SPORTS
Basketball coach Botard leaving Nocona for Quinlan Ford job
In another change to the Nocona athletics staff, boys basketball coach Bret Botard announced through his Twitter account on Tuesday he had taken the same position at Quinlan Ford, located east of Dallas.
The move was made more for family reasons, as stated in his tweet.
“While this move puts my wife and I within 30 minutes of many family, friends and our grandchildren, we are very sad to leave Nocona,” Botard said.
Botard went out of his way to thank the people of Nocona, the staff he worked with and especially, his players.
“Lastly, to my players,” Botard said. “I love you. You are a special group of young men. You did everything that was asked of you by me and the rest of the coaching staff. Along the way, you made some history here in Nocona. You accomplished things here that hadn’t been accomplished in over 30 years. Realize that you were the driving force behind this.”
Botard had an extremely successful three-year tenure at Nocona, posting a 73-29 record with three playoff appearances, including reaching the regional semifinals in 2017. The past two seasons saw the Indians compete in a tough district that featured state ranked and tough Holliday and Bowie. A couple of his former players expressed some of the impact he had on their team.
“Coach Botard wasn’t just a coach to our team, he was like our other dad,” recently graduated Jeremy James said. “There were days when none of us were in a good mood, but when we walked into the gym he brought an energy to us that always made us laugh and have a good time. Another great thing about coach was that he believed in us when absolutely no one else did. Overall, Coach Botard was an amazing man and will be missed at Nocona.”
“One thing about him is that he always expected our best effort,” recently graduated McCasland said. “If he knew we weren’t giving it, he made sure we did. He loved every one of us like his own and as hard as he was on us, it was always out of love.”
In his wake, Football Coach/Athletic Director Brad Keck now has to go through the process of hiring a new boys basketball coach for next year. With the search happening during the summer rather than the spring, Nocona will be under the pressure to hire someone sooner rather than later.
“Its kind of wide open right now,” Keck said. “We don’t really have a timeline or a person in mind. I posted the job and taking resumes right now. With it being summer now, there is a little bit of a since of urgency to get something done. We just want to find the right fit for our kids and the right fit for our town, while also doing it pretty quickly.”
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.
The Bowie sports banquets was on Monday night. Olivia Gill and Tucker Jones were named Jackrabbit and Lady Rabbit of the year. Pick up the mid-week paper for all of the sports team awards and pictures.
The 72nd Chisholm Trail Rodeo was a big success on Friday and Saturday nights at Nocona.
The rodeo had big crowds and saw some good competition from both local and far reaching talent.
Winners in the events included Zach Hibler in bareback riding, Lindsey Muggli in barrel racing, Ashley Goforth in breakaway roping, Leanardo Lima in bull riding, Cody McCartney in calf roping, Thomas Moellering in ranch bronc riding, Wacey Hathcock in saddle bronc riding, Renato Finazzi in steer wrestling, Rowdy Jones and Rance Doyal in team roping.
To see full results and more pictures, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.
The regional tennis tournaments were late last week in North Richland Hills and a doubles team is moving on to state.
The Saint Jo girl’s doubles team Kyler Dunn and Taylor Patrick won the 1A region III tournament and will return to state for the second straight year.
The pair rolled through teams from Morgan, Dodd City, Priddy before beating a Graford team in the finals. The pair did not lose a set and only lost five of the 53 games it played, never losing more than one in a set.
The team made it to state last year after finishing second at regionals and won a match at the state meet against a team from Vernon Northside. They then lost to the eventual state champion team from Utopia and finished tied for third place.
They will be the only tennis players from Montague County playing at state this week as others did not have as successful regional tournament.
The Saint Jo teammates and fellow girl’s doubles team Bailie Nobile and Maxey Johnson won their first match against Ector 6-1, 6-4, but fell in their next match against Lometa, 6-1, 6-1.
From Prairie Valley, Case Carpenter was competing in boy’s singles. His first match was a draining two and half hour battle against a player from Strawn Carpenter came through in the three-set battle, winning 6-4, 5-7, 6-4.
Unfortunately, the magic was not there in the second game. Paired against the eventual tournament champion from Gustine, Carpenter lost 6-0, 6-1.
From Gold-Burg, Alyson Rojas and Jimena Garcia competed in girl’s singles. Rojas won her first match against a girl from Avinger 7-6, 6-2. Unfortunately, the next match she lost to a girl from Graford 6-0, 6-0 to end her tournament.
Garcia lost a tough first match against a player from Ector. Both sets could have gone either way with the scores being 6-4, 7-5 to the winner.
The mixed doubles team from Forestburg, Jesse Wadsworth and Alli Cisneros, also did not make it through.
From Nocona, Kaygan Stone was playing in the girl’s singles 2A region II tournament.
Unfortunately, she got paired against the player who would go on to win the tournament in the first round to end her season.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.
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