HB/USA photo gallery

Game of the Year... Pirates beat USA

Harbor Beach won 13-12 in what could be the game of the year.
USA scored first in the first on a 10 yard TD run by QB Brandon Bitzer but had the extra point blocked. The Pirates responded with a score on a Brett Buchholz run, missing the kick wide right. So tied at 6-6 at the half.
In the second half, the Pirates draw first blood, scoring on a 13 yard TD pass from Tom Sorenson to Travis Schock, who made the extra point to make it 13-6. The Pats responded with a one yard TD from Tyson Valentine in the fourth, but kicker Erik Kuhl had his second extra point attempt of the day partially blocked.
Prior to their second TD, Harbor Beach had driven to the one yard line the previous possession, but fumbled. USA went three and out and pounted it to around the 29. The Pirates scored several plays later.
My thoughts:
* Rumors were swirling that Lance VanHoost was injuured. NOT THE CASE. HE played and had another big game, rushing for over 100 yards for sure.
* Brian Gornowich from Harbor Beach is a stud running back. He broke off back-to-back 20+ yard runs on the final Pirate drive, where they needed first downs to kill the clock. He likely ran for well over 100 yards for the second straight game, likely much closer to the 150 territory, but that is just a guess.
* The Pirates now have to be considered the top team in the area, but in the last two weeks the team on top of the Elite 8 has been the kiss of death so to speak...
* Harbor Beach's run defense look much improved and coach Troy Schelke was impressed by it. VanHoost got his yeards, but not the 200+ he got against Ubly.
* USA wanted to be battle tested after the first two weeks and they are. They will tear BCAS apart in week three. Much like Ubly's loss in week one, this shouldn't start a panic. USA will still be in the title hunt in the GTW and will make the playoffs.
* My question, will everyone annoint Harbor Beach as the team to make the long extended playoff run now, like happened to Ubly and then USA when they beat the Bearcats?

Week Two picks

First, here are the standings after week one:
Rick 2-4 (1)
Mumbles 4-2 (1)
Bossick 3-3 (1)
Sicotte 4-2 (1)
Me 4-2 (1)
* The number in parentheses indicates how many weeks you have picked.

Here are the week two games. Hopefully we'll get some more people picking this week:
Bad Axe at Saginaw BV
Ubly at Marlette
Owen-Gage at Dryden
USA at Harbor Beach
North Huron at Memphis
Cass City at EPBP

Even more soccer... JUST PLAYIN'

Hey there. It ws nice to see a couple of people get a little worked up in my absence. I've been waiting for something like that for awhile now.
So one of you posters ewanted some of my takes, well here you go:
USA football is the real deal. Now before anyone accuses me of jumping on the bandwagon, I did pick them to lose to Ubly, but I selected them as the team I thought would win the GTW title. Lance VanHoost had one of the best games I have ever seen from a running back. I've seen some doosies with 100+, 150+, but almost 225... wow. If Hooster can go 200+ against a good team like Ubly, can he get 275+ against Bad Axe or 300+ against BV. It may seem a little far fetched, but he is only limited by the number of carries he gets, which should be a lot.
Ubly is not that bad. There was a lot of doom and gloom in Ubly on Friday night after the loss. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw Chicken Little running through the parking lot saying something about the sky falling. Well, the Bearcats will be fine. Maybe they won't be 8-1 0r 7-2 good, but this is still a playoff team. And when Kaufman comes back, the sky is the limit. This is a team that could still make a nice playoff run.
Bad Axe and Lakers impress. They are not playoff level teams, but I'm positive by the end of the season these teams are going to have some opponents shaking their heads. They showed signs of life against two of the GTE's top teams and I think that when they get into the league schedule they will make some noise. In the end, these teams might not be league champs, but they will have a say.
Harbor Beach, the best team everyone is forgetting about. Between all the talk of Ubly and USA, everyone seems to be forgetting about the Pirates who were 8-1 last year. Not impressed too much by their opener, but who knows how much of that was the weather and how much were true issues the team needs to work on (read: stopping the run). With Kaufman's injury, let me annoint the Pirates as my new favorite in the East.
USA volleyball... wow. How do you win a tournament with just seven players? Ask coach Scott Smith (not to be confused with Scott "Bubba" Smith), whose team did that in the Hatchet Invitational last Saturday. They knocked off Ubly in the final, who was also down a player. Now, I'm not a fan of the season switch, but if it is going to produce volleyball this good... I'm on board.

