Sports Archive

The 2023 Baker Lady Gator volleyball seniors will forever be linked together as the team that finally scaled Mount Championship.

Lily Adams, Chloe Ates, Karsyn Crinklaw and Haley Westberry were the players on the floor getting the cheers from the fans. Laney Alazone, the team manager was Baker’s fifth senior.

It’s true that the apple doesn’t seem to fall too far from the tree.

Some family trees produce lawyers. Other family trees might yield an abundance of actors, builders, mechanics or accountants.

It has been five years since the Crestview boys basketball team won a state championship.

And while Bulldog coach Greg Watson isn’t predicting his team will cut down the nets at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland come March, he does see some similarities between this year’s Bulldogs and the team that won it all.

Not all the numbers tell the full story of the 2023 Baker volleyball season. The Lady Gators finished the season with an 18-11 record. None of the 11 losses came against another 1A school. They beat seven schools in larger classifications including Milton, Crestview and Pace, twice.

A senior, Braden Hood played his last football game for Crestview on Friday ending a career that has gone by too quickly. Bulldog coach Thomas Grant can’t say enough good things about Hood and what he has meant to the Crestview program in the time he has been a Bulldog.

The Baker Lady Gators volleyball team has to be hoping seven is in fact their lucky number. On six occasions the Lady Gators have played in the state championship match only to come home state runner up. Baker defeated Liberty County 3-1 on Monday in the Class 1A state semifinal by scores of 25-22, 26-24, 20-25, 25-23.

There will be no playoff run for the Crestview football team this year. Any trips Crestview players want to take to Niceville, Tallahassee or Pensacola to be a part of the playoffs will be on their own dime and they will be watching from the stands. But for one final shining moment on Friday night at Jack Foster Stadium the Bulldogs gave themselves and their fans a sweet memory to last until next year. Crestview battled for four quarters against county rival Fort Walton Beach.

Jack Foster Stadium will be alive with the sights, sounds and smells of high school football one last time in 2023 on Friday when Crestview plays host to Fort Walton Beach. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

There are no Cinderellas left in the Class 1A volleyball tournament. On Tuesday night all four matches to decide who would play in the Final Four were between teams that were one or two seeds. In other words, it was the best of the best in Class 1A playing each other.

Maddox Reeves is a throwback football player to another era when players that might be considered undersized linemen played both ways.
If you count special teams, Reeves plays at least three ways and seldom leaves the field for the Crestview Bulldogs.