Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First

Jock Talk

All of the local High School sports for the Fall season are over with exception of volleyball and the Kimball High Lady Longhorns will move into sub-district tournament play on Monday at Scottsbluff, but at the time of this writing, the pairings had not been determined. Our District play is at Scottsbluff High School on Monday and Tuesday.

However, the winter sports starts this Saturday, Oct. 27, with junior high wrestling at Harrisburg with a 9 a.m. start time, and then on Tuesday, Oct. 30, Kimball will host a junior high wrestling tournament with a 12 noon start time.

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The weather was near perfect this past weekend for area golfers and the two-person, triple play, fund raiser golf tournament at the Four Winds Golf Course was expanded to two days, Saturday and Sunday, and attracted 14 teams.

The winning team was the father-son duo of Chad and Dillon Wise shooting an awesome score of 62.16. Pat and Tom O’Brien finished second with 65.4, Gene Golding and John Fiehtner were third with 65.6. There was a tie for fourth and fifth with scores of 66.9 but the team of Don Trofholz and Steve Pattison won a score card playoff over the team of Tom Southard and Terry Lovesee. Still some nice days so all you golfers should get out and take advantage of both the weather and the great condition of the golf course.

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Kimball junior high football coach Dane Wurdeman caught me up on the final three games of their season that closed out, with a win over Morrill. This was Kimball’s lone win of the season but coaches and players alike were happy with the progress the team showed that resulted in the win.

Kimball dropped their game at Bayard at the tail end of September as they went up against a very good quarterback that was hard to contain but Kimball did get one TD by Derek Kauffman that got the Kimball players excited.

On Oct. 11, Kimball played a rematch with Bridgeport, at Bridgeport, and played both 8 man and 11 and Kimball coaches said “ We played so much better than the first time we met them”. “Our kids are so much more disciplined and play lots tougher than they did early,” Wurdeman said. Kimball lost 42-6 but did get to see Trey Shindler scamper into the end zone for the score.

The final game of the year was at home with Morrill and our kids were confident in warm ups and then showed it as they won 14-8. On the opening kickoff Domnick McCloskey took the ball right up the middle all the way to the end zone. At the end of the second quarter, Justin Klosterman went around end for a 15 yard touchdown, and early in the third quarter, Caleb Scheaffer was able to sack the Morrill quarterback for a safety.

“This year has been so rewarding watching the kids get so much better, said Wurdeman. “Although our record doesn’t look good, we as coaches are proud of the kids. We, as coaches, want to see these players stick together and get bigger and stronger for next year,” he said.

Wurdeman also wanted to extend a big thank you to the person who left him a card at the High School. “Although the kind words and the gracious gift is to remain anonymous, it was extremely encouraging and will not soon be forgotten. It is kind acts like this that help coaches, and teachers, through challenging days,” he said.