The eagerly-awaited Missouri spring wild turkey season is set to open only three days from now, on April 15, so there’s very little time left for turkey hunters’ scouting and getting their gear ready.We’ve had just enough warm weather to get the big gobblers seeking out hens and gobbling in the trees in early morning.The youth-only season has come and gone, so some of the “early birds” are already in someone’s freezer.
While the results were only an even split, Chillicothe High School’s soccer Lady Hornets had uplifting performances in both of their most-recent contests over the past 10 days.Last week at Savannah, they earned their second victory in three outings, riding senior Alice Hurtgen’s 4-goals barrage before halftime to a 5-2 triumph.This past Tuesday at home, they were far more competitive than a year ago as they fell to Maryville’s well-coordinated squad, 3-0.Today and tomorrow, the Chillicothe booters will see action three times in the annual Lady Spartan Invitational tournament at Moberly.The Lady Hornets take on Mid-Buchanan this afternoon at 4 p.m.
“They did it!” was second-year Chillicothe High School tennis Hornets coach and former CHS player Weston Baker’s simple reaction to a historic and long-sought accomplishment the 2024 Hornets achieved last Thursday.Facing Kansas City: St.
For two 2023-24 Chillicothe High School basketball stars, the winning hasn’t stopped just because the games have.
During the first week of paddlefish snagging season, two new Missouri “big fish” records were set, and both were also world records for their species.The first was a paddlefish taken by snagging at Lake of the Ozarks by first-time snagger Chad Williams of Olathe, Kansas.
With two 2-time state-tournament participants – one the program’s first state medal-winner since 2008 – at the top of their lineup, what is expected to be Chillicothe High School’s best boys’ golf season in a decade-and-a-half is off to a solid start.They followed that this past Monday with a 162-276 romp at Hamilton, their 15th-consecutive dual victory.
With not much hunting and fishing going on in Missouri in the late winter months, it would be easy to forget that the permits you were carrying were valid only through the last day of February.
If, improbably, school sports coaches are “a dime a dozen,” as lifelong Meadville resident Darren Smith says he was told by his academics adviser at the University of Central Missouri (then Central Missouri State University) at Warrensburg about four decades ago, many current and former Chillicothe High School Lady Hornets and former Meadville High Eagles basketball players and those programs’ fans likely would suggest that – if that cynical assessment is or was ever true, they got at least half of that dime’s value when their programs belatedly were under his guidance.Not coaching his first school-team’s game until approaching age 40, some 20 years after his early 1980s graduation from Meadville High School, Smith earlier this month concluded guiding the 2023-24 Lady Hornets to, arguably, their program’s greatest season ever, capping his first decade at the school with the girls’ team’s third-place finish in the Class 4 state tournament and a 28-2 record.That trip to the state semifinals and finals came 10 years after Smith completed a 10-years stint as boys’ head coach at his prep alma mater with fourth- and second-place finishes at state with the 2012-13 and 2013-14 MHS Eagles.Even though he likely passed up a state championship the following season by opting to accept the offer to take over the CHS girls’ program – Meadville’s boys won it all in Class 1 in 2014-15 with replacement Drew Nier at the helm, Smith has been highly prosperous in Chillicothe.This just-past season, a couple of years after he became the program’s all-time leader in coaching wins – a total now at 224, he had his eighth 20-plus-wins with the Lady Hornets and perhaps was within a point of getting that state crown.While that didn’t quite work out, thanks to an overtime loss in this year’s state semifinal, the shaven-headed coach – still a rural Meadville resident and farmer with his sons (and former players) Cody and Derek – now has a distinctive title, late start and all, many coaches of state champs don’t possess.Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Famer.“I am very humbled to be inducted.
Chillicothe High School’s soccer Lady Hornets kept two of their three opponents in last weekend’s season-opening Chillicothe Invitational Tournament from scoring during live action in the 4-teams, round-robin event.Unfortunately, that didn’t translate to winning any matches because they never scored at all.After a tough-luck 1-0 loss to Lone Jack on a last-minute penalty kick a week ago today, the Lady Hornets were blanked 3-0 by eventual tourney champion Marshall the next morning and then fell 1-0 to Kirksville that afternoon when 80 minutes of scoreless regulation time gave way directly to a 5-rounds penalty-kicks shootout KHS won 4-1 to secure an official 1-0 victory.“I was proud of our team this weekend,” Jimmy Chapman, Lady Hornets head coach, says.
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