Peyton Sipila returning to improve on last year’s season.

Hawk Baseball officially started their season with a scrimmage with Llano last Tuesday night at the Canyon Lake Diamond.

This will be a year where Head Coach Trent Dunavant will need to use a calculator in counting the number of players in his dugout.

“I don’t know….35?,” Coach Dunavant stated when asked how many players he had practicing and wanting to play this year. “We will carry around 14-15 for Varsity and over 20 for Junior Varsity.”

Coach Dunavant had a long pause when asked that question of players wanting to play, as in the past few years, those questions could easily been answered by looking at both hands and counting fingers.

Last year, Canyon Lake started a wave of players that started to influx this sport and the Hawks still had several players that had Sophomore besides their name giving you a hint of age.

Now those Sophomores will be classified as Juniors and that might hopefully translate into victories for a program that had not made the playoffs in three years.

“We will have competition on this team and that will be something that should make them better,” Coach Dunavant fielded. “We have more optimism than in the past and we will have multiple guys playing multiple positions.”

The Hawks seemed to be strong in the infield and will have more qualified players for those spots this season.

“We have infielders that will be able to compete for outfield positions if they can’t win their spot in the infield,” Dunavant said without error. “This was our first scrimmage and we had some things good and bad. We found things that need working on, and things that the kids retained from last year.”

“We did ok playing defense but bats are slower than pitching at this time of year and pitchers are mainly throwing fast balls.”

Catcher will be a position to keep an eye on as the Hawks lost a big bat and fielder when Michael Brady got his diploma last May.

“We had Kyle Krohn play a nice game yesterday and he will be fighting this position out with Bryce Dehlin and Colton Avey,” Coach Dunavant commented. “Peyton Sipala will be able to play anywhere, left field, first base, short stop…”

The pitching will have several players ready for their chance to make things happen….if you take one thing from Coach Dunavant on pitching, it is throw strikes.

“We walked way to many players last night,” Dunavant said. “If you throw strikes in high school, then nine times out of ten the batter will find a way to get out.”

“Throwing harder does not mean you can pitch, sometimes throwing an 85 mile per hour pitch down the middle will not do as well as a pitcher that throws a 75 mph pitch on the corner,” Dunavant reiterated.

When asked about what they would be looking for in finding a closer for this club, Coach Dunavant did not hesitate, “A closer is not afraid of failure and it is how they approach their game mentally and having pin point control. If they (pitchers) can’t throw strikes then they won’t be out there.”

“I want to be around four to five pitchers when district rolls around,” Coach Dunavant closed. “We have more athletic kids than positions this year.”

Canyon Lake will be wearing their coats this Friday as the weather could be frigid if Seguin does not help in changing the game to Saturday.

If that happens, then CL will be playing in Seguin rather than at Canyon Lake.

The ReSporter knows that Seguin is warmer than CL since it is so much further South.

Should be a good season…hopefully the season will end later in the year when temperatures get much warmer…thanks Coach and good luck.

With the storm of waiting for Re-Alignment comes lightning for coaches as they have to be ahead of the game in putting their schedule together.

Many times a non-district game can become a district game based on what the UIL in moving schools to different locations and partners.

Head Coach Charlie Drum has been burning the midnight oil since Sunday as he waited for the curtain to fall and find out who his new friends will be.

“Our degree of difficulty did not change much,” Coach Drum said when assessing new and departing teams in District 14-AAAA. “We traded two playoff teams for two playoff teams so our district did not change much.”

Wimberley and Navarro was lost while Liberty Hill and Taylor were added from their district to the north.

(more…)

The Canyon Lake JV Girls Basketball team finished this season on an upbeat note as this team got on a

Lexy Jackson helped lead a successful end of season for Hawk JV Basketball

winning track as the scheduled matured through the season.

“They got tired of losing,” Head JV Coach Jimmy Chamberlin said when asked about how this turnaround started.

The Hawks hung a loss on Navarro for the season finale Tuesday night, 37-28.

Navarro came back from their five point deficit after the first quarter to forge into a 17-16 advantage at intermission.

(more…)

The ReSporter: I know the score was the same as last time you played Canyon, what

This Soccer Coaches Corner is brought to you by Dan Krueger running for County Commissioner Pct. 4

positives did you take away from last night’s game?

Coach Erich Robinson: “Keeping in mind that Canyon will probably be 6A next season the score was 7-0.  I feel that we got to really see areas that we need improvements in. We tried a different defensive strategy the second half and will continue to address this area.  In addition, our counter attack needs some tweaking as well as supporting our offensive attack.”

The ReSporter: How much of an improvement have you seen with the team so far this season?

