Local Sports from The Courier
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Prep notebook: Kalida's Kortokrax closes in on 800 victories
Kortokrax entered this season, his 50th as head coach, with a 785-315 career record. As the prospect of attaining his 800th career win, approached, school officials wanted to make sure all the numbers compiled during a 50-year career at Fort Jennings (1960-62), Ottoville (1962-75) and Kalida (1975-present) all added up.
Dan Kern, who has done extensive research into Putnam County sports history, went through volumes of records and information. What he discovered was that Kortokrax's record reflects one more win than can be accounted for.
The error occurred more than 40 years ago when Kortokrax was coaching at Ottoville. The Ottoville yearbook has the Big Green posting a 13-7 record for the 1966-67 season. Kern's exhaustive studies show Ottoville was 12-7 that season.
Despite losing a win, Kortokrax appears still has an excellent shot at reaching the 800-win milestone this season. The Wildcats had Saturday's game at Wayne Trace postponed by Friday's winter storm. But, at 12-2, they need four wins in their final six regular season games and the tournament to make Kortokrax Ohio's first 800-win coach.
It is unknown when the Wayne Trace game will be rescheduled, but the Wildcats have the next two weekends booked. They are at Miller City this Friday and host Ayersville on Saturday. The following week, Kalida hosts Continental in a huge Putnam County League battle on Feb. 19. Should Kalida sweep those three games, Kortokrax would be going for No. 800 Feb. 20 at Van Buren.
SHARP SHOOTING: Riverdale's Ryan Frey hit two 3-pointers in the final 35 seconds to tie the game, then hit the winning free throw in overtime to give the Falcons a 61-60 win over league-leading Ontario on Jan. 30 and keep his team in contention for the North Central Conference title.
SHARING SUCCESS: The girls used to just cheer when the boys were winning league titles. Now they want to emulate them. League-leading programs are crossing gender lines at several schools in Northwest Ohio. At Liberty-Benton, the boys (15-0, 7-0) and girls (16-0, 7-0) are both unbeaten, ranked No. 1 in the state polls (Div. III) and in first place in the Blanchard Valley Conference. Marion Harding's boys (14-1, 6-0) and girls (17-0, 8-0) are both leading the Greater Buckeye Conference. New Riegel's boys (13-2, 8-0) and girls (15-2, 9-0) are both leading the Midland Athletic League, and Kalida's boys (12-2, 5-0) and girls (15-1, 3-0) are both leading the Putnam County League, although the girls, ranked No. 2 in Division IV, have a major PCL showdown on tap Thursday against No. 1-ranked Ottoville (17-0, 6-0).
Depending on how things shake out in the next few weeks, the boys and girls teams at Riverdale (North Central Conference), Columbus Grove (Northwest Conference) and both Bellevue and Tiffin Columbian (Northern Ohio League) could both be bringing home first-place hardware as well.
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