By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
North Pulaski came home with two individual medals and Cabot and Beebe grabbed one each at the state wrestling tournament at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock on Saturday.
North Pulaski’s Jonathan Buzzitta pinned Gentry’s Barney Cheney at the 3:40 mark to win the 125-pound classification in the small school, 1A-5A division and the Falcons’ A.J. Stephens defeated Gentry’s Shawn Johnson by a 19-4 technical fall in the 171-pound class.
Beebe’s David Day, top seed in the 1A-5A 160-pound class, beat Valley View’s Kyle Adams 16-12 in the finals. Cabot 112-pounder Tyler Kurtz, wrestling in the large-school, 6A-7A division, defeated Searcy’s Devonte Miller on points, 13-12.
North Pulaski, last year’s state runner-up in the 1A-5A division, this year sent a team of 14 and four No. 1 seeds including Buzzitta, Stephens, 140-pounder Tony Mongno and 119-pounder Jacob McClain.
McClain beat Ashdown’s Cody Ford by technical fall, 16-0, in the third-place finals and Gentry’s Kolby Rankin beat Mongno 6-0 in the finals.
In other finals action, top seed Connor Frederick, of Little Rock Christian, pinned North Pulaski’s Mariah Mongno, the No. 2 seed, at the 2:40 mark for a victory in the 103-pound match. No. 1 seed Nicholas Kurfess, of Little Rock Christian, pinned
Beebe’s Al Sharp at the 1:30 mark for a victory in the 112-pound class.
In the 134-pound small-school final, top seed Andrea Johnson, of the Little Rock School for the Blind, pinned Beebe’s Mykel Bain at the 2:26 mark. Gentry’s Robert Henderson, top seed in the 189-pound class, outpointed North Pulaski’s Vinnie Osmun 4-1.
In the 6A-7A, 285-pound class, Brad Ball, of Rogers Heritage, beat Searcy’s Patrick Bingham 11-5.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
SPORTS >> Lady Wildcats standing tall
Harding Academy point guard Molly Koch drives inside for a shot against England in the 2-3A District final on Friday at Rose Bud. Koch scored a season-high 13 points against the Lady Lions.By JASON KING
Leader sports writer
ROSE BUD — Getting big resulted in a big victory for Harding Academy on Friday at Rambler Arena.
The Lady Wildcats lost their two previous 2-3A Conference matchups with the England Lady Lions, but came up big, literally, when it counted most in the district finals with a 59-57 triumph to earn the No. 1 seed for this week’s 3A Region 2 tournament at Riverview.
England overcame a six-point, fourth-quarter deficit to get within 58-57 in the final two minutes. McKenzie Miller made a free throw with 26 seconds left and Janeka Watkins missed a last-second shot for England as Harding Academy held on.
The Lady Wildcats take on 5-3A No. 4 seed Bauxite in the regional today at 4 p.m.
Harding Academy senior post players Megan Pack, 5-11, and Ariel English, 6-1, alternated frequently through the first half, but both graced the court at the same time two minutes into the third quarter and remained a package deal for the duration.
That took away second-chance opportunities for the Lady Lions (24-4), and allowed the Lady Wildcats (18-8) to control the interior.
“From the middle of the third quarter on, we went to two post kids,” Lady Wildcats coach Rusty Garner said. “We were getting beat inside; getting killed in the paint. We couldn’t seem to grab a rebound. I thought Ariel English and Megan Pack both rebounded it really well.”
Pack scored 12 points inside, while English pulled down four critical defensive rebounds in the second half and found open teammates for three assists. English also pulled Harding Academy even with England on a pair of inside baskets in the final minute of the third quarter, including a third-attempt shot with 15 seconds left to make it 42-42.
The Lady Wildcats got the biggest lead of the game for either team with 2:38 left to play when Pack hit a pair of free throws to make it 56-50, but Lady Lions sophomore guard Jameka Watkins, one of England’s talented Watkins twins, hit two foul shots and followed that with a jumper in the lane to cut it to two.
Molly Koch then went the length of the court on the inbound for Harding Academy to score two of her season-high 13 points, but a three-pointer by Janeka Watkins cut it to 58-57 with 1:24 left.
The Lady Wildcats kept possession for close to a minute before McKenzie Miller was sent to the free-throw line with 26 seconds left. Miller hit the first free throw but missed the second and Tanesha Wiley grabbed the rebound for England.
The Lady Lions put the ball in Janeka Watkins’ hands for their last shot, but she burned valuable time on the perimeter looking for openings and could not shake pressure from Koch. That resulted in an off-balance shot that fell short off the rim and into Pack’s hands as the buzzer sounded.
“Really, we caught a break, because they were out of timeouts,” Garner said. “Janeka’s up top with the ball, and I think she kind of panicked with eight seconds left. I saw her look up, and it was late in the clock. I thought Molly Koch for us defensively did a good job of defending her, because that girl’s going to score.”
Harding Academy senior Anna Bangs was another key inside for the Lady Wildcats. Bangs led all scorers with 25 points, including six straight points starting with 2:05 left in the third quarter that cut England’s lead to 40-38.
“It validates that we’re who we hoped we were,” Garner said. “We played them in early January at home and got beat by three.
We missed a bunch of free throws, thought we should have beaten them. Went to England, got destroyed, so we had it in the back of our mind that we thought we could beat those guys. Now we can walk out of here and say that now we know on a good night, we can play with England.”
Janeka Watkins led England with 18 points and Wiley had 12.
The Lady Lions are the No. 2 seed out of District 2 and will play 5-3A No. 3 seed Mayflower Thursday at 7 p.m.
SPORTS >> Area teams advance, fall in district games
Harding Academy senior Megan Pack scored 11 points against Rose Bud.By JASON KING
Leader sports writer
Double-double hardly begins to describe Lonoke senior post player Asiah Scribner’s effort, especially rebounding, during the Lady Jackrabbits’ 43-29 semifinal victory over host Stuttgart in the 2-4A district tournament Thursday.
Scribner grabbed 19 rebounds, most of them defensive, and scored 14 points, as Lonoke (23-5), already qualified for regionals, advanced to Friday’s final round against Clinton.
Scribner’s rebounding work gave the Lady Ricebirds few second-chance opportunities and helped the Lady ’Rabbits control the tempo despite early foul trouble that limited playing time for leading scorer Cara Neighbors.
“Their guards are known for shooting the deep three,” Lady Jackrabbits coach Nathan Morris said. “So we were fortunate that a lot of them didn’t fall, and Asiah was there to grab some long rebounds, and she also got some put-backs from her rebounds on the offensive side.”
Ashleigh Himstedt added 16 points for Lonoke.
2-4A boys
Lonoke will move on to regionals courtesy of a 31-29 victory over Southside Batesville in the first round of the 2-4A district tournament at Stuttgart on Wednesday.
But the Jackrabbits suffered a 59-46 loss to Heber Springs in Thursday’s semifinal round. It was the Jackrabbits’ second loss to the Panthers in six days.
T.J. Scott led the Jackrabbits (12-11) with 13 points Thursday. Lonoke battled to a 30-30 tie at the half, but was outscored 18-4 in the third quarter.
“We talked about defensive transition and picking our guys up early,” Jackrabbits coach Dean Campbell said. “And for the most part, we did that in the first half. But we got behind and started taking quick shots in the third quarter, and that usually leads to points on the other side.”
2-3A boys
A strong defensive effort helped Harding Academy beat 2-3A district tourney hosts Rose Bud 59-44 in the semifinals on Thursday. The Wildcats (16-6) entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed, while the Ramblers were No. 3.
Daniel Stevens led Harding Academy with 18 points, and was 9 of 9 from the free-throw line. Jordan Smith and freshman Will Francis each scored 12 points.
“The keys were that we took care of the ball and didn’t give them turnovers that led to easy baskets,” Wildcats coach Brad Francis said. “Then we defended them well.”
Riverview
After an unbeaten run through the 2-3A Conference in the regular season, top seed Riverview got more than it bargained for in the semifinals matchup with No. 5 Barton in the 2-3A district tournament at Rose Bud High School on Thursday.
Senior Jordan Perry hit a 25-footer at the buzzer to help the Raiders secure a 59-56 victory, a trip to the finals and a fourth meeting with cross-town rival Harding Academy.
The Bears kept themselves in the game with solid outside shooting that included eight, three-point baskets from five different players.
“Any win is a good thing,” Raiders coach Russell Stump-enhous said. “Do I wish we won every game by 30 points? Sure, it makes my job a lot easier, but we’ve managed a lot of close games this year. When you go through the conference 12-0, you have a big target on your back.”
Taylor Smith led the Raiders (23-5) with 19 points while Perry had 14.
2-3A girls
After an uneventful first round, Harding Academy provided the drama in the 2-3A district tournament semifinals at Rambler Arena against host Rose Bud Thursday.
Anna Bangs hit a buzzer-beating turnaround shot in the lane for a 48-47 overtime victory that sent the Lady Wildcats to Friday’s championship with top seed England.
Harding Academy (17-8) found itself trailing 27-20 at the end of the third quarter but outscored Rose Bud 21-14 in the final period to tie the game 41-41 at the end of regulation.
“We stole that one for sure,” Lady Wildcats coach Rusty Garner said. “I haven’t had a legitimate buzzer-beater win since I’ve been here, so the kids were really excited to get that one.”
The Lady Wildcats, who entered the tournament as the No. 3 seed, easily advanced in the first round against No. 6 seed Brinkley in a mercy-ruled 53-24 rout. Bangs led Harding Academy with 14 points while senior post player Megan Pack scored 11 points.
Riverview
The Lady Raiders’ season ended at the hands of Pangburn, which won 53-46 in the first round of the 2-3A district tournament at Rose Bud High School on Tuesday.
Riverview sent Pangburn to the free-throw line in the late going to stop the clock, but the Lady Tigers hit six consecutive free throws in the final minutes to clinch the victory.
Queen Banks led the Lady Raiders with 21 points while Brianna Harris scored 10.
5-2A North
Bigelow ended the Abundant Life Lady Owls’ season with a 48-46 overtime victory in the first round of the 5-2A North district tournament Thursday.
Carmyn Sharp led the Lady Owls with 12 points while Sidney Venus scored 11.
With the loss, the Lady Owls (18-13) did not qualify for regionals, which means no repeat trip to the 2A state tournament after they qualified for the first time last season.
But the good news for Abundant Life is, with the exception of senior post player Erin Miller, the Lady Owls will return all of their key players next season, including Sharp and Venus.
“We had a good year, 18 wins is a good amount, and it’s more than a lot of teams have,” Lady Owls coach Justin Moseley said. “We had a couple of games that we would love to have back, but seven of those losses were against ranked teams. We have a lot coming back next year, and we have a good group of ninth graders coming in.”
