March 30th, 2026: Mark Llanas

0:00Dive in head first into West Dakota athletics. You're listening to the Matador fan zone on 100.7 the score and the 100.7 the score mobile app. Good Monday evening. Welcome into the high school fan zone on this Monday night. It seems like March has really gone by fast. I was just talking to Mark Yannis about how it's gotten a little less busy. The soccer season wrapped up last week abruptly. Four teams lost on Tuesday, the kind of in that season and that for me, that was a chance to kind of exhale a little bit, got to do a little bit more baseball last week, a little folks didn't a little bit more on softball, but it is spring season. This full blown go right now. We're in the district track and everything. I'm Randy Rosetta. This is the high school fan zone on 100.7 the score. We are going to jump into that Matador fan zone really quick here. I mean, think if there's any news, I need to get out of the way. And really, there's not because, like I said, the end of one season and we're really busy. Baseball is about to

1:04hit the baseball on softball, both about to hit the curve where there's district games start to be a little bit more meat on the bone. The district track meets are all this Wednesday and Thursday because of Easter coming up. So Mark can help me. You guys are out of school on Friday. Yes, Sarah. Okay. That means my wife and daughter will be home. So I should know that. Mark, you honest? I'm going to ask you again, but I'm just going to say long time. I'll tell you what I tell Chad Reynolds. I'm just going to call you long time at the Cotto baseball coach. I think you you and Chad are about the longest tenured coaches right now. I would believe so. Yes. And that may not just be baseball. That may be everything. And since Jill retired, Jill kind of opened the door. Once she left, because Jill had that spot. I mean, she the last year was 39 year. Oh, yeah, I'm not even close to that. 39 year and she gets right off into the sunset with the state championship. That's that's a pretty good strip script. Right? Yeah, it's exactly right. But how long have you been at twenty four stars? Twenty four stars, how long has

2:04had coach? 15. And we're going the opposite direction with you. You've been coaching long enough now that you're one of your coaches that you coach with to begin with is now coaching again, because we talked about it before the trip that Hector Lomon is back out there on the diamond or that's a high he is. Yeah. So, you know, every it just works a funny ways. You know, I found he called me one day and is like, Hey, I need some help with this. I'm like, why do you help with that? Those all my head coach at a desk. All right. All right. Let me help you. Now, did you have any former players that you've coached against yet? No, I've had a lot of player former players come become coaches and coached with us. Yeah. None against. And then, you know, it's just we just it's funny because it's I'll golly. I think last couple of years, it's oh, I coached your dad. I coached your dad. I coached your dad. I coached your dad and taught your mom. And it's just it's starting to

3:06they're all starting to come back into the full system. So it really makes you feel old. Now, you've coached you coached against Brad Winchie as a player. I said, yes, coached against Devon Rocha as a player when he was at Roosevelt. Yeah. So there's a couple. There's a couple. The one that those two get me because when I first started the hub city preps up, I started looking at coaches. I was like, Brad Winchie, I think I remember that guy being on the player back. And now you technically I almost could have covered you. You graduated in what year from 1997? Yes, I barely missed you that because I got here in I got here Memorial Day weekend of 1997. Okay. I had been hired. I was going to come and cover the Texas Tech baseball regional. Okay. And some paper got messed up. So I just went and watched it and said, you can remember that was Larry Hayes. Yeah. That was rank number one. And it lost the Stanford. And they were before the first game lost to lost the two teams that didn't exist. It was like Southwest Missouri and Southwest Texas. And they were done. And that text tech baseball's figured it out two years. They're

4:09okay. But that's the Cotto baseball's figured it out for a long time and marks a big part of that. You guys are coming off of maybe you can tell me maybe your best pitch game of the season against Big Spring, Jose Alcorda, shut him out, only gave up two hits. And I asked you before right before we started, I don't remember seeing him pitch last year, but then you kind of explained that he was one of the guys that would kind of team up with some people. And been pitch game. Yeah, you know, him and Zach Salazar, two lefties this year, they were kind of we last year they were used as one pitcher. So Jose would start. And then you know, you know, last year as a team was 1 1 0 0 2 2 3 3. Yep. So Jose got a lot of no decisions, even though he pitched some really good baseball last year. And then Zach Salazar would come in and you know, hold them down and and we'd scratch the run here and there. And then he would he would kind of get the credit for the win. But those two did a really good job and Zach fish really good to get Snyder. He didn't get the win. But man, he threw extremely well like

5:11six innings, 12 strikeouts, four walks, just didn't make a play here there. There else he gets the win on that one. And you know, two really good games pitch back to back. So, you know, it's there. We just got to kind of get those pieces around them figured out. And that win was big for you guys for this reason, because when you look at the standings, liberties hasn't lost, big spring hasn't won. Everybody else is just all grouped up. Now we got a lot of season left to go. But you need to make sure that once you are supposed to, you need to win. You need to make sure that you take care of business. Yeah, you know, you tell the kids one thing. And we talked to the coaches enough that you know, we tell the kids we should win every game. The coach is like, we have circle like, hey, this is what we need to make sure that we take care of. So, yeah, it's is getting close, like you said, we're not there yet. We haven't finished that first round of district. But, you know, we don't we're not playing 15 district games this year, we're only playing 12, so we lose three. So wiggle room is not very much. Our wiggle room is gone with a couple of losses that we probably shouldn't have had. But, you know, our backs against the wall has we

