Sports

El Reno High School honored two of its players to surpass the 1,000-point career scoring mark in the month of December.

Nick Owen has no problem with college athletes getting a little extra money in their pockets each month given the time commitment required to play college sports.

With expanding regular-season schedules, offseason training and degree course work, there is little free time to get even a part-time job to earn some spending money.

El Reno High School senior Izzy Choat (seated center) recently signed an National Letter of Intent to play softball for Kansas-based Independence Community College.

Choat is the second player from EHS to sign with a college program this school term.

El Reno High School’s basketball teams were slated to wrap up the 2024 portion of their schedules at home against Noble.

Both teams entered the District 5A-1 battles with the Bears with undefeated 5-0 records.

See Saturday’s edition for complete coverage of the contests with Noble.

Points were hard to come by for two of the county’s three small schools in their first games back from tournament action as both were dealt with road losses.

Union City High School’s girls basketball team tied its season-low point total in a 60-31 loss to Hydro-Eakly. The setback left the Tigers with a 7-4 overall record.

Held to single-digit scoring in three of the four periods, Union City managed a 14-point third period but still trailed 51-28 going into the final eight minutes. The Tigers were held to three points in the fourth.

Despite hitting only three perimeter shots, Calumet High School’s boys basketball team was able to escape a road upset bid by Thomas-Fay/Custer and remain unbeaten on the season.

The Chieftains, ranked second in Class B, moved to 10-0 on the season with a 59-52 win over the Terriers. It was the second closest winning margin of the season for Calumet as well as the second lowest offensive output.

Jacob Mayfield’s team entered the game having beaten teams by an average of 35 points and scored 60 or more points in seven games.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Though she would have preferred to have been at home, El Reno High School senior Lilly Thomas knows some things in life are just too good to wait.

Thomas scored a team-high 25 points in a 74-19 road win over Southeast to become the third El Reno player in the past four years to surpass the 1,000-point career scoring mark.

“I kind of wanted to hit it at home but it’s all good. This feels pretty good,” said Thomas.

OKLAHOMA CITY – What had the potential to be a see-saw battle, given the first two minutes, turned into a lopsided blowout for El Reno High School’s boys basketball team.

The Indians used a pair of multi-point runs in the first two periods to break through Southeast’s defense for a 93-40 victory. Matching its season-high offensive output, El Reno moved to 5-0 on the season.

More importantly, the Indians remain in step with Carl Albert (3-0) for the lead in District 5A-1 with a 2-0 mark - the same as Lawton MacArthur. Noble (2-1) is currently fourth in the league.

Freshman Remy Whitney was one of three placers for El Reno High School’s girls wrestling team, which placed 13th at the 2024 Wrestle Like a Girl Invitational, hosted by Cache.

El Reno logged 123.5 points in the 46-team field.

Whitney (100) won her weight class with a 4-0 record that included three first-period falls en route to the finals. There she scored a 19-4 technical fall over Broken Arrow’s Alina Peralta, securing 29.5 team points.

Pushing six grapplers into the top 15 and placing 10 overall, El Reno High School’s boys wrestling team finished 19th overall out of 35 teams at the 2024 Mid-America Nationals in Enid.

El Reno scored 157 points, with 59 of those coming from Theron Davis (175) as the freshman took fourth place with a 5-1 record. Davis logged three falls and a pair of major decisions, with his fastest fall being 41 seconds over Collinsville’s Sean Ross.

Coleman Iker (215) and Nick Mitchum (heavyweight) both placed 10th with duplicate 4-4 records and combined for 41 team points.