Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 401 - 425 of 700
It’s a long arduous road to a Texas state football championship. And Farwell has taken just one step so far. Friday, the Steers (10-1) will try to take the next one when they play Stratford (6-5) in the Texas 2A D2 Area round at River Road High School not far outside of Amarillo. Kickoff is scheduled for 2 p.m. Central Standard Time. Farwell posted its 10th-straight victory last Friday by routing Van Horn 53-6 at Hobbs High School in the Bi-District round. Now comes a tougher test against a Stratford team that won even bigger...
CLOVIS — Basketball rivalries are always cool. Even if teams aren’t in the same district, an area rivalry can be fun, packed with fans. Tuesday night’s Portales-Clovis boys basketball game was both of the above, with each team taking turns being in control of the flow, and Rock Staubus Gymnasium jammed with fans of both teams watching it all play out. Clovis held on to win 59-51 in front of all those fans, putting another area rivalry installment in the scorebooks. “That...
CLOVIS — ‘Twas the Friday before Christmas, and all through the Rock ... all the Wildcats were stirring, a win seemed a lock. The numbers rung up on the scoreboard with care ... with hopes that the mercy rule soon would be there. In its last home game before the Christmas break, Clovis’ boys basketball team shot well, scrapped for second shots, distributed the ball and played good defense, all leading to a heartwarming 73-30 Yuletide rout of Hereford on Friday at Rock Staubus...
GREENSBORO, N.C. — John Dawson knows he’s a lucky guy. He’s not playing at venues like Madison Square Garden, nor in cities like Charlotte, New York or Los Angeles. ESPN doesn’t spend hours speculating on his next free-agent landing spot. At least not yet. What Dawson does already have in common with the players who do some or all of the above is that he’s a basketball player drawing a paycheck for playing basketball. Now in his second season with the NBA G League’s...
PORTALES - The Portales boys basketball team can win close games, and can put games out of reach, too. This past week brought examples of both. Friday night, the Rams took care of Muleshoe 71-56, enjoying a fairly comfortable lead for most of the way at the Ram Athletic Center. Three days earlier in the same gym, they rallied from 18 down to beat West Las Vegas 62-61. Winning big, winning in the clutch. The most important aspect of both for Portales is the 'winning' part....
PORTALES — When the Portales boys basketball team was down big to West Las Vegas in the third quarter Tuesday night, it almost seemed hard to remember that the Rams had actually been ahead midway through the second. But when Portales fought all the way back to win 62-61, it was the big third-quarter deficit that seemed to fade from memory. Dug into an 18-point hole Tuesday, the Rams staged a thrilling comeback victory that may define the rest of their season and help power them through to even bigger things. At the very least...
For Clovis’ winter teams, it will be a weekend spent far north and west of home. And, they all hope, a weekend that serves them well going forward. Thursday through Saturday, Clovis’ boys basketball team begins competing in the Academy Tournament in Albuquerque, while the Clovis girls team takes part in Rio Rancho’s Mel Otero Tournament during the same span. Saturday beginning at 10 a.m., Clovis’ swim team will be competing in the Belen Tournament. Between them they’ll log a lot of miles, plenty of time spent on buses. Bu...
MELROSE - Finally, the Melrose basketball teams' journey has begun. Melrose's girls and boys, two teams with state title aspirations, hope Thursday's season openers were the first step along a path toward the ultimate late-winter prize - a blue trophy. The Melrose boys captured one last March; the Melrose girls were state finalists and took home a red. Thursday, each began new seasons with a fury - the boys opened their title defense with a 70-34 rout of Cliff, shortly after...
CLOVIS — Whatever else happened to the Clovis girls basketball team this weekend, whatever else happens to them throughout the winter, the Lady Wildcats may look back at Friday’s 41-35 comeback victory over Cleveland as one of their most important games of the season, as the night they found their identity. The young Lady ’Cats began Friday’s game at Rock Staubus Gymnasium still searching for that identity, with a befitting 1-1 record. And then there was the Lady Storm, heading into the Rock at 4-0. Through more than three q...
Elida has a new girls basketball coach, but nothing has really changed for the program. Keith Durham is not Jaden Isler and vice versa. Isler has his own style of coaching and Durham his, so there will be a difference there. The program, though, remains one that strives for excellence. The Lady Tigers have won eight consecutive Class A state titles, the last four under Isler after succeeding his father, the late J.D. Isler, who died in a 2015 car accident only months after taking over for Dan Howard. From coach to coach to...
Any girls basketball team might say it’s a sisterhood. Dora could make a more literal claim to the term. This year’s Dora girls team includes younger sisters of former players, plus a pair of sisters playing together on the current roster. “It’s pretty cool,” says sixth-year head coach Gabe Montoya. He hopes the season is, too. Helping Montoya bring about a memorable winter is one of his former all-state players, Taylor Dillard, now one of his assistant coaches. Dillard’s sister Brenn is a freshman post on Dora’s vars...
CLOVIS — For Jaden Isler, it seems right coaching boys basketball at Clovis High. Not that Isler didn’t enjoy his time coaching the Elida girls team. What coach wouldn’t like inheriting a team that had won four consecutive state championships, then guiding them to four more in a row? But, Clovis boys basketball owns a special, unique place in Isler’s heart. His father J.D., who has since passed away, coached boys basketball at Clovis for years. And Jaden Isler played there w...
