I’m not sure I’ll ever name more high school kids in a Nannen Physical Therapy Athlete of the Week update than I do today.
It was a fantastic first full week of the fall season and there’s way more than three viable candidates for this recognition, but I’m picking Eli Tinkham, Macy Schrad and Macy Wolf. Please, keep reading.
Macy Wolf, Arlington volleyball: The Eagles got beat Thursday in their season opener at Fort Calhoun, 3-0. In response, though, they went 2-1 Saturday during a tournament in Plattsmouth, and everything coach Erin Stosich has told me about Wolf leads me to believe she was a big reason why AHS bounced back. Well, that and she had a team-best 11 kills during a two-set sweep of the Blue Devils in the Eagles’ tourney finale. That helped. The volleyball player wasn’t the only Arlington athlete to excel this week, though. Special mention goes to softball players Savannah Lang (who homered against David City Aquinas), Tessa Spivey (who had 14 strikeouts against Tekamah-Herman) and Finley Timm (a freshman whose name and numbers kept jumping off of the stat sheet at me this week). I should mention the golf team, too, right? Aspen Smutz earned a top-10 finish in Syracuse this past week, so congrats to her as well.
Macy Schrad, Blair golf: This senior golfer had a big day Thursday during the Lincoln Northwest Invite. In the first 18-hole tournament of the season, she carded a career-best 93 strokes. It was good for an eighth-place finish as the Bears took fourth as a team. Good stuff all around. Same goes for Emma Ammon, who’s led the BHS volleyball team through the first weekend of the season with 30 kills, and Blaise Baughman, who scored two touchdowns against Lincoln Standing Bear in the football team’s opener. Oh, by the way, softball player Kaitlynn O’Neil had a four-RBI game in the Bears’ tournament title win, while Jacy Schueth hit a homer against Omaha Mercy and scored the go-ahead run against Elkhorn.
My typing fingers are tiring out, but I must continue on naming these names. Here it goes.
Eli Tinkham, Fort Calhoun football: I don’t have the final numbers yet, but I’ve watched the tape and Eli Tinkham had a decent offensive game against Arlington on Friday night. By decent, I — of course — mean outstanding. He had two touchdown catches on Adam Elofson throws, but also stretched the defense and made a couple of long catches to set up scores. Huge game to start the season. Speaking of huge games, Emilee Thayer-Mencke had a team-best 14 kills during FCHS’ aforementioned sweep of Arlington on the volleyball court. Last but not least, the softball squad’s Isabel Wray had an eight-strikeout game against Tekamah and Rylie Keyser notched four RBIs against Syracuse last week.
There we go. I did it. Made it through naming all of the names.
Now what? Well, I plan to go out into the rain this fine Sunday in hopes of taking photos of some youth football players. It's a rare day away from job No. 2 for your's truly, so we'll see how I did doing job No. 1 in the upcoming Friday edition of the Washington County Enterprise.
