best basketball right after halftime. Some players said that Coach Robbie Lowrance’s halftime adjustments and speeches have contributed to the success. “It was crazy how we came back. We got a whole lot of momentum in the third quarter and really started to play our best basketball,” senior Kaitlyn Burton said. “We always seem to play better in the third quarter for some reason. I think it’s because we had a chance for us to rest our legs, and of course Coach Robbie’s halftime speeches helped us get motivated to stay in the game mentally.” Although the Lady Falcons mounted a major come-back in the second half against Tuscola, the 20-point defi-cit proved too great an obstacle to overcome, and they lost by three points. Junior Ashley Rogers and sophomore Si-erra Bishop were major contributors to the comeback as well. The team’s record this season is 9-14 overall, 5-8 in the Appalachian Athletic Conference. The Falcons had a recent loss to North on Feb. 15 in the first round of the AAC conference tournament. This puts the team out of contention for the conference tour-nament title, but they will play either Erwin or North Buncombe in the first round of playoffs on Monday. “We have done pretty well as a team this year. We had some tough losses like Brevard where we didn’t play our best,” Foster said. “I think we are still one of the best teams in the conference; we just needed to play like we are and have confidence. We are definitely the most athletic team in our conference.”

7

Matt Thielke

Randy Johnson hangs up cleats on a great career

Tank Time

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Women’s basketball loses in AAC tournament

Stepping up to the mat at a dual-team match at Hendersonville High, senior Brandon Harrison knew he was one win away from setting a school

record for career wrestling wins. Unfortunately, Harrison also knew that win No. 137 would be a victory by forfeit. “It was kind of a let down that I didn’t even get to wrestle to break it. In general, I do not like taking forfeits, so it made it even worse that it was the one that broke the record,” Harrison said. “It was a weight class up, but I didn’t have anybody in my weight class either.” Harrison topped a record set in 2002 by Brandon Schweitzer. Schweitzer, a West wall-of-famer, was the 2002 heavyweight state champion and is currently the head wrestling coach at Polk County High. The Falcons fell to Fred T. Foard in the first round of the dual team state playoffs on Feb. 9 at Rugby. The team’s season conclusion did little justice to its 17-4 (7-1 confer-ence) final record. The team’s only conference loss came against Pisgah in the final conference match of the season. The wrestlers will compete at the individual region-al tournament Feb. 19-20 at St. Stephens High. The top wrestlers at regionals will move on to the state.

Wrestlers look to continue their successin individual regional tournament

At the Polk County Reindeer Games meet on Jan. 13, sophomore Tayler Tavel competes in the long jump event. The team scrimmaged against nine other area teams.

Giant Step

Competing in West’s Falcon Frenzy tournament, senior Allen Bice moves into position to pin his opponent. The Falcons placed second at the Frenzy, which brought in around $12,000 for the wrestling program.

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Ryan DuckettSenior Editor

Matt ThielkeSports Editor

Record:9-14

“Hopefully we can have about six state qualifiers this year,” senior Josh Littauer said The team’s overall success trancends its record. Clinching a runner-up title at the 26-team Falcon Frenzy on Dec. 5, the team placed second at the Charter Com-munications Indian Classic in Kingsport, Tenn., on Dec. 11. The team finished behind Bob Jones High in the 34-team tournament, placing seven wrestlers in the top six of their weight classes. Littauer placed second in the 160 lb. weight class, and Harrison and junior Jesus Vera both placed first in their weight classes, 119 lb. and 112 lb. re-spectively. Harrison was voted MVP. “The tournament was massive, and it was kind of unexpected; nobody really knew where we were at,” Har-rison said. “When they took the break and started to an-nounce scores, we were waiting and were thinking, ‘Well, we’re higher up there than we thought.’ At lunchtime we were in fourth, and we had two guys in the finals.” Harrison, the 2008 western regional champion and 2009 regional runner-up, hopes to clinch another region-al championship. Junior Trae Hemphill, who wrestled for Brevard last year, will also defend an in-dividual regional title in his weight class. The state qualifiers will compete at the state tournament on Feb. 26-27 at the Greensboro Coliseum.

