Author Spotlight
The Harbinger Staff
Boys’ Basketball
The Lancer boy’s basketball team will play St. James this Thursday, Dec. 6. The game is part of a tournament being hosted by Shawnee Mission East.
The team will be without senior center Chris Tuttle, who tore his meniscus in his knee earlier in the year and has not yet been cleared to practice.
A new young face coach Shawn Hair expecting a lot out of this year is six foot six inch sophomore Lucas Jones.
“Lucas Jones is going to be a huge player for us,” Hair said. “But we’ve got a lot of kids who can step in and help.”
Some of those younger players who could step up in include junior Luke Haverty, junior Colin Burns, and freshman Joey Wentz. Haverty could be brought up to play point guard, and according to Hair, Wentz has a lot of talent. Burns did not play his sophomore year, but is back on the team this year after playing junior varsity his freshman year.
Coach Hair is focused on playing as a team this year, but in key situations, the team will look for seniors Vance Wentz and Zach Schneider for scoring.
Expectations for this year are high, as usual.
“That’s the nature of coaching basketball [at East], and that’s a good thing,” Hair said. “I think that [the players] expectations are much higher, and I think their want and drive to succeed is obviously high because it’s their senior year, it’s their last year here.”
The team has had a couple of key injuries that has impacted the team. Freshman Samantha Schneider is out due to a knee injury and Eileen Seek has been recovering from an ankle injury that happened during the JV game on Nov. 29.
Developing fundamentals is key to winning their next game on Dec. 11 against Shawnee Mission South.
Boys’ Swimming
Varsity had their first meet last Saturday against Olathe East. The team suffered a hard loss, as they were missing five of their top swimmers — Chris Watkins, Jackson Granstaff, Zach Holbrook, Troy DeMoss and David Martinez.
According to Granstaff, practices have been physically challenging this past week in order to prepare for their two upcoming meets.
Tuesday night, the team earned a big win against SM North and Olathe South. Their next meet, the Olathe Invitational, will be this Friday at Prairie Trail Middle School at 5 p.m.
“Considering I’m just so physically exhausted from everything that gone on in the last week [the death of fellow Lancer Tyler Rathbun], I don’t think I will do all that great [at the meet], but we will see.” Granstaff said. “As for the team, I’m sure we will do very well.”
Wrestling
The wrestling team had their first meets this weekend, Varsity lost to Southeast Polk High School at Gardner and JV was at Blue Valley.
“The first meet is a measuring stick to see where we’re at skill-wise.”Ufford.
With weight classes during school and practice 3-5 pm after school, the team hopes to come back from there meet this Saturday Dec 8 *where, with a victory.
Bowling
The bowling team held tryouts for both boys and girls last week. Head coach Patti Kennedy said they filled their roster on the boys team, however she is still searching for three more girls to fill up the girls’ team.
“We have 12 girls and are looking for three more to fill up the roster,” Kennedy said. “I like to keep 12 bowlers for the team then have some alternates lined up in case something comes up.”
According to Kennedy, tryouts overall went well for the boys team but revealed some areas for improvement amongst the younger bowlers on the girls team.
“We have some strong bowlers for the boys this year and it’s a mix of upperclassmen and younger kids,” Kennedy said. “On the girls team as well as both teams for that matter, we have room for improvement in our technique. I can’t actually start coaching until January 3 so by just sitting back I saw some things that we’ll start improving on from day one.”
The team now waits to practice until after winter break, and will also compete in their first triangular on January 9.
2012 Boys’ Bowling Team:
Jay Anderson
Caleb Anthonis
Mark Darling
Charlie Deay
Ben Hoffman
Evan Howell
Dwayne Jones
Adam Lynch
Noah Modean
Sean Pollar
Matt Terry
Mike Thibodeau
Graham Walter
Ben Wickey
Kyle Winston
Seth Winston
2012 Girls’ Bowling Team:
Renee Brown
Emily Colebank
Mady Drosenos
Diedre Guthrie
Liz Harvey
Kiesha Layton
LeeAnn Cole
Mariana Mizik
Lily Payne
Lana Petersen
Maggie Sheahan
Annika Sink
Melissa Stasi
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