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.
Prairie Valley
The Prairie Valley Bulldogs had a good final non-district warm-up on Friday at home against Ector.
The Eagles beat the Bulldogs 69-63 in a game where Prairie Valley was trying to play catch up all the way through.
The Bulldogs were coming off a tough tournament at Electra the previous week to try and knock the holiday rust off. Prairie Valley was familiar with Ector, having played the team to start its season back in early November and was hoping to compete better than it did in that first game.
The Eagles came out firing, splashing five 3-pointers, including several deep ones, to go out to a 21-8 lead in the first quarter. Even with the Bulldogs changing out of their preferred zone defense, the 3-pointers continued a bit and opened things up inside the arc.
Thankfully, Prairie Valley’s offense came alive in the second quarter, scoring 18 points and cutting the lead down to 38-26 at halftime.
The third quarter was more of the same, though a different player for Ector started to get hot from beyond the arc. Even as the Bulldogs were able to keep up their offensive production from the second quarter, they could not break through and cut the game to single-digits, trailing 54-42 heading into the final period.
The fourth quarter saw Prairie Valley break through to cut it the lead to single-digits, but just not close enough. Every time the Bulldogs were on the cusp of making it a one or two basket game, the Eagles would make a shot to keep that distance.
In the end, the final score was the closest Prairie Valley got as Ector won 69-63.
Nocona
The Nocona Indians bounced back with a competitive district win at Petrolia on Friday.
The Indians won 60-53 against the Pirates in a game where the middle quarters took drastic swings in momentum.
Nocona was coming off its first district loss against Windthorst as the team sat a 1-1 district record.
Petrolia came into the game at 0-1, but had a bit more time to prepare for the game.
The first quarter was competitive, but the Indians were able to get to the free throw line at will and led 16-11.
Then Nocona’s pressure defense turned up its intensity in the second quarter.
“Our pressure seemed to disrupt them and we were able to get out in transition after forcing turnovers,” Coach Brody Wilson said.
Nocona scored 25 points and led 41-25 at halftime.
Unfortunately, that intensity did not keep up at the start of the third quarter for Nocona.
The Indians took their foot off the gas a little bit which allowed Petrolia’s offense to get back into the game and make up some of the deficit.
The Pirates outscored Nocona 15-7 and trailed only 48-40 heading into the final period.
Thankfully, the Indians bounced back and competed a bit better in the fourth quarter. Nocona was able to keep offensive pace to keep Petrolia at a bit of a distance instead of making it a one score game.
The Indians held on to win 60-53.
To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekly Bowie News.
For more pictures from the Prairie Valley game, click here https://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=bnews1&AID=6871971&T=1
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