The Abundant Life boys earned the No. 1 seed in their bracket and did not play until Friday night.
SPORTS >> Falcons fighting to keep pace
North Pulaski’s Kryon Ware was involved in a key inbounds play in Tuesday’s loss at Little Rock McClellan, which evened the season series between the teams entering the stretch run of the season.By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
North Pulaski had four games left entering Friday night, but the Falcons were already looking at the very real possibility of a coin flip deciding their state tournament seeding.
Little Rock McClellan handed North Pulaski its first 5A-Southeast Conference loss, 67-64 on Tuesday, to avenge the loss at North Pulaski that knocked the Lions from the No. 1 spot in the state.
McClellan’s victory evened the season series, and with both games decided by three points, the first tiebreaker, which is head-to-head competition, would go out the window.
The next tiebreaker, North Pulaski coach Raymond Cooper said, is margin of victory over conference opponents up to 10 points. Since North Pulaski and McClellan had both beaten all their other 5A-Southeast opponents by 10 or more, that tie breaker was also irrelevant entering Friday.
“So if it remains the same it would go down to a coin toss,” Cooper said.
The state tournament begins March 2 at Alma.
The Falcons played Monticello in a regularly scheduled game at home Friday, then play a makeup with Sylvan Hills tonight. North Pulaski wraps up the season with consecutive games against White Hall with the scheduled home match-up Tuesday and a makeup at White Hall on Thursday.
McClellan, which had fewer weather-related cancellations, was 23-3, 11-1 entering Friday. North Pulaski was 18-5, 9-1, making the remaining regular-season games more important in assuring a favorable state tournament schedule.
“If we win the coin toss or however it turns out, if all things remain the same, the first-place team will play Tuesday, Friday and Saturday,” Cooper said. “The second-place team plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday.”
The latest North Pulaski-McClellan showdown ended on a three-pointer by Lions senior guard Tevin Hammond, and the furious finish revealed the hard-fought nature of this season’s series.
North Pulaski saw its lead whittled away in the final three minutes as the Falcons scored just four points while the Lions scored on every possession in that span. North Pulaski still led with 14.5 seconds left and, anticipating McClellan’s press, tried to inbound the ball over the top.
That led to a series of physical plays, with Cooper thinking a foul should have been called when Kyron Ware was knocked down taking the inbounds pass at half court. The Falcons controlled the rebounding but had to fight through crowds for three missed shots before the Lions rebounded and Hammond hit his game-winner.
“We didn’t play defense down the stretch,” Cooper said. “We had the lead and we started playing not to lose instead of not to win.”
Cooper said the Falcons, who led by 18 at one point during their first meeting with McClellan, might have been overconfident entering the rematch and he thought that showed in practice.
But it was better to lose now than in the single-elimination state tournament, and Cooper, who led his team to a state finals loss against Greene Co. Tech last year, said he was going to try to manage his time during the stretch run and was not afraid to give his veteran team time off if needed.
“I’m just trying to make sure that we keep fresh going into the tournament,” Cooper said. “One thing I did last year, and I think just from me having experience, is last year I think I over practiced going into the deal. As a coach you want to make sure you prepare for every little thing you can possibly think of.”
Cooper wouldn’t handicap the chances of North Pulaski and McClellan meeting one more time — in the state final at Hot Springs. He just wants to make sure the Falcons hold up their end of things.
Cooper recalled getting a scare from No. 4 seed Central Arkansas Christian in the first round of the state tournament last year.
“I try not to look too far ahead because the thing about the tournament is it has a tendency to never work out the way people think it should,” Cooper said. “And very rarely do you have two teams from the same conference. We’re just trying to make sure that we don’t look ahead.”
SPORTS >> Sylvan Hills beats Beebe, stays in first
Kamisha Wright gets away from the Beebe defense in Tuesday’s victory.By JASON KING Leader sportswriter
What a difference a year makes.
The Beebe Lady Badgers and Sylvan Hills Lady Bears fought for the No. 1 seed in the 5A Southeast Conference last season, and Beebe took the top spot with an unbeaten league run.
This season, the Lady Bears are on top of the conference standings, and a deflated Beebe team did little to slow that momentum Tuesday as Sylvan Hills won 47-26 at Sylvan Hills.
Sylvan Hills (16-5, 9-1) took advantage of Beebe’s struggle to handle the ball and lack of team communication to grab 18 turnovers, which resulted in a number of transition opportunities.
“I was glad about that one; we needed one like that,” Lady Bears coach Bee Rodden said. “Maybe we’re getting back in some rhythm. We came in on Sunday afternoon and practiced. We just felt like we weren’t where we needed to be. We spent a lot of time on our defense.”
That extra work paid off with a 13-0 run in the second quarter that took the Lady Bears from a modest 15-8 lead with 5:48 left to a dominant, 28-8 advantage in the final minute of the first half.
Of Beebe’s 18 giveaways, 13 were a result of steals by Sylvan Hills. Terica Kendrick led in that department with three and was also the leading scorer for the Lady Bears with a season-high 18 points.
“Our shooting is getting better,” Rodden said. “T.K. shot the ball extremely well, I thought. She’s one of those kids that if she can get into a rhythm, she can light it up. She made her first three; she was too excited.”
Kendrick’s three-pointer with 1:59 left in the third quarter put Sylvan Hills dangerously close to triggering the mercy-rule and its fast-moving clock at 42-15, but Rodden began a heavy rotation of substitutes. All 11 players on the Lady Bears roster saw action before the end of the game.
“That was nice. The other night, we didn’t get to do that,” Rodden said. “It kind of keeps the underclassmen, those other kids motivated. This is the time of year that you want to be hitting your peak.”
With only one victory all year, it has been a trying season for the Lady Badgers after an unbeaten conference run and 5A state semifinals appearance last year.
With Beebe school officials looking on Tuesday, dispirited players bickered with each other on the way to the locker room at halftime and sources are speculating about coach Lora Jackson’s future in a season in which the roster has been cut in half by player departures.
Kendrick capped off the first quarter with a basket and free throw that gave the Lady Bears a 10-4 lead. Post player Ashley Johnson extended the lead in the second quarter with an inside basket assisted by Kendrick, followed by a free throw with 3:39 left that made it 22-8.
Senior Dee Dee Lewis tacked on two more free throws a minute later, and Kamisha Wright got a steal that she took all the way for a layup and the 26-8 lead with 1:59 left in the half.
A basket by Beebe’s Kelsie Walker with 4:41 left in the third quarter was the only interruption in another second-half Sylvan Hills scoring run.
SPORTS >> Stingy Bears keep Badgers’ baskets to bare minimum
Sylvan Hills’ Demetric Gross (15) tries to block a shot by Brandon Fuller, of Beebe, during the Bears’ victory Tuesday.By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Beebe never gave up, but from the closing minutes of the first quarter the Badgers were never in the game against Sylvan Hills on Tuesday.
The Bears put up one of their strongest defensive efforts of the season and slowed down Badgers standout junior guard Devonte Young to win 47-23 at Sylvan Hills.
The Badgers made a charge mid-way through the first quarter after falling behind early, but the Bears (12-9, 3-7 5A-Southeast) regrouped and slowly pulled away over the remainder of the half. They held the momentum in the second half and finally enacted the timing/sportsmanship rule when they took a 30-point lead with a little over three minutes left to play.
“In the last few games, we’ve really tried to harp on our defense,” Bears coach Kevin Davis said. “We’re trying to get better and better at it — that and our rebounding. I thought the guys really responded. They did a good job.”
Young finished with 11 points to lead Beebe (3-20, 1-11), but Sylvan Hills’ stiff zone defense denied him inside driving lanes. He hit three, three-pointers and added a pair of free throws in the third quarter for his totals.
Davis said his players carried out the defensive scheme as he had drawn it up.
“I thought they executed our game plan really well,” he said. “Seniors played like seniors need to play. But just from an overall game plan, I could see things in all facets. I saw great wing play, great post play and really good guard play — all within the confines of what we try to do every day in practice.”
Young hit his first three-pointer with 5:58 left in the first quarter to cut the Bears’ lead to 5-3. He then followed a Demetric Gross score for Sylvan Hills with a basket and free throw to make it 7-6.
“I thought Beebe came out and really played us hard right out of the gate,” Davis said. “So it was good to see them play with the heart and intensity early, and our guys having to match that.”
Badger sophomore Braden Jones added some points in the lane in the first half. He took an assist from Young with 32 seconds left in the first quarter and scored, then hit a shot assisted by Brandon Fuller to start the second quarter to make it 16-14.
“They were getting the pick-and-roll in early and getting some buckets inside,” Davis said. “We switched it up and threw a little zone at them, and that seemed to slow them down just a little bit and get them out of their rhythm that they were trying to do.”
Gross had a strong night inside for the Bears with 10 points and four rebounds, and teamed with Archie Goodwin to take over the game in the third quarter. Goodwin led with 21 points.
“He knows what to do with that basketball when you get it in there to him,” Davis said of Gross. “He’s got a few moves inside. If you give him a little space, he’s tough to guard. He throws several different moves at you.”
Trey Smith and senior Ahmad Scott each scored seven points for the Bears. Point guard Bruce Mack had only a pair of free throws, but his seven assists and team-leading six rebounds proved to be some of the biggest differences for the Bears.
“He’s tough to guard, and he’s elusive,” Davis said. “I thought he did a really good job once Beebe extended pressure of breaking that down and finding guys. That’s when we pulled away in the first half, when he was making those moves inside.”
SPORTS >> Wrestlers state bound
By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
Six area schools, including last year’s state runner-up North Pulaski, are represented at the Arkansas High School State Wrestling Tournament under way at the Jack Stephens Center on the UALR campus in Little Rock.
The tournament, which began Friday, features wrestlers from Cabot, Beebe, North Pulaski, Searcy, Sylvan Hills and Riverview competing in 14 weight classifications. Cabot and Searcy are in the large-school, 6A-7A bracket and the others are in the 1A-5A bracket.
After filling just eight weight classes last year and finishing second to Central Arkansas Christian, North Pulaski has one of the largest teams, at 14, and can boast the most seeded wrestlers, 10, from the area schools competing.
The Falcons have four No. 1 seeds: Jacob McClain in the 119- pound class, Jonathan Buzzita in the 125-pound class, 140-pounder Tony Mongno and A.J. Stephens in the 171-pound class.
Buzzita, son of North Pulaski soccer coach Tony Buzzita, won first in the 119-pound class last year and Mongno, son of head wrestling coach Tony Mongno Sr., finished first in the 130-pound class. North Pulaski’s Vinnie Osmun, who won the 189-pound classification last year, is the No. 3 seed at the same weight this week.
