Photo furnished
Okaw Valley Middle School Regional Champions front row l to r: Miaya Lehman, Grace Bunfill, Kalynn Teague, Bailey Bennett; second row l to r:  Stacey Orris, Avery Bruns, Mia Harris, Karson Park, Reiss Frye; third row l to r:  Reagan Reedy, Savannah Hagerman, Chloe Harris, Kayla Fleshner, Kailyn Walker, Evelyn Ashley; fourth row l to r:  Asst. coach Dave Benning, head coach Kurtis Bunfill, asst. coach Samantha Inman.

•September 28, 2016•

Okaw Valley’s Middle School softball team finished the postseason on a great run and brought home a Regional Championship.

“They had their ups and downs all season and things clicked during the postseason,” Brooks Inman, OV AD said of the middle school softball team. “It was an impressive run for sure, and we are beyond proud of the team’s accomplishments this fall.”

One of the big boosts to the Okaw Valley team was from pitcher Grace Bunfill. During the regional championship game against Beecher City Sept. 12 Bunfill threw a no-hitter in the 4-2 win.

She struck out 35 batters in two regional games.

“That 35 outs of 42 included a no-hitter in the regional championship vs. Beecher City...which is ridiculously impressive!” Inman emphasized.      Read More

Photo by Mike Brothers
It was tough making ground but Luke Bowman leaves Shelbyville’s defense plowing through for a modest gain.

•September 14, 2016•

Kirk Whitaker
NP Sports Reporter

Friday night Shelbyville honored 2013 graduate and former quarterback Tucker Schwengel, even painting a 15-yard line for the game in his memory.

Sophomore quarterback Turner Pullen put on his own impersonation of the former Shelbyville signal-caller.

Pullen torched the Redskins all night long--with the climax being his 85 yard touchdown scamper in the third where he started behind a wall of Rams in the middle of the field before bouncing out to his own sideline to go untouched, out-running Sullivan’s Luke Bowman-- with 168 yards passing and three scores through the air to go with 200 yards on just 14 carries and three more touchdowns. Read More

Photo by Darian Hays
Defense was a big part of keeping the South Fork team from scoring Friday in Sullivan. SOV senior Drew Hubbard stops this runner in his tracks.

•August 31, 2016•

By Kirk Whitaker
NP Sports Reporter

Things couldn’t have gone much better to start the season for the Redskins.

From start to finish the Redskins’ running attack featuring quarterback Brett Tuttle and running back Ty Nichols, made gash after gash in the South Fork defense with a 100 yard run touchdown and two 64 yard touchdowns respectively.

All the worries after Nichols slipped and fell for a five yard loss on the first play of scrimmage were long gone after the game.

“The way South Fork was playing their defensive ends throughout the game we felt like we would be able to get our option game going,” explained Redskins’ head coach Gerald Temples. “We felt like we needed to do that more in the second half and that worked out for us.”

Nichols’ first score came on a fourth and one from the one yard line, taking a handoff from Tuttle over the right side and over several Pony defenders with 5:31 to go in the first quarter.

Then the fireworks started. Read More

•August 10, 2016•

Kirk Whitaker
NP Sports Reporter

After a brief hiatus of the check-in on the area athletes at the collegiate level, we return to the recap with this week’s edition on Sullivan’s own Mollie Bowman.

The 2014 Redskin grad is currently a jumper and a sprinter at Division II McKendree University in Lebanon, Ill.

Bowman performs the long jump (personal records will follow each event 17’5”), triple jump (35’11”), 200 meter sprint (25.84 seconds) and the 4x100 and 4x400 meter relays (48.44 seconds, and 3:54.04 respectively).

Also, Bowman and the Bearcat coaches further plan on showcasing her versatility in the 400 meter hurdles.

Bowman has come, “extremely close”, in her own words, at bringing home conference hardware but has her sights set on achieving national honors her final two campaigns in Lebanon but not without working for them first.  Read More

•June 22, 2016•

By Kirk Whitaker
NP Sports

It’s about that time of year again. Summer practices, lifting weights, and running galore are the main activities for school sports programs starting their preparation for this coming sports season. Now we take a look at how some area athletes who are now at the collegiate level are doing:

Karly Goodman, Arthur-Lovington/Atwood-Hammond class of 2014, track and field Illinois Wesleyan.

After finishing fifth in the shot put her senior year, the Arthur native continued her career at Illinois Wesleyan and to this point in her career owns the school record in the outdoor shot school record: 42’ 6.75” and has been named All-Conference her freshman and sophomore campaigns. Goodman has also taken up the hammer and javelin throws and holds personal records at 141’8” and 115’ respectively.

Goodman credits her success to this point to coaching, training and a changed mindset.

“Training is a lot different. Because I’m not in any other sports and things are more geared toward strength and explosiveness, I’m in a different kind of “in shape”. My mindset in competition has changed from high school into college. There is always going to be someone better than you so rather than me competing against other athletes, I compete against myself. The coaching is a bit different as well. You are on a first name basis, but there is still an athlete coach barrier. There is definitely a lot more one-on-one time. You have to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. It’s not going to be easy, but if you love it, it’s worth it.”  Read More