) ) Send Tue POST Sunday,March 21, 2004 7 Sports h Madness for d parents annual Back Mountain - phootout will be held Sun- h 28 at Dallas Middle ing at 12 noon. 1 be competition in three- pting, free throws and layups for boys and girls age 7-16 in flights. There will also be a Hl team shooting competi- itration and warmup at tition starts at 12:30 p.m. gram is sponsored by the lownship Recreation Com- Basketb day, M School, st# There Ee I ; Saturday hs Junior Football Associa- old football/cheerleading on Saturday, March 27 . to 2 p.m. at the Dallas unicipal Building. Chil- 14 living in Dallas, Dallas and Franklin Township ar- eas are weltome to join the Dallas Ju- nior Mougts in the new Wyoming Val- ley West {Youth Football Conference. Bring at tithe of registration a copy of birth certificate, copy of health insur- ance and 4 joes photograph of child. Any questions, call the hotline at 674-5549} | The D tion will Junio football meets The D ths Junior Football Associa- tion will héld a monthly board meet- ing on Suhflay, March 21 at 7 p.m. at the Dalla Township Municipal Build- ing, Rt. 309. The public is invited. DYB proved players for each grade level Call 696-1190 or 639-1467 for ticket informati¢n UNIONT] Parsons wins | bars, 2nd ail- at state cham- Vanessa Parsons, a second grader at Dallas|Elementary School, cap- tured the state championship on un- even bard with a score of 9.355 at the Level4 YMCA Gymnastics State Champi bhip, held March 13 in York. Sh dlso placed third on the balance Bdam and sixth on the vault. : Vanessa ddmpeted against members of 16 oth¢r YMCA teams from across the state. She finished the meet with & silver medal in the all- around cémpetition with a score of 35.6. ! : Vanessa qlso recently won gold at the Central Pennsylvania YMCA Gymnastics League Championship in Hanovgk where she won the floor vault and uneven bars and finished fourth in balance bean. She won the all-arou title with a score of 35.8. Vanessa #s'8 years old and a mem- Jour sports reports by { States Roundup O’Reilly charges into title contest By DAVE KONOPKI For The Post HERSHEY — The Queensmen outhustled, outdefended, outre- bounded and, most important, outscored two-time defending state champion Scotland School on March 17 earning a berth in the PIAA Class A state champi- onship game with a 64-49 victory in the Eastern Regional Final at Hersheypark Arena. ~ Sophomore center Josh Aciukewicz led O'Reilly with a game-high 24 points. Senior guard Matt Flanagan added 17 and the Queensmen’s defense forced Scotland into 26 turnovers. District 2 champion O'Reilly (29-4) played Sewickley Academy (26-4) Friday at the Giant Center in Hershey for the state title. Re- sults were not available in time for this issue. Sewickley, of subur- ban Pittsburgh, advanced with a 45-36 victory against Johnson- burg in the West Regional Final. Simply put, the Queensmen were the much better team Wednesday. And Scotland head coach Randy Young knew it. “They played very well and we didn’t,” said the first-year Cadet head coach. “We were a step slower than them all night. They got all of the loose balls and they were in the game mentally much better than us. I was very im- FOR THE POST/PETE G. WILCOX Bishop O’Reilly’s Tim Crossin drove upcourt with Scotland’s John Howie in pursuit during Wednesday's Boys PIAA Class A semifinal in Hershey. pressed with them.” The Cadets committed 15 See O'REILLY, pg 9 Byron wins top honors in swimming By STEVE SEMBRAT For The Post UNIVERSITY PARK — It takes a lot to make Bishop Hoban junior Car- oline Byron cry tears of joy. She stayed rather calm March 13 when she captured her second gold medal at the PIAA Class 2A Swim- ming Championships, taking first in the 100-yard freestyle. When she was named the Out- standing Swimmer of the meet, though, that’s when the tears started to flow. “It hit me all at once, how hard our team has worked to get here,” Byron said. “It’s an incredible sense of ac- complishment to know everybody on the team did their best, and the whole year you had everybody sup- porting you. It’s a feeling you can’t de- scribe. You hope that everybody can experience it.” Byron is the first female swimmer from District 2 to be named the Out- standing Swimmer at a PIAA meet. Three boys previously have earned the honor, which is determined by the power-points system of the Na- tional Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association. “She is just a wonderful athlete that doesn’t come around often in a coach’s career,” Hoban coach Mara Pawlenok said of Byron. “She handled the pressure very well. She was not nervous. She was very laid-back.” Byron has that demeanor even when she is making history. On March 12 she became the first Hoban girls swimmer to win gold in an indi- vidual event at states when she won the 50 freestyle. She won another that Saturday, and is believed to be the only area female swimmer to win two See BYRON, pg 9 Eby is proud of comeback from brink (CHAMPIONS |; FOR THE POST/JACOB KEPLER Alaric Eby performed before judges at the PIAA Sate Diving Champi- onships, where he finished foruth. J Overcomes setback from phantom brush with diving board Staff reports UNIVERSITY PARK — Dallas sophomore Alaric Eby doesn’t dwell on what might have been at the PIAA Class 2A Diving Champi- onships. Instead, he takes pride in his abil- ity to bounce back from a disastrous break that jeopardized his chance to come away with a medal, which was his goal going into the competition. “I just tried to forget about it, and move on,” he said. Eby said in the past he had been unable to recover from a bad dive, but this time was different. Eby led early in the meet, held at the McCoy Natatorium on Penn State’s main campus, and was sec- ond going into the fifth and final dive of the preliminary round. He plummeted to eighth after the refer- ee ruled he hit the board, meaning he could get no higher than a 2 out of a possible 10 from any of the judges. The dive was a back 1 1/2 somer- sault, carrying a 2.3 degree of diffi- culty — not the hardest dive, Eby said, but definitely not easy, and one he usually hits. He put the questionable call be- hind him masterfully, and surged to a fourth-place medal with 369.20 points. “He did a phenomenal job of get- ting back into the game,” said Dal- las diving coach Kim Perez. “That was a great comeback.” There are no appeals, so Perez turned her attention to helping Eby refocus during a break, when the field was cut to 16 divers. Eby hit his next dive, and was narrowly in fourth after semifinals, when the See EBY, pg 9
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