Berthoud Weekly Surveyor | Covering all the angles in the Garden Spot

Spring sports wrapup

May 25, 2018 | Local News

By Dan Karpiel

The Surveyor

The spring sports season, the third and final leg of the year in high school sports, sees seven teams compete across six different sports. Berthoud High School (BHS) fields teams in baseball, girls golf, girls soccer, girls tennis, and both boys and girls track and field. Below is a wrap-up of results this spring and well as our picks for the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor’s players of the year in each sport.

Baseball:

CJ Balliet

For the Berthoud baseball team, 2018 was an historic year. The Spartans reached the postseason for the first time since 1999, before any of team’s players were born. The Spartans won their opening playoff game by a 6-4 final score to Thomas Jefferson. Berthoud’s season came to an earlier-than-desired end a couple hours later at the hands of 4A No. 2-ranked Valor Christian, but the success the team enjoyed was not lost on the players or on the team’s seventh-year manager, Buddy Kouns.

Berthoud played a killer schedule in the ultra-competitive Tri-Valley Conference (TVC), finishing the year with a 12-7 overall record that included a 6-8 mark in conference play. The brutal regular season schedule gave the Spartans the No.18 ranking in 4A RPI, which accounts heavily for strength of schedule. Berthoud proved their resiliency all season long with three come-from-behind wins thanks in part to an experienced roster that included 14 seniors, five of whom – Colin DeVore, Chris DeSousa, Brent Fowler, Quinn Oliver and Hunter Pearce – will be playing at the collegiate level. Kouns spoke all season long about his team’s never-say-die attitude; even in some games the Spartans lost, the team always battled to the very end, giving No. 1-ranked Windsor and No. 2-ranked Valor all they could handle.

Senior first baseman C.J. Balliet led Berthoud in a plethora of offensive categories including batting average (.493) hits (33), RBI (27), doubles (eight), on-base average (.583), slugging (.656) and OPS (1.240), with several of those marks also pacing the TVC. DeSousa, Berthoud’s ace, struck out a team-high 82 batters, the second-best mark in the TVC, with a very solid 3.21 ERA while also raking at the plate where Lamar College commit hit .414 with 29 hits, including a homerun, and contributed 21 RBI. DeSousa turned in an exceptional performance in the opening round playoff game with Thomas Jefferson where he tallied a Berthoud team-record 15 strikeouts in six innings pitched. The Spartans got contributions from up and down the roster all season long with Fowler (.431, 28 hits, 14 RBI), DeVore (.397, 1.039 OPS, two 3Bs, six stolen bases, three saves) and Pearce (.333, eight 2Bs, 23 RBI, 19 walks) all turning in strong seasons. Balliet, DeSousa, DeVore and Fowler were all selected as TVC All-Conference while both Pearce and Oliver were named as honorable mentions.

Surveyor Baseball Player of the Year: C.J. Balliet

Girls golf:

Kyra McDonald

After enjoying the best season in the program’s history in 2017, the BHS girls golf team faced a rebuilding year in 2018 after having lost three of the four members of last season’s state top-five team to graduation. Even though the team was light on experience, first-year Head Coach Troy Diffendaffer’s Lady Spartans saw steady improvement throughout the year, with virtually each subsequent tournament seeing the golfers posting personal best scores.

While a lot of the team was new to varsity golf, senior Kyra McDonald was unquestionably the team’s top player. McDonald routinely shot in the low-to-mid 80s, placing in the top-10 regularly throughout the season as well as qualifying for the two-day, 36-hole state tournament held this year at Elmwood Golf Course in Pueblo. McDonald turned in an excellent performance at the state tourney, shooting a 172 combined score (83, 89) over two days to take 13th place, her second top-20 finish in as many years. With back-to-back stellar performances, not just at state, but over the entire course of her junior and senior years, McDonald cemented her place as one of Berthoud’s best ever high school golfers.