The only other No. 1 seed from the area is Beebe’s David Day, who is No. 1 in the 160-pound classification. Beebe has 12 wrestlers in the tournament and also has a No. 3 seed, Jason Ferguson, in the 285-pound class.
Cabot and Searcy sent the most wrestlers, 14 apiece. Tyler Kurtz, a 112-pounder, is the highest of Cabot’s four seeds at No. 3 and Micah Wilson is the No. 4 seed in the 171-pound classification.
Riverview sent a team of nine and Sylvan Hills has five wrestlers at the tournament.
Leader sports editor
Six area schools, including last year’s state runner-up North Pulaski, are represented at the Arkansas High School State Wrestling Tournament under way at the Jack Stephens Center on the UALR campus in Little Rock.
The tournament, which began Friday, features wrestlers from Cabot, Beebe, North Pulaski, Searcy, Sylvan Hills and Riverview competing in 14 weight classifications. Cabot and Searcy are in the large-school, 6A-7A bracket and the others are in the 1A-5A bracket.
After filling just eight weight classes last year and finishing second to Central Arkansas Christian, North Pulaski has one of the largest teams, at 14, and can boast the most seeded wrestlers, 10, from the area schools competing.
The Falcons have four No. 1 seeds: Jacob McClain in the 119- pound class, Jonathan Buzzita in the 125-pound class, 140-pounder Tony Mongno and A.J. Stephens in the 171-pound class.
Buzzita, son of North Pulaski soccer coach Tony Buzzita, won first in the 119-pound class last year and Mongno, son of head wrestling coach Tony Mongno Sr., finished first in the 130-pound class. North Pulaski’s Vinnie Osmun, who won the 189-pound classification last year, is the No. 3 seed at the same weight this week.
The only other No. 1 seed from the area is Beebe’s David Day, who is No. 1 in the 160-pound classification. Beebe has 12 wrestlers in the tournament and also has a No. 3 seed, Jason Ferguson, in the 285-pound class.
Cabot and Searcy sent the most wrestlers, 14 apiece. Tyler Kurtz, a 112-pounder, is the highest of Cabot’s four seeds at No. 3 and Micah Wilson is the No. 4 seed in the 171-pound classification.
Riverview sent a team of nine and Sylvan Hills has five wrestlers at the tournament.
Monday, February 22, 2010
TOP STORY >> Cabot school to go without textbooks
Workers are installing the metal roof at Mountain Springs Elementary School.By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
The new Mountain Springs Elementary School, which opens this fall in Cabot, will be the first in the state not to use textbooks.
Harold Jeffcoat, director of curriculum for the district’s elementary schools, told the school board Tuesday evening that instead of paying $250,000 for math and social studies books, the district will pay $1,000 for software that will let teachers choose and share instructional material tailored to the state standards to which they must teach.
Textbooks are written to a national standard and don’t necessarily contain the lessons that Arkansas policy says students must be taught.
As an example, Jeffcoat said Arkansas requires that fourth-graders learn about major mountain ranges. But the $45 social studies book adopted by the district barely mentioned some of them and didn’t contain a full lesson about any.
“It’s our state standard we’re held accountable to and our students are tested on,” he said.
If the materials they need are not in their textbooks, teachers have no choice but to search out other sources. So they are already building their own programs.
The new software will make it easier to find what they need. Digital instructional material also will be more varied with videos available and maps enhanced by Google Earth that will, for example, show students what a real mountain in the Andes looks like.
The teachers will select the content of the Web site that the program will use, he said. That process will start when the teachers for the new school are assembled.
After that, if the program works as touted, the teachers will share their best finds and the program will continue to improve.
Although the school will have no textbooks, paper worksheets may be printed from the digital lessons. Students will still have homework and work to take home to show their parents.
In other business, principals from the junior highs and high school talked about what they are doing to improve scores on open- response questions to test reading comprehension before testing starts next month. The principals said low scores in the past could be attributed in some cases to lack of interest.
The students don’t seem to care about the scores. But part of the the problem is the lack of experience with answering questions that require reading an essay and making inferences based on the information it contains.
To get them ready, principals and teachers have been working with students in small groups, teaching them how to think on a higher level and also how to recognize the cues that will help them really understand the questions they are required to answer.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
TOP STORY >> PCSSD superintendent to be chosen in March
By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer
Interviews with the two finalists for Pulaski County Special School District superintendent are planned around the first of March, with a decision to come soon after.
The interviews will be closed to the public.
But a forum for school patrons to talk with the candidates will take place around the same time, said board president Tim Clark.
“We hope to have this finalized in the next 10 days,” Clark said.
The school board at a special meeting Thursday selected the finalists for the district’s top post. Acting superintendent Rob McGill and Vashti Washington, associate superintendent for Charleston, S.C., public schools, had emerged as the clear favorites during a discussion of candidates the day before, board members said.
“I am excited to be a finalist for this position,” said McGill in a prepared statement. “As the acting superintendent since last March, I have spearheaded many programs, projects and plans that I want to see to fruition for the betterment of PCSSD students and their families.”
Board member Bill Vasquez of Jacksonville said that any of the four candidates considered for the post “would be great for the district,” but that a strong leader is what is needed most.
“I want someone who is a team builder, a good communicator and someone who can involve all the stakeholders, but be the ultimate authority,” Vasquez said. “The board tends to be the final decider, and that is not the design. The superintendent runs the district, the board has oversight. Our board is much too active.”
Clark said in the next round of interviews he’ll probably ask questions “outside of the box, more in depth” on an array of topics that might include the upcoming federal court desegregation case or the candidate’s stance on school discipline.
“Whoever gets it, I am going to be happy with it,” Clark said. “Both have good experience and a good educational background.”
The board will not make a decision for the superintendent’s job until after the conclusion of an investigation of allegations that McGill made racially insensitive comments on more than one occasion. Attorney Jack Lassiter is expected to complete his investigation in a few days, said board member Charles Wood on Wednesday.
Dale Charles, president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, presented a letter to the board at its regular meeting Wednesday that alleged McGill had commented, regarding the state Board of Education’s granting of a charter to an all-black school, “They gave the blacks something, and didn’t give the whites nothing.”
In his letter, Charles said that McGill “lacked the necessary skills” to lead the district and end its long-running desegregation case.
A hearing on the PCSSD’s adherence to its desegregation plan is scheduled to start in federal court Feb. 25.
Rizzelle Aaron, representative of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP, said at the board meeting Wednesday that he would not air “other complaints” against McGill until after the board’s pick of a superintendent in order to counter rumors that the timing of the allegations was “politically motivated.”
At the meeting, Marty Nix, president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, and Emery Chesterfield, president of the Pulaski Association of Support Staff, chided the school board for not including them in discussions about candidates for the superintendent position. Inclusion of union representatives has been past practice, Nix said.
“PACT represents the majority of teachers in the district, and we are still under contract,” Nix said.
Before taking on the job of acting superintendent a year ago, McGill was principal at Sherwood Elementary School for six years and at Pine Forest Elementary School for four years. Prior to that, he was assistant principal at Landmark Elementary School for two years.
He has four years experience teaching fourth, fifth and sixth grade in PCSSD. McGill has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in elementary school administration. McGill lives in Mayflower.
The district is the second largest in the state, with 17,330 students.
Washington, the other candidate, lives in Summerville, S.C., where she is in her sixth year as associate superintendent for the Charleston County Schools, which has 43,000 students.
She has 10 years’ experience as a school principal and 15 years’ teaching experience on the elementary and middle school levels in South Carolina schools.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in speech and communication, a master’s degree in early childhood education and a doctoral degree in school leadership and administration.
TOP STORY >> Steep fall for former Cabot CEO
By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
The Cabot man who was fired in March 2009 as CEO of Affiliated Foods four months before the wholesale food distribution company went out of business, pleaded guilty to kiting $11.5 million in checks Thursday. He faces up to 30 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Jane Duke said Friday that John Mills, 59, is free on his own recognizance until his sentencing in six to eight weeks.
The actual sentence will be determined by Chief U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes and based in part on a report from the court’s probation division. Since there is no parole for federal crimes, the sentence Mills is given is the one he will serve.
In its simplest form, check kiting is an activity carried out by individuals strapped for cash who float hot checks between two checking accounts.
A check written on one bank is deposited in a second bank creating an apparent positive balance which allows the withdrawal of enough money to deposit into the first bank before the first check bounces.
In a press release Thursday, Duke said Mills kited checks on a grand scale.
At the plea hearing before Judge Holmes, Mills admitted that Affiliated Foods began to experience major cash-flow problems in mid to late 2008, Duke said. To alleviate the problem, Mills and Alexander Martinez, the company’s chief financial officer, devised a scheme in which two subsidiaries, Convenience Store Supply Inc. and Supermarket Investors Inc., would issue checks to cover shortfalls at Affiliated Foods.
Every day, U.S. Bank withdrew the funds deposited into Affiliated Food’s account and used those funds to reduce the outstanding balance on the company’s line of credit, Duke said. By using the kited checks, written almost daily, to artificially reduce its outstanding line-of-credit balance, Affiliated Foods had sufficient funds available on its line of credit to cover the checks clearing each day.
The scheme was ongoing from Sept. 29, 2008 until Feb. 27, 2009 when it was discovered by U.S. Bank during a routine audit.
The company’s line of credit was frozen, further escalating the cash-flow problem. The company filed bankruptcy in May 2009 and went out of business two months later.
Affiliated Foods was headquartered in Little Rock and provided products to hundreds of independent grocery stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
“In the wake of our country’s economic downturn, we have seen all manner of corporate fraud come to light. Such corporate fraud hampers vital recovery efforts by displacing workers, destroying investor trust, and curtailing consumer confidence,” Duke said in the Thursday press release.
“The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute Ponzi schemes, bank fraud, check kiting, and other similar types of financial ‘shell games’ specifically designed to lull banks, investors, and employees into having a false sense of security,” she said.
The investigation that led to Mills’ guilty plea to bank fraud was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Whatley.
EDITORIAL >> How you can help, senator
Sen. Blanche Lincoln spent a tiny bit of her ample campaign war chest Thursday on a country breakfast for some 40 Arkansas legislators in the state-owned apartment building across the street from the state Capitol, where she made an obviously earnest and most plaintive pitch to lawmakers to help her.
If there is any little problem in your districts that her office and the federal government might help resolve please call her, Sen. Lincoln told the lawmakers. Constituency work has become an important function of congressional offices, and diligent attention to constituency problems is rewarded at election time.
U. S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, Mr. Republican in Arkansas, was the best there ever was. He could dislodge a disability check more quickly than any member of Congress. There are stories that Lincoln’s staff is not the best at such mundane stuff.
