advanced in the first round of post-season play the previous night at Madrid.

Five of the senior Hawks made up the starting line up and got the team off to an 8-0 start. EG was up 11-5 at the quarter break and 25-21 at the half. The Bombers were still in it after three quarters of play, trailing 40-33 but the Hawks’ depth came through in the final period as they scored 21 points and limited AC to just 6, going on to post a big 61-39 win over a team that had advanced last year to the 1A state tournament, but was rebuilding this year.

Priest led the scoring with 16 points. All 15 members of the Hawk varsity saw action with Beger scoring 8, Neese 4, and Gathercoal 2 in their final appearance on the EG home floor. Junior point guard Aaron Lyons had a big night going 5-5 from the field and 2-2 from behind the arc for 12 points. 6-5 junior center Nic Nicolaisen put up 9 points and led the rebounding brigade with 6, with Neese also pulling down 6 boards and Priest 5.

Rounding out the scoring with 2 points each were juniors Chaz Wessels, Tyler Cooklin, Schlyer Bardole, Wes Onken, and Zach Dearborn. Freshman Tory Beger, younger brother of Tom, added 2 points, and fellow freshman Reed Ostrander, a 6-4 center, pulled down a rebound as they made their mark on the future of Hawk hoopsterdom.

The Hawks’ effort was solid all around with 23 of 44 shooting from the field for 52% and 3 of 11 from three point land for 28%. EG was 12-19 from the charity stripe, a solid 64% clip. EG pulled down 29 rebounds and turned the ball over just 9 times. EG allowed the Bombers to get to the free throw line six times, where they made 4 for 67%, and held them to 15 of 39 two-point shots, a 38% mark. The Bombers did have success behind the arc, though, connecting on half of their of 10 attempts. Senior point guard Michael Christofferson led AC with 16 points.

EYE ON GJ SAYS: CRB in Coon Rapids was a tough draw for the Hawks. Coach Dean Lyons and the entire Hawk squad are to be commended for a fine season. EG loses Jessie Priest and Tom Beger off the starting five, but returns a very solid nucleus in its returning junior class and the two freshmen on the varsity.

EG played improved ball in the latter half of the season and scored big wins over Guthrie Center, West Central Valley and Woodward-Granger in January--all teams that had topped the Hawks in the first half of the conference season. EG made a good showing against a very fine Rockwell City-Lytton team and scored big wins in its non-conference tilts against 1A schools Southeast Webster-Grand and Adair-Casey, winning by 25 and 22 points respectively against those teams from the Twin Lakes and Rolling Hills conferences.

This was a bittersweet year for several teams in the Twin Lakes and Rolling Hills. RCL and Southern Cal played their last basketball games as competitors as the two Calhoun County schools have agreed to merge all sports (wrestling and summer sports have been shared for several years) starting next year, 2010-11, although since they already share softball and baseball, the shift is really occurring now at the end of the basketball season and into track and golf this spring. The schools have also agreed to move toward a whole-grade sharing arrangement in the year following (2011-12) but are still working out the details as to which school and town (Rockwell City or Lake City) would host the high school and which the middle school, although it looks likely each town would continue to have an elementary school. RCL closed its school building in Lytton at the end of last school year. Also unknown is the fate of the Southern Cal elementary building in Lohrville, which merged with Lake City to form the Southern Cal district in the 1990s.

Similarly, Elk Horn-Kimballton and Exira will extend what began as a football sharing agreement this fall (2009). EHK and Exira will formally link together in a similar whole-grade sharing agreement and begin sharing all sports next year, although they had been sharing wrestling and girls golf the past few seasons.

As both EHK and Exira are in the Rolling Hills, the league will drop down from 10 teams to 9. Last year, East Greene had applied to the Rolling Hills but it was agreed to keep the league membership at 10, so East Greene remained in the West Central, where it has been a member since 1996-97. East Greene is the smallest of the 10 West Central Conference schools and former members Glidden-Ralston and Paton-Churdan had already left the West Central to join the Rolling Hills in 2009 and 2007, respectively. These are EG’s two longest rivals, all having been members of the same conference since the late 1970s, when East Greene and Paton-Churdan left the original West Central Conference (formed in 1966-67) and joined with Glidden-Ralston, YJB, Bayard, Coon Rapids, Scranton and Cedar Valley to form the Central Valley Conference. That league remained intact until around 1990 when another wave of school reorganizations saw the demise of Scranton, YJB and Cedar Valley, while Coon Rapids and Bayard had already merged to form Coon Rapids-Bayard. YJB merged with Panora-Linden to form Panorama and Cedar Valley merged with Prairie (Gowrie) to form Prairie Valley. Greene County rival Scranton merged with Jefferson, the county seat and largest school in the county, to form an even larger school, Jefferson-Scranton, reducing the number of high schools in Greene County to three.

East Greene, Paton-Churdan and Glidden-Ralston then joined with Southeast Webster and four northwest Iowa schools to form the Coon River Valley Conference. Conference foes Schaller-Crestland, Newell-Fonda, Pomeroy-Palmer and St. Mary’s (Storm Lake) were new to East Greene, but Southeast Webster was not, as it had been created by a merger of Central Webster and Dayton. Those were two of the original members of the Little Central Conference formed in 1959-60, the same year that Grand Community of Boxholm was formed, as was East Greene, a merger of Grand Junction and Dana, and Central Webster, the new district formed when Lehigh, Burnside and Harcourt merged together.

