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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Sports
Friday, May 11, 2001
Pecos, Canyon hope for no weather woes
By JON FULBRIGHT
Staff Writer
Weather conditions were a big factor the last time the Pecos Eagles
and Canyon Eagles met in the Class 4A baseball playoffs. And weather
could be a factor again this weekend, when the Eagle teams meet in the
area round of the playoffs beginning this afternoon at Howard College in
Big Spring.
Game 1 of the best-of-three series is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. today, with
Game 2 at 10 a.m. Saturday and a deciding game, if needed, at about 1 p.m.
on Saturday. The winner will face Frenship or El Paso Burges in the Region
I-4A quarterfinals next weekend.
Forecasts today call for a 30 to 40 percent chance of rain in the Big
Spring area. Afternoon showers there would definitely cause problems for
Pecos and Canyon, because there are no lights at Howard College's field,
meaning the teams would either have to drive to find a field with lights,
or possibly cut their series down to a one-game playoff on Saturday.
Moffett Field in Snyder, 50 miles from Big Spring, is the nearest field
with lights that is not being used for baseball playoffs this weekend.
Canyon already has experience with rainouts in the 2001. Their series
last Friday against Big Spring was supposed to be played in Lubbock, but
had to be moved to Seminole because of thunderstorms in the Lubbock area.
The Panhandle Eagles lost the rain-delayed game last Friday, but came back
Saturday to defeat the Steers, 11-10 and 8-7, to advance to the area round
against Pecos, which won the District 2-4A title and drew a bye in the first
round of the state playoffs.
Canyon and Big Spring's 75-mile trip to Seminole was nothing compared
with the ordeal Pecos and Canyon went through 14 years ago, when the teams
faced each other in the playoffs on Memorial Day weekend in Lubbock. That
series opened up on May 22, 1987, when storms ranged throughout West Texas,
including the worst storm in Reeves County's history, which spawned the Saragosa
tornado that left 30 people dead.
The storms weren't as severe around Lubbock, but they did stop Game 1
of the series in the sixth inning, with Canyon winning 7-1, and forced Eagles'
coach Bubba Williams to spend half of Saturday trying to find a dry field
to play on, in order to get in the final two games of the series.
The teams ended up driving 140 miles southeast to Eunice, N.M., and didn't
get their game started until just before 6 p.m. Pecos ended up winning that
contest, 7-5, then came back and won the deciding game of the series by the
same 7-5 score, in a game where the final out wasn't recorded until 11:30
p.m.
That was still 45 minutes earlier than Andrews and Hereford finished up
their series, 20 miles to the south in Jal, N.M. Both those teams also were
rained out in Lubbock, and couldn't get Game 2 of their series started until
the Jal field dried off, after 9:30 p.m. In that case, Hereford, which had
won the first game on Friday, also took Game 2, preventing the teams from
having to play a deciding game at 1:15 in the morning.
Hereford is back in New Mexico this weekend, playing El Paso Riverside
in Hobbs after sweeping Andrews. The Eagles are hoping there are no side
trips to New Mexico on their schedule this weekend, but will be hoping for
the same final results against Canyon this time around.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 915-445-5475, FAX 915-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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Copyright 2000 by Pecos Enterprise
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