Sports Archive

In a few weeks a long wait will come to an end. Navarre’s softball team will play games that matter again, something it hasn’t done since March when the season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Three seniors will head up the charge. Rachel Hester, Jessica Oakley and Kaitlyn Wollenzien are the veterans of a young team ready to play the sport it loves again.

Navarre’s girls soccer team and Navarre’s girls basketball team are both ranked in the top five in their region in the 6A rankings posted on MaxPreps Jan. 1.

The girls soccer team is fifth within Region 1-6A and 16th overall in the state in its classification. The girls hoops team is third in its region and sits at 13th in the state in 6A.

Promise and potential dot the sports landscape in the area with the arrival of the new year.

Navarre’s girls basketball team has 10 wins to its credit, the most in the first half of the year since the 2015-16 campaign when the Raiders won a district title and advanced to the regional.

Hockey is back in Pensacola nine months after the season came to a halt.

It looks a little different. Only five of the 10 teams in the league are competing because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the season is starting more than a month late. But it beats the alternative of not being on the ice at all.

As Navarre’s softball team prepared to hit the field for a game against rival Gulf Breeze March 12, there was a feeling of uncertainty gripping the moment.

With the COVID-19 pandemic gaining steam, athletic activity was on the brink of shutting down.

LaMarcus Smith might have wondered at times what he had gotten himself into. Joining a college football team that didn’t win a game the previous year isn’t exactly ideal.

But Smith stayed the course at Ave Maria, an NAIA school in South Florida, and it paid off. 

Michael Carter is in the running for one of college football’s biggest awards.

The University of North Carolina running back is a finalist for the Paul Hornung Award, which is given to the nation’s most versatile athlete.

Abby Fogg coached like her team was down 30 instead of up by that much throughout Thursday night’s showdown with Pace.

Rachel Leggett, Mickey Vollmer and the rest of the players on Navarre’s girls basketball team kept playing like they were the team trying to dig out of a hole rather than bury its opponent in one.

Dante Wright didn’t get a chance to play many football games this season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But when he was on the field, he made his presence felt.