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Show AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Thursday, December 7. 2006 COMMUNITY SPORTS, PEOPLE AND OUTDOOR FUN NIKKI YBARRA American Fork High School Page 6 - . ' i "- "ffc - '2 MELISSA FARGONorth County Senior swimmer Michael King is a captain on the American Fork swim team for the second straight year. Cavemen swim team stronger because of senior who leads by example Dean Von Memmott SH)R", f OCKr.POUDINI As a second-year captain for the American Fork hoys swim team, Michael King has been leading the team with his example of hard work. "The kids are drawn to him," said current assistant and former head coach Celeste Tiffany. "They have the utmost respect for him and they value what he says. He's quiet, but what he does speaks very loudly. "Very few kids I've ever been associated with are like Michael," the coach went on. "He's willing to put in whatever it takes. Beyond himself, he wants the entire team to experience success. "l or years at American Fork, we've had mens swim teams of four or five kids and they had to fight for everything. Michael's been a part of these small teams along the way." King started swimming at the age of 12 and Tiffany worked with him first as part of the American Fork-based Fork-based Hilltop Aquatic Swim team, and then later on the high school team. "Right away I noticed his athleticism athleti-cism and the personal qualities that would prove to help him achieve success in swimming as well as throughout his life," Tiffany said. Aside from the leadership he shows, there are four other main character traits that Tiffany said set Michael apart. The first is his incredible incred-ible work ethic. "That says it all," she said. Next is his coachability. "He listens well and applies what his coaches teach him." Third is his reliability. "He can be depended on for his best effort, no matter what the circumstances," cir-cumstances," the coach explained. Finally, there is his extreme determination. deter-mination. "He does whatever he needs to do to reach his goals," she said. "Every year Michael has made incredible strides in his swimming progress," she continued. "He's improved by leaps and bounds, and much quicker than most. I attribute this to both his athletic ability and character." Another coach King has worked with a lot is Dee Loose, who coaches with HAST and is also an assistant at BYU. "He helped me a lot with my technique tech-nique when I was first starting out," King said. "Now, I'm focusing more on my timing and stroke efficiency." The senior said that whenever he gets in the water, it's a race to get his time down. "All the things around me don't matter as I try lowering my time. My goal this year is to swim faster than I did at State (last year)," he said. At least twice a week, the team holds joint practices with Lone Peak's swimmers, and they usually travel and compete together as well. King thinks that association has helped him become a better swimmer. swim-mer. "They're kids who make me swim hard," he said. "Jeff Nielsen and Stephen Ste-phen Greiner are fun to race against and give me good competition at practice and meets." The trio are together to-gether during the off-season as part of HAST. King's individual events are the 100-yard breastroke and the 200-yard 200-yard individual medley. He finished third and fifth in them, respectively, at last season's state meet. He's also a member of the 400-yard 400-yard freestyle and the medley relay teams, where he has been joined this season by his freshman younger brother, McKay. "It's fun to have him on the team," his older brother said. "In the medley med-ley relay, he does the backstroke and I do the breaststroke. For the 400, he goes first and I go in as the anchor." The two are often paired in the same events by their mother and coach, Kathy King, to see how they'll do against each other. "McKay and I always compare times of events we have swum together." See KING, Page 7 Cavemen come up with big road win over Timpview Jared Lloyd N1IH ' OUNI1Y In a game that was played at a crazy, frenetic pace for almost all 2 minutes, it seemed almost anti-climactic for the biggest moment in an exciting American Fork-Timpview Fork-Timpview battle to come with play at a standstill. With the crowd in the Thunderdome in lYovo going go-ing crazy after watching the . Thunderbirds trim an eight-point eight-point lead to just two, Cavemen Cave-men senior guard Jayce , Ross was f ; j awaraea a one-and-one with 42 seconds left to go and calmly stepped to the line to take the most important im-portant shots of the game. Although he'd only made one of the two free throws he'd attempted at-tempted up to that point, Ross silenced the crowd by hitting both shots and giving American Ameri-can Fork the 56-52 road win. "Jayce is a rhythm shooter and I thought he had a good rhythm," Caveman head coach Doug Meacham said. "He has the confidence that if he's missed 10 shots, he'll be like Reggie Miller and go make the 1 1th. At that point the momentum was all their way, but we have a good free-throw free-throw shooting group." The victory for the visitors appeared within reach when they pulled out to a 5244 lead with 120 on the clock, but Timpview refused to go away without a battle. A nice jump shot in the lane by junior guard Michael Sala-lar Sala-lar sparked the T'Birds, who then forced two straight turnovers turn-overs with their press that turned into four more points. That turned out to be all of the magic for the home team The Cavemen got the ball down the floor and to Ross on the baseline, who was fouled on his way to the basket. After the made free throws, Timpview failed to score again and American Amer-ican Fork had the win. The streaky play late in the fourth quarter mirrored what happened throughout the game. Both squads employed pressure de- Mint; u fense, creating r. v4 i turnovers and going up and down the floor at break -nprk speed. While at times neither side could stay under