El Reno High School’s sporting programs shifted into high gear Monday morning as the football team kicked off the first of two-a-day practices as the Indians have just 18 days to prepare for the 2020 season opener.
It’s the third fall sport at EHS to begin preseason drills. Softball and volleyball opened last month and are set to kick off the 2020 season on Tuesday.
Fall practice will begin bright and early Monday for El Reno High School’s football team as the Indians begin the first of at least four two-a-day practices.
Morning practices will start at 7:30 and will be followed by an afternoon practice beginning at 4. The program will follow the district’s COVID-19 precautions which began in early June.
“We will be doing temperature checks and exposure screenings and now we are wearing masks in the weight room and in all meeting rooms,” said El Reno head coach Chuck Atchison.
El Reno High School center fielder Krystiana Guzman throws toward third base after making a sliding catch during a practice last week. El Reno is set to open the season Tuesday at Ardmore before hosting its own tournament on Friday and Saturday.
There will be sports played at Redlands Community College for the 2020-21 academic year, however, major changes have been implemented from the National Junior College Athletic Association.
Due to COVID-19, all sports except for bowling, cross country, half marathon and Division III women’s tennis have been moved to the spring.
Redlands began offering both men’s and women’s cross country in 2019 but does not offer the other sports to be contested in 2020.
The Cougars do compete in women’s soccer, women’s golf, baseball and men’s and women’s basketball.
Growing up as a football ball boy, Rafe Goucher watched many talented El Reno High School athletes earn the highest honor handed out to prep players in Oklahoma – All-State laurels.
It drove him to become one of the program’s better two-way linemen in school history and eventually earn him the chance to don the coveted blue and yellow jacket reserved for those selected as All-Staters by the Oklahoma Coaches Association.
Texoma:
Lake level normal. Water temperature 80 degrees.
Striped bass good on Alabama rig, hair jigs, live shad, sassy shad, top water.
Catfish fair on chicken liver, punch bait, shad.
Crappie fair on hair jigs, minnows.
Fishing is good early mornings and anglers should use top water lures when surface feeding is present and transfer to slabs and down rigging umbrella rigs as the morning
progresses. Top water action has been good on the Denison Dam. Channel cat are being caught on baited holes in shallow water.
El Reno native Cameron Hill made his Major League Baseball debut Sunday afternoon, retiring the side in the top of the ninth inning to preserve the Cleveland Indians 9-2 win over Kansas City.
In the process, Hill recorded his first MLB strikeout to end the game, getting Royals left-hander Erick Mejia to chase an 83-mph slider in the top of the zone. Hill threw 10 pitches in the debut, six of those strikes.
“Game doesn’t change, only the person playing it,” said Hill after the game.
Either on the 660-foot shortened course or the full 1,000-foot tracks, the 2020 Smoke on the Water Drag Boat Races produced some of the fastest speeds on Lake El Reno since the event moved here seven years ago.
“Without timing lights I would guess they were hitting well over 150 miles per hour in the Unlimited Top Fuel. That’s some of the biggest speeds we have ever had,” said co-organizer Josh Finnigan.
High winds on the lake forced day one racing to be delayed over an hour and the course shortened to 660 feet.
While band and volleyball began preseason work last week, El Reno High School’s softball program remains closed due to complications with COVID-19.
“Softball will be shut down until Monday (July 27) because we had a second player test positive.
“They have not been together out there since July 13 and that gives us two weeks that the facility has been locked up,” said El Reno Athletic Director Rodney Haydon.