(more…)

Canyon Lake’s Softball team was in discovery mode last Saturday as they opened their year.

Sophomore Pitcher Alexis Robinson

The Hawks played three games on Saturday in New Braunfels Canyon High School.

Wins and losses are not what coaches are looking for during these skirmishes, but looking for hidden jewels and seeing how much work and the specific type of work needs to be done to ready a team for the season is a top priority.

After asking how Alexis Robinson pitched, Head Coach John Gallagher surmised, “Pretty good, she threw about seven innings overall and had three strikeouts. We used two different catchers so she did not throw a lot of different pitches.”

Canyon Lake will be thin in that pitching circle again this year and so how Robinson goes will also let you know how the Hawks will fair this year.

(more…)

Canyon Lake will be resetting their GPS as another realignment has been set.

Hawk Football team add Liberty Hill and Taylor. Subtract Wimberley and Navarro as District foes.

The first item you will notice is another ‘A’ being added to the Hawks classification. Since the school has started competing in sports six years ago, CL was in the AAA class and now will be competing in District 26-AAAA, but that will not mean different sizes of schools.

This year the UIL had all of the 6-Man football teams move into the Class A Division and that was the reason for moving all other Classifications up from AAA to AAAA.

(more…)

Congratulations to the Canyon Lake Swim Team on a great showing at the UIL 28-4A District Championships this past weekend. Competing in one of the largest and most competitive 4A District’s in the state, the Hawk Swimmers placed 5th in the boy’s division and 6th in the girl’s.

First Place Trophy from Burnet’s 3A & Under Championships held earlier this year.

Highlights of the meet include:

Christian Duarte (12): 3rd place in the 100 Backstroke, two school records, qualified for the Region 7 Championships in the 200 Freestyle & 100 Backstroke

Phoenix Duarte (9): Qualified for Region 7 Championships in the 100 Backstroke

(more…)

Canyon Lake will be playing their last game for the season this Tuesday night

Canyon Lake Girls Basketball will be in their last game of this season on Tuesday at the Hawk gym.

This has been a rebuilding year for CL as this team has featured Freshman and Sophomores and with that came a lot of growing pains.

On Tuesday night the Hawk Nation will be saying good-bye to Amber Ramsey, Emily Muniz, Cati Harrington, Brianna Young, and Jenna Lann.

Come out this Tuesday night to let these girls know your appreciation for representing Canyon Lake.

The Hawk Boy’s Basketball team will be on the road as they play out their season with only 3 games remaining. Their next home game will be a week from this Tuesday which will also be their season finale.

(more…)

The ReSporter: How have your practices been going?

Head Softball Coach John Gallagher

Coach Gallagher: “Practice is going very well. We have a lot of eager minds willing to learn all they can to become better players. The Junior varsity is doing everything they can to be better players by listening and working hard everyday.”

The ReSporter: What have you noticed that has surprised you in what you have seen thus far?

Coach Gallagher: “I’ve been surprised with our team speed on varsity. We have some girls that can run well and know how to execute in situations. I am also very happy that we have some added depth at several positions this year. All of these players are working extremely hard on all parts of their game to earn a spot.”

(more…)

The ReSporter: I was looking at your schedule and you will have 5 meets before district…

Track and Field Coach Troy Moses

Is that enough or would you want more?

Coach Moses: “It depends on how the calendar works out each year. This year, there’s not a lot of time between District, Area, & Regional’s and that is when we want our kids performing their best. So you don’t want to run them too much and have their legs tired when you need them the most.

The ReSporter: You also mentioned that you had approx. 50 students that will be on the team, how and when do you place them in an event?

Coach Moses: “It’s sometimes a hit and miss thing. We put them where we feel they can be successful, and most the times we are right, but sometimes we are wrong. There’s been times we have an injury and we have to put someone in that event to replace them and it turns out that the replacement was better than the first.”

The ReSporter: How much of a say do they have compared to what you see in them?

Coach Moses: “We will try to put them in events that they want to do, but when it comes down to it we are going to put them where: #1 They are going to help the TEAM win, and #2 they can compete.”

The ReSporter: What are your hopes for this year’s squad after a disappointing ending to last season’s district meet?

Coach Moses: “I just want to see our kids work hard and compete to the best of their ability. Track is an individual sport with a TEAM component. The difference is that we have no control over what the other teams do.

The ReSporter: Do you have a feel for what area you might be strongest in? Distance, Field Events, Relays or sprints?

Coach Moses: “If we get the kids out that need to be running we could be very competitive in the relays. I’m not for sure how the field events were last season, but I foresee our field events improving as well.”