State Tournaments

Heidi Myers, Writer

With October coming to an end and November approaching, fall sports are beginning to feel the pressure of KHSAA State Championship Tournaments. McPherson High School falls into the class 4A. Our fall sports at the high school include Football, Boys Soccer, Girls Tennis, Volleyball, and Cross Country.

The McPherson High School football team had a three week winning streak to make them 4­2 overall, and making them 3­1 in league play before the lost to Abilene on Oct. 16. With that loss we moved to a record of 3­2 in league and plan on playing against Buhler on Oct. 23. The team will continue to work hard and hopefully find themselves with success on Friday, Nov. 6 in their Regional game and who, with luck, will qualify for the State tournament games the following weeks.

The boys soccer team here in McPherson has had nothing but a smooth start to their season with a record of 12­3 losses to Salina South (No. 2 in 5A), 2014 State Champs, Rose Hill (No. 1 in 4­1A), and Dodge City (No. 4 in 6A). The Bullpups unfortunately lost their fourth place ranking to Berean and Winfield who are the No. 4 and No. 5 in class 4­1A. Even with the win over Winfield earlier in the season they dropped in rankings after the loss to Rose Hill. The boys are preparing to play their first Regional game on Oct. 27 and then their Regional Final will be Oct. 29. All first round winners will play for the Regional Championship that will continue them to the State Quarterfinals the following week at Circle High School.

Although most fall sports are focusing right now on Regionals, Girl’s Tennis finished their season early due to the fact that their state tournament happened Oct. 16 and 17. McPherson tennis girls that qualified were Cassiday Corrigan, Rachel Ivers, Ellea Ediger, and Maisie Edmonson. With the news of the class qualifications the team knew it was going to be a hard tournament with Wichita Collegiate and Andover Central dropping the Mcpherson team to No. 3 with Collegiate No. 1 and Andover No. 2. The doubles team of Ediger and Ivers finished the tournament with a 3­1 record and a loss to Collegiate in the championship finals. Corrigan and Edmonson found themselves falling to the doubles team of Andover Central and didn’t make it to the second day. At the end of the tournament, the girls finished the tournament in fourth place as a team.

McPherson High’s volleyball team No. 2 rank all season with a 32­7 record right behind Bishop Miege No. 1. The pups will be playing Hays No. 5 rank at 3 p.m. on Oct. 24 in the Class 4A Division I sub­state tournament hosted at Buhler High School. The girls will be needing to win this weekend to qualify and play in the state tournament on Oct. 31 at the Salina Bicentennial Center. Time of play is still to be announced.

Along with the volleyball team, the McPherson boys and girls cross country team will be traveling to compete in Regionals. This year the Varsity Regional is hosted in Hays, Kansas. There are four Regionals taking place and three teams will qualify per Regional along with top ten runners with possibility of additional individual qualifiers. Fortunately, none of the top five ranked teams for the girls are in the Hays Regional. Girls will start run at 12 p.m. Although on the boys side, Hugoton No. 3 and Wamego No. 5 will make their appearances at the meet. Boys will start run at 11:30 a.m.