Orrville Fall Sports Update # 2

The Fall Sports season is coming to a close, with some sports already done for the season. Seems like just yesterday we were getting ready for another football season, and now we're 2 weeks away from the Orrville-Wooster game.

Here's what's going on....

Volleyball

As expected the Red Rider volleyball cruised past Chippewa and Manchester to earn a spot in the district semifinals. They'll take on Dalton this Tuesday at 6pm at Smithville for a spot in the district final. Triway and Waynedale match up in the other semifinal at 7:30pm. Should be a great night for Wayne Co. volleyball action.  If the Riders win, they return to Smithville on Thursday night for the district title game.

Last week, the OCC post season awards were announced and a special congrats to sophomore Trinniti Hall and senior Lauryn Wright were named OCC 1st Team. Congrats ladies!!

Here's the full list as posted on the OCC website:

2013 OCC All Conference Girls' Volleyball Selections

Offensive Player of the Year - Mackenzie Weaver, Soph. - Lexington

Defensive Player of the Year - Cara Park, Soph. - West Holmes

Coach of the Year - Jenise Vaughn - Ashland

1st Team

Alexis Stoops, Sr. - Ashland

Alannah Lemming, Jr. - Lexington

Ali Brown, Jr. - Madison

Chase Carper, Jr. - Madison

Katie Weaver, Jr. - Madison

Trinniti Hall, Soph. - Orrville

Lauryn Wright, Sr. - Orrville

Paiten Strother, Sr. - West Holmes

Megan Fiscus, Jr. - Wooster

2nd Team

Sydni Carpenter, Jr. - Ashland

Jillian Stuff, Sr. - Clear Fork

Ellie Guth, Sr. - Lexington

Mekaila Grose, Jr. - Madison

Elexius Harris, Sr. - Mansfield

Aleah Stauffer, Soph. - Orrville

Raichelle Erman, Soph. - West Holmes

Makayla Hart, Jr. - Wooster

Honorable Mention

Rachel Benway, Sr. - Ashland

Bryanna Masters, Fr. - Ashland

Mattie Van Orman, Jr. - Clear Fork

Macey Ruhl, Sr. - Clear Fork

Alex Fitzpatrick, Sr. - Lexington

Lauren Slaton, Fr. - Lexington

Maggie Andrews, Sr. - Madison

Liz Sutter, Sr. - Madison

Jeryn Reese, Jr. - Mansfield

Janae Harris, Sr. - Mansfield

Sarah Auble, Soph. - Orrville

McKinley Smith, Fr. - Orrville

Madison Cox, Soph. - West Holmes

Brittleigh Macaulay, Soph. - West Holmes

Bri Bocook, Jr. - Wooster

Syd Logee, Sr. - Wooster

It sure is encouraging to see that 4 of the 5 Orrville honorees are sophomores and freshmen. I've heard good things about the middle school volleyball teams, and with a core of underclassmen returning next year, it sure seems that the volleyball program is in good hands.

Cross Country

Congrats to the Orrville girls cross country team. They placed 5 runners in the top 31 at this past Saturday's district run at Malone University to finish 4th as a team and advance to next week's regional meet.  It's the 2nd straight year the team advanced to regionals and the 4th straight year that Haley has advanced to regionals.

Leading the way was senior Haley Woodruff who finished 6th overall, sophomore Jessica Eby was close behind in 15th place, and the Madigan twins, Kaitlyn and Kayla, both juniors, finished 21st and 25th respectively. Megan Buchwalter (Soph.) finished 31st, Courtney Stiffler (Soph.) 45th and Sara Stiles (Junior) 51st.

Again, notice all those underclassmen...other than Woodruff, everyone will be back next year. Tip of the cap to Coach Reed and the entire cross country program. Take a lot of dedication to be a cross country runner. You're simultaneously competing against the other runner and yourself.

Great job ladies!!!

Football

Tough loss for the football team last Friday at Madison. This was one the Riders needed badly to keep their playoff hopes alive.  They still have a chance to play in week 11 according to JoeEitel.com, but will need to win their last 2 games (at Clear Fork and vs. Wooster) and probably get some help from other teams in the region losing.  Kids are working hard, but it's always an uphill battle in the OCC, where Orrville is the smallest team both in participation and enrollment.  The margin for error is so slim.  I know it may not solve all our problems, but I still say the OCC is too big for us.  It's time to find a conference with schools of similar size.

