MAYB Madness

The Mid America Youth Basketball Dodge City tournament blew through town like a whirlwind and wrapped up as quickly as the action got started. Pool play for the six different divisions started Friday and the championship brackets all concluded Sunday, with Dodge City teams taking medals or trophies in each division a local team was entered.
    The Dodge City Red won the seventh-grade boys division by beating the Central Kansas Warriors Sunday afternoon at the Dodge City High School fieldhouse. The future Red Demons bested three other teams in their age division to take home the trophies.
    The Garden City New Editions won the seventh- and eighth-grade girls bracket by beating the Dodge City Lady Hoosiers in the final game. The Lady Hoosiers, who have had successful tournaments in Lawrence and Hays as well, finished the Dodge City tournament with a 5-1 record, losing only in the finals.
    The ninth- and 10th-grade boys bracket was also won by a Garden City team, the Mavericks. But the Dodge City Vipers came in second, with the Hutchinson Falcons rounding out the top three.
    The high school girls division again saw a Dodge City team reach the finals, only to lose its first game of the tournament in the last game. The Lady Demons lost to the Scott City Hoopsters in the final game, 43-39.
    They had to go through the All-Stars, a team made up of girls from Garden City and Liberal, in the first round of bracket play. They then faced the South Gray Running Rebels, who still have many of the girls who made up their state 1A championship team from a year ago.
    In the finals, though, the Lady Demons never got control of the game, and turnovers got the best of the host team.
    Still, coach Steve Matheny said the Lady Demons played well in the fifth and final tournament of the summer.
    "I thought they did a real good job," Matheny said. "In the last three games they faced some stiff competition, and they came up winners in two of them."
    The Lady Demons took first place in the Hays MAYB tournament earlier this summer.
    There were 20 teams in the boys bracket for grades 11 and 12, so after pool play (five pools of four teams each), the top two teams from each pool went to the "A" bracket and the bottom two went into the "B" bracket. The Dodge City team went 1-2 in pool play and ended up in the "B" bracket.
    The team, though playing in the 11th- and 12th-grade bracket, had two entering freshmen and a sophomore to round out the nine roster spots.
    "The biggest objective was to get these kids used to playing together," said head coach Frank Goedeken. "The guys really bucked up and did well."
    In the third-place game, Dodge City was down by eight at halftime but came back to win by two. The team also took the "B" bracket trophy in Hays earlier this summer.
    The Dodge City tournament was the boys' third together this summer, and it was part of the effort to keep the basketball team solid in the long off-season.
    "Dennis [Hamilton] can probably do a lot more with them than I can, but they know where they need to improve before the season," Goedeken said, referring to the Dodge High boys basketball coach.