Sports

On a night when all eyes were on Malachi Nicholson’s quest to break the 2,000-yard rushing mark for the season, the senior served as a decoy on the most critical snaps – scoring chances.

Nicholson was held without a touchdown for the first time this season but El Reno got five scores from three different ball carriers en route to a 35-10 win over Ardmore.

“I’m always all right with that, giving my teammates the ball and not always to me so other teams cannot just focus on me. They have got to worry about other people,” said Nicholson.

Entering the latter stages of the regular season, the phrase “coach speak” tends to pop up in just about every aspect of high school football.

Coaches use phrases like “one game at a time,” “control our own destiny” or “can’t overlook anyone” in interviews and team meetings.

In the case of El Reno High School’s football team, each one of those phrases is a reality with three games left in the regular season.

“It’s really true. We’ve got to do our job first and foremost and take things one game at a time,” said head coach Russell Cook.

Soccer has grown into the fourth most popular sport in the United States with over 31 percent of all Americans considering themselves a fan, according to a 2019 Gallup survey.

And at Redlands Community College, there may be more of those fans in the stands considering a number of the players on the women’s team are from local high schools.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association fields 1,057 women’s teams alone over its three levels of competition, with 347 of those being Division 1 programs.

Steady play on both offense and defense, which carried Calumet High School’s baseball team through a 16-game late-season winning streak, abandoned the Chieftains when it was needed most – the state title game.

Calumet, ranked No.2 in the state, committed four errors leading to six runs for top-ranked Fort Cobb-Broxton as the Mustangs run-ruled CHS 10-0 to win the 2023 Class B Fall State High School Baseball Championship.

Though the end goal of reaching the Class 5A State Championships slipped his team’s grasp, El Reno High School fast-pitch softball coach Jason Little was proud of the way his players competed.

El Reno posted a 2-2 record in the Region 2 Championships, defeating Lawton MacArthur twice by scores of 24-1 and 17-0. The Indians were eliminated from state contention with losses to host and fourth-ranked Elgin by scores of 10-0 and 8-3.

“We played hard and never gave up and hopefully we learned a lot about how to get to that next level,” said Little.

MIDWEST CITY – With Piedmont jumping up to Class 6A, the door was left wide open for a new champion at the 2023 Suburban Conference Cross Country Championships – and Guthrie stepped through it.

The Bluejays won both the girls and the boys titles by a margin of 30 points or more. El Reno was fifth in the girls division with 120 points, 96 behind Guthrie, while the EHS boys were seventh with 181 points, 155 back of the champions.

Despite winning two of the final four matches to close the regular season, El Reno High School’s volleyball team had a short stay in the Class 5A playoffs.

Traveling east to eighth-ranked Sapulpa for the Region 8 Championships, El Reno dropped a 3-0 match to the host in the semifinals by scores of 25-14/25-6/25-20.

The loss left El Reno with a 5-16 overall record and extended the school’s longest hiatus away from the state tournament in any sport, having not qualified for the Elite Eight since its lone appearance in 1993.

El Reno football, now 3-3 on the year and 2-1 in the District 5A-1 standings, was slated to host Ardmore Friday night.

The team is close to passing 3,000 total yards after last week’s win over Midwest City.

Letting a golden opportunity to play spoiler slip its grasp, Redlands Community College women’s soccer team dropped a 1-0 match recently at Murray State College.

The Aggies, second in the NJCAA Region 2 standings and ranked 19th nationally, scored a goal with no time showing to end the first half. It was the lone shot that slipped past RCC goalie Haley Inglehart, who posted a season-high 21 saves.

Redlands logged six shots total, two of those from Amya Lindsay and one each by McKenzie Simon, Avery Turner, Gaby Figueroa and Kyla Thompson.

Redlands Community College women’s golf team rebounded from one of its worst rounds to place 15th overall at the 2023 Grace Shin Invitational played at the Golf Club of Edmond.

The Cougars shot an opening round of 337, the highest of the tourney, but rallied for a 316 over the final 18 holes to close with a 653 to edge out Southeastern Oklahoma State University by two shots.