Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Bounds Enjoys Teaching The Game
WOLVES’ BASEBALL BEGINS AMIDST WET SPRING SEASON
LINCOLN — Baseball competition for Lincoln High School and new head coach Justin Bounds like all area teams has experienced a number of scheduling revisions due to a late blast of winter and rainfall in the region.
Games against 6A Siloam Springs on March 6 and Farmington (5A-West) on March 9 were rained out. Lincoln lost to former 3A-1 foe Greenland, 15-7, on March 11. The Wolves were defeated, 11-7, by Providence Academy and 24-0 by Keys, Okla., on March 12.
Continuing nonconference action this week Lincoln played Sequoyah High School, of Tahlequah, Okla., on March 17, then travels to West Fork on March 19 and hosts Hacket on March 20. After spring break, Lincoln competes in the Westville, Okla. tournament. The Wolves wrap up March with a trip to Farmington on March 30 and begin conference play on March 31 against Gravette on the road.
Lincoln meets rival Prairie Grove on April 20 with the district tournament beginning 10 days later at Huntsville (April 30 - May 2). Lincoln hosted the 4A North Regional last season and again bid for the tourney this year but the site was awarded to Dover (May 8-11). The 2015 4A state baseball tournament is scheduled for May 14-16 at Gosnell.
Bounds has imposed a certain amount of mental conditioning upon himself to make the transition from assistant to head coach.
“I think I’ve grown as a person, not just athletically or sports-related or as a coach but overall as a person I think I’ve grown and matured,” Bounds said.
Bounds has benefitted from varied experiences of being around different baseball programs from playing high school ball to college ball to interning during baseball season to coaching girls in softball and coaching baseball and moving to Lincoln and coaching baseball and having some success.
Bounds has gathered thoughts and ideas from different coaches and talked to different coaches and opposing teams and from attending and watching baseball games plus listening to announcers on TV, learning all he can through observation.
“I’m always trying to learn something and it’s my job to apply that to what we can do here at Lincoln,” Bounds said.
Teaching the game is the part of baseball Bounds enjoys most. He has sat down with some of the players throughout some of the fundraisers last season and just kind of just talked baseball to them trying to open their eyes to things they may not have thought about or explaining concepts that might not have been understood.
“The overall teaching of the game I enjoy that,” Bounds said.
Bounds’ assistant is Tyler Sutherland, a first- year teacher at Lincoln Middle School who also served as assistant coach for the girls basketball team.
One plus is Bounds is already familiar with 4A-1 teams listing rival Prairie Grove as always going to be tough because they’re wellcoached. Bounds respects Gravette, as well.
“You look at our conference, if you make it out of our conference and into Regionals you’ve had a very successful season,” Bounds said. “Gravette got beat out by Pea Ridge in the district tournament and Gravette could have beat any of the teams in the Regional tournament from the opposing conference. So I think if you make it out of our conference and you make it into Regionals, you’ve had a successful year and it definitely prepares you for the one-game season you have in the first-round of the Regional tournament.”
As far as the other teams go Bounds expects Pea Ridge to be well-coached but isn’t that familiar with Huntsville with Lincoln only having played them once or twice during his tenure as an assistant.
Bounds notes Berryville and Gentry are improving year- to- year and doesn’t want his team to be intimidated when competing versus Shiloh Christian or any other opponent they may encounter along the way.
“The old saying is they put their pants on one leg at a time just like we do. Their kids, their coaches, they’re going to play the game, too. It’s our job to execute what we need to execute. They’re still going to hit the ball, they’re still going to run the bases, they’re going to field it and try to throw us out so we’re just playing the game of baseball. It doesn’t matter who it is. It’s still just playing baseball. It doesn’t really matter what the name across their chest is, let’s go play baseball.”
FARMINGTON — In the midst of a weather-delayed state competition at all levels with winter storms flowing across the state, Farmington took on Batesville in the tourney hosted by Greene County Tech at Paragould on March 9.
Nearly a week after winning a first-round game, 45-26, over Magnolia on March 2, Farmington defeated Batesville, 66-54. With Farmington leading 11-4, Batesville rallied by making a trio of 3-pointers with Kendra Kelley, Sarah Hayes and Hannah Qualls taking turns connecting from beyond the arc. A 13-2 run pushed Batesville in front, 17-13, after the end of the first quarter. Farmington came back with a 10-2 run of their own, getting ahead, 23-19, before Batesville closed out the first half with a second run of 10-4 to take a 29-27 lead at intermission.
Qualls scored 9 points in the first half but was held to 3 in the second half. The Lady Cardinals outscored Batesville by nearly a 2-1 margin (16-9) in the third to capture a 43-38 lead going into the fourth quarter. Farmington extended their lead to 9 points at the 5:33 mark and went on to a 66-54 victory. Four Lady Cardinals: Trish O’Connell, 18; Tayton Hopkins, 17; DuChanois, 16; and Tahlon Hopkins, 13; scored in double figures and Farmington advanced to a March 10 state semifinal contest against Hot Springs (No. 1 5A South) making 2015 the second straight year Farmington reached the state semifinals. The Lady Cardinals reached the 2014 state semifinals when they were in 4A and lost to eventual 2014 State 4A champion Malvern.