control, the two teams displayed flashes flash-es of the brilliance they hope to develop. "It's still one of the first games, so we had a lot of mental mistakes," Meacham said. "At times we had to go away from our pressure and focus on just getting layups. We never shoot that well in this gym and layups are more high percentage." Timpview went out first, going up by seven in the first quarter before American Fork rallied. The second quarter mostly belonged to the Cavemen, who went up by five, fell behind, then came back to go into the break on top by a bucket. The runs in the third period were even more pronounced, with the visitors starting with a 9-0 spurt, only to see the Thunderbirds score 12 of the next 14 points to catch up. That set up the exciting final quarter of play ending with Ross's big foul shots. The senior guard paced the Cavemen Cave-men with 14 points and finished fin-ished with 6 steals, 6 rebounds and 3 assists. Spencer Shumway added 12 points, and five other players also contributed to the scoring totals. Brandon Beddes had eight boards and Brady Mason Ma-son four assists. "Going into the Thunder-dome Thunder-dome and coming out with a win is always a positive," the coach said. "We had way too many turnovers at 26, but we forced Timpview into 24. "Brady did a great job on holding their point guard to 2 points. He is a very tenacious defender. Brandon was very good for us. He rebounded with energy, he threw great outlet passes, and he was able to get some key buckets for us. "He is very intelligent and he knows what we're trying to do on both ends of the floor. He really ran the floor hard, and did the little things to help us win this game," Meacham continued. "Jayce was also very aggressive for us on both defense and offense. "The thing I was impressed with was that although we made some mistakes down the stretch, we bent but didn't break. Our seniors were not going to let it happen. "Another good sign, I thought, was the feeling in the locker room," the coach said. "There wasn't a lot of whooping and hollering; the guys didn't act like they were surprised to win. They had expected ex-pected to win and they seemed to be saving their celebration for wins later on in the year. (Wf Mi, w m Ik. MARIO RUIZNorth County American Fork's Jayce Ross (4) drives around Timpview's Michael Salazar during Friday 's game. "We just want to get better as we go, and hopefully we are peaking at the right time," Meacham concluded. I Beky Beaton contributed to this report. I American Fork 66, Wasatch 39: At Heber City, American Fork took advantage of five consecutive Wasp turnovers to take control of the game late in the third quarter. The Cavemen out scored Wasatch 36-17 in the second half. Spencer Shumway paced American Fork with 26 points, six rebounds and five steals. Jayce Ross added 13 points, five boards and three steals, while Kellen Nicol scored nine with six rebounds and Greg Meacham contributed five boards, five assists and four steals. See REWIND, Page 7 Parents: Julie and Steve Ybarra Age: 15 Birthplace: Long Beach, Calif. Year: Sophomore Sports: Basketball, soccer and swimming Positions: Basketball guard and soccer forward Favorite sports team: Miami Heat Favorite food: Strawberries Favorite restaurant: Cafe Rio Favorite class: Health Favorite movie: She's the Man Favorite magazine: Sports Illustrated Hero: Michael Jordan Future plans: To attend college after high school. Most memorable career moment: "Going to state in soccer." Girls basketball coach Corey Clayton Clay-ton said: "I've never seen her in practice or a game when she's not giving 100 percent. She sets the tone for us in effort and energy. As far as basketball goes, it's nice to have a guard like that. If the other team has a good guard, she can basically shut them down. She's the best on-ball defender I've ever had. She worked really hard in the off-season on her offense and she's our most improved ball handler. She's not the best shooter but sometimes the balls drop because she's mentally tough. She knows when to take the shot and she just wills them to go down." f," VlWi CROSSCOUNTRY Runners successful at Footlockermeet NORTH COUNTY Members of the American Fork cross country team had success last weekend at the Footlocker Regional Cross Country Coun-try Championships held at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. Ten Cavemen earned medals: the highest total ever for the squad. The previous high for the team was nine medals in both 2003 and 2004, while the team earned seven medals last year. Top finisher for the team was Ben Felix, who placed second in his junior race in a time of 16:41 on the hilly 5,000-meter course. Jarett Pulsipher placed fifth in the other junior race in 17:13. The girls squad had two on the winner's podium with Alexis Laws placing fifth and Danielle West eighth in the freshman race with times of 20:14 and 2028, respectively. respec-tively. Other medal winners were Ryan Bradshaw, 14th in the boys sophomore sopho-more race in 17:41; Arista Som-mers, Som-mers, 15th in the girls sophomore race; and Natasha Lye, 44th in the girls freshman race. Kyle Wentz ( 17th, 17:34), Geoff Harmon (25th, 17:47), and Mike Nelson placed (28th, 17:49) in the senior boys race. Other competitors for the Cavemen Cave-men were freshman girls Erminia Martinez (23:09) and Ashley Lewis (25:53); freshman boys Corey Jackson Jack-son (19:43), Adam Derfler (19:53), and Brady Pulsipher (20:08); sophomore sopho-more girl McCall Harward (21:49) and sophomore boy Cameron Hodges (28:30). Also, junior girls Rebecca Thorpe (2226) and Shaylynn Baugh (24:00); junior boy Spencer Craft (19:11); and senior girls Lindsey Grimes (22:46) and Kellie Wentz (23:01). TRACK Indoor track meeting scheduled NORTH COUNTY All those students in grades 9-12 who are interested in participating on the Cavemen Indoor Track Team should meet after school on Tuesday (Dec. 12). The Tuesday meeting will be in c6ach Timo Mostert's room 209 at American Fork High School POOR |