The Melrose boys basketball team will look a bit different than the one that captured a state Class A championship in Albuquerque last March. Losing six seniors tends to give a team quite the makeover. But head coach Kevin Lackey doesn’t expect a freefall. He thinks the Buffaloes can be solid, perhaps even contend for another state crown. “We don’t use the word rebuild at Melrose,” Lackey said Tuesday afternoon, “so we’ll be competitive, no doubt.” Still, those six seniors aren’t going to be easily replaced. Jordan Jasso, B...
CLOVIS — Opening night doesn’t reveal everything about the season that lies ahead, but it can be somewhat of a barometer, giving teams an indication of what they can become. The barometer reading for the Portales and Clovis girls basketball teams in Friday’s season opener at Rock Staubus Gymnasium may bode well for both, as the Lady Wildcats prevailed 46-45 on the first night of the Foxy Drive-In Shootout. The Lady Rams — with a mostly different team than the one that capture...
PORTALES — Opening the college basketball season is a big deal. Opening the conference schedule, even bigger. Those conference opponents are the company a team will keep for most of the winter. They’re the ones a team needs to beat if a conference title and postseason berth are in the offing. So, starting well in the Lone Star Conference slate by beating Midwestern State 80-64 was huge for the Eastern New Mexico women’s basketball team Thursday night at Greyhound Arena. The G...
CLOVIS — Were Clovis High a smaller school, perhaps fans would see a running, gunning, razzle-dazzling team moving the ball quickly up and down the court this season. Being 5A — a notch smaller than last year, but still plenty big — means the Lady Wildcats will have to adapt to the schools that size, schools like Hobbs, Carlsbad and Roswell, who will likely force them to play a certain way. “We’re still trying to figure that out,” Clovis head coach Jeff Reed said Monday night...
TEXICO — As the backboard was lighting up in red after Maryelle Dickerman’s buzzer-beating shot, it was on to the next season for Texico’s girls basketball team. Dickerman’s basket had won a 3A state championship for the Lady Wolverines, as they edged Tohatchi 48-47 at The Pit in Albuquerque last March 9. There was time to savor the crown, time to celebrate, time to soak it all in. But really, Dickerman’s shot brought an immediate end to the 2017-18 season for Texico, and the end to the high school careers of seven Texico se...
TEXICO — It doesn’t matter how many games you win if you don’t win the last. Man oh man, did Texico’s boys basketball team learn that the hard way last March at the Pit in Albuquerque. The Wolverines soared into that 3A state title game against Pecos with a 29-0 record, trying to go 30-for-30 while joining Bobby Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers in the ranks of undefeated basketball champions. The Wolves, though, emerged from that game 29-1. A fine record under different circumstances, but for Texico it represented a bitter end...
PORTALES — So, it’s back to the state 4A semifinals for the Portales football team. But, the Rams managed to reach this point last year and things didn’t turn out so well. It is of course a different year, a somewhat different Portales team, a distinctly different opponent, a noticeably different locale. Last year’s senior-laden Rams team had to go on the road for the semis and play Robertson, who wound up beating them 20-14. Beginning at 1 p.m. this Saturday, Portale...
PORTALES — Portales’ football team is headed back to the final four. The Rams earned a return visit to the state 4A semifinal round with a 64-32 victory over Grants on Saturday at Greyhound Stadium. By Portales head coach Jaime Ramirez’s own admission, it was a far-from-perfect victory, filled with penalties and turnovers, but the Rams got it done — thanks in part to six interceptions by their defense — and they are moving on to the semis, where they will host Taos in a 1 p.m....
MELROSE — There will be a new Eight-Man state football champion. That much was clear Friday night after four-time defending champ Melrose was defeated at home 53-24 by top-seeded Gateway Christian. The first state titleist not hailing from Melrose since 2013 will be either Gateway or Tatum, who play for the crown this Saturday in Tatum, beginning at 1 p.m. Not that Melrose didn’t try hard to get back and play for a fifth straight title. Injuries beset the Buffaloes early in...
CLOVIS — Clovis High’s head football coach Cal Fullerton thought last Saturday’s 24-21 season-ending loss to Las Cruces was a microcosm of the season. For a while, it was hard to tell which direction the Wildcats were headed, how things would turn out. It got rough in the middle, but the ’Cats kept playing hard. Saturday, Las Cruces took a 14-0 lead on Clovis. “I thought our kids could’ve thrown the towel in right then,” Fullerton said. But it was 14-14 before halftime. The...
PORTALES — Every football team wants its last game of the season to be a win. But they’d prefer it were in a championship game, not the regular season. Eastern New Mexico wrapped for the 2018 season on Saturday afternoon, beating Western Oregon 19-14 at Greyhound Stadium. There will be no playoffs for ENMU, just plenty of optimism for 2019. A big part of the reason Eastern is already looking ahead to next year is that this year began with a parade of nationally-ranked tea...
A little over a month ago, it seemed Melrose’s football team was in trouble. The Buffaloes were 1-5 and injury-riddled, their season in doubt. But they got healthy, tore off a string of victories — including a big one over powerhouse Gateway Christian on Oct. 19 — and well, what do you know, the four-time defending state eight-man champs are right where they usually are at this point of the season, in the state tournament’s semifinal round. They will host Gateway on Friday at 7 p.m., with a chance to play for a fifth consecu...
PORTALES - Opening night. There isn't much in sports that quite compares to it. And when opening night ends with a victory? Way cooler. The Eastern New Mexico women's basketball team broke the seal on its 2018-19 season in way cool style Friday at Greyhound Arena, with a 66-38 victory over New Mexico Highlands. It was also the first night of the Lone Star/Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Challenge, but being Day 1 of the season was even more important, more special. After a...