But we have an idea about how Lincoln could serve her constituents much better than that. She could announce that she was going to use her pivotal position in the Senate to insist that Congress address the single problem that polls show most distresses the people of Arkansas: health care.
Then she should go back to Washington and do it.
In a poll conducted last month for Talk Business Quarterly, 39 percent of Arkansans listed paying for health care as their greatest financial concern. Nothing else was close. Asked about all concerns, financial or otherwise, health care was second to worries about the general economy.
Why wouldn’t they be worried? Health-insurance premiums are rising far faster than inflation and tens of thousands lose their coverage every year. The increases are certain to become steeper and steeper.
Californians are learning this month about the insurance death spiral, and we will hear about it, too. People who are not covered by employer-sponsored plans and buy individual policies learned that their premiums are going up in some cases by 39 percent even while insurance companies are enjoying record profits.
More and more healthy people are dropping their coverage because of the expense, which means that the insurers are left with sicker people who need more expensive care. So the company raises premiums to cover the medical losses, which means that even more people will drop their coverage. The same spiral affects employer insurance, but it is slower.
It means more and more people fall back on government insurance, Medicaid and veterans medical services. Gov. Beebe is now wrestling with finding ways to cut $400 million a year from the state Medicaid budget because it is growing at an unsustainable rate of nearly 8 percent. Every state faces the same dilemma.
Some may remember that was the reason that President Obama made health-insurance reform the first priority with the support of a vast majority of Americans, and it was the reason that Congress spent the better part of a year putting together plans to address the manifold problems of the health system.
It was an ugly and confusing process, but both houses eventually produced very similar plans that did indeed address the big problems. Nearly everyone would have liked something a little different — more government involvement or less typically — but it was a consensus, which is how democratic institutions always address problems.
Both plans would have protected the coverage of people with private insurance, expanded it to tens of millions of Americans who are without it, install mechanisms to stem the rising costs and reduce the national budget deficits.
Sen. Lincoln eventually voted for the plan that her committee drafted, but after seeing poll numbers showing that insurance and pharmaceutical company advertising had succeeded in frightening Arkansans about what the bills did, she became apologetic.
Then in full-panic mode she announced that she would join a Republican effort to block the legislation that she had supported from becoming law through the reconciliation process, by which a majority of senators rule.
We think it would be politically advisable for Lincoln, too, not just the right thing to do. People would like to see their senator stand firm and educate them on what her bill does and why it would help all of them.
Tell seniors that the Republicans and insurance companies are lying and that the bills wouldn’t reduce their Medicare. Sen. Dale Bumpers, whose seat she took, did that for 24 years. Oh, how we miss him.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
EDITORIAL >> $4.5B ripoff must stop
Don’t hold your breath, not until 2013 anyway, but a little relief on your light bill may be finally on the way. The state Public Service Commission ordered a study last week to see whether the state’s largest electric utility, Entergy Arkansas, should stop subsidizing people and industries in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas with our paychecks.
You probably ask, why do we need a study? Isn’t the answer transparently yes? But we all thought the answer was yes 31 years ago when Arkansans first learned of the “system agreement” under which the six subsidiaries of Entergy Corp. — it was called Middle South Utilities back then — would start sharing the costs of power generation when a big new nuclear plant in Mississippi was finished.
Since 1985, when the Grand Gulf I generating plant was finished at Port Gibson, Miss., customers of the Arkansas utility have sent $4.5 billion to three states to the south so that customers there would not have to pay so much to light, heat and cool their homes and businesses. The monthly subsidy was part of your light bill. It helped Mississippi amortize the mammoth cost of building the nuclear plant and customers in all three states avoid the high cost of generating their electricity with expensive oil and gas.
As we have pointed out, Jacksonville’s own Wally Nixon, who was then working for the new young Governor Bill Clinton, uncovered the state’s obligation under the agreement, which was negotiated by the utilities. Clinton protested and there was protracted litigation, but in the end Arkansas lost. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a federal appeals court said Arkansas had to oblige the agreement and pay up.
Arkansas had to pay under the agreement because in the 1960s and ’70s it had built two nuclear units at Russellville and two coal-powered plants near Pine Bluff and Batesville, all of which produced electricity at lower costs than the oil and gas plants in Louisiana. Arkansans had to pay for the plants’ construction, but along with much greater pollution from the carbon exhausts of coal, they eventually got cheaper power. Starting in 1985, they (we) would also have to subsidize the southern neighbors. The neighbors got cleaner air from generating from natural gas and nuclear and flat rates, too. Louisiana in particular has liked the arrangement a lot. Thanks Arkansas, Louisianans say, keep the money coming.
Last fall, the federal agency said Arkansas could be let out of the agreement in 2013 if it chose. The state Public Service Commission said last week that it wanted to explore that option. It will hold hearings this year.
Entergy, of course, wants the six subsidiaries to continue to share costs in some way. The company says it is working on a new agreement to start in 2013 but promises that it would be much different and presumably fairer than the old one. We recall Middle South’s insistence 30 years ago that the agreement was fair and mutually beneficial to people in the four states. How did that turn out?
It sounds like the Arkansas commissioners are going to examine the propositions with a hard eye, as they should. They only have to imagine what Arkansas and the 687,000 customers of Entergy could have done with $4.5 billion — $5 billion before this year is out.
You probably ask, why do we need a study? Isn’t the answer transparently yes? But we all thought the answer was yes 31 years ago when Arkansans first learned of the “system agreement” under which the six subsidiaries of Entergy Corp. — it was called Middle South Utilities back then — would start sharing the costs of power generation when a big new nuclear plant in Mississippi was finished.
Since 1985, when the Grand Gulf I generating plant was finished at Port Gibson, Miss., customers of the Arkansas utility have sent $4.5 billion to three states to the south so that customers there would not have to pay so much to light, heat and cool their homes and businesses. The monthly subsidy was part of your light bill. It helped Mississippi amortize the mammoth cost of building the nuclear plant and customers in all three states avoid the high cost of generating their electricity with expensive oil and gas.
As we have pointed out, Jacksonville’s own Wally Nixon, who was then working for the new young Governor Bill Clinton, uncovered the state’s obligation under the agreement, which was negotiated by the utilities. Clinton protested and there was protracted litigation, but in the end Arkansas lost. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a federal appeals court said Arkansas had to oblige the agreement and pay up.
Arkansas had to pay under the agreement because in the 1960s and ’70s it had built two nuclear units at Russellville and two coal-powered plants near Pine Bluff and Batesville, all of which produced electricity at lower costs than the oil and gas plants in Louisiana. Arkansans had to pay for the plants’ construction, but along with much greater pollution from the carbon exhausts of coal, they eventually got cheaper power. Starting in 1985, they (we) would also have to subsidize the southern neighbors. The neighbors got cleaner air from generating from natural gas and nuclear and flat rates, too. Louisiana in particular has liked the arrangement a lot. Thanks Arkansas, Louisianans say, keep the money coming.
Last fall, the federal agency said Arkansas could be let out of the agreement in 2013 if it chose. The state Public Service Commission said last week that it wanted to explore that option. It will hold hearings this year.
Entergy, of course, wants the six subsidiaries to continue to share costs in some way. The company says it is working on a new agreement to start in 2013 but promises that it would be much different and presumably fairer than the old one. We recall Middle South’s insistence 30 years ago that the agreement was fair and mutually beneficial to people in the four states. How did that turn out?
It sounds like the Arkansas commissioners are going to examine the propositions with a hard eye, as they should. They only have to imagine what Arkansas and the 687,000 customers of Entergy could have done with $4.5 billion — $5 billion before this year is out.
TOP STORY >> Justice Jim fought tough final battle
By GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader executive editor
Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was.
Johnson, who fought against integration at Central High School in Little Rock and elsewhere around the state, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound early Saturday morning in his rural Conway home at the age of 85. He’d been in poor health and had been deteriorating since his wife’s death several years ago.
I knew him well enough to get his old ties in the mail around Christmas, but I didn’t receive one last December, and I realized he was not well.
He really was a man of the 1950s, although he kept making mischief for most of his life. He was smart, shrewd, articulate and all that, but a bit over the top: His blatant bigotry was a little too embarrassing even to those who shared many of his beliefs.
In his heyday, there was a menacing air around Justice Jim, who would scream and holler and hint at potential violence if he didn’t get his way. But he really wasn’t much of a brawler, and in his old age, everyone thought he was courtly, someone who was born 100 years too late, and he knew it.
He was mostly forgotten. Cancer had killed his beloved wife Virginia, and then he, too had cancer. Too despondent to go on, he killed himself with his .45-caliber rifle.
His constitutional amendment opposing integration, which the voters approved and then repealed 30 years later, was a legal sham and was never enforced.
The obituaries talked about Johnson’s unabashed bigotry. He was a firebrand who modeled himself after Huey Long of Louisiana, just across the border from Johnson’s home town of Crossett in Ashley County. But Justice Jim, like Faubus, was a spent force by the time the 1960s rolled around.
Johnson hadn’t won an election since 1958, when he was elected to the state Supreme Court, a job he hated because it made him stay out of politics. He ran again for governor in 1966, losing to Winthrop Rockefeller, and the result was not much better than a decade earlier, when Faubus defeated him soundly.
Faubus, who positioned himself as a moderate in 1956, when he was running for a second term, carried 67 of the state’s 75 counties and beat Johnson better than 2-1.
The Central High School integration crisis might have been avoided if Johnson hadn’t sent his followers to the school and threatened violence. Faubus was so intimidated (and fearful he might lose the election next year), he sent in the National Guard to keep the Little Rock Nine out of Central.
Johnson rehearsed for the 1957 crisis two years earlier, when he thought he could stop integration in Hoxie near Jonesboro.
He stirred up the mob, as he often did, but in the end Hoxie was integrated.
Schools in Fayetteville, Van Buren and Charleston were integrated without incident — all of them in the northern half of Arkansas, where Johnson’s brand of politics didn’t travel well.
Justice Jim ran and lost for U.S. senator, attorney general and Supreme Court chief justice. He made a mark as state campaign chairman in 1968 for George Wallace, the third-party presidential candidate who carried Arkansas. That was the year Johnson lost to Sen. J. William Fulbright in the Democratic primary and Johnson’s wife lost to Rockefeller.
It’s unlikely Arkansas will ever see a ballot lineup like that again — not to mention the Gene Williams’ country band that entertained Johnson’s supporters on the campaign trail. You had to be there.
Johnson and Faubus were important political figures for maybe a dozen years, but neither would fade away: Johnson used his newspaper, Arkansas Faith, to spread his segregationist views and kept writing letters to editors and cultivating the media, a word that didn’t exist when he was still a force to be reckoned with.
