6November 2014Sports

By Justin ZouchaStaff Reporter

“These O’s ain’t Royal”, “Husker Power”, and “Ne-brasketball”. These are all trending topics in the world of sports today as the Kansas City Royals, Husker football, and Husker basketball are all doing well. This has left Ne-braska citizens very excited and hopeful.

The Kansas City Royals had a magical postseason run this year. They started off with victory in a twelve inning thriller against Oakland in the wild card matchup. They con-tinued their winning ways by sweeping Los Angeles in the AL divisional series, and then by sweeping Baltimore in the AL championship.

After winning eight in a row, they lost their first game of the postseason to San Francisco in the first game of the World Series. Follow-ing several lopsided games, the series was tied at 3 wins a piece sending the series to a much-anticipated game 7. The game turned out to be a nail-biting classic.

Trailing only 3-2 heading into the bottom of the 9th in-ning, the Royals line up faced eventual World Series MVP pitcher Madison Bumgarner. Following late heroics by Lin-coln native and UNL baseball standout Alex Gordon, the Royals were in position to tie the game, but it was cut short when Salvador Perez fouled out a hit to end the series.

Though it was a heart breaking finish, the Royals still accomplished much. This was the first time they had made the postseason since 1985, ending a 29-year drought. All their success this year will also help them gain momentum and stay hungry for next season.

Teams a little closer to home are having success as well. The Nebraska Corn-husker football team is off to a hot start. They are currently 8-2, their only losses on the road to #10 Michigan State and #20 Wisconsin. Despite another embarrassing loss to the Badgers in Madison, Ne-braska still has a chance to make a decent bowl game and have their best record in over 10 years.

With the recent under-performing football team, Husker fans are excited for another Nebraska sport. Ne-braska basketball, maybe bet-ter known as Nebrasketball, became ranked in the presea-son polls at #21 for the first time since 1992. This is also the second time they’ve ever been included in the preseason college basketball rankings. Last year was a record break-ing season which included the debut of the new Pinnacle Bank arena, the emergence of all-Big Ten performer Terran Petteway, second year head coach Tim Miles winning the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year award, and Nebraska making their first NCAA tour-ney appearance since 1998. The Huskers have four return-ing starters, and with Miles in his third year they look to have another exciting season. Following an easy win in their opener against Northern Ken-tucky, Nebraska continues their schedule tonight against Central Arkansas.

With all these area teams having their best seasons in years, Nebraska sports fans are ecstatic. People can no longer give them a hard time about how bad their teams are. They can finally be ex-cited about real accomplish-ments. They can finally take pride in being a Royals or Husker fan instead of hiding in the shadows.

Midwest teams show recent

success

The Scotus cross country teams quest for gold fell a lit-tle short at the Cross Country State Championships October 24 in Kearney. The boys were just shy of hanging a banner in the Dowd Activity Center while the girls came up short defending their champion-ship.

“I think that both boys and girls had higher aspira-tions than were the actual re-sults, but both performed fair-ly well,” head coach Merlin Lahm said.

The boys’ team finished as runners-up to Milford, los-ing by a score of 58-47. How-ever, the boys’ 58 points was still 23 points better than third place Syracuse. Their highest placing runner, sophomore Nathan Ostdiek, earned a 4th place medal. The other varsi-ty runners were junior Justin Brockhaus (18), sophomore Cody Mroczek (32), senior Eduardo Lopez (35), senior Toby Tooley (52), and senior Joe Sonderman (63).

“I was a little disap-pointed because I knew how hard we worked all season preparing for the state cham-

pionship, but there’s nothing wrong with being second in the state!” Sonderman said.

A surprise for the team and their coach was how much Milford improved over the season. Milford runners captured the top two individ-ual places in the boys’ race causing a tough deficit for the Shamrocks to overcome. Coach Lahm did not expect them to go 1 and 2. Their sec-

ond runner improved greatly over the season.

“The guy who placed second was 46th at UNK and that’s an enormous differ-ence,” Lahm noted.

The girls’ team finished fourth after being back-to-back championships the past two years. They finished with 68 points, 25 points worse than champion Boone Cen-tral/Newman Grove. Their

By Justin ZouchaStaff Reporter

highest placing runner, senior Jaimee Beauvais, finished 19th. The other varsity run-ners were sophomore Kaylee Tonniges (21), senior Jessica Schaecher (22), senior Kelsey Kessler (27), senior Carly Fehringer (34), and junior Jes-sica Lahm (46).

“We didn’t do as well as we would have hoped; the competition was insane, so I think we still did well,” Jessi-

ca Lahm commented.The heat was another fac-

tor that hindered the teams at race time. The temperatures reached high 70s and low 80s, pretty uncharacteristic weath-er for Nebraska in late Octo-ber.

“It was really hot and a couple of our runners in par-ticular have a tough time in the heat so it wasn’t ideal,” Coach Lahm said.