Surveyor Girls Golfer of the Year: Kyra McDonald

Girls soccer:

Maddie Barcewski

While the BHS girls soccer team came up just a hair short of their preseason goal of making the playoffs, the team turned in a strong showing in 2018. Under second-year Head Coach Kelly Hardegree-Ullman, the Lady Spartans finished with a respectable 7-8 overall record. A rash of mid-season injuries to some key players sapped some of the momentum with which Berthoud began the season. After winning five of their first six games by a combined score 30-5, Berthoud dropped five consecutive matches, four of which came against TVC opponents. The Lady Spartans were able to the right the ship late in the year, winning back-to-back TVC matches against Roosevelt and Frederick, where senior goalkeeper Morgan Hughes turned in back-to-back shutouts with 14 combined saves.

Sophomore Maddie Barcewski and Hailey Pepper were forces on offense for Berthoud. Barcewski, who took home TVC All-Conference honors, paced Berthoud with 15 goals, five assists, and 35 points despite missing a pair of games midseason, while Pepper scored 13 times and added four more assists for 30 points. Senior Liz Bosnich scored five goals and had three assists, and freshman Bre Fowler had four of each. Hughes tallied over 1,000 minutes in net and led the entire TVC with a whopping 134 saves.

Surveyor Girls Soccer Player of the Year: Maddie Barcewski

Tennis:

Leah Marty

Under first-year Head Coach Alexander Grant, the BHS girls tennis team finished the year 3-7 overall with plenty of bright spots to be found. Playing at the top of the heap in one singles, senior Leah Marty won a pair of matches on the season while facing the toughest opponents the other teams had to offer. Marty said she was pleased with her senior season, saying even when things weren’t going in her favor she enjoyed herself and the camaraderie of her teammates. “Even when we were losing we were always having fun … every match was a good time.” Skye Kearney won three matches in singles competition and Riley Lundgreen won another two.

It was in doubles play, however, where the Lady Spartans enjoyed their most success from a win-loss perspective. Berthoud’s one doubles team of Gretchen Marty and Eriana Rennaker finished the year with a winning record, going 6-4 overall. The pair defeated the Frederick one doubles team in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4 to finish the season on a high note. The Lady Spartans three doubles team of Delaney Fouts and Meghan Lucero, both seniors, posted the best win-loss record for Berthoud on the season, finishing the season a stellar 7-1 overall.

Surveyor Tennis Player of the Year: Leah Marty

Track and field:

The BHS track and field team had a memorable year. With a litany of seniors on both the boys and girls teams, Berthoud saw a tremendous amount of success.

Brock Voth

Cailey Archer

The Spartans 4x100m relay team of Trinity Buckley, Connor Siruta, Ryan Schmad and Jake Rafferty broke the BHS record in the state prelims and went on to win the state title in the event a day later. It was the first state championship claimed by the Berthoud boys in a decade. The Spartans 4×200 relay team, with Brock Voth replacing Siruta, but the rest of the group remaining the same – the five, all seniors, have been running together in various configurations since middle school – also broke the standing BHS record in the event and took home the bronze medal at state. Voth finished the 2017-18 season school year with four school records, passing yardage and passing touchdowns as the Berthoud football team’s starting quarterback, the aforementioned record in the 4×200 and, to cap it off, broke the record he set a season ago in the triple jump, finishing in sixth place in the event at state. Earlier in the season Schmad broke the BHS record in 400 and on the podium with a fifth-place finish at state.

Sam Mulder

On the girls side, sophomore Emily Cavey broke the BHS record in the discus throw, claiming the silver medal in the event at state with a throw of 119’1” while Cailey Archer took home second place in the high jump. Kailee Berry took third at state in discus with a throw of 116’1”, a better than 30-foot improvement over where the junior began the season. Senior Sam Mulder, who earlier in the spring signed to continue her track and field career at Hastings College, brought home a pair of seventh-place finishes in both the 100 and 300 hurdles in addition to competing on the 4×100 and 4×200 relay teams, each of which finished in the top-15.

Surveyor Track and Field Athletes of the Year: Brock Voth (boys T and F), Cailey Archer and Sam Mulder (girls T and F)

 

 

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