More soccer stuff...

Here's a few more updates from the first night of soccer action. Just to let you know, as much as possible throughout the season, we will be providing up to the minute updates as they come through over e-mail.
Bad Axe 5, Harbor Beach 1
Here are is what Hatchet coach Davud DeCourval sent over:
Bad Axe opened the season with a 5-1 win over Harbor Beach. Leading the scoring was Scott Hewens with 3 goals, with Marcus Epperson and Cody Eskau each scoring one goal. Marcus Epperson had two assists, while Cody Eskau and Scott Hewens added one assist each.
Brian Meinhold, had 4 saves in goal, and Pete Salens had 5 saves in the second half. The Hatchet defense did a good job allowing only 9 shots on goal.
According to information from HB coach Phil Bowen, Jesse Grekowicz had the lone Pirate score.

Lakers win soccer opener

After months of slow down on the blog, here comes my fourth post tonight. Lakers win their opener 7-0 over Marlette.

Here are the stats:

Adam Chiotti 3 goals

Tyler Yoder 2 goals, 1 assist

Eric Turner 1 goal, 2 assists

Shay Wruble 3 assists

Cory Maust 1 goal, 1 assist

David Maust and Jesse Maust combined for the shutoutint the net with 2 saves each.

Talkin' Smack week one

For those who were intrigued by my earlier post, here is your chance to share your thoughts on all sports, not just football. Have any thoughts on who will be league champions? Who will make a run?
Want to vent after Friday about how your team did?
Here is the place to do it. Just a couple of "rules."
Have a take and come strong with it. I really don't want to or plan to run to run alot of "good luck team X on Friday" crap, although as we go on in the post-season, support pages are a possibility.
But I'm looking for your pure, honest feelings about what is happening in high school sports.
Leave a name, the name at the bottom of your post is how it will appear in the paper, whether it is a pseudonym, your last name, your real name, etc.
Keep it clean, keep it controversial and keep the posts coming!

Make your week one picks

Trying to kick get this kicked off today, so I thought I give you my picks. Reminder: These picks will just cover the eight teams we cover in our paper (Bad Axe, Cass City, EPBP, Harbor Beach, North Huron, Owen-Gage, Ubly & USA).

Arenac Eastern @ Owen-Gage
Bad Axe @ Harbor Beach
Cass City @ Sandusky
Deckerville @ EPBP
Marine City Cardinal Mooney @ North Huron
USA @ Ubly

News season brings new changes

This season our sports coverage is going to be even more exciting at the Huron County Press, Newsweekly and Harbor Beach Times.
One of the many upgrades we plan on making will be to have our first ever “Outpick Ogryski” contest. The rules of the contest are pretty simple, the person with the highest percentage of correct picks will win a $20 gift certificate to the local business of their choice. But in order to claim the prize, they need to have a higher percentage of correct picks then I do.
The contest is formatted this way so people that don’t hear about it right away can still jump in after week one, but the winner must pick for a minimum of six weeks. In the case of a tie, the first tiebreaker will be number of weeks picked.
This contest will be held completely online with picks being posted at our sports blog by Friday at 5 p.m. The time of every post is listed as part of the message, so in the case of a discrepancy we will go with the posted time on the message.
The official post announcing this contest will be up on the blog sometime Tuesday night.
You can reach the blog by going to http://www.huroncountypress.com/ and clicking on the link “Sports Blog.”
In addition to the online contest, we’ve added the Elite Eight football poll, which will continue on in similar forms in both the boys and girls basketball, too.
In one final item, we are looking for fans to react to the action over the week form football, as well as volleyball, cross-country, soccer, tennis and sport I may have forgotten because of the season change. When there is space available, we will publish some of these comments as part of “Talkin’ Smack.” Comments for “Talkin’ Smack” can be made any time during the week, but the cut off time to have comments published in a given week is Monday at noon as that is our production date.
Hope you all enjoy these new ideas and I’ll see you at the games.

Still here...

For those who have been looking for an update lately and haven't seen one lately, it is do largely ot the fact that our editor is currently on medical leave and I've been filling in for her for the last three weeks.
She will be out at least three more weeks, but could be as long as nine more. Putting in major hours at this point, but I'm really enjoying the exper ience and could see myself wanting to do that at some point in my career.
I also like my daughter telling everyone we see that daddy is "the boss."
Anyhow, as the sports season gets closer we'll be back in full swing and better than ever. Look for another update in the next few days