Thread: Thread for articles.

I write for my school's newspaper and I always like getting feedback and criticism. So I figure I would post articles as I do them for the paper.

I apologize ahead of time.

It would seem that the Lincoln Land Community College women’s basketball team was destined to have a losing season this year. Everything bad that could happen to a sports team happened to them. When you study their season a single word comes to mind: catastrophe.

It all started when their previous coach, Jill Barclay, left for Kansas to take the head coaching position at Barton Community College. That was a big loss for the Loggers’ program. During her stint as head coach for LLCC, Barclay sported an 80-49 record. To add insult to injury, Barclay took the school’s top recruits with her.

For all intensive purposes, the void left by Barclay ended the girls’ season. LLCC was forced to rebuild its program from the ground up. The Loggers found their head coach right beneath their nose in Ryan Jones.
Ryan, the brother of the men’s basketball teams’ head coach, Chad Jones, was hired for the job. It was a quality hiring; Ryan Jones was once an assistant coach for the men’s basketball team. He went to LLCC as a student, played basketball for the team during his stay at LLCC, and has strong ties to the school.

Ron Riggle, LLCC’s Athletic Director hired Jones on to coach the women’s team.
“He helped the situation and made it easier since he knew LLCC. That was the intriguing part about his hire,” said Riggle.
Coaching changes and roster turnover hurt the team before the season even started. The roster suffered even more damage as the season progressed.

Vanessa Cruz suffered a back injury.

Dominique Gulley tore her anterior cruciate ligament in her knee.

Tameka Taylor suffered a groin injury.

Jessica Ashby tore her ACL in the previous semester but waited to have the surgery so she was out as well.

Cassandre Patrigeon was an exchange student from France who moved back home at the start of the semester without telling anyone.

Around a fourth of the team was gone before the end of the season.

Feleshia Long, a freshman who played power forward for the team, summarized the toll the injuries took on her team.

“We played two or three games with four girls; we had to finish the game with four girls. As long as you start the game with five you can finish with up to three. It was pretty hard to do,” said Long.

The most shocking thing about the season is how the girls reacted to it.

“It was a lot of fun. Even though we only had a certain amount of girls, we all made it fun, “said Long.

At the end of the season the girls won six games and lost 23. When you consider the circumstances, that’s really the best anyone could expect. Injuries are a part of the game, and some years you get hit by them harder than others. Coaching changes occur allot on any real competitive level of sports. However, when you combine them both the result is never going to be a winning team that makes a strong playoff run. No one is to blame for the season that the girls just had; there was just too much to overcome.

Riggle completely understood what Jones had to deal with this year.
“Coach Jones was our coach,” said Riggle. “He was put in a tough situation. Ryan was hired late, he lost a lot of time, and it was just a really tough situation.”

And with the poor season, Jones could have stayed on.

“His job was not in jeopardy, and he did a good job,” said Riggle.

With Riggle’s understanding and the respect of his players, Jones was set to return next season as the head coach of the team if he wanted.

It turns out that it wasn’t what Ryan Jones wanted.

He recently resigned from his post as head coach of the LLCC women’s basketball team.

When I first started looking into his resignation, my initial reaction was that Jones simply had enough in his one year as head coach. The season was disastrous and rebuilding a program takes time. He was a rookie head coach, maybe he had bitten off more than he could chew.

My initial reaction was dead wrong.

Ryan Jones has a full-time job now with United Cerebral Palsy. He’s moving forward and taking on another new task.

LLCC women’s basketball will move forward too.

Great artical. It maked me want to become a fan of their next season in hopes that they could turn it around and make a play-off run.

I also like that you took a moment to give cudos to the coach for taken on his next noble indever

Organize a special pep rally for those girls, they deserve it.

There is a saying that goes you should save the best for last. The Lincoln Land Community College baseball team took that message to heart on April 4th against the Illinois Central Cougars.

Before the seventh inning, the Loggers scored a measly two runs and could barely hit the ball out of the infield. The Cougars’ mistakes on the field kept the Loggers in the game.

In the first inning a Cougars player was picked off at first which negated their leadoff single.

A bad throw to the first baseman by a Cougars infielder netted the Loggers a hit and a runner on first base in the first inning of the game.
A wild pitch advanced that same runner to second base.

In the second inning the Cougars botched a double play and gave the Loggers’ inning new life. The Loggers scored their first run of the game off of a sacrifice fly ball. The Loggers went on to score another run off of a Brett Schubert RBI single in the fourth inning.

Despite the many Cougar mistakes, the Loggers could not take control of the game and always trailed until the seventh inning due to the struggles of starting pitcher Jamison Miller.

Miller got off to a slow start for the Loggers, although he did pitch a complete game for his team. Miller gave up four earned runs including a two-run homer in the second inning and one-run homer in the third inning. The Illinois Central Cougars scored an unearned run off of a Logger error and another run off of a RBI ground out in the second inning.

Trailing Illinois Central 5-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, Taylor Gregory’s RBI single brought the game within two runs. Logger’s first baseman Mike Maziarz hit a well placed two-run single down the first base line that tied the contest at 5-5.

The defining moment of the game was when outfielder Daniel Milhouse went to bat with two outs and a runner on third base. Facing a two strike, two ball count, Milhouse won the game for the Loggers by hitting a pitch past the Cougars third basemen for a walkoff single.

At press time, the Loggers are holding an 8-13 record. The team started the season well winning three of their first five games.
They then stumbled, dropping nine of their next 10 games. Excluding this win, the Loggers have won three of the last five games and have turned their season around.