Sports

The Lady Blues volleyball team welcomed the new season by hosting a scrimmage on Friday at Graham High School gymnasium. Eight different schools took part in the scrimmage.

While the exhibition was basically another practice, with the exception of going up against other schools for the first time, head coach Marci Faulk got plenty of minutes from her young team.

The matches featured no score in the games. Teams competed for 35 minutes in one match with the court separated into two different games going on at once.

Expectations are high once again in Bryson for the Lady Cowgirls volleyball team. After earning a trip to the Class 1A regional tournament a season ago, head coach Chelsea Kincaid said that each year she expects to become a better team.

“The overall expectation of every year is to leave the program better than the way you found it,” she said. “ We aim to build not only better athletes, but also better people.”

With the official start of the season beginning Tuesday, Bryson hosted Ranger for a scrimmage Friday.

Seeking their third consecutive district title, the Lady Blues welcomed the new season with two-a-day practices beginning last Wednesday.

Head coach Marci Faulk liked the way her young roster handled the stress and build-up to the start of a new season on the first day of practice.

“I thought the very first hours on Wednesday that we had a great practice,” Faulk said. “Of course the girls are all on fire and energized and that’s exciting to see that they are ready to get after it.”

The Newcastle Ladycats opened the new season with a new volleyball coach. Paige Hauger takes over for former head coach James King.

While it may be her first head coaching job, Hauger is all too familiar with the area. The Bryson native inherits a team that is filled with talent after losing just two seniors to graduation.

Future Steer football players took over Newton Field this week in preparation for the upcoming season, which starts this month.

Athletes ranging from third through ninth grade learned the basics of the game from the Graham junior high and high school coaches.

While the first day of the camp was wiped out due to lightning Monday morning, the camp still drew a large number. Around 120 campers took part in the drills this week.

Coming off its inaugural soccer season at the high school level, Graham combined for a camp at Newton Field last week to area youths. The camp was hosted by Steers soccer coach Tim Wankowicz and Lady Blues coach Misty Mills.

Volleyball teams all across the state will begin their 2018 seasons Wednesday. While having to wait a few more days to start official practices, the gym at Graham High School was alive and well with volleyballs spinning every wish way during the volleyball camp that started Monday and ended last Wednesday.

The skills learned at this week’s tennis camp could last a lifetime for the kids that went through drills and games on the courts at Graham Tennis Courts.

With the start of the 2018-19 tennis season less than two weeks away, the camp featured both fundamentals of the game, as well as competition among the campers.

The camp ran two sessions a day for four days with the earliest group consisting of first through fifth graders, and the later session featured sixth through ninth grade students.

With the start of the 2018 high school volleyball season less than two weeks away, the Graham Lady Blues are preparing for the season by competing in the Abilene preseason tournament beginning this Friday. After taking second place last season at the same tournament, there is a lot of reason to see the team do well before the start of the actual season begins.

While the Graham coaching staff cannot be on the court to assist, there are many things that head coach Marci Faulk can take away from the few practices and the upcoming tournament.

Jason Briles admitted that he wouldn’t be where he is without the production he has received from Brayden Houser and Paul Davidson.

It showed exactly why Saturday evening at Memorial Stadium in Wichita Falls. Houser threw for 235 yards and five touchdowns to lead the East to a dominating 56-24 win over the West in the Texas Six-Man Coaches Association Division I all star-game.