The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/259021
b-1 Wednesday, Februar y 12, 2014 the Press-dispatch MILLER, ROBERtS ADVANCE tO SEMIStAtE Pike Central high school senior Alex roberts (right) tries to get a take- down on heritage hills junior ryan Fisher (left) during the first round of the 195-pound weight division at the regional meet held saturday, Feb. 8, at Castle. Ed Cahill photo. see heNsoN on b-3 Sprinkle leads Alices past Chargers see seMistAte on b-2 see AliCes on b-7 see West on b-7 Petersburg man to test his limits in Death Race Lady Chargers sixth in sectional swim meet Henson advances to diving regional by ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net The Pike Central High School girls' swim- ming team made a big splash during the sec- tional meet held Thursday, Feb. 6, and Satur- day, Feb. 8, at the Jasper High School Nata- torium, finishing sixth out of 11 teams with 160 points. The sixth-place finish was the highest for the Lady Chargers since 2010, when they al- so placed sixth. "In past years, we've always been toward the bottom half at the sectional, points-wise," Pike Central head coach Jason McKinney said. "We've had a few individuals do alright, but, as a team, we've always kind of been on the weaker side." "This year, the girls really did a great job. Saturday, at finals, everybody swam their best times pretty well for the season. We had a couple of relay events that we moved up in and individual events that we moved up in and took a few more points. Points- wise, we were right up there, probably the best we've had in a long, long time, as far as a team score." The team of freshman Maya Frederick, se- nior Kylee Claridge, senior Kendall Duden- hoeffer and sophomore Ally Sutherland posted the Lady Chargers' best finish dur- ing Saturday's finals, placing third in the 200 -yard medley relay with a season-best by ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net For the first time in three years, two Pike Central High School wrestlers will advance to semistate after senior Dalton Miller placed second and senior Alex Roberts placed third in their weight divisions during the regional meet on Saturday, Feb. 8 at Castle. Miller, who will be making his third straight trip to semistate, posted wins over Mt. Vernon sophomore Austin Stallings (by pin) and Heritage Hills senior Ryan Baker (by a 3-2 decision) before dropping a 2-0 de- cision in overtime to Evansville Mater Dei senior Matthew Cox in the 285 -pound cham- pionship bout. "We had a good game plan, I thought, go- ing in, and he pretty much followed it all the way through until the end, when he couldn't quite get out from the bottom," Pike Cen- tral head coach Billy Hewig said. "We had to keep (Cox) scoreless because we knew it was going to be a tough match with how the kid wrestles." " We got that done, and then he just couldn't quite pull it out there at the end," Hewig added. Roberts, who is making his first trip to semistate, posted a first-round win by pin over Heritage Hills junior Ryan Fisher before dropping a 5 -1 decision to Evansville Mater Dei sophomore Seth Orth in the semifinals of the 195 -pound weight division. Roberts then posted a 5 -4 overtime win over Vincennes Lincoln senior Rashon Jef- ferson, his third straight win over Jefferson after losing in their first meeting earlier this season, to place third. "It's hard to wrestle anybody four times in one year, especially a quality opponent such as him," said Hewig. "That's a kid who went to semistate last year. He's easily won 30 matches, just a tough, tough kid, and Al- ex pulled through again, in overtime, which shows that he just wants it. He wants to be successful and he showed that in his match." The last time the Chargers sent two wres- tlers to semistate was in 2011, when Cody Kendle and Derek Lunsford advanced in the 119-pound and 130 -pound weight divisions. The semistate meet will be at the Ford Center in Evansville this Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Miller, who is now 34-5 this season, will open the semistate against Paoli junior Mark Miles (13-3) while Roberts (39-5) will square off against Jennings County sophomore Christian Redmond (25 -9). "They both have tough first-round match- es and even tougher matches second round," Hewig said. "But I'm happy with our draws. I feel like they're draws we can handle. They're draws we can get good game plans for. It's just going to be whether or not we can put them into effect." Roberts, who had dropped a 1-0 overtime decision to Fisher a week earlier when the two grappled for the sectional championship, trailed 4-1 after two periods before rallying with an escape and a takedown to tie the match at 4-4 during the third period. Falling behind 5 -4 when Fisher scored a point with an escape, Roberts scored a take- down with approximately 30 seconds left before getting the win by pin with 11.6 sec- onds left. "I couldn't have been more proud of him," Hewig said. "That was a kid who we've had trouble with the three previous times we've wrestled him. We knew it was going to be a tough match so we went in and we watched a lot of film." When school was dismissed early on Tues- day, Feb. 4, due to inclement weather, Hewig sent film home with Roberts. "I told him what to watch and he studied it as much as he could," Hewig said. "He un- Pike Central high school fresh- man sylvia henson shows off her ribbon after placing fourth in div- ing during the sectional finals held saturday, Feb. 8, at the Jasper high school Natatorium. henson ad- vanced to the diving regional at bloomington North on tuesday, Feb. 11. Ed Cahill photo. by ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net A fter joining the U.S. Navy fol- lowing his graduation from Pike Central High School in 1978, Gary West turned down an opportunity to become a Navy SEAL. "They came around to recruit for the Navy SEALs," West recalled. "I wanted to and I chickened out. I couldn't do it. I couldn't pull the trigger." More than three decades later, the 53-year-old West admits that he still wonders if he could have completed the extremely rigorous SEAL training, which has a repu- tation as being among the tough- est in the world. After all, the drop out rate sometimes exceeds 90 per- cent. "I've always wanted to challenge myself on some, I guess, extreme level," said West, training coordi- nator at Duke Energy's Edward- sport IGCC plant. "Could I do that? Could I do it? " West said that he began looking for a civilian version