Sports from the week of December 5, 2001 Headlight Herald - Serving Tracy, Minnesota, since 1880
YME outplays Panther girls in opener, 47-32
Yellow Medicine East spoiled the Tracy/Milroy/Balaton girls basketball opener with a 47-32 victory Tuesday night in Tracy.
"It was a tough game to start the season with," said Panther Coach Paul Soupir. "YME is likely the best team in the conference right now."
The Panthers led 11-8 at the end of the first quarter. They increased that lead to 18-10 midway in the second period but the Sting took over at that point and scored the last nine points of the first half to take a 19-18 lead at the intermission.
The Sting continued their dominance on the boards and played a very aggressive defense to outscore the Panthers 15-5 in the third period to up their lead to 34-23 at the end of the third quarter. The Panthers put on a brief spurt at the beginning of the second half to wrest the lead from the Sting at 23-22 after one minute of play in the third period, but a 12-0 run by YME put them in charge of the game.
"I don't know any other way to say that I was disappointed in the effort we made tonight," said Soupir. "That is not the normal way we play the game. Hopefully we can learn from this and improve."
Wrestlers open at Clara City
The Panther wrestling team opened its season by going 0-3 in a quadrangular meet held in Clara City last Friday night.
In the first meet TMB lost to Renville County West by a score of 37-24. In the second they lost to MACCRAY 36-35. A referees ruling on facial hair turned out to be the margin in the meet.
In the third meet TMB lost to Benson 48-30.
"We have a young team with only two seniors," said Panther Assistant Coach Chris Kamrud.
Adam Snyder, Donald Strand, Matt Prairie, Erik Kathman and Matt Schreier led the team by going 2-1. Drew Hebig, Cody Arnold and Ross Ryan were 1-1, Paul Johnson and Derick Goettig were 1-2.
Slow start sinks cagers at Ivanhoe
The Panther boys' basketball team lost to Lincoln HI 78-65 at Ivanhoe Tuesday night. The loss dropped Tracy/Milroy/Balaton's season record to 0-2 and they are 0-0 in the 212 Conference.
"We played three quarters of pretty good basketball," said Panther Coach Jon Ruoff. "We just dug ourselves too dep a hole in the first quarter to be able to come out of it."
By the end of the first period, the Rebels had outscored the Panthers 23-10, mainly due to the efforts of J. Beck who meshed nine points in the first quarter toward his game high 22 point total.
"We were just out of sync, our passes were lazy and we just gave up too many scoring opportunities," observed Ruoff. "We are searching for the best combination of players and some of the sophomores stepped up and served notice to the seniors that they will have to work for their jobs."
The Panther boys play at home against MACCRAY Thursday night and will entertain Redwood Valley on Friday night at the high school.