Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a flood of regular-season finales and postseason action among the ranks of high school winter sports. Basketball, bowling, boys’ swimming and wrestling have occupied my time and the time of my co-worker at the Newton Daily News.
While working through these busy night and days, the sound track to the background of my local work has been the 2018 Winter Olympics. The broadcasts on at night have kept me company as I churned out stories and photos of our Jasper County winter sports athletes.
With this week’s basketball playoff losses by the Newton boys, Lynnville-Sully girls and Baxter boys, we’re down to one team remaining in play for a state basketball tournament berth. Lynnville-Sully’s boys, who finished the regular season ranked No. 4 in Class 1A, have had to endure a couple of postponements this week in their postseason run.
The Hawks’ district semifinal was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday because of inclement weather. They posted a convincing win over Sigourney on Wednesday night and readied themselves to play another South Iowa Cedar League team — Montezuma— in the District 10 final on Thursday at Newton.
Winter weather stepped in again to push the third-time-this-season meeting of the Hawks and Montezuma Braves to Friday. The game is set for 6 p.m. at Newton High School. The winner advances to Saturday’s 1A Substate 5 championship game against District 9 champion Iowa Mennonite at 7 p.m. in Oskaloosa. Iowa Mennonite (21-3) beat New London 61-56 on Thursday.
Lynnville-Sully’s boys have been a very balanced team offensively this season with seniors Jesse Van Wyk, Tanner Foster and Brevin Hansen leading the way, all averaging in double-digit scoring. The Hawks (20-3) also hang their hats on defense, outscoring opponents by 24 points.
To reach their second straight 1A state basketball tournament, the Hawks have to beat a team f— Montezuma — for a third time this season then bounce back to play the next night. Lynnville-Sully’s three losses were to two 2A schools in undefeated East Marshall and Albia, and to 1A No. 2 Grand View Christian.
Jasper County high school wrestling teams had a strong showing at the 2018 Iowa state wrestling tournament last week. Some wrestlers walked away with just experience of wrestling at the state tournament but left all they had on the mats at Wells Fargo Arena. Newton Daily News’ Troy Hyde was our man at the state wrestling tournament and did a great job of capturing the moments in words and photos.
We had three Prairie City-Monroe wrestlers earn state medals, and one of those was a Class 2A state champion, a first for the Mustang wrestling program. Lucas Roland’s historic junior season and the adversities he and his family dealt with including his mother’s battle with breast cancer was inspiring to all.
Another historic season came to an end for a Jasper County athlete on Monday night. Newton High senior point guard Garrett Sturtz had the best-ever individual season on the basketball court for a Cardinal.
Sturtz is Newton’s single-season scoring leader with 764 points this year. He is the program’s all-time career scorer with 1,746 points. He also is the program’s career leader in assists and steals.
Sturtz already had the top spots in the four free throw categories on the Newton record book.
His final game of his career was 54-point performance in a 63-62 4A substate loss to Indianola. That was the second-best single-game total for Newton High. Sturtz re-wrote the single-game scoring record not once but three times — 44 points, 47 points then 56 points.
Sturtz led the 2017-18 Cardinals in points, assists (84), rebounds (191), steals (47) and blocked shots (23). He cashed in on 227-of-259 free throw attempts with 87.6 percent.
It is never easy when your final competition is a loss. It is the nature of the beast we call athletics.
Contact Jocelyn Sheets
at jsheets@newtondailynews.com