COACH OF THE YEAR

CHIP DURHAM

SCHOOL Bentonville West

THE SCOOP Durham started the baseball program at West three years ago and guided the Wolverines to a share of the 6A-West Conference title and back-to-back state tournament appearances. … The Wolverines finished 20-11 — the best record in the school’s short history and lost to eventual state champion North Little Rock in the semifinals. … He has an extensive coaching background at the college level including Crowder College and Nicholls State and played baseball at Arkansas-Monticello.

DID YOU KNOW Durham got out of coaching entirely, selling pharmaceuticals for six years before taking the job at Bentonville West.

QUOTABLE “I’m really pleased where our program has come in three years. These guys who are leaving, the seniors, have left a footprint to get us where we want to go. We came up a little short on the field, but we had a good year and kids did well. “They did a great job of laying the groundwork for what this program is about, setting standards and leaving a legacy of where we want to be.”

ANTHONY CANTRELL

SCHOOL Bentonville West

NOTABLE Led the Lady Wolverines to a 23-4 record overall and a 6A-West Conference championship in the team’s third season. … West’s victories included a regular-season sweep of Class 6A runner-up Bentonville and wins over Class 6A state champion Cabot, Class 5A state runner-up Greenwood and Class 4A state runner-up Farmington. … After a 3-2 loss at home against Rogers High, the Lady Wolverines won their next 11 league games and clinched the conference title with a 5-3 win over Bentonville. West then reached the state tournament semifinals before the season ended with a loss to Cabot.

DID YOU KNOW Cantrell admits he is “deathly afraid” of opossums and “other varmints.”

QUOTABLE “We knew we had a chance to be pretty good this year, but you never know when you have Bentonville and Rogers in the same league. Overall, we had a great year. That’s a tribute to my kids and their desire to be good. They’re a great group of kids, and we do things a little bit differently than what other people do. The biggest thing is I want those kids to be good and have fun being good.

“We came up short of where we could’ve been, but that’s part of it. In that state semifinal game, I still don’t think we played bad. We just didn’t play well enough to win. We had a few things that didn’t go for us. We had 10 hits in the game, but they weren’t strung together.”