Wooster Week Schedule

Two dates of importance for the upcoming Wooster Week. Always a fun week of special events.  Remember, the game is on a Saturday (7pm) again this year. So the parade and bonfire will be on Friday night, November 1st beginning at 7pm.  The "adult" Beat Wooster party will be held at 9pm at the VFW. This event is being planned by the senior football parents. Light snacks and soft drinks will be provided. I believe there will be a "coach look-a-like" contest, as well as an award for the attendee dressed with the most Red Rider Spirit. Free of charge, must be 21 or over.

Soccer

Congrats to the OHS soccer team on another good season. They finished 7th in the OCC tournament (beating West Holmes in OCC tourney play) and won an OHSAA tournament game for the 3rd straight year, defeating Rittman 2-1. They lost 5-0 to #1 seed Chippewa this past weekend. Congrats Coach Duskey and the Red Rider soccer team. Keep working hard!!

Baseball

I know baseball is a spring sport, but this item came across my twitter feed last week.

OH: Orrville 2014 LHP/1B JT Perez commits to Cincinnati. 3rd commit to the Bearcats from the Fall Unsigned Senior Games.
— Prep Baseball Report (@prepbaseball) October 19, 2013

Congrats to JT & his family. Guessing it's been a while since Orrville baseball has produced a D-1 college commit. Hope he's not the last senior baseball player to get an offer to play college ball.

Winter Sports Schedule

In another month, winter sports will be kicking off. Here's the schedule for boys basketball, girls basketball and wrestling.

Note some changes on the boys basketball schedule. Gone is the opening game against Shelby. It will now be Coventry kicking off the season on Saturday November 30th, the first game in the new gym.  They will also be participating for the first time in the Jack Greynolds Classic in Barberton. They will face Northwest in the first game of the day at 11am on December 7th (Saturday).

We will also be playing 4 games vs. the WCAL this year with games vs. Waynedale, Norwayne, Northwestern and Smithville.  Only one of those games will be at home, the Smithville game. The Norwayne & Northwestern games will be at those schools while the Waynedale game will be at the WQKT Smitty Classic.

Here's the full lineup for this year's Smitty Classic.

The girls will not be playing in the Classic in the Country after playing in the classic the last 2 years.  Instead, they'll be participating in the Tiger Prep Shootout at Pickerington High School on Jan. 19th (Sunday) vs. Pickerington.

One last thing....

Got an anonymous (of course) comment sent to me this week criticizing the content of this site...basically saying that I was not covering ALL sports equally..  First off, I won't apologize for the content of this site, I'm proud of it, and have realized long ago that you can't please everyone, so why try. 

Once again allow me to remind my readers...I'm not a reporter. I don't "cover" games. I'm basically an aggregator of news and information pertaining to Orrville sports. I collect info I can find on the web and share it with Red Rider Nation, and tweet out scores when I do attend games. Yes, this site is heavy on football and basketball, but those are popular sports that get a lot of coverage. I try to put as much out there on all sports...but if I'm not being notified of scores and results, I can't tweet it out to followers or post it on Facebook.  If you're looking for in-depth write-ups on all sports, you're going to be sorely disappointed. 

If you're attending games and taking photos, post them to Facebook and tag "Orrville Red Rider Sports Blog" so I'll see them.

If your son/daughter is playing sports in college, email me and let me know.

If you're at a game, tweet me the result.  

Trust me, I'd love nothing more than for someone to do what I do, but better. I'd love to see the school take more of an active role in challenging students wishing to get into journalism to do game write-ups and post it to the school website.

My time to do this site is shrinking and I've mentioned that before. Several posts a week are down to one or two a month. I don't do football game previews anymore if you haven't noticed.  The day is quickly approaching where this site will be a reference site only...there won't be any updates for folks to complain about.

Luckily these kind of comments are in the minority...but everything has it's time.  I sincerely hope that the broad range of topics in this update was pleasing to all my readers...even the anonymous ones.

GO RIDERS!!