The Dodge City Athletics capped off a rollercoaster season Thursday night on a high note, coming from behind to defeat Liberal 9-7.
    Although the A’s went 11-21 in the Jayhawk League to finish in a last-place tie with Derby, they improved from their 2009 campaign where they finished 5-25 in league.
    “It was a funner year this year,” said Cruz Sedillo, the only player to play on the A’s the last two seasons. “Baseball is baseball and you have fun playing the game because you love it, but the group of guys you were around this year made it a little funner than last year.
    “Everyone wanted to hang out all the time. It was like we woke up and we hung out before we went to the field. We hung out the whole time at the field and when we got done playing or practicing or whatever it was, we would go home, shower and go right back to hanging out with each other. … That helped out quite a bit, because if everybody is playing I-baseball you are not going to win anything.”

Dodge City Conquistadors head football coach Bob Majeski is faced with a dilemma that many coaches would find intriguing: How do you determine a starter between five players for the starting quarterback position?
    But that’s the situation Majeski and the Conqs find themselves as they begin to set up preparations for the upcoming season between last year’s starter, a freshman with a little swagger, a red-shirt freshman, a sophomore transfer, and an in-state freshman all vying to try to be the signal caller.
    “It’s a wide-open deal,” Majeski said Friday afternoon at the Jayhawk Conference media luncheon at the Wichita Boathouse. “That’s the way we have to have it for someone to step up and get us going.”

The Dodge City Community College Board of Trustees approved a resolution Tuesday authorizing the sale of revenue bonds for $5.06 million. The bonds will fund a new dormitory.

The Dodge City Athletics went into last weekend needing a sweep of first place Haysville to have a chance take one of the Jayhawk League’s automatic bids to the National Baseball Congress World Series.
    In the three games, Dodge City scored one run on 11 hits, losing every game.
    “It is pretty disappointing,” A’s center fielder Allen Riley said. “Going into the second game, I feel like we were in all the games. The game Friday night was pretty tough. We just did not swing the bat well. All the other games were pretty tough.
    “It was kind of fitting to know we had a chance to write our own destiny, because we really did not do to well.”

Dodge City Community College will be hosting a camp for 7-12 year-old volleyball players.
    The campers will get to work with DCCC volleyball players and coach Shaun Pohlman.
    The camp begins Aug. 2 and ends Aug. 4. The camp will start on those days at 8 a.m. and run until noon at the Dodge City Community College gymnasium.

The Dodge City Athletics' Karch Kowalczyk had the type of game Thursday night that players dream about. Kowalczyk had two home runs in the eighth inning, a three-run bomb and a grand slam in the A’s 25-10 win on Thursday night.
    He ended the night a triple short of the cycle, going 5-for-5 with two doubles, two home runs, a single and two walks while driving in eight runs and scoring four runs.
    “Nice to see him have a breakout game again,” A’s head coach Phil Stephenson said. "It’s been a while since he swung the bat the way he is capable of.”
    Dodge City totaled 23 hits, and Hays had 13. The two teams combined for 14 extra-base hits, including six that were homers.

It would seem like Corrales, N.M., native Cruz Sedillo can’t get enough of Dodge City.
    He played two years at Dodge City Community College and when his eligibility was up, he joined the Dodge City Athletics National Baseball Congress summer-league team. After playing one year at Division-II New Mexico Highlands University, he came back to play one more season with the A’s.
    But it was not the allure of Southwest Kansas that kept him coming back, it was the opportunity to play for coach Phil Stephenson, who as a player, was a college star at Wichita State as he held 13 NCAA hitting records. Stephenson spent four years playing in the Major Leagues, playing for the Cubs and Padres.

Going into the bottom of the ninth Sunday night, it looked like Liberal would win its third game of a four-game National Baseball Congress series, as the Bee Jays held a 7-5 lead.
    The A’s scored a run and strung together some hits to bring hot-hitting Jeremy Gum to the plate in the ninth.    Gum hit his fifth double in two games to bring home two runs and give the A’s an 8-7 win. Gum said it was the first walk-off hit in his life.
    “I was just trying to get a pitch I could hit,” Gum said. “I was trying not to be to picky. I just wanted a single to score the run from second. I was able to square up the pitch in the strike zone. Luckily,  I hit it hard enough.”
    His teammates rushed the field and piled on top of him, as soon as Trey Whaley crossed the plate with the game-winner.

The Dodge City Rangers 16U American Legion baseball team manufactured some big innings, including a four-run third and a five-run fifth, in a first-round game of Class AA American Legion zone tournament.
    As a result, the Rangers run-ruled Great Bend 12-1 in five innings at Cavalier Field.  The game was moved from Demon Field after heavy rains Wednesday night left it too muddy to play on.
    The two teams meet again tonight at 6 at Demon Field in an elimination game. The winner advances to play top-seeded Hays, and only a Hays loss would force a third day on Saturday to determine the zone champion and a berth in the state tournament.
    In the lid-lifter, Dodge scored two runs in the second inning, keyed by Adley Davis’ RBI single, driving in Simon Arevalo. Cale Woydziak also scored on the play on an error on the relay throw back to the infield. He had reached on a two-base error.
    The Rangers surged ahead 6-0 with four runs in the third.
    Dakota Duckett highlighted the inning with a two-run single. Taylor Murphy led off the inning by lining a double down the left-field line. After Austin Weiser singled, BJ Tieben executed a sacrifice before Duckett’s base hit made it 4-0.
     One of the Rangers’ other two runs in the came on a balk on Braves pitcher Taylor Turner, who took the loss.
    After Tieben’s sacrifice fly to left drove in Jordan Doan, who earlier singled, the lead stretched to 7-0.
    The Rangers were able to put the run-rule into effect in the fifth after plating five more runs for its 12-1 advantage.
    Woydziak started the burst with a one-out single and scored on Davis’ RBI double. After Doan singled, Murphy came through with the Rangers’ fourth straight hit, an RBI double to right-center. Dylan Roy later drove in the final run.
    Great Bend scored its lone run in the bottom of the fourth on Ethan Henderson’s RBI single, driving in Chad Touslee, who led off with ha double to left-center.
    Josh Austin shrugged off a jam in the fourth, getting back-to-back strikeouts after the Braves had loaded the bases.
    He finished with a four-hitter, and only yielded three walks.
Hays 18, Dodge City 3
    In the late game, Hays got a leg up on its foes after beating Dodge.
    Hays exploded for 15 runs on 10 hits in the second inning alone. It went through the lineup two times, with 17 straight batters reaching base before Hays No. 9 hitter Landon Leiker struck out for the first out.
    The run-rule went into effect after 3 1/2 innings.

    The Dodge City Community College Football team uses the summer for more than just getting in shape.
    “The thing we do, we try to get a lot of our young guys to come in for summer school,”  DCCC head coach Bob Majeski said. “The primary reason we do it is to get them ahead academically.”
    The Conquistadors meet five days a week during a summer-school physical education class, which includes conditioning and lifting weights.