Justice Jim had one more fight in him. He did not want Bill Clinton elected president and was the source for some of the most salacious allegations against him. This was 1950s no-holds-barred politics, the only kind he knew. That style of politics has made a comeback, thanks partly to Justice Jim.
During the Clinton years, Sheffield Nelson worked on the other side of the street, recruiting Jim McDougal to embarrass Clinton over Whitewater. Nelson was all business, sort of, while Johnson was all dirt.
The election of Barack Obama was another blow for Justice Jim. It was worse than integration, miscegenation and Clinton’s election. Few blacks could vote or go to white schools when Johnson started out in politics, and now it all seemed hopeless. All his life he had predicted that integration would mean the end of white domination, and he’d lived long enough to see it happen.
By then he had a terminal illness, and it was all too much to bear. He had no more fight left in him and ended it all with a gunshot to his chest.
Leader executive editor
Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was.
Johnson, who fought against integration at Central High School in Little Rock and elsewhere around the state, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound early Saturday morning in his rural Conway home at the age of 85. He’d been in poor health and had been deteriorating since his wife’s death several years ago.
I knew him well enough to get his old ties in the mail around Christmas, but I didn’t receive one last December, and I realized he was not well.
He really was a man of the 1950s, although he kept making mischief for most of his life. He was smart, shrewd, articulate and all that, but a bit over the top: His blatant bigotry was a little too embarrassing even to those who shared many of his beliefs.
In his heyday, there was a menacing air around Justice Jim, who would scream and holler and hint at potential violence if he didn’t get his way. But he really wasn’t much of a brawler, and in his old age, everyone thought he was courtly, someone who was born 100 years too late, and he knew it.
He was mostly forgotten. Cancer had killed his beloved wife Virginia, and then he, too had cancer. Too despondent to go on, he killed himself with his .45-caliber rifle.
His constitutional amendment opposing integration, which the voters approved and then repealed 30 years later, was a legal sham and was never enforced.
Leading the massive resistance against the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation, Justice Jim fought the ruling with all his might and high-falutin’ legalisms such as “interposition” and “nullification,” which meant states could ignore court decisions they didn’t like.
A half-century later, the secessionists down in Texas and elsewhere are using the same words, which must have pleased Justice Jim.
An old-style segregationist who stuck to his principles, Johnson really believed all that stuff about keeping black children out of good schools and why it was wrong to shake hands with a black person. Orval Faubus, who died in 1994, was an opportunist who would have accepted integration if his political career hadn’t been on the line.The obituaries talked about Johnson’s unabashed bigotry. He was a firebrand who modeled himself after Huey Long of Louisiana, just across the border from Johnson’s home town of Crossett in Ashley County. But Justice Jim, like Faubus, was a spent force by the time the 1960s rolled around.
Johnson hadn’t won an election since 1958, when he was elected to the state Supreme Court, a job he hated because it made him stay out of politics. He ran again for governor in 1966, losing to Winthrop Rockefeller, and the result was not much better than a decade earlier, when Faubus defeated him soundly.
Faubus, who positioned himself as a moderate in 1956, when he was running for a second term, carried 67 of the state’s 75 counties and beat Johnson better than 2-1.
The Central High School integration crisis might have been avoided if Johnson hadn’t sent his followers to the school and threatened violence. Faubus was so intimidated (and fearful he might lose the election next year), he sent in the National Guard to keep the Little Rock Nine out of Central.
Johnson rehearsed for the 1957 crisis two years earlier, when he thought he could stop integration in Hoxie near Jonesboro.
He stirred up the mob, as he often did, but in the end Hoxie was integrated.
Schools in Fayetteville, Van Buren and Charleston were integrated without incident — all of them in the northern half of Arkansas, where Johnson’s brand of politics didn’t travel well.
Justice Jim ran and lost for U.S. senator, attorney general and Supreme Court chief justice. He made a mark as state campaign chairman in 1968 for George Wallace, the third-party presidential candidate who carried Arkansas. That was the year Johnson lost to Sen. J. William Fulbright in the Democratic primary and Johnson’s wife lost to Rockefeller.
It’s unlikely Arkansas will ever see a ballot lineup like that again — not to mention the Gene Williams’ country band that entertained Johnson’s supporters on the campaign trail. You had to be there.
Johnson and Faubus were important political figures for maybe a dozen years, but neither would fade away: Johnson used his newspaper, Arkansas Faith, to spread his segregationist views and kept writing letters to editors and cultivating the media, a word that didn’t exist when he was still a force to be reckoned with.
Justice Jim had one more fight in him. He did not want Bill Clinton elected president and was the source for some of the most salacious allegations against him. This was 1950s no-holds-barred politics, the only kind he knew. That style of politics has made a comeback, thanks partly to Justice Jim.
During the Clinton years, Sheffield Nelson worked on the other side of the street, recruiting Jim McDougal to embarrass Clinton over Whitewater. Nelson was all business, sort of, while Johnson was all dirt.
The election of Barack Obama was another blow for Justice Jim. It was worse than integration, miscegenation and Clinton’s election. Few blacks could vote or go to white schools when Johnson started out in politics, and now it all seemed hopeless. All his life he had predicted that integration would mean the end of white domination, and he’d lived long enough to see it happen.
By then he had a terminal illness, and it was all too much to bear. He had no more fight left in him and ended it all with a gunshot to his chest.
TOP STORY >> Mayor will miss running city
By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer
Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams, who is not running for re-election, gave his last state of the city address during the Tuesday night council meeting saying the past three years have been the best years of his life.
Although Williams is running for state Senate, he said he will continue to work for the city as long as he is in office.
“It is my job to maintain the public’s trust and confidence that we are doing the best for Cabot with the means we have available to us. I believe we have accomplished this task, and my commitment to you is that we will continue down that road the rest of my term as mayor,” he said. “I took forward to an exciting final year in office and pledge to you that I will work my hardest for you until the day I leave office.”
From the tornadoes in 2008 to heavy rains in 2009, the weather has been one of the biggest challenges of his administration, Williams said.
“All of this water brought flooding to areas that never flooded in the past and extra problems to areas that typically flood,” Williams said.
But since the $30 million solution outlined in an engineering study was not feasible, Williams said, “We had to look at our drainage situation from a different perspective, and I believe we have made a significant amount of progress with a much smaller price tag.
“We applied for four small drainage grants from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. We have received approval letters for three of these projects and have two of them completely finished.
“They have already made a marked difference in the drainage in these areas, and we look forward to continuing to work on these projects as much as possible to help as many flood areas as we can with the available funds.
“We also applied for a large project through FEMA to help the Cabot Highlands, and we are currently awaiting approval of our application. This project is estimated to cost around $800,000 and is an 80/20 split with the city.
“There are still several flooding issues in Cabot, but we have made great strides and will continue to work hard to help as many of these areas as possible,” the mayor said.
Williams talked about improvements in technology that have made city hall accessible to residents without leaving their homes and about setting up a system for paying wages and salaries that includes a serious evaluation program for raises.
He talked about the good working relationships he has helped develop with county, state and national leaders and the importance of setting aside money for projects that will need funding after he is no longer mayor.
“Some of the projects we are planning for are the north interchange, Cabot Highlands flooding project, Veterans Park Community Center expansion, and equipping a new fire station. We must plan for these expenses now rather than wait until the day we need the money,” he said.
“The north interchange will require approximately $2 million to $4 million from the city of Cabot, so we must prepare now to have that money available when we are given the go ahead to start this project.
“We have worked diligently with our congressional representatives to get funding for this project, and we will continue to work on this project to my last day in office, and hopefully until it is finished,” the mayor said.
In other business, the city council passed a resolution reappointing Roger Tonnessen to the parks commission and read an ordinance that, if passed, will allow the city to place liens on property to collect unpaid bills for mowing yards.
Leader staff writer
Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams, who is not running for re-election, gave his last state of the city address during the Tuesday night council meeting saying the past three years have been the best years of his life.
Although Williams is running for state Senate, he said he will continue to work for the city as long as he is in office.
“It is my job to maintain the public’s trust and confidence that we are doing the best for Cabot with the means we have available to us. I believe we have accomplished this task, and my commitment to you is that we will continue down that road the rest of my term as mayor,” he said. “I took forward to an exciting final year in office and pledge to you that I will work my hardest for you until the day I leave office.”
From the tornadoes in 2008 to heavy rains in 2009, the weather has been one of the biggest challenges of his administration, Williams said.
“All of this water brought flooding to areas that never flooded in the past and extra problems to areas that typically flood,” Williams said.
But since the $30 million solution outlined in an engineering study was not feasible, Williams said, “We had to look at our drainage situation from a different perspective, and I believe we have made a significant amount of progress with a much smaller price tag.
“We applied for four small drainage grants from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. We have received approval letters for three of these projects and have two of them completely finished.
“They have already made a marked difference in the drainage in these areas, and we look forward to continuing to work on these projects as much as possible to help as many flood areas as we can with the available funds.
“We also applied for a large project through FEMA to help the Cabot Highlands, and we are currently awaiting approval of our application. This project is estimated to cost around $800,000 and is an 80/20 split with the city.
“There are still several flooding issues in Cabot, but we have made great strides and will continue to work hard to help as many of these areas as possible,” the mayor said.
Williams talked about improvements in technology that have made city hall accessible to residents without leaving their homes and about setting up a system for paying wages and salaries that includes a serious evaluation program for raises.
He talked about the good working relationships he has helped develop with county, state and national leaders and the importance of setting aside money for projects that will need funding after he is no longer mayor.
“Some of the projects we are planning for are the north interchange, Cabot Highlands flooding project, Veterans Park Community Center expansion, and equipping a new fire station. We must plan for these expenses now rather than wait until the day we need the money,” he said.
“The north interchange will require approximately $2 million to $4 million from the city of Cabot, so we must prepare now to have that money available when we are given the go ahead to start this project.
“We have worked diligently with our congressional representatives to get funding for this project, and we will continue to work on this project to my last day in office, and hopefully until it is finished,” the mayor said.
In other business, the city council passed a resolution reappointing Roger Tonnessen to the parks commission and read an ordinance that, if passed, will allow the city to place liens on property to collect unpaid bills for mowing yards.
TOP STORY >> A lengthy hearing on PCSSD expected
By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staffwriter
Representatives of the Pulaski County Special School District expect another lengthy hearing to begin on Feb. 22 as part of its petition for unitary status.
The hearing may last longer than a week, be rigorously opposed by the Joshua Intervenors and probably by the Knight Intervenors as well, PCSSD attorney Sam Jones said.
The Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts have been interlocked in an expensive, extensive desegregation agreement for about three decades.
U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson ruled earlier that Little Rock is in substantial compliance with requirements to achieve desegregation, and over a challenge by the Joshua Intervenors, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
Wilson then recused himself from the desegregation case, which landed on District Judge Brian Miller’s docket.
