McKenzie Sports Report – September 25

McKenzie Varsity Sports Schedule This Week

The McKenzie Varsity Volleyball team hosts Eddyville Charter on Tuesday, September 23. Match time is set for 6:00 pm. The Eagle team travels to First Baptist Church in Eugene on Thursday, September 25, to participate in a three-way match schedule starting with Siletz Valley at 4:30 pm and following with a match versus Eugene Christian at 6:00 pm. McKenzie travels to Triangle Lake on Tuesday, September 30 and that match starts at 6:00 pm. The McKenzie Cross Country Teams travel to Cheadle Lake Park in Lebanon on Friday, September 26, to participate in the Champs Invite. The 5,000 meters Varsity Girls race starts at 4:30 pm and the Varsity Boys 5,000 meters race starts at 5:15 pm. A Junior Varsity Girls and Boys race precedes at 4:00 pm. The McKenzie Varsity Six-Man Football team hosts Crow on Friday, September 26. Kick off is slated for 7:00 pm.

Eagle Volleyball Still Searching For First Victory

It’s been close at times, sets going down to the wire. But, son-of-a-gun, McKenzie’s Varsity Volleyball team has yet to string enough set wins together to sew a match victory. And so it was last Thursday, down in Mapleton, home of the Sailors and Siuslaw striped bass. It was a three-way set-up along the stream that night, the Eagles taking on host Mapleton and following with a non-league tilt with the Central Linn Cobras. The Sailors sunk the Eagle travelers in three sets, 25-23, 25-20, and 25-20 and the Cobras snake-bit the visitors 25-11, 25-10, and 25-16. Thus, sadly for the Eagles, the team slipped to 0-4, 0-5 on the season. With their separate match wins, Mapleton improved to 2-4, 3-8 and Central Linn (3-0 victors over the Sailors) to 5-5. Some day soon, hopefully, the Eagles find a way to shrug off the monkey and surely find a way to secure a match win. First start is with the visiting Eddyville Charter Eagles who slip into Finn Rock on Tuesday. Next opportunity would be when McKenzie scoots downstream to First Baptist in Eugene on Thursday. The two opponents on the schedule that day are Siletz Valley and Eugene Christian. The Lions of Eugene Christian are seeing and experiencing the same scenario as the Eagles, the goal of snagging a first, season victory. Stay tuned. Someone in the latter match is surely going to salt away a check in the win column. For sure!

How Did It Go Up In Seaside At The Three Course Challenge?

Well, we’re about to inform you. The Three Course Challenge hosted by Seaside High School for the last many years, at least since 2003, is one of those regional cross-country meets that everybody likes to attend and race. And so, per usual, this season’s premier high school race event featured 70 high school teams from the Northwest. And throw in a 21 middle school teams just for good measure. One of the unique features to this full day of running in the sand and water and at times wind and rain, is three race courses to choose from, a hard, medium or easy course. This year McKenzie senior Will Meister chose the hard, 5000-meter race. So did 251 other competitors by the way. Mr. Meister ran a fine race, finishing 38th overall with a time of 20:14.6 minutes. The winner of this race was Amin Fidaar, representing Rogers High School in Puyallup, WA and he posted the fastest time of 17:43.2 min. Fidaar just did out lean second place Conner Hill from Toledo, OR who finished second in 17:44.3 min. Preferring to compete in the medium difficult rated course, Eagle teammates, freshman Cylas Sughroue finished 46th with a time of 20:00.4 minutes and senior Allen Acevedo tagged in at 78th, posting a time of 20:58.7 minutes. The medium race featured 332 total runners and was won by Monta Vista (Cupertino, CA) junior Kento Murase, who ran the 5K in 17:58.2 minutes. Matthew Seyum of Meadowdale (Lynnwood, WA) took home second place honors with a finish time of 18:05.0 minutes. The boy’s 4,300 meters easy course was the choice of McKenzie sophomore Liam Acevedo, junior William Valtinson, and freshman Cyrus Bennett. With a field of 241 runners, Acevedo finished the course in 21:13.0 minutes, good for 68th place, Valtinson finished in 109th place with a time of 22:38.8 minutes and Bennett followed in 204th in a time of 28:17.3 minutes. Baker junior Gabriel Schwartz finished first in this race with a time of 17:19. 3 minutes and coming in second was Lou Kissinger of La Center (La Center, WA) who ran the course in 17:27.8 minutes. Now let’s talk about the Girls races. Eagle sophomore Zyla Drake was McKenzie’s top girl finisher at Seaside, running in the medium difficult race and finishing 27th overall, out of a field of 188 athletes. Drake’s time was 24:06.0 over the 5,000-meter course. McKenzie senior Myra Dion followed with a 36th place mark or 24:36.1 minutes. The winning time was posted by Aubrey Wilems of Eastlake (Sammamish, WA), which was 18:48.5 minutes. Eastlake teammate Rio Tabion took second place in 19:48.5 minutes. On another note, McKenzie’s Conrad Drake, a seventh grade athlete, ran a Personal Best in the Boys Middle School 3,000 meters race, finishing the course in 11:27.5 minutes and placing 7th out of 149 runners.

Grizzlies Eat Eagles Lunch

Dominate 31-7

Nothin’ sweet about visiting the Griz gridiron this time of the season and that lesson was learned the hard way by McKenzie when it traveled to Special District 3 opponent Gilchrist last Friday, September 19. It’s been getting cold at night recently over the Hump and down 97 (Hwy) to the Grizzlies home field lair. And even though the kickoff was scheduled for 2:00 pm last Friday, by all accounts it appeared the Eagle offense against the Grizzly defense was just as cold as the mountain air temperature. McKenzie was held to a touchdown and an extra point, 7 points total. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, the home team’s offense racked up 31 points to push their point for a League title and help Gilchrist maintain pace with North Lake at the top of the early SD-3 standings. Both the Grizzlies and the Cowboys are 1-0. Meanwhile, the Eagles are still looking to catch their wind, excuse me, and win. McKenzie is 0-1 in SD-3 League play and 0-3 overall. Crow follows the McKenzie Trail upriver to Finn Rock this Friday and maybe the Eagles can tie the Cougar’s tail in a knot or two and pick up a welcome victory. The Cougs are 2-1 overall courtesy of a 78-0 shellacking of Mapleton and another shutout victory over Falls City, 25-0, under their belts. Crow’s lone loss thus far was at home last week against SD-3 co-leader North Lake, and that loss wasn’t pretty,

7-41. So who knows where the Cougars are this day, except you can bet your cougar claw necklace, they will be grouchy, hungry and scratching for a redemption victory. So you know, those Cougars will be back into the hunt prowl. And the Eagles are currently in their headlights, standing in the way. But, hey by the way, that can be a good thing for the “60-mile main street” hometown boys. Bring it on in. Can’t wait to hear the whistles and toe the line! Time to show some whiskers they used to say! Right?!