Fall sports in the home stretch

Football, volleyball and cross country are coming down the home stretch with the volleyball team set to finish this week at the 4A State Tournament in Springdale. The gridders and the harriers are set to end their seasons next week.

The footballers thrilled fans last week with a highly entertaining contest with the Clarksville Panthers, not icing the game until the last six seconds. They have two road games left with likely playoff teams Farmington and Harrison.

Meanwhile, conference wise, the boys’ cross country team looks like they had an excellent chance to win the 4A-1 District Championship held Tuesday in Berryville with the girls likely having to battle it out with Gravette for girls’ supremacy.

Volleyball girls finished third in the conference standings and qualified for the state tourney which was to start Tuesday in Springdale. The LadyHawks

were set to play long-time state volleyball power Valley View. The Blazers started their program decades before Arkansas made it an official sport, and have won more state titles than any other program. A week from Friday, Vilonia will visit Greenbrier. That game will probably determine this year’s champion of the 5A West. Long-time defending champion Harrison has lost three games this year and is out of contention for the conference crown and is in a real battle for a playoff spot.

It usually takes four wins to get into the 5A playoffs which only has four rounds, compared to the five round 4A and 3A playoffs. Harrison, Alma and Morrilton are currently tied at 2-3 for the fourth playoff spot.

Harrison seems to have the inside track for four wins with games against the bottom two teams. Meanwhile, Morrilton has to play Vilonia and would have no real chance for four victories unless it scored a major major upset. Alma has to play Greenbrier, a low odds victory scenario, leaving them probably short of their four-victory quest.

Farmington only has to get past either Pea Ridge or Alma to punch their ticket. An upset win by Pea Ridge this Friday would throw a monkey wrench into playoff predictions. For the past few years, there has been a sharp divide between the top four teams in the 5A West and the bottom four, but this year, only Vilonia and Greenbrier are markedly better than the rest. With those teams leaving the 5A West with the expected inclusion of Dardanelle, Shiloh and Prairie Grove into the league for the 2022 season, next season may be one of the most wide open ones in quite a spell.

Last week was a big one for scoring in the 5A West, with the four winning teams averaging 50 points among them. Beside the Hawks’ 54-49 victory, Vilonia crushed Alma 5620, Harrison blasted Morrilton 42-7, and Greenbrier whipped Farmington 48-6.

This week Pea Ridge is battling Farmington, Harrison is taking on Clarksville, Morrilton is fighting Vilonia and Alma is teeing it up with Greenbrier.

4a-1 district championships Tuesday, state meet nov. 5

Heather Wade’s cross country teams ended their regular season Tuesday and will be headed off to the state championships next week in Hot Springs.

Both teams have piled up a lot of hardware in a very successful season to date. The boys are defending a state title they won a year ago, with the girls coming back as the girls’ runner-up team from 2020.

Currently, the boys are the second-ranked team in the 4A competition, with the girls in a very tight battle for the second position, ranked in fourth at present.

Defending champion Valley View is leading the girls’ charts, with past champion DeQueen making a run to claim another title.

Cross country rankings are derived from compiling all the meet results from cross the state, with the times affected by the terrain, weather and accuracy of course distance. The polls are generally an indication of where a team is at competitively, but is rarely an accurate prediction of how the final results will look. There are many cases of teams not ranked high running great races and surprising the field.

Among the boys, there is a sizeable gap regarding the top three teams and the rest of the field with the girls top four teams far and away better than teams ranked fifth and lower. The boys’ champion and runner up will likely be among DeQueen, Pea Ridge and Farmington, with Valley View, Clarksville, Pea Ridge and Gravette fighting it out for the top two.

Here are the current