After some delays, Miller set Jan. 25 as a hearing date on North Little Rock School District’s motion for unitary status.
That hearing, which started on time, is expected to wrap up this week, Jones said.
The Joshua Intervenors, the parents of a group of black students, are represented by their original attorney, John Walker, and by Robert Pressman and Austin Porter Jr. in their objection to a declaration of unitary status, Jones said.
It will be easier for Jacksonville to detach from PCSSD and form its own district if the desegregation settlements and court oversight are ended.
Walker has said a separate Jacksonville district hurts desegregation and that he’s opposed to it.
The Knight Intervenors are schoolteachers. They made no court filings in the North Little Rock hearing but “they did file a lot of stuff in opposition to ours,” Jones said. “One could infer that they might appear and be active in our case.”
The Joshua attorneys have pressed extensive cross examination of North Little Rock witnesses and still had witnesses to call at the beginning of this week, said Jones, who has sat through much of the proceedings.
‘The judge keeps his cards very close to his vest,” he said. “He’s intensely interested in achievement issues. Beyond that, nothing else is very clear. He’s granting both sides great latitude.”
Jones said the Pulaski County Special School District case is substantially different than the North Little Rock plan. The PCSSD plan is based on Plan 2000 and it enumerates 11 areas, he said. I will make initial presentations on each topic,” Jones said, “pretty spare.”
“But I can’t predict how much cross-examination there will be. While I hope our case is not nearly as long as North Little Rocks has proven to be, its probably going to take longer than a week.”
Jones said it would be his job to prove that PCSSD substantially satisfied the requirements of Plan 2000.
Leader senior staffwriter
Representatives of the Pulaski County Special School District expect another lengthy hearing to begin on Feb. 22 as part of its petition for unitary status.
The hearing may last longer than a week, be rigorously opposed by the Joshua Intervenors and probably by the Knight Intervenors as well, PCSSD attorney Sam Jones said.
The Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts have been interlocked in an expensive, extensive desegregation agreement for about three decades.
U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson ruled earlier that Little Rock is in substantial compliance with requirements to achieve desegregation, and over a challenge by the Joshua Intervenors, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
Wilson then recused himself from the desegregation case, which landed on District Judge Brian Miller’s docket.
After some delays, Miller set Jan. 25 as a hearing date on North Little Rock School District’s motion for unitary status.
That hearing, which started on time, is expected to wrap up this week, Jones said.
The Joshua Intervenors, the parents of a group of black students, are represented by their original attorney, John Walker, and by Robert Pressman and Austin Porter Jr. in their objection to a declaration of unitary status, Jones said.
It will be easier for Jacksonville to detach from PCSSD and form its own district if the desegregation settlements and court oversight are ended.
Walker has said a separate Jacksonville district hurts desegregation and that he’s opposed to it.
The Knight Intervenors are schoolteachers. They made no court filings in the North Little Rock hearing but “they did file a lot of stuff in opposition to ours,” Jones said. “One could infer that they might appear and be active in our case.”
The Joshua attorneys have pressed extensive cross examination of North Little Rock witnesses and still had witnesses to call at the beginning of this week, said Jones, who has sat through much of the proceedings.
‘The judge keeps his cards very close to his vest,” he said. “He’s intensely interested in achievement issues. Beyond that, nothing else is very clear. He’s granting both sides great latitude.”
Jones said the Pulaski County Special School District case is substantially different than the North Little Rock plan. The PCSSD plan is based on Plan 2000 and it enumerates 11 areas, he said. I will make initial presentations on each topic,” Jones said, “pretty spare.”
“But I can’t predict how much cross-examination there will be. While I hope our case is not nearly as long as North Little Rocks has proven to be, its probably going to take longer than a week.”
Jones said it would be his job to prove that PCSSD substantially satisfied the requirements of Plan 2000.
SPORTS >> Snow days don’t freeze imagination
By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
I’ve got to hand it to the local school administrators and athletic directors for the prompt way they got those snowed-out basketball games rescheduled and, in many cases, already played.
The people in charge realized the season was winding down — the smaller classifications began their conference tournaments this week — and with sites and dates set for regional and state tournaments and state finals, and with some schools playing previously scheduled makeup games at the end of the regular season, the latest round of postponements had to be made up whenever possible.
The situation probably wasn’t solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Former Lonoke girls coach Darryl Fimple, now at North Little Rock, told me at Cabot on Friday his team was playing its second consecutive night.
As a sports editor, I am particularly grateful to Fimple’s old employer Lonoke, which got in a couple makeups with Clinton a week ago to give us something live to cover for The Leader. Cabotalso got in games on Wednesday and had just a one-day hiatus before facing North Little Rock on Friday.
When rumors of more snow began to flutter around late last week I nearly panicked. After all how many postponement/rescheduling/state of the program stories can you write?
In my distressed state I threw out a lifeline on my Facebook page.
“If it snows again,” I wrote, “and more basketball games are canceled, and I don’t have anything to put in my sports section AGAIN I swear I’m going to start making stuff up. If you read about a basketball player being carried away by an enormous bird, you’ll know the fix is in.”
Apparently most of my friends were as bored or afflicted by cabin fever as I was, because they chimed in with ideas ranging from the ridiculous to the really ridiculous.
Some of the printable suggestions included an offer for me to cover a friend’s game of chess with his wife; an offer from a fellow editor in Colorado — where games don’t get snowed out — to send me some material; a suggestion I write about clowns in the sewer, Stephen King style and a recommendation I write about the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers or Bill Belichick, like all sportswriters do when they’re bored.
Boy, it’s like a college creative writing professor once said to me “when your back is against the wall you just plot, plot, plot.”
I also read a lot of Facebook updates from people who see snow in winter and automatically think it disproves the theory of global warming. As if years of science, study, observation and measurement can be debunked by a guy using his debit card to scrape off his windshield.
Let me get this straight, if it snows, it means there is no global warming. So, using that logic, when the snow melts, it must mean global warming is back on, right?
Anyway, you think a lot of weird thoughts when you’re snowed in.
For example, I actually started missing Jacksonville’s pregame warm-up music, which should come with a parental advisory label; having to park far away at Abundant Life because the Owls always have an early-arriving crowd, and that weird yellow glow that suffuses the inside on North Pulaski’s gym.
Seriously, I’m hoping we’re back to stay now, because I’d hate to see another interruption to this basketball season. I mean, look at what we have going on here.
Lonoke’s girls are the 2-4A Conference champs and the top seed to this week’s district tournament as they try to reach their fourth straight state final and finally win one; North Pulaski’s boys were perfect in the 5A-Southeast entering Tuesday, No. 1 in 5A and looking for a finals return of their own and the Abundant Life boys are No. 2 in Class 2A, the 5-2A North champions and the top seed in that district.
The Riverview boys are No. 3 in 3A and it remains to be seen if defending 6A champion Jacksonville can regroup with a mostly new starting lineup and make a push in the postseason. And maybe some other area team, boys or girls, pulls it together in the postseason, peaks at the right time, gets a good draw and makes a run.
To an ex-Yankee carpetbagger like myself, our recent weather is probably supposed to be a tiptoe through the tulips. But with all this basketball awaiting us and with baseball just around the corner, the next time I hear the word “snow” it better be followed by “cone.”
Leader sports editor
I’ve got to hand it to the local school administrators and athletic directors for the prompt way they got those snowed-out basketball games rescheduled and, in many cases, already played.
The people in charge realized the season was winding down — the smaller classifications began their conference tournaments this week — and with sites and dates set for regional and state tournaments and state finals, and with some schools playing previously scheduled makeup games at the end of the regular season, the latest round of postponements had to be made up whenever possible.
The situation probably wasn’t solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Former Lonoke girls coach Darryl Fimple, now at North Little Rock, told me at Cabot on Friday his team was playing its second consecutive night.
As a sports editor, I am particularly grateful to Fimple’s old employer Lonoke, which got in a couple makeups with Clinton a week ago to give us something live to cover for The Leader. Cabotalso got in games on Wednesday and had just a one-day hiatus before facing North Little Rock on Friday.
When rumors of more snow began to flutter around late last week I nearly panicked. After all how many postponement/rescheduling/state of the program stories can you write?
In my distressed state I threw out a lifeline on my Facebook page.
“If it snows again,” I wrote, “and more basketball games are canceled, and I don’t have anything to put in my sports section AGAIN I swear I’m going to start making stuff up. If you read about a basketball player being carried away by an enormous bird, you’ll know the fix is in.”
Apparently most of my friends were as bored or afflicted by cabin fever as I was, because they chimed in with ideas ranging from the ridiculous to the really ridiculous.
Some of the printable suggestions included an offer for me to cover a friend’s game of chess with his wife; an offer from a fellow editor in Colorado — where games don’t get snowed out — to send me some material; a suggestion I write about clowns in the sewer, Stephen King style and a recommendation I write about the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers or Bill Belichick, like all sportswriters do when they’re bored.
Boy, it’s like a college creative writing professor once said to me “when your back is against the wall you just plot, plot, plot.”
I also read a lot of Facebook updates from people who see snow in winter and automatically think it disproves the theory of global warming. As if years of science, study, observation and measurement can be debunked by a guy using his debit card to scrape off his windshield.
Let me get this straight, if it snows, it means there is no global warming. So, using that logic, when the snow melts, it must mean global warming is back on, right?
Anyway, you think a lot of weird thoughts when you’re snowed in.
For example, I actually started missing Jacksonville’s pregame warm-up music, which should come with a parental advisory label; having to park far away at Abundant Life because the Owls always have an early-arriving crowd, and that weird yellow glow that suffuses the inside on North Pulaski’s gym.
Seriously, I’m hoping we’re back to stay now, because I’d hate to see another interruption to this basketball season. I mean, look at what we have going on here.
Lonoke’s girls are the 2-4A Conference champs and the top seed to this week’s district tournament as they try to reach their fourth straight state final and finally win one; North Pulaski’s boys were perfect in the 5A-Southeast entering Tuesday, No. 1 in 5A and looking for a finals return of their own and the Abundant Life boys are No. 2 in Class 2A, the 5-2A North champions and the top seed in that district.
The Riverview boys are No. 3 in 3A and it remains to be seen if defending 6A champion Jacksonville can regroup with a mostly new starting lineup and make a push in the postseason. And maybe some other area team, boys or girls, pulls it together in the postseason, peaks at the right time, gets a good draw and makes a run.
To an ex-Yankee carpetbagger like myself, our recent weather is probably supposed to be a tiptoe through the tulips. But with all this basketball awaiting us and with baseball just around the corner, the next time I hear the word “snow” it better be followed by “cone.”
