Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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It all started with a coffee can. Brooks Jennings Sr. took a metal Folgers can, cut out the bottom, taped it to the wall and handed his 3-year-old son Brooks “Bubba” Jennings a tennis ball. That was how Bubba attempted his first basketball shots. And his life would never be the same. The sport carried Bubba through a historic Clovis High career that ended with him as the program’s all-time leading scorer, a decorated playing career at Texas Tech, inclusion in the 1985 NBA Draft, a stint playing overseas, a chance to coach...
CLOVIS — Normally, a 52-48 win for the Clovis boys basketball team in its District 4-5A opener would be cause for excitement. In the case of Tuesday’s game at Rock Staubus Gymnasium, cautious optimism would be more appropriate. The Wildcats did get that first district win, but they had to hold on after leading by 22 in the third quarter, so that tempered the excitement a little bit. Still, the ’Cats are 1-0 in district. They’ll take it. “Every district game is huge,” Clovis head coach Jaden Isler said. “However you can win ...
PORTALES — Eastern New Mexico’s softball team will head to Albuquerque for its season opener against Fort Lewis (Colo.) this weekend with some uncertainty. And it goes beyond the basic question of how the Greyhounds will do this year. First-year head coach Kira Zeiter said Monday that her starting lineup wasn’t quite settled, at least as of the practice that was just wrapping up at blustery Greyhound Stadium. One thing Zeiter and her team seems certain about is how they...
PORTALES — Monday’s Eastern New Mexico baseball practice was a microcosm of a new season outlook overall. Hoping for better times ahead. The Greyhounds look forward to better conditions than Monday’s grey skies, howling January wind, brown patches of grass and big puddle behind third base — a not-so-hot corner. And overall, they look forward to a season that was better than the last, one that ends deeper in the playoffs. Sixth-year head coach David Gomez likes what he sees so...
CLOVIS - Tuesday was a double-header night at Rock Staubus Gymnasium, featuring back-to-back Clovis basketball games with mixed results. The Clovis boys took care of Goddard 72-62; the Clovis girls fell short against Artesia, 68-61. Another building block for the Wildcats. For the Lady 'Cats, losing perhaps pushed them farther away from gaining consecutive state-tournament berths. Breaking away Clovis' boys team posted its 13th victory in 22 tries by taking care of a solid...
CLOVIS — Friday’s Clovis boys basketball game at Rock Staubus Gymnasium could be considered a tune-up for District 4-5A play. But it was much more than that. By rolling to a 68-46 win over Artesia, the Wildcats’ second victory in a row and their fourth in the last five games, they took a step toward securing their place at the postseason table. “That game was a lot bigger than most people realize as far as what can happen to the district and the (state) playoff rankings,” Clovis head coach Jaden Isler said. “If we lose tha...
CLOVIS — Though it may seem like high school basketball practice just started, it’s district time already. The games have counted for two months, but now is when they start counting even more, meaning even more. Clovis’ boys basketball team will open District 4-5A play at home, when Carlsbad visits Rock Staubus Gymnasium on Tuesday, tipping off at 7 p.m. The Clovis girls make their district debut at Carlsbad, also at 7 p.m. Tuesday. It’s huge for both teams, but perhaps even more so for the Lady Wildcats, whose state-t...
PORTALES — It wasn’t four against the world, but it sure seemed like it for the Eastern New Mexico men’s basketball team on Saturday. Flying fists. The Greyhound bench cleared. Ejections galore. They all happened less than nine minutes into the first half of Saturday’s Lone Star Conference game between ENMU and Division II’s 20th-ranked Texas A&M-Commerce team at Greyhound Arena. Eastern — already injury-riddled and down to eight available players — had four ejected, leaving only guards Nick Brown, Mangistu Jongkor, Devi...
PORTALES - Teams having special seasons, teams looking like championship contenders usually have at least one game of the gut-check, character-building variety throughout the course of a season. Check all of the above for the Eastern New Mexico women's basketball team. The Greyhounds are title contenders in the Lone Star Conference, and needed to bag Thursday's home game against LSC foe Tarleton State to burnish that contender status. And despite trailing almost the entire sec...
CLOVIS - You again? That was the theme of Friday's Volcano Vista-Clovis girls basketball game at Rock Staubus Gymnasium. After all, it was a mere 20 days earlier that the teams had met at the Rock for the championship game of Clovis' holiday basketball tournament. Volcano Vista won that late-December game and Friday's, too, pulling away in the latter for a 62-34 rout of the Lady Wildcats. Different score, but not all that different in general. "It was pretty much the same,"...
PORTALES - The Eastern New Mexico men's basketball team may remember Jan. 17, 2019 for the remainder of this season. Maybe longer. It was the night an injury-riddled 2018-19 team seemed to find itself. Hosting Lone Star Conference foe Tarleton State at Greyhound Arena Thursday night, the Hounds trailed almost the whole game, rallied to grab the lead before falling behind one last time, then won 70-68 on sophomore guard Devin Pullum's right-elbow trey with three seconds left....
PORTALES — Both Portales High basketball teams looked to use Tuesday’s cross-state games with Lubbock’s Trinity Christian as educational experiences. And both did learn, though it might not have seemed so from a glance at the Ram Athletic Center scoreboard after each game. The Portales boys lost 51-34, not long after the Lady Rams had fallen 62-58. Yet each was encouraged by what they may have gained from their game, how they may have evolved, as district play grew closer. The young Portales girls may have learned the most...
