Setting the lineup

Two baseball games scheduled for today will determine the order of things for next month’s 45th District Tournament.

The four seeds will be determined after Danville plays at Boyle County and Garrard County plays at Lincoln County this afternoon.

The Danville-Boyle game will decide the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds. It’s the only scheduled game this season between the two teams. (Teams in this district only have to play each other once for seeding, and if they play twice it’s the first game that counts.) Danville beat Boyle twice last season, 2-0 in the regular season and 12-1 in the district final.

(Important game time note: At least three different starting times are floating around for this game. It is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m., 30 minutes later than some might expect and 90 minutes earlier than others might expect. Be on time.)

Half an hour before things get started at Boyle, Garrard and Lincoln will begin their game that will decide seeds Nos. 3 and 4. This is also the only time these teams will play in the regular season. Lincoln won last year’s only meeting 6-3.

Boyle (18-4) and Danville (15-7) are both 2-0 in the district standings; Lincoln (7-12) and Garrard (10-5) are both 0-2. Here are results of the other district games that will count in the standings: April 8, Boyle County 4, Lincoln County 3; April 15, Boyle County 16, Garrard County 6; April 15, Danville 7, Lincoln County 4; April 22, Danville 8, Garrard County 4.

Time for track

Track and field season is already under way, but Saturday marks the beginning of the busiest time of year on the area tracks.

It starts with the Alvis Johnson Heart of the Bluegrass, the longest-running local meet, which will be held Saturday in Harrodsburg. Started by Harrodsburg and now continued by Mercer County, the meet has been renamed to honor the former Harrodsburg coach who made it what it is.

Twenty teams are entered, including almost all of the local schools. The field also includes Central, Henry Clay, John Hardin, Lafayette and North Hardin, as well as regional rivals East Jessamine, Frankfort, Rockcastle County, West Jessamine and Western Hills.

There are two local meets next week, the Double-A Derby on Friday at Boyle County and the All “A” Classic on Saturday (April 26) at Danville. The first meet is open to Class AA schools and will also include Casey and Mercer counties. The second is not affiliated with the All “A” Classic organization that sponsors tournaments in basketball, baseball and the like, but it operates on the same principle, as it is open to teams in the smallest of Kentucky’s three track classifications.

The following week brings the E.G. Plummer Invitational on May 3, and right behind that comes the Boyle County Invitational on May 9.

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The latest statewide rankings from the Kentucky Track and Cross Country Coaches Association show several athletes from area schools near the top of their classes. Here are some of the highest rankings (based on results submitted through Monday):

Class A

Boys: 200 — 3. Derrick Henderson, Danville; 400 — 3. Nick Winkler, Danville; 800 — 1. Ross Hempel, Danville; 400 relay — 2. Danville; 800 relay — 1. Danville; 1600 relay — 3. Danville.

Girls: 200 — 2. Andrea Payne, Danville; 1600 — 3. Kaitlin Snapp, Danville; 3200 — 2. Snapp, Danville; 400 relay — 1. Danville; 800 relay — 1. Danville; Long jump — 2. Candice Taylor, Danville; Triple jump — 2. Diamond Pace, Danville.

Class AA

Boys: Triple jump — 3. Eddie Houekpon-Chincoun, Boyle County; Pole vault — 3. Manly Bryant, Boyle County.

Girls: 400 — 1. Nicole Coffman, Casey County; 800 — 1. Jenna Lee, Casey County; 2. Emily Hall, Boyle County; 1600 relay — 2. Boyle County; 3200 relay — 1. Boyle County; Discus — 2. Loran Crowell, Mercer County; Shot put — 2. Kalee Phelps, Mercer County; Pole vault — 2. Erica Mills, Boyle County.

Baseball and BTUs

As much as I love baseball, I’ve got to draw the line when it’s cold enough to put heaters in the dugouts. And those heaters weren’t the strangest sight at Saturday night’s Mercer County-Boyle County game.

While Mercer ran its “A” team onto the field, six of Boyle’s varsity players were in street clothes (not counting two others who are injured). That made for a pretty unusual lineup for the Rebels’ third game of the day, a home game that followed two games earlier in the day at East Jessamine.

The game started at what was basically dusk on a cool, cloudy and windy day, and of course it only got colder as darkness took hold. And while a forced-air heater in each dugout kept the players warm, the smattering of fans that watched Mercer’s 7-2 win was left to brave the elements in a 2-hour, 40-minute game played on a night that felt more like November than April.

Makes you glad they put in lights, doesn’t it?

Familiar face at Bullitt East

Bullitt East has filled the football coaching vacancy left when Mike Settles moved to Lincoln County with a name many local football fans will recognize. The Pioneer News of Shepherdsville reports that Doug Preston, a former assistant coach at two area schools who has spent the last two seasons as head coach at Western.

Preston was 14-9 at Western, and prior to that he was 10-20 in three seasons at Rowan County. Ironically, his first job in high school coaching was as an assistant at Lincoln. He later worked on the staff at Danville.

Meanwhile, Settles has spread the word that he is looking for an offensive coordinator for the Lincoln staff.

Young to get all-star tryout

Ryan Young of Lincoln County is among 40 basketball players who have been invited to try out for the Kentucky All-Stars later this month.

Young is the only boy from a 12th Region school to be invited to the tryouts. His invitation was assured after he was voted the 12th Region Player of the Year by the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches.

Tryouts will be held April 18-19 at Georgetown College. The team will be announced April 23. The Kentucky-Indiana all-star games will be played June 13 in Indianapolis and June 15 in Louisville.

Something looks familiar in Florida

There’s nothing stranger when scanning scores than to see two teams from the same region playing each 12 hours from home, but you’ll see it almost every year at this time.

Teams that travel to Florida for spring break baseball and softball trips very often end up crossing paths with other Kentucky teams, some of which they’re pretty familiar with.

This year’s example of that can be found in the Boyle County baseball team’s trip to Cocoa, Fla., for a week’s worth of games at the Cocoa Expo, a baseball/softball complex at the former spring training site of the Houston Astros.

The Rebels traveled some 850 miles, and one of the first games they played was against Rockcastle County, a regional rival located only 45 minutes from home. The very next day, Rockcastle played Pulaski County, a team in its own district.

According to the KHSAA’s Internet scoreboard, 16 Kentucky teams are at the Cocoa Expo this week. And while there’s probably no way to avoid pairing some teams from the same general area against each other — six of the 16 teams are from Boyd, Carter and Greenup counties, for instance — it always seems wrong when it happens.

Coaches don’t care much for those matchups either, but clearly the benefits of such a trip outweigh the downside.

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Perhaps because of the rising cost of transportation, Boyle is the only local school to send a team to Florida this year. The Rebels will be in Cocoa through Friday.

The only other team headed out of state is Mercer’s baseball team, which played last weekend at a tournament in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that it has visited before.

And Danville is hosting a spring break tournament again this year, the Arby’s Spring Break Classic. The three-day event begins Thursday and includes Ballard Memorial, Fort Knox, Nicholas County, Russell and Washington County, although a weather forecast calling for heavy rain Thursday and Friday puts its status very much in doubt.