Sports

After a year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Union City High School’s Spring Break Baseball Festival got back on the diamond last week with five host sites holding games – four of those inside Canadian County.

In-county sites El Reno, Union City, Calumet and Okarche hosted games. The fifth site was Minco as teams from across the state converged to play a combined 40 games over two days.

There were 11 ranked teams from the state’s two smallest classes entered in the field.

Five of its seven qualifiers placed in the top 10 as El Reno High School recently won the Class 5A team title at the 2021 Oklahoma Football Coaches Association’s State Powerlifting Championship.

El Reno logged 88 total points from its seven lifters to beat out Ardmore by 35 points for the title. Lawton Eisenhower was third with 35 points. The Indians had the third highest overall point total behind 4A winner Miami (118) and 3A state champion Sulphur (105).

There were 45 districts in the Large School division comprised of Classes 3A-6A.

Redlands Community College’s baseball team snapped a four-game losing streak last week with a 15-12 win over Rose State College to split a doubleheader with the Raiders.

The Cougars improved to 3-11 on the season after dropping the series opener 9-4. That loss came on the heels of setbacks to Cowley County by scores of 10-0 and 10-6.

The win over Rose State was fueled by a nine-run effort over the third through fifth innings, six of those runs coming in the fifth. Holden Tate and Duke Crossley doubled in runs, while Tylor Richey and Patrick Hunter had an RBI-single each.

Redlands Community College’s basketball teams are struggling through three-game losing streaks which have dropped both squads down in the Oklahoma Collegiate Athletic Conference standings.

The RCC men lost a close 66-56 game to Seminole State College last week on the heels of setbacks to Northern Oklahoma College of Tonkawa (73-64) and Eastern Oklahoma (98-84).

The Cougars are now 8-8 on the season and 2-8 and ranked eighth in the OCAC standings.

Redlands Community College’s golf team opened up the spring season recently with a fourth-place finish in the Diffee Invitational held at Kickingbird Golf Course in Edmond.

The Cougars had a 36-hole total of 625 after rounds of 314-311. The University of Central Oklahoma won with a 610 total, followed by Rogers State (613) and Southwestern Oklahoma State (618).

Several El Reno bowlers won scholarship money recently by placing in the 2021 Oklahoma Youth State Championships, held at Heritage Lanes in Oklahoma City.

Zak Billings, Collin Vickers, Mallory Watkins and Brianna Vickers joined forces to win the Mixed B Handicap title. The team had a combined score of 2,790.

Gena Studley and Kyston Haines bowled a score of 1,395 to take first place in the Mixed Doubles B Handicap.

Billings and Watkins placed third in the same division with a score of 1,337.

Calumet High School’s baseball team opened up the spring season by winning two games in its own festival.

The Chieftains, 2-1, were slated to be one of the five host teams for the 2021 Union City Spring Break Festival, which was set to get under way Thursday.

Calumet defeated Laverne (7-2) and Shattuck (9-3) in the festival but dropped a 5-2 game to Seiling. The Chieftains hit .288 for the series, logging 18 runs off 19 hits.

Following a 1-3 start, Union City High School’s slow-pitch softball team has found a recent groove by winning six of its last nine games to improve to 7-6 on the season.

Two of the wins came during a three-game stint in the Ringwood Festival. The Tigers, ranked 20th in Class 2A, beat 6A’s 16th-ranked Enid (9-8) and Hennessey (15-5) but lost 14-2 to Morrison, ranked second in Class 3A.

TULSA – Moving out of the first round of the state tournament for just the second time in school history, El Reno High School’s girls basketball team had its run to the Class 5A title game stopped in the semifinals.

Top-ranked Sapulpa, which went on to win the state championship, hit five 3-pointers to start the game and fended off a handful of comeback attempts by El Reno to hand the fifth-ranked Indians a season-ending 73-55 loss.

El Reno High School added another state title to its trophy case as the Indians won the Oklahoma Football Coaches Association’s Class 5A State Powerlifting Championship last week at the meet held at Jenks Simmons Field House. El Reno was hosting the event for a third time after it was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s event was spread out over both gyms at the field house for safety protocols. See Saturday’s edition for a breakdown of the meet.