By Rob Patrick

Debbie Stepp was talking to a friend from her hometown in Wynne recently and they asked her about her new job as the head softball coach at Bryant High School.

“They said, ‘Well, coach, what do you think?’” she recounted. “I said, ‘The way I can describe them best? Beasts.’ I mean, I am really impressed with the power we have.

“In the past, I’ve had one or two power hitters and I’ve played the short game a whole lot,” she said, referring to her tenure as the head coach at Wynne, her alma mater, since 2003 that culminated in a State championship last spring. “But I’ve been real pleased with what I’ve seen hitting-wise. We’ve faced live pitching with our pitchers some and, of course, we’ve done all kinds of drills and it’ll be different when the other team is out there. We’ll see who can come through.

“I think this is a complete team,” Stepp asserted. “I think we can play short game, long game, we can steal on people. We’re going to be able to move the ball around and I’m excited about that. I’m so excited, we’re all so excited and we’re ready to play.”

The Lady Hornets are set to open the 2010 season in a benefit game that will inaugurate the new softball facility at Benton on Monday, March 1, at 5 p.m. They’ll officially open the season at home against Lake Hamilton on Tuesday.

CLASS 7A STATE TOURNAMENT

At Van Buren High School

Girls

Wednesday, March 3

Game 1 — Cabot (14-13) (Central 4) vs. Fort Smith Southside (11-15) (West 5), 1 p.m.

Game 3 — Fort Smith Northside (20-8) (West 3) vs. Van Buren (11-17) Central 6), 4 p.m.

Game 5 — Springdale Har-Ber (14-14) (West 4) vs. Little Rock Central (12-14) (Central 5), 7 p.m.

By Rob Patrick

LITTLE ROCK — The Bryant Lady Hornets’ seniors just know how to win.

Though they trailed the Little Rock Central Lady Tigers for most of their 7A-Central Conference game at the sweat box also known as the Tiger Den, the Lady Hornets found a way to extract a 47-42 win. The fact that they held the Lady Tigers to just 2 points over the final six minutes of the game was integral.

“I felt like, through the whole course of the game, they never looked like they expected anything other than we were going to win,” Bryant head coach Blake Condley said of his players. “They were the same start to finish, no panic, no frustrations. We just kept doing what we’ve been doing.

“Central didn’t give us anything tonight,” he noted. “We had to work and earn it. Central played real hard. They were aggressive. I thought they did a lot of good things. We just had to fight through that in order to be able to win.”

As a result of the victory, the Lady Hornets will be the No. 2 seed from the league to the Class 7A State Tournament in Van Buren. They’ve earned a first-round bye and they won’t run into the unbeaten Central champs from North Little Rock until the finals, if they can get there.

By Rob Patrick

LITTLE ROCK — In the end, when you’ve given the last ounce of effort one last time, it seems like the whole season’s worth of weariness descends on you.

Bone tired.

The end is bittersweet.

Bitter because there will be no more drives to the rack, no more swishing 3-balls from the corner, no more steals and coast-to-coast sprints, no more of that sweet anticipation before a game, no more “thrill of victory.”

Sweet because there will be no more defenders pounding you as you try to dribble up the floor, no more cuts and scratches, no more bruises, no more conditioning drills at practice, and no more “agony of defeat.”

The Bryant Hornets battled to the very end. Even when their hopes of going to the State tournament were dashed, they continued to bring it. But, the results didn’t change. In their final game of the season on Friday night at the sauna otherwise known as the Tiger Den at Little Rock Central, they were close. The Tigers held on, however, for a 68-57 win.

LITTLE ROCK — A 13-2 run to start it and a 20-1 blitz to put it out of reach — the Bryant Hornets junior varsity completed its 2009-10 season with a 65-48 win over the Little Rock Central Tigers JV on Friday night.

L.J. McLaughlin scored 19 points, Quinton Motto 15 to lead the Hornets. Kyle Nossaman added 9, Houston Garner 8, Logan Trudell 7, Brantley Cozart 5 and Cameron Wood 2.

By Rob Patrick

Chances are, they’re not all going to be this easy.

But, hey, who knows?

The Bryant Hornets banged out 14 hits to take advantage of nine errors and 10 walks in a 20-1 romp over the Pine Bluff Zebras in a pre-season benefit scrimmage at Bryant High School Field on Thursday night.

A quartet of pitchers — Blake Davidson, Caleb Milam, Jordan Taylor and Ben Wells — limited the Z’s to four hits — three of them by the Zebras’ hit machine Claude Johnson — while issuing just two walks and fanning 13.

In the field, the Hornets committed just one error despite playing so many players. And, at the plate, 19 different players got to the plate and 18 of them reached base at least once. Lucas Castleberry and Chris Joiner each had two hits.

By Aaron Shuttleworth

This next week in practice the Bryant Lady Hornets are going to hear the word "finish" a lot. At the end of the soccer game against the Texarkana Lady Razorbacks on Thursday night at Bryant Stadium, the Lady Hornets took 12 shots on the goal and not one went in.

The lone goal of the night came with 33:11 left in the game from Shelby Gartrell.

"She's a worker," said Lady Hornets Coach Julie Long. "But we need to work on our finishing of games, that's our number one focus."

By Aaron Shuttleworth

There was excitement on the Bryant Stadium field Thursday night as the Hornets extended their season record to 2-0. But no one was more excited then Daniel Tucker.

With :35 seconds left in the game, Tucker was running behind teammate Marshawn Hood driving towards Texarkana’s goal. When Hood got tangled up with a Texarkana defender, all he had to do was kick it back to Tucker for a wide open shot that went to the top of the goal beyond the reach of the keeper.

So on opening night at home with less then a minute to play, senior Daniel Tucker scored his first career goal as part of a 4-0 victory.

By Rob Patrick

Saying that his team is further along at this point than it was last year, Bryant head baseball coach Kirk Bock sends his defending 7A-Central Conference champion Hornets to the field for a benefit game against the Pine Bluff Zebras on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 5 p.m.

The Hornets, coming off a 22-8 season that surprised some, welcome back all but three starters from last year’s team. Of course, those three starters — Tyler Sawyer, Kaleb Jobe and Justin Blankenship — all signed to play college ball. They were the team’s top three in runs batted in and included the team leader in wins on the mound (Sawyer) and saves (Jobe).

“Those were three key people,” Bock allowed, “but we’ve got more depth on the mound and, this year, we actually have people competing for positions in the infield. And they’re competing hard and that’s good. So, we’re going to have some choices where last year, we were limited a little bit. It’s going to be fun.”