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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Lubbock meet starts off 2004 for swimmers
The Pecos Eagles will see several teams they'll be seeing again at the
same site a month from now, and several other teams they won't be
seeing at all for the rest of the season this weekend, when the Eagles
compete in the Lubbock Invitational, the final pre-district meet for
the 2003-04 season.
Andrews, Monahans and Fort Stockton from Pecos' District 4-4A will
be at the meet, along with several other 4A schools from El Paso and
the Panhandle who Pecos could see again next month in Lubbock at
regionals. The Eagles will also face the host Class 5A schools from
Lubbock, along with 5As from El Paso, Amarillo, Odessa and Abilene,
plus Fort Bend Elkins from the Houston area.
Competition will begin with a preliminaries and the 3 meter diving
competition on Friday, at 1 p.m. The 1-meter diving event will be held
Saturday morning, followed by the finals at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
Pecos' boys and girls took first place in each of their last four
meets, but with the large field and high number of Class 5A schools
entered, none of the Eagle swimmers go into their races seeded first.
Coach Terri Morse said the girls will be at an added disadvantage with
two swimmers absent from this weekend's competition.
"I'm going to have to scratch Susan (Moore). She still has stitches
in her foot and Amanda Contreras hyperextended her knee on Tuesday in
the basketball game, so I'll have to scratch her," Morse said.
Moore was seeded fourth in the 50 yard freestyle and seventh in the
100 free, and Morse said the absence of both her and Contreras would
force changes in the relay line-ups for the girls.
"I had to change things up a bit. In the 200 medley Teddie Salcido
will swim the backstroke and I'll have Amie Reynolds at the
breaststroke, Lindsey Shaw at the fly and Jessica Minjarez at the
freestyle. In the 200 free I'll have Betsy Lujan, Ashley Horsburgh,
Amie Reynolds and Catherine Minjarez. I'm moving Catherine from the 200
medley to the 200 free in order to try and get into the finals."
She said Lujan, Salcido, Horsburgh and Catherine Minjarez would swim
the 'A' relay and Jessica Minjarez Shaw, Ashley Mendoza and Cynthia
Maramalejo would swim the 'B' relay in the 400 freestyle.
The boys will have all their swimmers, but Morse said she would
still make a few changes in the relays.
"I'm going to put Max (Key) on the medley at freestyle to see if we
can win that relay, and I'm going to move Daniel (Quintana) to the 200
free," she said. "In the 400 free I'm going to lead off with Max for
the first 100, because I want to see what I'm going to put him in at
district, the 50 (free) 100 or the 100 breaststroke."
Morse will also have freshman Matt Oglesby in the 100-yard
butterfly, while his brother Will swims the 500 free and the 100
backstroke. They're seeded second in their races, as is Key in the 50
free and 100 breaststroke and the 200 medley relay team. The highest
seed for the girls is also a No. 2 spot, by Catherine Minjarez in the
100 fly.
After this weekend the Eagles will have two weeks off before
district competition in Fort Stockton. Regionals will be the first
weekend of February back at the Pete Ragus Aquatic Center in Lubbock
and the state finals are Feb. 20-21 in Austin.
Eagles have lighter lifting schedule in '04
The Pecos Eagles' powerlifting team may not have as many events this
winter as they did a year ago, but at least it's not dead, which was
the program's status following the end of the 2003 season.
The 2004 season opens for the Eagles on Jan. 17 at Odessa High, and
will be followed by two other meets before regional competition in
March. The program was scheduled to be eliminated after only three
years of competition due to budget cuts, but was kept alive when new
head football coach and athletic director Patrick Willis said he would
oversee the program.
Part of the reason was the need for an off-season weight program for
Pecos' football players. "Everybody in the off-season program is going
to be powerlifting," Willis said, though not all would be making the
trips to meet competition, and the team will also have girls competing
again this season.
"We'll have about eight girls and probably around 20 boys eventually
will be lifting," he said. For the meets, Willis said, "I'll take a
full boys team of 11 and I'll take all the girls who are eligible."
After their opening meet at Odessa High, the Eagles will compete on
Jan. 31 in Monahans. From there, Pecos will have four weeks off before
their next meet, on Feb.. 28 at Kermit.
Any Eagle girls who qualify for regionals will go back to Kermit the
following Saturday for regional competition, while the boys who qualify
for regionals will go to Lubbock on March 13. State competition for the
girls will be March 20 in Killeen and for the boys it will be March 27
in Fort Worth.
While working with the powerlifting team, Willis is also working on
the Eagles' 2004 football schedule. He said the Eagles will scrimmage
Andrews in August and have five tentative games lined up to start the
season, but those will have to await the announcement of the bi-annual
realignment by the University Interscholastic League, scheduled for
Feb. 2.
Pecos is expected to stay in a Permian Basin-area district, with
several Class 3A-sized schools in El Paso petitioning to play in Class
4A for the next two years. However, district rival Kermit is expected
to drop to Class 2A, and the UIL could add one or more teams to the
district, due to both the loss of the Yellowjackets and the decision
last year by Presidio to drop football.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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Copyright 2003 by Pecos Enterprise
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