PORTALES — The Texico boys basketball team entered Saturday night’s EPAC Tournament championship game at Greyhound Arena knowing history was within reach. Early in the second quarter, though, history seemed like it might just elude the Wolverines’ grasp. They were playing for a fourth straight EPAC title — something the boys program had never achieved before — but trailed a hot-shooting Fort Sumner team by 12 in the second period. Texico, though, remained steady and took firm...
PORTALES — Any team that wins three consecutive tournament championships expects to win a fourth straight. But expecting doesn’t guarantee it. The only guarantee comes from what the scoreboard says the team has earned at game’s end. And the Greyhound Arena scoreboard Saturday night said that Texico’s girls basketball team had done it, had earned a fourth consecutive EPAC Tournament crown by defeating Melrose 46-35. Only once before — from 1998-2001 — has a Texico girls team wo...
PORTALES — Texico’s boys basketball team always has eyes on an EPAC championship. The Wolverines win it so regularly, it’s almost like a rite of January. The Melrose boys approach it a little differently. Sure, they’d like to win EPAC, who wouldn’t? But the Buffaloes are a young team looking for anything that can help them learn and evolve as they continue down the road toward trying to defend the program’s state championship. So, Friday night’s 56-41 semifinal win for Texic...
MELROSE - Dora's boys basketball team was not without its chances to climb back into Thursday night's EPAC Tournament quarterfinal at Melrose High School. Those chances, though, lessened with each offensive rebound Fort Sumner grabbed, which happened repeatedly in Thursday's second half. The Coyotes gave defending 2A state champ Fort Sumner too many second-chance baskets, squelching their comeback attempts and leading to a 66-49 win for the Foxes. Fort Sumner's offensive rebou...
TEXICO - When taking a long drive, it's always good to see certain mileposts, certain landmarks, signifying how far you've come no matter how far you still need to go. The EPAC tournament is a metaphoric milepost, an in-season landmark. It's not any team's final destination - they all want to win a state championship in March, and early January is just too relatively early in the season whether they're state-champion material or not. EPAC, though, is an important point in the...
CLOVIS — The first segment of basketball season is over, the part when teams size up their opponents, size up themselves, get into the flow of the season, play holiday tournaments. The third segment — district play, likely the most important on the regular-season calendar — doesn’t start until the end of January. This weekend began the second segment — most of January, when teams head out of holiday tournament mode and into a stretch of wilderness that could be considered almost as important as the district slate. January i...
CLOVIS — Clovis’ boys basketball team was hoping to lug a nice bounty into 2019. A seven-game winning streak and a holiday tournament title were the treasures Clovis wanted to haul into January. Neither was to be. In Saturday night’s Griego & Sons Holiday Classic championship game at Rock Staubus Gymnasium, Volcano Vista led most of the way and stretched to double-digit margins in the second half, eventually winning by a comfortable 74-48 score. Clovis had its win streak snapp...
CLOVIS — Once upon a time there was a Clovis girls basketball team called the Lady Wildcats. They battled for points and rebounds and were in every game they played. But try as they might, those Lady ’Cats exited 2018 with a 4-8 record. If it sounds like a familiar tale, think of how Clovis head coach Jeff Reed feels. He’s had to watch the story play out regularly since late November, with seven of the unhappy endings having Clovis fade down the stretch. Saturday’s consola...
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories reviewing 2018 for eastern New Mexico. As John Lennon once sang, ‘Another year over and a new one just begun.’ 2018 flew like the high plains wind, with some Curry County sports teams sweeping to championships. The first quarter of the year — i.e. basketball season — was especially memorable for Curry teams. Here’s a glance back: Winter Texico’s girls basketball team didn’t have time to be in shock. Tohatchi’s Brianna Denetso hit a left-corner three with less than 10 seco...
CLOVIS — The only win streak Clovis’ boys basketball team really cares about is a four-game stretch to win a state tournament in March. Miles to go before then. But as of Friday night, the Wildcats were taking some of the necessary steps to at least be state playoff-caliber. By dispatching St. Mike’s of Santa Fe 77-48 Friday in the second round of the Griego & Sons Tournament at Rock Staubus Gymnasium, the ’Cats won their sixth straight after a 2-3 start. Win No. 5 in the str...
For Clovis girls basketball coach Jeff Reed, it was simple. He didn't have to think too hard and long to figure out what his team had learned over the first two nights of the Plateau Holiday Tournament. "What we've learned is, we've still got to get better," Reed said. He was mostly referring to Thursday's opener against Los Alamos, which the Lady Wildcats lost 56-44 after a second-half freefall. But Reed also wasn't happy with Friday's performance against Borger, even after...
TEXICO — Losing your own tournament is far from the world’s end. And the Saturday before Christmas is far from do-or-die time. But, Texico’s boys basketball team certainly didn’t want to lose its last game before the holiday break, especially not at home, especially not by two points to border rival Farwell. For Farwell, you could say vice versa about all of the above. The Steers wanted to go into Christmas week by winning a tournament on the road against a border rival. Survi...
CLOVIS — With Clovis’ girls basketball team tipping off on the last day of November, the Clovis boys in early December, holiday tournament time comes fast. It will begin for both teams on Thursday at Rock Staubus Gymnasium, with the girls tipping off their Plateau Tournament against Los Alamos at 6:30 p.m., and the boys starting their Griego and Sons Tournament against Sandia Prep at 8 p.m. No matter how the tournaments unfold, the Clovis games will be 6:30 p.m. for the gir...
