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The Braselton News Contact the sports department: Phone: 706-367-5233 Fax: 706-367-9355 brandon@mainstreetnews.com IB Wednesday, November 28, 2007 Wrestling Wrestling Hawks start season Friday The Mill Creek Hawks varsity wrestling team is set to get their 2007-2008 season underway this week, as they’ll take part in the Comet Classic at South Gwinnett on Friday. The Hawks come into the season looking to improve on last year’s 4-8 record. Last year saw the hawks take eighth place finishes in the Brookwood Invitational, the Fayette City Invitational, and the Coal Mountain Classic. The team took 13th at Gwinnett County, and seventh at the Area VII meet. Hawks head wrestling coach David Landis says he has several returning starters on the team this year, including five area placers. Among those returning are Mill Creek junior Josh Harrison, who placed first at area and fourth at state, junior Billy Anderton, who placed second at area, junior Augustus Appling, who placed fifth at area, senior Chris Porcheddu, who placed sixth at area, junior Nick Voss, and senior Aaron Dumond. Landis says he also has several other players for the Mill Creek faithful to keep their eyes on this year that he feels will make an impact on the season, including senior Taylor Lacy, junior Ryan Gasaway, junior Max Wright, junior John Holland, and senior Cameron Fowler. “We now have some experi enced guys coming up through the youth program, which will help the program,” Landis said. “We have about 70 guys out and most of our varsity guys, after paying their dues, have experi ence which will make us more competitive. “This is our 4th year and we now have some guys with varsity experience. That will hopefully give leadership and direction to the younger kids.” As to how his team will do in the season opener, Landis said it’s a wait and see situation. “It is too early to tell, because we have not had the big guys out but this week,” Landis said. “Also, not all of the guys are at the best weight class yet. Given that info, I hope to be in the top half.” The Comet Classic is scheduled to get underway at 5 p.m. Friday afternoon at South Gwinnett High School in Snellville. Swimming Hawks swim team at GAC, Collins Hill Sat. Girls' Basketball Lady Hawks continue winning ways Mill Creek plays host to South Forsyth on Friday BY BRANDON REED The Mill Creek Lady Hawks have been strong right out of the gate. They showed that with back-to-back wins against Brookwood and St. Pius in the Parkview Tip-Off Classic, then sealed the deal by defeating Wesleyan 72-58 last Tuesday night to take the tournament title. For the Lady Hawks, it’s a good start to what’s expected to be a suc cessful season. The Lady Hawks moved ahead of the Lady Wolves in the second quar ter, and never looked back. “The Wesleyan game was a good win for us,” said girls’ head bas ketball coach Ashley Phillips. “They are a very good team and it was a tough game from start to finish. We were able to create a few turnovers early in the game to build a lead, and we held on with solid play through the second half. Tia Williams had an outstanding performance, but really the whole team played well.” Porsha Porter scored 23 points en route to the victory, going 10 for 10 from the foul line, while Mill Creek junior Tia Williams recorded 17 points. Sophomore Moneshia Simmons had 13 points, and senior Megan Basile scored 10. The Lady Hawks extended their win streak Tuesday night with a 67-55 victory over the Peachtree Ridge Lions. Game stats were unavailable at press time. Going into Tuesday’s game, Peachtree Ridge had an overall 2-1 record. Last year, they lost their early season match-up with Mill Creek 51-40. “(The) game against Peachtree Ridge is our first region go, so it is very important for us to get off to a good start in our region schedule,” Phillips said prior to Tuesday night’s game. The Lady Hawks will host their first home game on Friday, as they’ll face off against the South Forsyth War Eagles on Friday. Last year, Mill Creek defeated South Forsyth in an early season game 61-39. Game time Friday is set for 6 p.m. HEADS UP Mill Creek’s Jasmine Sublett (30) looks for an opening down the court during last weekend’s Parkview Tip-Off Classic. The Lady Hawks went undefeated to win the tournament. Photo by Brandon Reed MOVING ON Travis Bollier moves up the court during the Hawk’s opening game in the Parkview tip-off classic. Photo by Brandon Reed Bovs’ Basketball Mill Creek drops opening games Hawks to host South Forsyth War Eagles Fri. night BY BRANDON REED It’s been a rough start to the sea son for the Mill Creek Hawks boys’ basketball team, but they feel they’ll see a change in fortune soon. After suffering a 70-40 loss to Riverdale in the opener of the Parkview Tip-Off Classic last week end, the Hawks lost in their second match-up of the tournament, this time to Sandy Creek 61-25. “Sandy Creek is very talented and very athletic,” said head boys’ basketball coach Phil Bollier. “We had trouble organizing under pres sure, and turned the ball over too often.” Bollier said one of the things working against the team in the opening two games was the absence of players that were also members of the Mill Creek football team. “We were still without our foot ball players, which means that three of our varsity starters from last year, and