The transition to Spring has neared it's completion. Sure there still plenty of snow around, no buds have come to bear on the trees and there is the threat of a blizzard as I type but the temperature has reached low Spring levels and all the Spring sports are well under way. Not only underway, but already dominating the schedules for each of the post secondary institutions. Not long from now, the same will be able to be said of the prep level athletics. So let's see how it all went for the locals!
Bison
The men's Golf were the initiators this week when they teed off in Texas. They finished fifth overall as a team and had an individual best finish at 17th. Maybe that's underachieving but it's still early in their Spring schedule so it should get better.
Beyond the Links, the Diamond heads had mixed results this week. The Baseball team only managed a single run against Minnesota on Tuesday while giving up three. If the bats were working a little better that would be quite alright! They followed that up with a 17 - 4 beatdown at the hands of Northern Colorado. That's a crooked number, to put it mildly, but they followed that up by taking a pair of games on Saturday before falling 7-9 today. Splitting a four game series isn't award winning but could have been worse. The Softball team on the other hand went 4/4 at the Blue Devil debut. They will each be out west next weekend, must be nice to be in all these warms locations this time of year!
The Wrestling team took fifth on Saturday at the Big 12 championships but had not yet gone final today.
And then there was the Basketball. As I suspected, the women of SDSU shot the lights out against NDSU yesterday. That leaves one game for Paul Miller, AJ Jacobson and Spencer Eliason. I still think they're going to lose but hope I'm wrong! If my intuition proves accurate it would complete what has been a disappointing outcome all around for the hoopsters.
Dragons
All quiet on the Eastern campus.
Cobbers
In a shocking week of scheduling, there were 37 different events by Concordia's various athletes. Softball started it off with a split double header went well beyond that in the days between then and now.
Nine of the 37 featured the Baseball team attacking their schedule down on the peninsula. Two of the nine were convincing victories while a third was a nail biter. The rest were less positive.
Not to be out done, the Softball players had a 10 game week. In similar fashion they managed to win 40% of those. So the diamond was not friendly for the corn cobs this week. Here's to hoping that it gets better!
The remaining 18 contests were primarily comprised of Tennis matches, with just a dash of Track & Field for good measure. The Men's Tennis came out on top in half of their matches while the women stumbled to a two win week.
So that leaves the Summer Olympian competitors. Suffice it to say that they did not represent well in their events.
Olympics
But speaking of the Olympics, while not exactly in the target area for me, gotta give a shout out to the Lamoureux sisters. They not only became some of the stars of team USA, they showed that NoDak's can represent! Combine that with the big win by the Duluth Hurlers and small town North Heartland showed up pretty well on the world stage!
Should make for some extra attention as the Curling Nationals are in town for the next several days!
Timberwolves
The flush may have begun. Their standing in the conference was always likely to fluctuate but with Butler out for most of the rest of the season, can only hope that they'll win enough games to squeak into the playoffs. ugh
High School
The EDC championships went off last night at the SHAC. The evening made for some interesting entertainment but I don't want to give anything away for the full recap that'll be out soon!
On the other side of the river, Moorhead once again came frustratingly close to making it to the state Hockey Tournament. From the ice to the mat, Barnesville and Verndale both managed champion wrestlers, the latter of which is a behemoth of a sophomore so they are likely on the precipice of a great run!
Meanwhile on the court, Park Christian put their great season up against Pelican Rapids. They came up a few plays short but with the quality of the talent that they'll have for the next couple of seasons, this was a stepping stone. From what I can tell, they took some great steps!
There's always more on the high school front, especially this time of year, but I think those are a few of the better headlines, with more to come soon!