of the Navy SEAL training approximately 10 years ago "and couldn't find any- thing." Last spring, however, he and some friends signed up for a Spar- tan Sprint Race— consisting of three-plus miles of obstacle rac- ing—at the Haspin Acres Off-Road and Motocross Park in Laurel, Ind. Then, in July, West traveled to Marseilles, Ill., for the Mid-West Super Spartan Race, which the race's organizers describe as an "8 + mile battlefield of insane ob- stacles to test your physical and mental resolve." "The obstacles can be anything from crawling under barbed wire in mud—the barbed wire is about 18 inches off the ground—for a couple of hundred yards, or there might be an eight-foot wall with nothing but just the wall, and you've got to get yourself over the wall," West said. A Spartan Race differs from oth- er types of obstacle racing in that participants are not given a map of the course or any information about what obstacles they will en- counter along the way. "The difference between Spar- tan and like the Tough Mudder and some of these other courses that are out there, Spartan doesn't let you know what's next," West said. "You don't get to see a map of the course before you start. You don't know what's around the cor- ner. You just go and do whatever comes up. " The first one I did was sup- posed to have been a 5K," West added. "It ended up being about five and a quarter miles, but they had 25 obstacles over the course of that race. And the terrain is ex- tremely rugged in those races, so there's really not a lot of just get- ting up and running which, hey, that's for me, because I hate to run." Having tested his mettle, West is currently preparing for his next challenge—the Spartan Death Race. The Spartan Death Race, hosted annually in Pittsfield, Vt., in June, is an obstacle and challenge-driven race that requires competitors to complete numerous grueling and physical challenges throughout a 40 -mile course that runs through the Vermont woods. During the Spartan Death Race, competitors may be asked to chop wood for two hours; complete a 30 -mile hike carrying rocks and weighted packs; build a fire from scratch; slice up a bushel of on- ions; or, after 24 hours of racing, memorize the names of the first 10 U.S. Presidents, hike to the top of a mountain, and recite them back, in order. Competitors are not told when the Spartan Death Race—which can range from 48 to 70 hours— starts or when it will end. Last year's event ended after nearly 70 hours. "It looks a lot like Hell Week for the SEALs, only they go 96 hours and this is somewhat less than 96," said West. "But, in the spirit of Spartan, you don't know how long it is. They tell you when to start and they'll tell you when you're done, but you don't know if you're a half a day from being done or two days from being done." Last year, race organizers an- nounced that the race would start at 4 a.m. on Saturday but that com- petitors had to check in on Friday night. As they arrived, competitors were informed they had to attend a meeting at a nearby church but were told to leave their packs out- side because there was not enough room inside the building. At the end of the meeting, the competitors were informed that their packs were now at the top of the mountain—and that they had to retrieve them and return to the start line before the race began. When they arrived at the top of the mountain, however, competi- tors were asked for a claim receipt, which they had to go back down the mountain to obtain. "By the time they did all this and they got back down to the bottom, it was time for the race to start," West said. "So they took their sleep away from them. And there's real- ly no opportunity to sleep during the race." The Spartan Death Race has been described as "agonizing tor- ture" and the only way to make it stop is to finish the race—or quit. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of the participants in last year's Spar- tan Death Race finished. "Just like life, the Death Race is designed to push and aggravate people to such a point that even the most stoic eventually fail," said Joe De Sena, co-founder of the Spar- tan Death Race and founder of the Spartan Race series. "Only those people possessing incredible dis- cipline under the most insane and even delusional circumstances can call themselves a finisher. "These athletes are willing to complete the journey at all costs," De Sena added. "The fact that peo- ple endured for 70 hours to see gary West (left) crawls in mud underneath barbed wire as part of the Mid-West super spartan race last July in Marseilles, ill. the Petersburg resident is currently training to com- pete in the 2014 spartan death race in vermont in June. Photo submitted. by ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net Senior Josh Sprinkle scored a game-high 22 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as Vincennes Lincoln defeated visiting Pike Central 54- 39 in a high school boys' basketball game on Saturday, Feb. 8. Pike Central, which had not prac- ticed since Monday, Feb. 3, and had to reschedule its game at Tell City— originally set for Friday, Feb. 7—due to inclement weather conditions, fell to 4-10 with its seventh straight loss. The Alices, who played and defeat- ed visiting Washington 55 -53 in over- time on Friday, Feb. 7, improved to 13-5. "We game-planned a little bit for Tell City on Monday; we didn't have any time to put anything in for Lin- coln until today," Chargers' head coach John Mokris said. "We came in about 2:30, went over a couple of things, but a team like that, you've got to go over a bunch of things." "I really wanted to play last night to get our feet wet a little bit before play- ing a team like Vincennes," Mokris added. "The first half was our prac- tice this week." Pike Central started slowly, hitting just four of 18 field goal attempts—in- cluding two of six tries from beyond the three-point line—and turning the ball over nine times while falling be- hind 30 -12 at halftime. In addition, the Chargers grabbed just nine rebounds while Vincennes Lincoln had 17, including four offen- sive boards that the Alices convert- ed into six points. "We were sloppy the first half," Mokris said. "We didn't play very hard, I didn't think. We got stops, but we didn't get defensive boards." Pike Central high school freshman gabe elliott (23) goes up for a shot while vin- cennes lincoln sophomore ethan Claycomb (23) tries to draw the offensive foul dur- ing game action on saturday, Feb. 8. Ed Cahill photo.