three of our projected starters from this year were not available to play in that game,” he said. “What we did was play some of our younger guys, our JV guys.” The Hawks hoped to see their luck change with the return of those players last Tuesday, as Mill Creek faced off against St. Pius. The team did make a stronger stand, but still suffered a loss, this time 55-49 in overtime. “We had our football players then, it obviously made a difference,” Bollier said. “We played a lot bet ter, and did not turn it over. We still had too many turnovers. We’re not to the point to where we’re satis fied with the way we played. We need to eliminate our turnovers. We’ve done a better job of that in practice over Thanksgiving. We got outrteam back together.” Despite the losses, Bollier said considering the circumstances, he thought his team did well. “That St. Pius game was without any practice as a unit, so I thought we played pretty well for those cir cumstances,” he said. “We’ve got our things in order now.” But the Hawks’ fortunes didn’t turn on Tuesday, as they lost to the Peachtree Ridge Lions 75-61. “We played much more orga nized, played with more intensity, and did more things correctly,” Bollier said. “The game got away from us a little bit in the second quarter, and we battled back, had the ball. We were down by six late in the third quarter, and just didn’t execute the way we needed to for the finish.” “We still need to improve on our turnovers for baskets for our oppo nents,” he added. “It’s an area that we just need to improve on.” Game stats were unavailable at press time. The Hawks will play their home opener of the season Friday night, against the War Eagles of South Forsyth. Tip off Friday is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. GHSA Georgia High School Association ironing out reclassification details The Mill Creek Hawks swim and dive team’s Nov. 30 meet at Greater Atlanta Christian has been moved to Saturday, Dec. 1 due to state football playoffs. The rescheduled meet at GAC will be held at 10 a.m. in Norcross. Saturday night, the Hawks will take part in their scheduled meet against Collins Hill at the Mountain Park Pool in Stone Mountain. The meet is scheduled to get underway at 6:30 p.m. Mill Creek enters these two meets off a successful season opener against Parkview on Nov. 17. At that meet, the Hawks defeated the Panthers with a combined team score of 327 to 294. The girls scored 177 points to Parkview’s 132, while the boys outscored Parkview as well, 162-150. Mill Creek won 14 of 24 events against the Panthers. BY ALLEN LUTON When the Georgia High School Association’s reclassification com mittee meets on Thursday, schools across the state are expected to begin to find out what region they will be placed in for the next two years beginning with the 2008-09 school year. For local schools in Jackson County that means learning about the finer details of just how much the reclassification process will affect their athletic departments. Mill Creek High School in Hoschton is not expected to be affected by any changes. However, Jackson County Comprehensive High School is slated to change classifications, as it will be moving down one class from Class AAAA to Class AAA next year. However, when the pre liminary reclassification figures were released earlier this month, JCCHS was kept in the state’s sec ond highest classification (AAAA), which was a big surprise to school officials. But, that was due to an error in the GHSA’s figuring of its projected enrollment that has since been corrected following an appeal by the school. It was one of seven reclassification appeals approved last week by the GHSA. The cor rect enrollment of 1,020 for next year places JCCHS among the top half of Class AAA, based on size. “We were anticipating (moving down to Class AAA) all along,” JCCHS athletic director Fancaster said. Now that the school is correctly placed in Class AAA, it waits to hear what region it will fall into, which is something that still remains a definite question. “We don’t know exactly where we’re going to be,” Fancaster said. “It looks like we’ll be in (Region) 8-AAA, that’s historically where we’ve been, but there are rumors that 7-AAA would be split up and some of them might come into 8-AAA, (but) nobody knows until after that meeting on Thursday.” Region 7-AAA is currently made up of schools in the Gainesville and Hall County area, while 8-AAA is made up of Northeast Georgia’s other AAA schools located south and east of Gainesville on down into the Athens area. In the case of Jefferson High School, which has grown substan tially in recent years, it will be moving up one classification to Class AA next year. Just how the region alignment process works out, will have a big impact on its sports and how JHS will be able to schedule over the next two years. Jefferson is expected to have 636 students next year, which based on size, would place it in the bottom third of Class AA. Depending on how many teams are in its region, Jefferson may or may not be able to schedule longtime arch-rival Commerce in football and perhaps other sports. That said, with more Class AA schools in the area, mov ing up will likely make scheduling games against schools closer to home a bit easier. As for what takes place on the field, Jefferson athletic director Tim Corbett said the impact on See GHSA on page 2B