Sports

Calumet High School’s baseball team reached the semifinals of the Class B State Championships before losing to Fort Cobb/Broxton.

See Saturday’s paper for a recap.

MIDWEST CITY – A repeat trip to the Class 5A State Fast-Pitch Softball State Championships will have to come through the consolation bracket as El Reno High School suffered an 11-1 loss to Carl Albert.

The Indians went 1-1 on the first day of the Region 1 Championships on the Titans home turf, run-ruling Ardmore 11-0 in five innings. El Reno, now 13-17 on the season, will face the Tigers again in an elimination game.

If successful, the Indians will have to defeat Carl Albert twice to earn their third trip to state in the past four seasons.

While giving up a noticeable height difference across the net, El Reno High School’s volleyball team rode a series of unforced errors by Del City to a 3-0 win over the Eagles.

The 25-13/25-11/25-15 victory was the third in the past five matches for El Reno, which improved to 11-14 on the season and 2-2 in the Suburban Conference standings.

El Reno trailed only once in the match as Del City committed 11 unforced errors out of the first 12 points in game one. The Eagles had a total of 51 errors over the three games including a service miscue on match point.

Last week’s 41-40 win over Noble came with a season-high 423 yards of total offense which put El Reno High School’s football team over the 1,000-yard mark for the season.

El Reno’s junior high football teams returned to Memorial Stadium last week after a two-week road swing to split a Suburban Conference doubleheader with Guthrie.

The seventh-grade team lost 36-32 despite a 65-yard kickoff return and a 30-yard run, both for touchdowns, by Leo Willis.

The eighth-grade team moved to 6-0 on the year with a 28-18 win, aided by a 30-yard scoring jaunt by Tahir Neal.

Redlands Community College’s golf team has been on a stellar roll after taking second place at the recent Oklahoma Baptist University Fall Invitational.

Playing the 5,803-yard Shawnee Country Club Course, Redlands carded a 36-hole total of 636 (313/323) to finish 13 shots back of the host school. Northwestern Oklahoma State (645), University of Arkansas-Monticello (648) and Seminole State College (744) rounded out the field.

Avenging an earlier one-goal loss to the Bucks, Redlands Community College’s soccer team earned its first road win of the season with a 3-0 shutout of the University of Arkansas Rich Mountain.

The victory came in the second of four straight road matches for the Cougars, who improved to 3-8 on the season and 2-6 in the NJCAA Region 2 standings – which is sixth.

El Reno High School’s football team will be facing a few new wrinkles brought on by this week’s District 5A-1 home game against Midwest City – first starting with the day. The game is Thursday at Memorial Stadium with kickoff at 7 p.m.

While Thursday games are nothing new to El Reno, the situation which brought it on is.

The game does not fall over EHS’ fall break or against an opponent which shares a stadium.

“This year every team was supposed to schedule a Thursday game due to the shortage of officials and it’s going to stay that way.

While the play took only a few seconds to unfold, it seemed like a lifetime to El Reno High School linebacker Diante Palmer.

“It was going in slow motion. I could see the ball coming into the end zone,” said Palmer.

The senior broke up a two-point conversion pass from Noble quarterback Colin Fisher to help preserve a wild 41-40 win for El Reno on homecoming night.

“I saw them drop down for a pass and the only thing that went through my head was go for the ball. I was going for the interception but I also really wanted to just break up the pass,” said Palmer.

It’s taken over four decades but Calumet High School’s baseball team has found its way back to the state baseball tourney after winning the Class B, Region 3 Championships.

Calumet, ranked third in the state, defeated Big Pasture (11-4) and Moss (13-1) to punch its state ticket with a 24-4 overall record.

The Chieftains open up the Class B State Championships Thursday at Edmond Memorial. Calumet has made state in the fall just one time before, losing 16-0 to Asher in 1975 – a gap of 45 years.