The original Little Central Conference participated in boys and girls basketball and baseball only, with softball and track not yet official sports in most schools in the early 60s. None of the six schools offered football, as the boys played baseball in the fall. The original six members of the Little Central were East Greene, Central Webster, Dayton, Grand, Stratford and Churdan. The league had a slight but perceptible shift in 1962-63 when East Greene and Rippey merged, expanding the size of East Greene, and in 1964-65 when Churdan merged with Paton to form Paton-Churdan, although the high school at Paton had been closed the same year Rippey was closed, 1961-62. For three years, 1959-60, 1960-61 and 1961-62 there were separate and distinct high schools--East Greene and Rippey on the east side of the county, and Churdan and Paton in the north. Debate raged among Paton town and rural residents about whether they should merge with Churdan or Jefferson. As it was, a number of families to the west and southwest of Paton aligned with Jefferson, which is why when looking at the district map of Paton-Churdan, the Jefferson district’s northern-most boundary exceeds the line drawn straight west along the paved county road that heads west out of Paton, which is the main conduit between Paton and Churdan in Paton and Dawson townships.

The official vote was not taken until 1965, although families had pretty much chosen where they were going to send their kids to school by then. So for 1962-63 and 1963-64, the record books will show competition between East Greene and Churdan, but no contests between EG and PC until 1964-65.

The Eye Guy believes that Grand Junction, Rippey, Dana, Paton and Churdan were all members of a Greene County Conference along with Cooper throughout much of the 1950s, but the Greene County Conference is not to be confused with the annual boys and girls Greene County Tournaments in basketball (and possibly baseball). Those events throughout the 1940s and 1950s also included Scranton, Jefferson and Farlin, until that school closed. The Greene County Conference was most likely disbanded after the 1958-59 season, as Dana, Grand Junction and Cooper, which merged with Jefferson and closed its high school, all would have left the conference, leaving just Rippey and Paton. No doubt those were also bittersweet county tournaments in the early 1960s as so many changes were underway among the county high schools. Records show that one of the final girls county tournaments (1961) was hosted by East Greene in the Grand Junction gym and was a win for EG (undefeated up until the district finals and led by All-Stater and Hall of Fame member Pam Slock) over Rippey. The following year would most likely have been the last tournament and marked the last appearance by teams from Paton and Rippey. It would have been just a five-team event (East Greene, Paton, Rippey, Churdan and Scranton) as Jefferson did not field a girls baskeball team until the early 1970s, after Title IX was enacted.

When EG and PC became larger schools, each introduced football. EG in the fall of 1963 (the second year after Rippey came in) and PC in the fall of 1965. The following year, 1966-67 those two schools joined six other schools to form the first West Central Conference, extending the Central from “Little Central.” Those charter members were EG, PC, Central Webster (Burnside), Prairie (Gowrie), YJB, Ogden, Story City and United (Boone). The “Boone” in United of Boone actually stood for rural Boone County, as the district had been formed in the late 1950s when three towns in eastern Boone County--Luther, Jordan and Napier--merged together to form United. The actual high school was first housed in the existing Luther school building but then a new school building was built in the country along a site on U.S. Highway 30 very close to the county line with Story County putting the new United High School closer to Ames than Boone, hence creating much confusion of who or what made up the United of Boone district. (The district still exists today as a K-6 entity with high school and middle school students open enrolling out to adjacent larger districts Ames, Boone, Gilbert and Ballard.)

Big changes will be occurring among the teams remaining in the Twin Lakes after the RCL-SC realignment, as there will be just six teams remaining: RCL-SC, East Sac, Manson-Northwest Webster, Prairie Valley, Southeast Webster and Pocahontas/Pomeroy-Palmer. Similarly, the Northwest Conference has been shrinking as the schools that formed the league after the Coon River Valley disbanded (St. Mary’s, Newell-Fonda, Schaller-Crestland and Pomeroy-Palmer) along with Alta, Aurelia and Sac City (members of the Twin Lakes up until 1996) and Albert City-Truesdale and Sioux Central to make a nine-team league, are very much in transition.

The first to go was Albert City-Truesdale, which formed an alignment (later merger) with Laurens-Marathon, also a Twin Lakes member up until a few years ago. Pomeroy-Palmer aligned its athletics with Pocahontas, dropping the Northwest down to 7 members, but then Laurens-Marathon shifted over from the Twin Lakes, making it an eight-league team again, but dropping the Twin Lakes from seven to six members. However, Southeast Webster-Grand left the North Star Conference and joined the Twin Lakes to move it to the present seven members.

Sac City merged with Wall Lake View Auburn two years ago to form East Sac, so that dropped the Northwest down to 7 teams again but kept the Twin Lakes intact at 7, occupying the WLVA slot.

This season marked the end of Schaller-Crestland, which kept is state-ranked volleyball team intact in the fall, but merged all sports thereafter with Galva-Holstein to form Ridge View, again dropping the Northwest to just 6 teams.

As the scenarios involving the Twin Lakes and Northwest teams were playing out last year, discussions got underway to form a Super Conference among the two, which at that time involved 7 teams from each league, forming a 14-team league. Now, with just six remaining in each league, a 12-team league seems more feasible.

If East Greene is accepted into the Rolling Hills, it will again compete head-to-head with Paton-Churdan and Glidden-Ralston. In addition to Adair-Casey, the other teams in the present Rolling Hills are Elk Horn-Kimballton, Exira, CAM (Anita), Ankeny Christian, Iowa Christian, Walnut and Orient-Macksburg.