There were many lasts this season on the cross coun-try team. With four of the six girls’ varsity runners and three of the boys’ varsity run-ners being seniors, plenty of emotions and memories were present at their final cross country meet.

“It was definitely an emo-tional experience. I am going to miss the family that I made throughout the sport,” Kessler mentioned.

All together the seven seniors have contributed to winning three state champi-onships, a state runner-up, and a handful of conference and district titles.

Lahm concluded, “We’re losing seven of those runners who ran at state so that’s a big chunk. I’d like to thank them for all the work they’ve done over the years.”

Boys finish runner-up, girls take fourth at state

The boys’ cross country team (Coach Merlin Lahm, junior Austin Svehla, junior Justin Brockhaus, senior Eduardo Lopez, sophomore Cody Mroczek, Coach Amy Sokol, sophomore Nathan Ostdiek, senior Joe Sonderman, senior Toby Tooley) poses with their second place trophy alongside their coaches.

Alyson stuArt/yeArbook stAff

Senior Garrit Shanle wrestles a Pierce ball carrier to the ground. The Shamrocks defeated the Bluejays 35-7 in the playoff rematch.

kArstA stieglitz/MediA stAff

The Scotus football team concluded their winning sea-son with a loss in the quar-terfinal game versus Kearney Catholic 22-21 on November 7.

The Shamrocks started out strong with a 14-6 lead going in to half time. At the start of the third quarter the Shamrocks scored again giv-ing them a 21-6 lead over Ke-arney. The Stars were down but not out. Later in the game, Kearney came back with a pair of touchdowns to make the game 21-19. On Kear-ney’s last drive, they made a 42 yard field goal to take the lead and win the game.

“I was extremely hap-py with the way our coach-es coached and the players played, but we did some things that were uncharacter-istic of our team. We put the ball on the ground and those things you can’t do against great teams, and Kearney Catholic was a great team,” Head Coach Tyler Linder said.

Football finishes best season since 1999By Garrit Shanle

Staff ReporterAlthough Coach Linder

was not happy with the results of the football game, he had positive things to say about this senior class.

“I had a great group of seniors this year that were great leaders. Hopefully that leadership will trickle down to the juniors who will be the big dogs on campus next sea-son. I hope that the legacy of the hard work that our seniors showed week in and week out is something that the rest of the team can adopt for future years to come,” Linder add-ed.

Although this was the seniors’ final game as Sham-rocks, they can still take a lot from the season, and the un-derclassmen can learn from their time on the field this year and apply it to next sea-son.

Senior Jared Duren said, “I wish that the season would not have ended, but it was a great season and the team will be one to remember. I was very happy with our sea-son.”

The Shamrocks went 5-0 in district play and carried that

momentum into the playoffs. In the first round, the Sham-rocks defeated Pierce 35-7 and moved on to the quarter finals versus Kearney Catho-lic. The loss to Kearney Cath-olic ended the Shamrocks sea-son with a 9-2 record, which is better than previous years. The last time the Shamrocks

won 9 games was in the 1999 season when they finished with a record of 9-2.

Junior Jake Bos said, “I enjoyed the pre-game speech-es, especially Coach Gru-baugh’s speech before the playoff game verses Pierce. I also enjoyed Ross’s dance moves.”

With Coach Linder hav-ing a successful season as his first year as head coach, he can take what he learned from this year and make next year’s team even more suc-cessful.

Linder concluded, “I am happy but never satis-fied.”

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Junior Courtney Brockhaus tips the ball against Wahoo in the third place game at the state playoffs. The Shamrocks beat the Warriors 3 sets to 1 to take third place.

The Shamrocks hold up their third place trophy after the consolation match on Saturday morning. They defeated Chadron in straight sets on Thursday night and lost to Kearney Catholic, the eventual state champs, on Friday afternoon to then face Wahoo High.

CAlly lArsen/MediA stAff

or downs, however. The Shamrocks took a hard loss against Lakeview during regular season play, but they came back that same week and beat them in tournament play.

“I didn’t know how far we’d honestly make it. This summer we did better than I’d thought, which gave me a lit-tle hope. But after that Lakev-iew loss up there it looked pretty dismal for a while. There is a lot of credit to the girls and the rest of the coach-ing staff getting back to work.

Being gritty,” Held said. “We avenged that loss that week-end. I kind of knew we could really do it then, we just need-ed to keep working hard. The girls bought in and it worked out for us.”

The Shamrocks finished the season with a record of 22-9.

“My favorite moment was probably the way we played against Lakeview at sub districts and how we competed at Stanton during districts. The atmosphere was just awesome. Playing those nights, win or lose, that was the best because we knew we really competed and everyone

was into it,” Held said, re-membering the season. “The student section is the best, too. Our support we have is incredible. During our third place match, lots of props go to our students and fans for showing up to support.”

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