SPORTS
Football kicks-off Friday night
The first games of the Texas High School football regular season kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Friday night.
All five of Montague County’s football teams and their new head coaches start the quest to be the best team they can, with only two teams playing home games.
Bowie is traveling to Godly to take on the 4A Wildcats. Godly was a playoff team last year and returns 13 starters on both sides of the ball while also breaking in a new coach.
“They like to get the ball down the field,” Jackrabbits Coach Cory Mandrell said. “They have a big tall receiver they like to throw it to. A lot of their passing game is vertical passing. They like to throw the ball down the field. It is one of our big keys on defense for us.”
Nocona will start the season at home against familiar foe Boyd. A young team last year at key positions surprised some people by making it into the playoffs after the Yellow Jackets started off last year with a big win against the Indians at home.
“We are going to have our hands full,” Indians Coach Rick Weaver said. “We are going to have to come out and execute and do things right. We have to limit mental mistakes if we are going to stay in the ball game.”
The other home game will be at Forestburg. The Longhorns play the private school Lone Star North out of Gainesville. The one thing Forestburg has over the Tornados is experience as Lone Star North returns only a few starters.
A matchup of athleticism versus brawn should prove interesting.
Saint Jo is traveling to Fannindel, a team that shares its district with Montague County’s other two six-man teams. The Falcons won last year’s district title and are favored to win it this year as well.
Coach Mark Stevens’ biggest concern is trying to shutdown running back Dayton Dunbar.
“They are a very fast football team, especially their running back and are a predominately running team,” Stevens said. “They love to crowd the line of scrimmage so we are going to have to do a good job blocking , but I like where we are at.”
Gold-Burg starts of the season on the road at private school Notre Dame Catholic out of Wichita Falls. The Stars have all state running back Nathan Baker returning to carry the load on offense, but a lot of last years starters graduated.
The young Bears will try to prove a lot of doubters wrong and hanging with Notre Dame in any way will show this group has some fight.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.
Bowie had six players play in the Maskat Shrine Oil Bowl football all-star game. For pictures from not just the football game, but the basketball and volleyball games as well that feature athletes from Bowie, Nocona and Saint Jo, click here https://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=bnews1&AID=6875584&T=1
Nocona is welcoming back Coach Sandy Langford, former coach and alumnus for the Lady Indians, as its new volleyball head coach.
Langford comes back to Nocona after spending the past 11 years leading the Glen Rose volleyball program.
Her circumstances with her family allowed her to jump at the opportunity once she became aware the position at Nocona was available.
“My youngest graduated and is playing football at Midwestern (State University),” Langford said. “All of our family is here and I knew that Coach Kara (Lucherk) was leaving. We were eventually going to retire here. Our oldest son plays college football at West Texas A&M and we’ll be two hours closer to him as well.”
She again will lead the Lady Indians volleyball program, one that she led all the way to the state title game in 2011, which is the farthest the volleyball program has ever gone in its prestigious history.
Langford kept up that level of success during her 11 years at the bigger 4A Glen Rose. She won less than 20 games only twice during her time, winning her 500th career game back in 2023. Her teams were ranked among the top 10 in the state five times and Langford led Glen Rose to the state tournament in 2017, the best finish in program history.
With the Lady Indians also having its own string of success, appearing in back-to-back regional finals while finishing atop the district standings both years, Langford is excited to not just keep the success going, but shoot for the stars.
“We are not expecting anything less than a state championship,” Langford said.
She has stacked the non-district schedule with strong, state-ranked 3A and 4A teams as well as big tournaments that will test Nocona’s mettle early next season in the hopes it will prepare them for a long playoff run.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekly edition of the Bowie News.
The Red River High School Bass Club competed this past weekend, May 31 – June 1, at the State Tournament on Lake Conroe for the two-day tournament.
Two of the teams from Montague County traveled south to try their best at the culmination of the year for the state title. Teams were able to pre-fish on Friday before the Saturday and Sunday competition. On Friday, there was a flipping contest for the youth and Cooper Johnson won third overall and won a $500 scholarship and an Academy gift card.
The club’s two teams who competed were Lane Smith/Colt Henry with boat captain Jimmy Smith. The team placed 63rd with a total of 16.22 pounds. The second team of Cooper Johnson/Corbyn Patton and boat captain Jayson Toerck placed 169th with a total weight of 2.29 pounds.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekly edition of the Bowie News.
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