Winter track team members attending rescheduled state meet

Michael TurlingtonFeature Writer

Record:17- 4

We have all experienced them — nightmares that wake you up at 3 a.m. with your heart racing, head spinning and cold sweat pouring down your face. Most of the time you can’t even remember what the nightmare was. But if this happens to

you and you have played major league baseball, my bet is you dreamed about dig-

ging into the batter’s box to face off with one of the most intimidating play-ers of the game, Randy Johnson. Luckily for MLB batters, Johnson recently retired from the game at the age of 46 after 22 years of service to the sport. For those of you who call yourselves sports fans and are wondering who Randy Johnson is, punch yourself in the face (as Mr. Kahn would say), and let me give you a history les-son. Johnson is known as “The Big Unit.” He is the tallest pitcher in baseball history, standing at 6 feet, 10 inches. Personally, I think the nickname wasn’t given for his height, but for the nasty mullet he rocked throughout the years. The mullet was not only perfectly full, but it added to the fear factor and his presence on the mound. The fear he instilled in batters across the league led to a Hall of Fame career. He threw two no-hitters, one of those being a perfect game in 2004 against an Atlanta Braves’ team that won 96 games that season. He would throw over 100 mph with accuracy, striking out 4,875 batters in his career, an all-time record second only to Nolan Ryan. He also has some nice hard-ware to put on his mantle, with a World Series ring and five Cy Young awards. I will always remember watching Randy Johnson dominate the mound when I was a kid. I wanted to be a pitcher just like him (we are both left handed), and be known as one of the greatest south-paws to ever play. So I want to give a big thank you to Randy. Thanks for a phenomenal, historical, Hall-of-Fame caliber career. Thanks for bringing joy to those like me who love watching pitchers dominate batters during games, and thanks for showing us again and again how baseball should be played.

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Any team losing by 20 points or more at halftime is usually written off and a loss is penciled in to the score book. This was the situation for West’s wom-

en’s basketball team in a Jan. 11 game against conference rival Tuscola. Going into halftime, all seemed lost for the Lady Fal-cons, who were down by 22 points. The Lady Falcons were not playing their best basketball, but they knew they were capable of coming back if they started executing their plays and controlling the ball better. “At halftime we knew that we had to stop turning the ball over so much and start making the easy shots we had been taking,” senior Summer Kremer said. “We wanted to come out in the second half and play harder than we ever had before to get back in the game.” The Lady Falcons responded to the halftime break and came back firing in the third quarter. The team came together and gathered momentum, creating a much clos-er basketball game and an opportunity to win. “I think in the first half we sort of feared Tuscola be-cause they are third in the conference,” senior Meredith Foster said, “But we realized at halftime that we could win and play with them. They weren’t all that much better than us.” The Lady Falcons have seemed to be a ‘third quarter team’ throughout the course of the season, playing their

A fter enduring bitter cold, hard training and diffi-cult qualification standards, most athletes would be upset if the state track meet was pushed back a

week. Not so in senior Meredith Foster’s case. Foster is the defending state champion in the high jump. “When I heard the meet was going to be a week later, I was really excited,” Foster said. “I was going to try to jump with my ankle the way it is anyway, but this gave it another week to heal.” Foster, who also plays basketball, sprained her ankle at a game against Franklin the week before the state meet was originally scheduled. Other state qualifiers include seniors Keenan Young, also in the high jump, and Matt Thielke in the 500-meter dash. The indoor state 1A/2A/3A meet will now be at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Feb. 20 at the Eddie Smith Field House. The number of state qualifiers reflects the success of the winter track team as a whole. “I am pleased with the number of kids that we had on the team this year,” Head Coach Walt Fletcher said. “I did not expect this many, es-pecially since several of the people who run in the spring play winter sports.” The team finished its regular season by competing at the 2010 Western North Carolina Polar Bear Champi-onships on Jan. 27. Young, who qualified for state in his sole jump, and Foster, who also placed second in the long jump, placed first in the men’s and women’s high jump competitions respectively. Senior Delfino Islas, in the 500-meter dash, and sophomore Savanna Carland, in the triple jump, both placed fourth. Both the men’s and women’s teams ended up sixth out of 12 teams at the meet overall. The team also ran at Polk on Jan. 13. According to Fletcher, several Falcons did well in their events, although times got worse as the meet went on because of the fall-ing temperatures. “This was one of our better meets. Matt Thielke did well in the 500; (sophomore) Savannah Carland improved her triple jump by a foot and a half; (junior) Chase An-drews improved his throw; and our men’s two-mile relay did well,” Fletcher said. “After it got cold, our times start-ed to drop off, but we couldn’t really help that.” New to this year’s season was the Dec. 16 Reindeer Games, a holiday-themed meet where the men placed eighth and the women placed seventh out of 12 other teams. “It was a lot of fun,” junior Shaundi Sides said. “We all had on our Christmas socks, and we used candy canes for relays. It really made us look forward to running.” According to Fletcher, indoor track is a good oppor-tunity for athletes to prepare for the spring outdoor sea-son. After the last regular meet of the year, however , the focus changes. “My goal is to help the people who make it to state to place the highest that they can,” Fletcher said.