— Sports Corner —

Roman celebrates 25 years

?Editor’s note: For several years, this column began with Roman Watch, which was a weekly update on Pat’s little son’s battle with cancer. Hundreds of readers prayed and cheered as he made progress.

Roman Watch: After quite some time of not seeing Roman Watch, we thought we would do an update.
Roman really appreciates all your thoughts and prayers and your genuine caring, so we thought it would be nice to share a big milestone in Roman’s life.
First of all, other than fighting blood pressure and high cholesterol, he is doing A-okay.
We are grateful for that and very happy that he celebrated an anniversary last week. Roman reached the 25th year of being cancer-free since his bone marrow transplant, which was a donation from his sister, Gina.
We had a cook-out at our home last weekend to celebrate this historic event.
Roman still is very grateful for all your thoughts and prayers and, as always, we leave things in the Lord’s hands.
Just a brief note on sports: We have state championships in both track and golf this coming week, as the school year is about over.
I have not mentioned the NBA nor NHC for some time, but with pro-basketball and hockey in their playoffs now and close to the finals, we will have more later.

Tracksters earn league medals

?Northwest Kansas League track competition was held in Oakley May 10 and the Buffs had medals to show for their efforts.
Earning gold was the girls 4x 100m relay team of Taylor Leitner, Keshia Green, Lexy Leitner and Rohey Singhateh with a time of 51.37.
“The team is still unbeaten and ranked first in state in Class 1-A,” Coach John Terry said.
Taylor Leitner ran the 100 in 12:9.4. for league first place. She placed third in the 200m with 27.6.
Singhateh took two silvers, one in the 200m dash at 27.51 and the other in the 100m at 13.01. She was third with a long jump of 16 ft. 2 in.
Green got a bronze medal for her shot put of 30 ft. 5.75 in.
Lexy Leitner finished third in the 100m with a time of 13.12. She was fourth in the 200m at 28.48 and fourth with a long jump of 15 ft. 6 in.
Katie Withington pole vaulted 6 ft. 6 in to place fifth at league.
Oberlin won the NWKL with 126.5 points. Hoxie was second with 72.5, followed by Oakley with 72 and RCHS with 70.
“We were only 2.5 points out of second, so the girls performed well,” Terry said.

Boys league

Dylan Tiemeyer long jumped 20 ft 7.5 in to win a gold medal.
Macrae Migchelbrink high jumped 5 ft 8 in. to place third. He took fourth with a triple jump of 38 ft. 4.5 in.
Joey McFee cleared 11 ft. to finish fourth in pole vault.
Michael Capo was fifth with a triple jump of 37 ft. 10 in.
Robby Brown pole vaulted 10 ft. to take fifth place.
The 4 x 100m relay team of Neil Portschy, Tiemeyer, Capo and Migchelbrink dashed 48.21 to finish in sixth place.
St. Francis won the boys league meet followed by Sharon Springs. RCHS was eighth out of 10 teams.
“This week, we go to Hays for regionals,” Coach Terry said. “You must place in the top four to qualify for state in Wichita. There will be 24 teams at regionals. It’s going to be very tough, but we should qualify some boys and girls.”
Regionals in Hays begin with field events at 3 p.m., running prelims at 4:30 and finals at 6 p.m.

Buff golf team is state bound

?The six-man Buffalo golf team took second place in the regional meet in Wakeeney last Monday and qualified for state play May 20 in Emporia.
“It was not one of our better days, but we did enough to get us a trip to state,” Coach Steve Woody said. “Hopefully, our guys will re-group this week now that the pressure to qualify is gone. They should realize that they are very, very, very capable of heading to Emporia and bringing home a trophy.
The state-bound team is comprised of Jake Williams, Michael Blodgett, Hunter Leibbrandt, Justin Engel, Health Dunker and James Peterson.
Leibbrandt earned a 5th place regional medal and Williams came home with a 9th place regional medal.

NWK League

The league golf tournament was held at Atwood Country Club May 10.
The RCHS team finished second to Oberlin.
Leibbrandt finished in 4th place. Heath Dunker earned 8th place and Williams was 9th.

Self-defense class
coming to Atwood

?An opportunity to learn some safety and awareness tips and hands on self defense will be presented in Atwood.
Class instructors will be Marty Schmid Gardino and her husband, Joe, who teach self defense through the Kempo-Karate Schools Association in Colorado Springs.
The hour-long class will be held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, May 26 in the RCHS wrestling room. It is open to anyone age 14 and older, but those under 18 need parental permission.
Beth Holle at 322-5676 is the local contact person.
“No experience is necessary to participate and learn about ways to take care of yourself,” Holle said.
More details about the instructors and class will be in next week’s Square Deal.

Swim team, parents to meet May 16

?There will be a parents’ meeting for Atwood Swim Team at 6 p.m., Thursday, May 16 at the Atwood pool.
Anyone interested in swimming on the team this summer should be at this meeting.

Full stories in this week's
issue of The Square Deal.