SPORTS >> Panthers spoil night for seniors at Lonoke
By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
A shining sophomore was not enough for Lonoke on senior night.
Post player T.J. Scott led the way for the Jackrabbits with a strong, 16-point performance, but he was the only Lonoke player in double figures against a Heber Springs team that had three, and the home team fell short on Friday as Heber Springs won 60-45.
The Panthers (18-7, 12-2 2-4A Conference) benefited from guard Tanner Rockwell’s deadeye shooting and Caleb Brock’s quirky moves in the lane on their way to securing the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in this week’s district tournament at Stuttgart.
“We did some better things on offense tonight than what we’ve been doing as far as being patient,” Panthers coach Kevin Kyzer said. “We got away from that late, but we did a pretty good job offensively. Early, we did a poor job defensively of denying the ball in the paint. We shored that up and were able to extend our lead in the second quarter.”
Heber Springs finished one game behind league champion Marianna-Lee.
“We probably weren’t a very good team to start the year,” Kyzer said. “We steadily got better. We split with Marianna, and the guys did a really good job of improving all year. They really came to play every night in conference. We only had eight home games all year, so a lot of it has been on the road.”
The Jackrabbits (11-10, 7-7) kept it close early with seven inside points from T.J. Scott in the first quarter. But the team was without junior starting point guard Darius Scott, who chose to attend an event at Ole Miss over his teammates’ senior night and conference finale, and the one-dimensional approach did not hold up.
“They’re a very good team, I mean, there’s no getting around it,” said Jackrabbits coach Dean Campbell, who declined to comment on Darius Scott’s absence. “They’re very physical, strong kids in the post, guards that shoot it real well. You can tell they spend a lot of time in the gym. It’s a credit to them.”
Rockwell scored all but two of his game-high 17 points on three-pointers, including a pair in the final 2:28 of the first quarter to help Heber Springs take the lead for the first time. But it was the inside-outside play of two-guard Brock that kept Lonoke off balance.
Brock scored 10 straight points for the Panthers starting with 4:03 left in second quarter as he hit two consecutive baskets in the lane. His approaches were awkward and his releases were even more unconventional, but both shots fell.
He then extended his run and Heber Springs’ lead with a 30-footer that made it 29-21, and capped it off with another three-pointer with 1:27 left in the half for a 32-21 Panthers lead.
“That’s the way he plays — that’s the way he’s always played,” Campbell said of Brock’s unusual inside style. “And I think he kind of took it personal. At their place, we held him to no buckets. I think he had three points — three free throws. I think he wanted to come in and make a statement, and he did.”
Lonoke seniors Mike Jones and Demarcus Dodson did not go down without a fight in their final game at home. Along with fellow senior and two-sport star Michael Nelson, Jones and Dodson tried to battle back from a 34-21 halftime deficit.
Jones scored seven points and Dodson had six for Lonoke, but 16 points by Brock, and another 10 from forward Austin Brown allowed the Panthers to extend their lead to 50-31 at the end of three quarters.
“The first quarter, I thought we played real well,” Campbell said. “We moved the ball, we were active; second quarter, we got a little stagnant and didn’t move as much. And they knocked down some shots. There were times we were there, and they knocked them down.”
Lonoke will be the No. 3 seed in this week’s 2-4A district tournament at Stuttgart with a first-round bye. The Jackrabbits played Tuesday night against the winner of Monday’s first-round game between Clinton and Southside Batesville.
Leader sportswriter
A shining sophomore was not enough for Lonoke on senior night.
Post player T.J. Scott led the way for the Jackrabbits with a strong, 16-point performance, but he was the only Lonoke player in double figures against a Heber Springs team that had three, and the home team fell short on Friday as Heber Springs won 60-45.
The Panthers (18-7, 12-2 2-4A Conference) benefited from guard Tanner Rockwell’s deadeye shooting and Caleb Brock’s quirky moves in the lane on their way to securing the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in this week’s district tournament at Stuttgart.
“We did some better things on offense tonight than what we’ve been doing as far as being patient,” Panthers coach Kevin Kyzer said. “We got away from that late, but we did a pretty good job offensively. Early, we did a poor job defensively of denying the ball in the paint. We shored that up and were able to extend our lead in the second quarter.”
Heber Springs finished one game behind league champion Marianna-Lee.
“We probably weren’t a very good team to start the year,” Kyzer said. “We steadily got better. We split with Marianna, and the guys did a really good job of improving all year. They really came to play every night in conference. We only had eight home games all year, so a lot of it has been on the road.”
The Jackrabbits (11-10, 7-7) kept it close early with seven inside points from T.J. Scott in the first quarter. But the team was without junior starting point guard Darius Scott, who chose to attend an event at Ole Miss over his teammates’ senior night and conference finale, and the one-dimensional approach did not hold up.
“They’re a very good team, I mean, there’s no getting around it,” said Jackrabbits coach Dean Campbell, who declined to comment on Darius Scott’s absence. “They’re very physical, strong kids in the post, guards that shoot it real well. You can tell they spend a lot of time in the gym. It’s a credit to them.”
Rockwell scored all but two of his game-high 17 points on three-pointers, including a pair in the final 2:28 of the first quarter to help Heber Springs take the lead for the first time. But it was the inside-outside play of two-guard Brock that kept Lonoke off balance.
Brock scored 10 straight points for the Panthers starting with 4:03 left in second quarter as he hit two consecutive baskets in the lane. His approaches were awkward and his releases were even more unconventional, but both shots fell.
He then extended his run and Heber Springs’ lead with a 30-footer that made it 29-21, and capped it off with another three-pointer with 1:27 left in the half for a 32-21 Panthers lead.
“That’s the way he plays — that’s the way he’s always played,” Campbell said of Brock’s unusual inside style. “And I think he kind of took it personal. At their place, we held him to no buckets. I think he had three points — three free throws. I think he wanted to come in and make a statement, and he did.”
Lonoke seniors Mike Jones and Demarcus Dodson did not go down without a fight in their final game at home. Along with fellow senior and two-sport star Michael Nelson, Jones and Dodson tried to battle back from a 34-21 halftime deficit.
Jones scored seven points and Dodson had six for Lonoke, but 16 points by Brock, and another 10 from forward Austin Brown allowed the Panthers to extend their lead to 50-31 at the end of three quarters.
“The first quarter, I thought we played real well,” Campbell said. “We moved the ball, we were active; second quarter, we got a little stagnant and didn’t move as much. And they knocked down some shots. There were times we were there, and they knocked them down.”
Lonoke will be the No. 3 seed in this week’s 2-4A district tournament at Stuttgart with a first-round bye. The Jackrabbits played Tuesday night against the winner of Monday’s first-round game between Clinton and Southside Batesville.
SPORTS >> Turnover costs Panthers in loss
Cabot’s Alex Baker attempts a three-pointer in Friday’s loss.By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
It was a case of theft, pure and simple.
North Little scratched out a 7A-Central Conference road victory when it beat Cabot 33-29 at Cabot on Friday night. Reggie Bryles gave the Charging Wildcats their final lead with 2:37 left and Brandon Tyler stole an in-bounds pass with fewer than 20 seconds left to help seal the victory.
“We stole one here tonight,” North Little Rock coach Richard Alexander said. “We did.”
Alexander was referring to the old “win at home, steal one on the road,” maxim, but Tyler’s steal after Cabot had pulled within 32-29 gave literal meaning to Alexander’s words.
“We didn’t quit,” Cabot coach Jerry Bridges said. “If you get one of those looks to fall it could be a different game but, man, it’s tough.”
North Little Rock took a 27-26 lead on Bryles’ scoop shot with 2:37 left in the game and improved that to 28-26 when Bryles made a free-throw after drawing Darin Jones’ fifth foul.
Jones’ foul-out surprised Cabot because of miscommunication among the Panthers’ bench, the student assistants and the official scorekeeper. Bridges left Jones in the game thinking he had three fouls when he had four.
“I’m going by the board,” Bridges said. “The board had him with three. But the board’s not official.”
Bryles made it 30-26 for North Little Rock when he hit two free throws with 1:18 to go and Bryles made two more free throws for the 32-26 lead with 42.2 seconds left on the clock.
Seth Bloomberg penetrated then kicked the ball out to Alex Baker on Cabot’s next possession and Baker hit an off-balance, falling-down three-pointer to cut it to 29-32 and Cabot called timeout with 31 seconds remaining.
“He was supposed to stay with him and not help,” Alexander said of his defender on the play. “I don’t care if they drove in and made a layup, he was not supposed to leave him and consequently he made the three.”
Bryles got behind the Panthers defense to take the long, in-bounds pass but missed the open layup. Chris Campbell blocked Jacob Ellerbee’s shot out of bounds on Cabot’s possession with 21.6 seconds left, but Tyler picked off the Panthers’ in-bounds pass, drawing a foul from Shane Collins.
North Little Rock (15-9, 7-3) wrapped free throws around two missed three-pointers by Cabot to close out the game.
Bridges said the loss of Jones, the trigger man on many of Cabot’s in-bounds plays, may have led to the final turnover.
“That’s just an unfortunate time to get a turnover with the amount of time left in the game,” Bridges said.
Cabot (9-12, 3-7) led 6-3 early but North Little Rock went in front when Campbell stole a pass leading to Mike Malvin’s jumper that made it 7-6, and after another turnover Campbell slammed in a one-handed dunk over Christian Armstrong to make it 9-6.
Cabot, whose tallest player is 6-3, was against a taller North Little Rock front line that included Malvin, 6-5. But the Panthers packed the middle and dictated a deliberate pace to stay within seven, though they didn’t regain the lead until Baker made a leaping, one-handed shot after Armstrong’s offensive rebound to make it 25-24 with 6:05 left in the game.
Baker made a free throw with 4:42 remaining for the 26-24 lead. Then Campbell made a free throw for North Little Rock after a Kai Davis foul, and after a Cabot miss Bryles hit his go-ahead shot.
SPORTS >> NLR shows depth, grit to win big over Cabot
By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
Undefeated North Little Rock had a good reason to be tired Friday, but the Lady Charging Wildcats looked tireless instead as they harassed their way to a 62-44 victory over the Cabot Lady Panthers at Cabot.
Playing its second game in as many nights, North Little Rock used a deep bench and plenty of fullcourt pressure to force Cabot turnovers and turn them into points.
“That’s kind of how we play,” North Little Rock coach Darryl Fimple said. “We were awful at the free-throw line so we had to do something to kind of keep it up tempo and that’s what we’re kind of known for, to try and wear out some people on our traps.”
North Little Rock (24-0, 10-0 7A Central) outscored Cabot 11-3 in the first quarter and made it 13-3 early in the second before Kaki Thomas made a three-pointer for Cabot. The Lady Panthers fought back to within 17-11 on a rebound and putback by Sarah Moore and 19-13 when Amber Rock made a jumper from the left corner with 4:33 left in the half.
