Winter high school sports notebook

Time to get tough

After his team’s 17th-place showing at the Rose Hill Invitational, in which 135-pounder Blake Greenfield was the only wrestler to earn a medal, Lawrence High coach Pat Naughton talked about ways to better prepare his team for the make-or-break weeks that lie ahead.

“In this tournament, there was no place to hide,” Naughton said. “It was just incredible how tough this tourney was this year. But I didn’t do a good job of having our guys mentally prepared for that. Now that we’ve seen how they did at this tournament we can move forward and work on getting them better mentally prepared for league, regionals and state.”

Lawrence High and Free State, along with a slieu of area wrestling teams, will compete at league meets this weekend, followed by regional meets the following weekend and the state meet in Wichita, Feb. 22-23.

The Sunflower League meet, which LHS and FSHS both will compete at, will take place Saturday at Olathe Northwest.

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Crutch you like a hurricane

Injured Firebirds guards Maggie Hull and Sarah Craft found some humor in their unfortunate injury situations. Last Wednesday, before a FSHS win over Savannah (Mo.), the duo each played one of Hull’s crutches like a guitar as 1980s rock anthem “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” by the Scorpions, blared over the FSHS speakers.

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Signing day has arrived

With today being national signing day for high school seniors around the nation, a few local prospects are prepared to make official comittments to play college football.

Free State High seniors Craig Rosenstengle (Butler County Community College), Ryder Werts (Baker University) and Mike Santee (Drake University), will sign at 7:50 a.m. at FSHS.

Lawrence High seniors Jared Vinoverski (Drake University) and Quintin Rucker (Coffeyville Community College) also are scheduled to make comittments.

The LHS duo will sign today at 2:45 p.m. at LHS, where it will also be announced that senior Tyler Hunt has been invited to walk-on at Kansas University.

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Firebirds finding stride?

The win over Shawnee Mission Northwest on Monday night gave the Free State girls their second win in three games. The only loss was a double-overtime setback to SM South.

During the stretch the Firebirds received strong play from post players Taylor Manning, Chantay Caron and Ashli Hill but lost another guard, as senior Sarah Craft reaggravated a previous injury and is out for the rest of the season.