BW recognizes State Champion Competition Cheer Squad

Word has got­ten around by now that mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut High School Com­pe­ti­tion Cheer­lead­ing Team took home first place at the Sun­day, March 3, Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­ondary School Admin­is­tra­tors 2013 Cheer and Dance State Cham­pi­onships; but many folks don’t under­stand exactly how rare win­ning state in any dis­ci­pline is.

Last Fri­day after­noon, dur­ing a cer­e­mony in the high school gym­na­sium, Big Wal­nut High School Ath­letic Direc­tor Steve Gle­senkamp explained just how rare state cham­pi­onships are.

“Big Wal­nut has been around for 60 years, and this is only the third state cham­pi­onship,” Gle­senkamp said, direct­ing stu­dents atten­tion to a wall at the end of the gym­na­sium with ban­ners rec­og­niz­ing a 2002 Golf State Cham­pi­onship and a 2007 Var­sity Foot­ball Sate crown. “That shows you just how hard some­thing like this is to accomplish.”

Piper named Second Team All-OAC at Otterbein

Otter­bein Uni­ver­sity sopho­more Tabatha Piper, a 2011 grad­u­ate of Big Wal­nut High School, has been selected to a Sec­ond Team berth on the 2013 All-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence (OAC) women’s bas­ket­ball team.

Piper, who was named the OAC “Fresh­man of the Year” in 2012, fol­lowed with her solid sec­ond col­le­giate cam­paign by rank­ing sec­ond in scor­ing with 9.5 points per game and tying for the team lead in rebound­ing with 6.9 rebound per game with Car­di­nal senior Han­nah Day (Chillicothe).

Big Walnut Sixth Grade Girls Travel Basketball Team takes State trophy

To say that mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut Youth Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion BWYBA) Sixth Grade Girls Travel Bas­ket­ball Team had a suc­cess­ful sea­son would be a bit of an under­state­ment. The team posted a 32–5 record this sea­son, and its won three key Sixth Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Divi­sion II tournaments.

In Decem­ber, the Big Wal­nut girls won the Hol­i­day Tour­na­ment at USA Sports, pre­vi­ously known as The Hoop. They won the Feb­ru­ary 15–17 Cen­tral Ohio Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (COBA) League Cham­pi­onship; and best of all they took home the Sixth Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Divi­sion II, tro­phy at the Feb­ru­ary 22–24 State School Team Championship.

Golden Eagles win final tuneup prior to District Indoor Meet

Fol­low­ing Saturday’s tune-up meet at Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity, the Golden Eagles girls indoor track and field team is ready to defend their 2012 Cen­tral Dis­trict Indoor Cham­pi­onship this Sat­ur­day at 3 p.m. at Otter­bein University.

Joe Evener’s Big Wal­nut squad, post­ing 10 top-six fin­ishes, includ­ing firsts by Olivia Small in the long jump and triple jump, cap­tured the 65-team meet in Columbus.

Hord Arnold Kickboxing champ

On Sat­ur­day at the Arnold Clas­sic in Colum­bus, a local res­i­dent made quite a splash.

The annual Clas­sic fea­tured a vari­ety of events, includ­ing the Mar­tial Art and Box­ing com­pe­ti­tions. Among these events, was a new Kick­box­ing Divi­sion. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in this event for the first time was Sunbury’s Cay­lan Hord. Cay­lan is a mem­ber of the Koguryo Mar­tial Art Acad­emy (KMA) in Sun­bury and par­tic­i­pates in the ilovekickboxing.com program.

BW upsets ninth-seeded Licking Heights 76-75 in OT

PATASKALA — For one of the few times this sea­son, the Golden Eagles looked defeat in the the eye … and came away with a victory.

Big Wal­nut, led by the dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mance of 6-foot-5 senior post Adam Sha­heen, who scored a game and career-high 44 points on his way to a double-double with a career and game-high 20 rebounds, to lead the Golden Eagles to a 76–75 over­time upset of ninth-seeded host Lick­ing Heights (18–5) in a Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict Sec­tional Semi­fi­nal con­test Sat­ur­day afternoon.

The Golden Eagles (7–16), had to come from behind to send the game into over­time and then rally in the clos­ing sec­onds to advance to today’s (Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 28) Sec­tional Final matchup with seventh-seeded Colum­bus East­moor Acad­emy on the War­riors’ home floor.

Golden Eagle girls ace Amanda 41-27 in Division II Sectional final

The Golden Eagle pres­sure defense made an early post­sea­son impression …

Eighth-seeded Big Wal­nut (14–9), hold­ing Amanda-Clearcreek to 8 field goals while forc­ing 19 turnovers, opened Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict play with a 41–27 Sec­tional Final vic­tory over the vis­it­ing Aces last Wednes­day (Feb­ru­ary 20) night in Sunbury.

With the vic­tory, the Golden Eagles advanced to yesterday’s (Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 27) Dis­trict semi­fi­nals where they will take on top-seeded Colum­bus East­moor Acad­emy (20–4) at 8 p.m. at New Albany High School. The War­riors advanced with a 65–31 Sec­tional final deci­sion over Hamil­ton Town­ship at East­moor Academy.

Eisnnicher advances to state at 170 pounds pounds

While Big Wal­nut and Buck­eye Val­ley didn’t have as much suc­cess as the D-I schools did, they com­bined to pro­duce a pair of OHSAA State Tour­na­ment qual­i­fiers dur­ing last weekend’s Divi­sion II Dis­trict Tour­na­ment at Heath High School.

Big Walnut’s Alex Eisnnicher (31–5), mak­ing his sec­ond Dis­trict appear­ance, led the way with a strong second-place fin­ish clos­ing in the 170-pound divi­sion. After pin­ning a pair of oppo­nents on the first day of action, the junior came back to beat Beaver’s Daniel Lat­tanzio 11–3 in Saturday’s semi­fi­nal before falling to New Philadelphia’s Mark Bar­row 8–6 in the final.