Sports

   A Bay City Ladycat basketball team member was discovered to be ineligible over the 2015-16 season last Friday, Feb. 5, and the team will forfeit all games the player was listed on the official score book.
   This eliminates the Ladycats from the 2016 playoffs and their season will officially end Feb. 9, at El Campo, Superintendent Keith Brown said Tuesday morning.
   The violation of “No Pass-No Play” and University Interscholastic League (UIL) eligibility rules was discovered by the school district’s athletic program, which self-reported the violation to the (UIL) District Executive Committee Chairman.
   The forfeiture will include all varsity district games up to Feb. 5, Brown explained. 
   The DEC chairman, Brown added, will update the season records of all the teams and distribute new district standings. 

    Spring’s newness arrives this weekend for the Bay City High School baseball team:  a new coach plans to bring a new tradition to the start of a new season.
   The Blackcats kick off a three-game intersquad series on       
Thursday at the school baseball field, an event Coach Chad Kinney has dubbed, “The Blue and Gold World Series.”
    Assistant Coach Trevor Archer will manage one squad, the other assistant, Rodrick Johnson, will lead the other, and the Blackcats will battle head-to-head for three games to get their 2016 schedule started.

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  Van Vleck High School senior Dillan Wakefield has committed to playing football next season for a college-level program that could earn him national attention from college coaches.
   While not yet officially a college, Texas Institute of Agriculture and Technology, in Southeast Houston, will continue its tradition of fielding a college-level football team in 2016. 
  The school was known as Southeast Houston Prep from 2008 – 2015.
   Wakefield is set to travel across the country with the Drillers to play an eight-game schedule against junior-college teams and junior-varsity squads of several four-year universities.

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  Two region finals appearances in Rosenberg last weekend put an exclamation mark on the Bay City High School swim team’s stellar 2015-2016 season.
   Hanna Sliva advanced to the regional meet’s final in the 500-yard freestyle, and the 400-yard freestyle relay team of Stephen Estraca, Colby Johnson, Jayden Dye and Pralay Atodaria also qualified for the finals.
   In the final races, Sliva finished 13th and the relay team finished 15th. 
   That was out of the top-six finish in the regionals required to advance to the University Scholastic League’s state meet this year.
   But, the Blackcat Swimmers aren’t shedding any tears of disappointment.

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  The Bay City Texans semi-pro football team tied the Brenham Express 18-18 in a road game Saturday.
   Keemn Jones was the first to score in the game when he returned an Express fumble 38 yards to put the Texans up 6-0.
   The Texans’ extra-point try was influenced by a heavy wind and sailed wide.
   More special-team problems ensued for Bay City as the Express returned the next kickoff for a touchdown.
   But the same wind also struck Brenham on the extra-point try, and the game remained tied 6-6 at halftime.
   The teams then traded touchdowns – and conversion failures – two more times in the second half, and the contest went to overtime. 
   Neither team managed a score in the game’s fifth quarter, and the battle will go down in the standings as a tie.
   Scoring for Bay City in the second half was Brandon Brinkley on a 60-yard pass play from Doug Ford and Adam Pointer on a seven-yard pass play also from Ford.

New district alignments for area high school sports teams will likely bring an interruption to a local football rivalry.
    Matagorda County rivals Tidehaven and Van Vleck will not play in the same football district beginning next season, and the two coaches seem unable to work a meeting into their non-district schedules. 
    “The good news is that we will still have each other in our basketball districts (and likely most other sports too), so the rivalry can stay alive. Just not in football,” said Tidehaven athletic director and head football coach Brent Maschek. 
    The University Interscholastic League, Texas’s governing body for public school sports, released its biennial re-alignment notice to coaches on Monday, making it official that Tidehaven and Van Vleck will play in different divisions of Conference 3A for the next two seasons.

As the final week of the regular season begins for area girls’ high school basketball, Bay City (6-1), and Van Vleck (7-2) remain in contention for at least a share of their district championships. 
   Bay City even clinched a berth in the state playoff with its 84-43 win over Sealy on Friday. 
   And Van Vleck was in position to clinch a playoff spot with a win over Brazos after press time on Tuesday. 
   The top four teams from each district in the state will advance to the playoffs which begin Feb. 15. Playoff seeds are based on a team’s regular season finishes, with district champions drawing the mathematically easiest routes to the regional championship. 
    Van Vleck and Bay City were in second place in their districts going in to Tuesday’s games,  and the season’s final three games will prove crucial to their playoff positioning.