But North Little Rock closed out the half with an 11-2 run, beginning with a steal that led to Lexus Williams’ fastbreak layup and ending when Williams hit a basket underneath with 1.5 seconds left to make it 30-15 at halftime.
Cabot committed eight turnovers in the second quarter against North Little Rock’s defense that included plenty of traps and double teams in the backcourt.
“We just can’t simulate that in practice,” Cabot coach Carla Crowder said. “They’re so much quicker than we are and that’s just something we’ve got to work on to get better.”
Cabot has a young team whose only seniors are starters Amber Rock and Sarah Moore. Crowder said the Lady Panthers played into the Lady Wildcats’ hands, especially in the first half.
‘When you dribble they’re going to trap you so you’ve got pass,” Crowder said. “We dribbled a lot the first half. Second half we did a lot better.”
Williams scored inside to give the Lady Wildcats a 41-21 lead with 5:19 left in the third quarter and the Lady Panthers didn’t get within 20 points again until Emilee Turner made a pair of free throws for the final margin with 5.3 seconds left.
“Cabot’s been playing better; coach Crowder has always got them ready,” Fimple said. “They sure as heck shot the basketball better in the second half too. We couldn’t keep them off the foul line.”
Cabot (10-13, 4-6) did put together an 8-2 run early in the third quarter to pull within 53-33. Most of its points came on free throws, including two by Jessie Grunwald when Fimple was called for a technical foul when he complained about a non-call he thought should have been a personal foul on Cabot.
“I thought our kid got hammered to be honest with you,” Fimple said. “I know it was late in the game but I keep telling our kids you’ve got to play hard and be intense. That’s one of them things. It happens.”
North Little Rock kept up the defensive pressure, despite beating Conway the previous night and because Fimple was able to get quality minutes out of most of his roster. The Lady Wildcats used 13 players and 11 scored.
“We definitely do that,” Fimple said of the number of players used, “but especially after back-to-back nights.”
Williams led North Little Rock with 15 points and Cassie Vaughn scored 12. Thomas made two three-pointers and led Cabot with eight points.
“I think we played hard,” Crowder said. “Maybe we were a little intimidated to start with. And at the finish, I think we finished real strong.”
Leader sports editor
Undefeated North Little Rock had a good reason to be tired Friday, but the Lady Charging Wildcats looked tireless instead as they harassed their way to a 62-44 victory over the Cabot Lady Panthers at Cabot.
Playing its second game in as many nights, North Little Rock used a deep bench and plenty of fullcourt pressure to force Cabot turnovers and turn them into points.
“That’s kind of how we play,” North Little Rock coach Darryl Fimple said. “We were awful at the free-throw line so we had to do something to kind of keep it up tempo and that’s what we’re kind of known for, to try and wear out some people on our traps.”
North Little Rock (24-0, 10-0 7A Central) outscored Cabot 11-3 in the first quarter and made it 13-3 early in the second before Kaki Thomas made a three-pointer for Cabot. The Lady Panthers fought back to within 17-11 on a rebound and putback by Sarah Moore and 19-13 when Amber Rock made a jumper from the left corner with 4:33 left in the half.
But North Little Rock closed out the half with an 11-2 run, beginning with a steal that led to Lexus Williams’ fastbreak layup and ending when Williams hit a basket underneath with 1.5 seconds left to make it 30-15 at halftime.
Cabot committed eight turnovers in the second quarter against North Little Rock’s defense that included plenty of traps and double teams in the backcourt.
“We just can’t simulate that in practice,” Cabot coach Carla Crowder said. “They’re so much quicker than we are and that’s just something we’ve got to work on to get better.”
Cabot has a young team whose only seniors are starters Amber Rock and Sarah Moore. Crowder said the Lady Panthers played into the Lady Wildcats’ hands, especially in the first half.
‘When you dribble they’re going to trap you so you’ve got pass,” Crowder said. “We dribbled a lot the first half. Second half we did a lot better.”
Williams scored inside to give the Lady Wildcats a 41-21 lead with 5:19 left in the third quarter and the Lady Panthers didn’t get within 20 points again until Emilee Turner made a pair of free throws for the final margin with 5.3 seconds left.
“Cabot’s been playing better; coach Crowder has always got them ready,” Fimple said. “They sure as heck shot the basketball better in the second half too. We couldn’t keep them off the foul line.”
Cabot (10-13, 4-6) did put together an 8-2 run early in the third quarter to pull within 53-33. Most of its points came on free throws, including two by Jessie Grunwald when Fimple was called for a technical foul when he complained about a non-call he thought should have been a personal foul on Cabot.
“I thought our kid got hammered to be honest with you,” Fimple said. “I know it was late in the game but I keep telling our kids you’ve got to play hard and be intense. That’s one of them things. It happens.”
North Little Rock kept up the defensive pressure, despite beating Conway the previous night and because Fimple was able to get quality minutes out of most of his roster. The Lady Wildcats used 13 players and 11 scored.
“We definitely do that,” Fimple said of the number of players used, “but especially after back-to-back nights.”
Williams led North Little Rock with 15 points and Cassie Vaughn scored 12. Thomas made two three-pointers and led Cabot with eight points.
“I think we played hard,” Crowder said. “Maybe we were a little intimidated to start with. And at the finish, I think we finished real strong.”
SPORTS >> Lady ’Rabbits savor sendoff
By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter
Lonoke’s senior night against Heber Springs in the 2-4A Conference finale was merely a statement game after Lonoke had clinched the league crown two nights earlier.
But senior Asiah Scribner took the opportunity to make the statement a bold one in the Lady Jackrabbits’ 57-30 victory at Lonoke on Friday.
Scribner, the 6-0 post player and UALR signee, took over the game completely in the third quarter with 10 consecutive points.
Scribner’s outburst sparked a 20-0 run for the Lady Jackrabbits that began with 5:20 left in the third quarter and ended with 4:47 left to play.
Scribner finished with a game-high 23 points as the Lady ’Rabbits overcame a sluggish first half. The victory marked Lonoke’s first conference championship since the 2006-07 season and their first unbeaten conference run, 14-0, in modern school history.
“It’s an emotional night,” Lady Jackrabbits coach Nathan Morris said. “These seniors have meant the world to our program. We probably needed that — a little wake-up call. It’s not always easy. They kind of turned it on in the second half. Asiah Scribner, she was able to impose her will inside.”
Lonoke (22-5) held a 30-23 lead when Scribner began her run with 4:28 left in the third quarter. She started with a third-try putback, followed by a basket off a steal and assist from sophomore Calvian McGaughey to make it 36-23.
Scribner’s next shot came off an assist from fellow senior Ashleigh Himstedt, and then she scored after a steal and pass from point guard Michaela Brown. Scribner capped the run with two free throws, while Himstedt added a basket in the final eight seconds to give Lonoke a 43-23 lead heading into the final period.
While emotions ran high for the seniors during their final game in their home gym, Morris said Scribner’s explosion was not out of sentiment, but necessity.
“I don’t know if it was that or just the need for it,” Morris said. “I think she just knew it was her night. Our guards weren’t necessarily scoring early. It just looked like no one wanted to shoot the ball, so she kind of took it upon herself. We’re definitely tough to beat if Asiah Scribner scores more than 20 points.”
Himstedt scored 15 points for the Lady Jackrabbits while junior guard Cara Neighbors added 10.
Scriber, Brown and Himstedt, along with fellow seniors Emily Smith, Mallory Sexton and Brandy Lee, were honored along with the senior boys and senior cheerleaders immediately following the game.
It marked the last home game for a senior group that has two conference titles, three district championships, two regional titles and three state finals appearances to its credit.
“We told them it was their last game in Lonoke, but it wasn’t their last game in a white jersey,” Morris said. “If there’s this many tears after the last home game, then we better not lose, because it’s emotional.
“These kids have, I don’t want to say built the program, but they’ve built it strong. We had a strong program, but they built it stronger. Every one of them are better people than they are players, and I’ve always said that I felt like they were good players.”
Leader sportswriter
Lonoke’s senior night against Heber Springs in the 2-4A Conference finale was merely a statement game after Lonoke had clinched the league crown two nights earlier.
But senior Asiah Scribner took the opportunity to make the statement a bold one in the Lady Jackrabbits’ 57-30 victory at Lonoke on Friday.
Scribner, the 6-0 post player and UALR signee, took over the game completely in the third quarter with 10 consecutive points.
Scribner’s outburst sparked a 20-0 run for the Lady Jackrabbits that began with 5:20 left in the third quarter and ended with 4:47 left to play.
Scribner finished with a game-high 23 points as the Lady ’Rabbits overcame a sluggish first half. The victory marked Lonoke’s first conference championship since the 2006-07 season and their first unbeaten conference run, 14-0, in modern school history.
“It’s an emotional night,” Lady Jackrabbits coach Nathan Morris said. “These seniors have meant the world to our program. We probably needed that — a little wake-up call. It’s not always easy. They kind of turned it on in the second half. Asiah Scribner, she was able to impose her will inside.”
Lonoke (22-5) held a 30-23 lead when Scribner began her run with 4:28 left in the third quarter. She started with a third-try putback, followed by a basket off a steal and assist from sophomore Calvian McGaughey to make it 36-23.
Scribner’s next shot came off an assist from fellow senior Ashleigh Himstedt, and then she scored after a steal and pass from point guard Michaela Brown. Scribner capped the run with two free throws, while Himstedt added a basket in the final eight seconds to give Lonoke a 43-23 lead heading into the final period.
While emotions ran high for the seniors during their final game in their home gym, Morris said Scribner’s explosion was not out of sentiment, but necessity.
“I don’t know if it was that or just the need for it,” Morris said. “I think she just knew it was her night. Our guards weren’t necessarily scoring early. It just looked like no one wanted to shoot the ball, so she kind of took it upon herself. We’re definitely tough to beat if Asiah Scribner scores more than 20 points.”
Himstedt scored 15 points for the Lady Jackrabbits while junior guard Cara Neighbors added 10.
Scriber, Brown and Himstedt, along with fellow seniors Emily Smith, Mallory Sexton and Brandy Lee, were honored along with the senior boys and senior cheerleaders immediately following the game.
It marked the last home game for a senior group that has two conference titles, three district championships, two regional titles and three state finals appearances to its credit.
“We told them it was their last game in Lonoke, but it wasn’t their last game in a white jersey,” Morris said. “If there’s this many tears after the last home game, then we better not lose, because it’s emotional.
“These kids have, I don’t want to say built the program, but they’ve built it strong. We had a strong program, but they built it stronger. Every one of them are better people than they are players, and I’ve always said that I felt like they were good players.”
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