Sports Shorts: week of Sept. 8, 2022

Silsbee Wall of Honor

Coach David Green Jr. received another in a long list of accolades as he was one of two people inducted into the Silsbee High School Wall of Honor during a Sept. 1 banquet.

Green, a 1980 graduate of SHS, is the current head basketball coach at Beaumont United, where he led his team to back-to-back state championships in 2021 and 2022.

He was a standout player on the basketball court, earning three letters and named to the all-district team in 1978-80. Green led the Tigers in assists all three years and was named the district’s most valuable player in 1979. During his junior and senior season, he led SHS in steals and was named to several all-tournament teams. He also lettered two years in baseball.

Green earned a basketball scholarship to McNeese State University and started all four years on the court. He led the team every season is assists and steals, while setting the school record for assists in a season (218) and most assists in a career.

After college, Green taught and coached at several Southeast Texas high schools. He coached at Kountze, Beaumont Central, Port Arthur Memorial, Fort Bend Hightower, North Shore and Beaumont United.

He has been to the state championship finals, winning a state title in 2014 with North Shore and his two with Beaumont United.

Legendary coach Fred Williams, who introduced Green, gave him his first head coaching job at Kountze.

In 2014, Green won his 500th game and goes into the 2022-23 with 733 wins. He also has 14 district titles and was named coach of the year 14 times.

Lamar Cardinals

The cross country teams began their season with a bang as they dominated the McNeese Season Opener hosted by McNeese State last weekend. With two first place winners, both teams finished in the top five as the men claimed the overall team title while the women took third.

Senior Yasmin Austridge led the women’s team with a first-place finish in 9:59.5. She was the only runner to break the 10-minute mark.

Meanwhile, the men, who tallied 48 points, bested the host school by two to claim the title. Graduate student George Wheeler led the way in 17:43.7, which topped the second-place finisher by 8 seconds.

“Although we lost a handful of guys to graduation last year, this freshman class is eager to come in and contribute,” said coach Trey Clark. “We ran under control as a pack the first couple of miles, and then tried to work it from there. George and Eli were as reliable as ever, and Crawford Kiser and Hayden Eubank stepped up to help us win the team battle. It was a fun way to kick off the season.”

The teams will next compete Friday, Sept. 16, at the North Alabama Showcase in Florence, Alabama.

The LU football team dropped the season opener to Abilene Christian, 28-14, on Sept. 1 in Abilene. The Cardinals finished the night with 272 yards of total offense, but struggled on the ground recording just 68 yards. ACU’s Maverick McIvor led a Wildcat offense that recorded 444 yards of offense. He completed 22 passes for 258 yards and two scores. The Wildcats also rushed for two scores.

Lamar (0-1) will travel to Dallas on Saturday, Sept. 10, to face the SMU Mustangs (1-0) at 6 p.m.

Entering her fourth season as head coach of the women’s basketball team, coach Aqua Franklin added three new members to her coaching staff including Raymond Patche, Katie Jones and Omar Sneed.

Patche comes from Grand Canyon State while Jones is from Johnson County Community College.

A familiar name in the Beaumont area, Sneed was the assistant at Hardin-Jefferson and recently coached the Cy Fair Elite club team to the Nike EYBL national championship in July.

Sneed played basketball at West Brook where he was an all-state player. He went on to play college basketball at San Jacinto College and Memphis. Sneed also played professionally in Colombia, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, England, Israel, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Uruguay, and the Philippines.

BISD brings home games to you

The Beaumont ISD Career and Technical Education (CTE) Department brings home football games to personal devices via BISD TV, the district’s new online event streaming service. The service is run by digital communications students and their adviser, Audio/Video Production Teacher Joshua Lamb. The streaming service can be accessed at no cost on the Beaumont ISD CTE YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMeNgdQUAdk22
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“The idea of livestreaming is something that we have been bouncing around for quite some time now,” said Lamb. “The world as we know has changed and there are still some people who may have had a bad battle with COVID and the idea of big crowds is stressful for them.”

Lamb credits the vision and follow-through of administrators: CTE director Dr. Donna Prudhomme and athletic director Dr. Ron Jackson.

“I would like to thank the community for coming out in a big way and supporting the live stream. We were excited to end our first game with over 1700 views on the first livestream and a few days later, we are over 3000 views and over 200 subscribers on the channel,” said Lamb. “The comments included former alumni and athletes, local politicians and more. Their response was heartwarming to see so many people excited to see our kids line up to take the field.”

For more information on digital communications and the CTE programs of study, visit https://www.bmtisd.com/Page/6160.