6:12tell the kids and we got to work from there. And you got a big week coming up this weekend and different kind of week as it's not Tuesday and then Friday. It's Tuesday, Thursday because of the holiday. And you don't have to leave town. No, we don't. You know, it's different, but it's not, you know, I think our kids really love it when you just show up to the ballpark, you know, you know, sleep in a little bit, show up, start the process for for the game and then go play, you know, it's like, it's almost feeling like a big leader for a day or two. So, especially on Thursday, because you get to go to a nice facility, nice place to play, a play gets a really good team. And it just has a different feel to it when there's no school and, you know, you know, it's going to be a big crowd and stuff like that. It's tomorrow night against more, forget that's caught against Memorial tomorrow at seven, that's caught, caught against Liberty Thursday at seven. Are both of those either one at home or they're both away. So you're going to two nice. Oh, we're going to two new facilities. Yeah. So it's exciting. The kids will like that. And, you know, it's all the

7:14more reason to play better. And your guys are just like every other sport. I think I'm a Tony Wagner talking about how it's good to have those teams that have come in those four A teams to give us to kind of somebody is kind of a foil on the different sports because you guys have been in four A by yourselves for a while. We have it is nice, you know, sometimes we cause our own problems. But just to having that visual of somebody else, somebody different, you know, playing you next year. Yeah, another one or an old rival. Yeah, old older playing them when I started. So it's, it's nice. Those two games are seven believe ones on the radio airwaves here. So we're coming up on a break. We'll talk more Matador Baseball when we come back on the high school fan zone on this Monday night on the high school fan zone. Your inside look in the West Dakota sports. This is the Matador fan zone on 100.7 the score and the 100.7 the score mobile app. Welcome back in. We are talking as to Cato Matador Baseball currently district records to me are more important on obviously production fine standing to always list them first because we were to the point of the season where that that's

8:16where you determine who's going to go who's going to get to the playoffs. Four teams get to the playoffs for those who aren't overly familiar with it. And it's odd and different now because four teams get there and then two go big school, two go small school. And you guys will always be small school or is no, because in basketball you didn't. Well, it all depends on how it's memorial. Yeah, kind of throws the pink in it. Memorial and Liberty are like either ends. Yeah, they're on the either ends and then San Angelo is the wild card. Last year, we beat them. And so that was for big school. Okay. We got big school. And it makes it. It's a huge importance because they ended up getting they would big school. And I think they got. Who was it? But what you guys took care of business? You you wound up playing some and also it wasn't like it was an easy pass. No, they're all hard, but it was just some paths are easier than others. And being one seat is obviously an easier path. So, you know, outside of making the playoffs, you still have to get that into the equation in terms of, you

9:18know, it's memorial like you. So we got the the one game of on legacy. So technically, I guess we could come down the road and play again. But, you know, that's why getting that memorial win is so huge because that puts us in the dry receipt for the big school. If we make the playoffs. There's a lot of reasons this week is big for you guys because we were talking about it for the break. This is love it. You're going against love it teams both games. These kids know each other. But baseball may be more than any other sport that the guys know each other. And what's been fun talking to the memorial coaches all year in different sports is now some of them I've ran Roberson knows you guys because he's been around. But some of those coaches didn't understand that those kids knew each other so well. So they'd start looking at video and they'd start coaches talking about numbers. This number is just heavens doing this and their players would say, oh, that's such an issue. So they know you guys are going to go out there against Memorial. They're going to know. Now they're younger guys. You guys aren't exactly you don't have a lot of great

10:18beard. So it's not like. No, we don't. You know, we do have some seniors. We do have a lot of juniors. So it's a mixture depending on who's on the rubber. You know, like most teams. There's a lot of moving pieces with pitching. But yeah, it's we have experience. It's just, you know, we don't have as much experience as we would like compared to last year. So it, you know, we do bring his back. But it's it's not the same. We were talking about this before. It's a little bit different for you too because you probably coached a lot of these kids from Memorial that have dads that played somewhere in Lubbock X. I'm point to you mad coach against. And these are also potentially neighbors of yours because you live out in that part of the night. I do. You know, it's funny is there's two players on Memorial that I coached their dads at Estecato. Oh, so it's there's another, you know, which ones. Uh, Reyna. I can't think it was. And Michael Reyna is a catcher. That will Michael Reyna's senior was with Hector. He was our catcher and lead off. And I know he was a centerfielder caught a little bit.

11:19And I think there was another, I think a Garcia. There's two different Garcia's. So it's just a funny thing. And then we had another kid that was on the JV. They ended up moving out there. So he's out there now. So it's just one of those deals where it's like you said, it's just a hodgepodge of kids that play with uh, each other three quarters of the year. Right. And then for that one quarter, they go to the school and then they play against each other. And they're, I know you're not supposed to like each other when you're playing against each other. But again, baseball is a little bit different to gentleman's game. It's not that you can't be gentleman and everything else. But those guys are going to both sides. You're going to step on that field and beat them. But then afterwards it's, it was cool the other night, like a low-key Monterey game, uh, two really tight games. Victor got a nice one on Saturday. Yeah. But on Friday night, they lost by a run. You think that their kids would be just devastated. They're taking pictures with the Monterey guys that they played with the summer base. First of all, Lubbock baseball is different than any place I've ever been

12:20because it's, there's so much crossover. Yeah. So many teams and coaches that know each other. Well, you know, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, you know, got a choice but to play with each other. We have to travel to these bigger places. So it is, you know, a lot of our kids play with our guys, you know, a lot of our kids played with kids from Snyder. So it's just one of those deals. The Snyder kids come to Lubbock, you know, they just jumbled up and then level and kids play too. So it's, you know, it's just kind of like a big community, baseball community, uh, you know, come summertime and fall. We touched on this just a little bit. We're getting close to the end here. So I want to come back to you guys. You guys have gotten a really good pitching lately. Offensive still. Trying to figure it out in the last time I saw you was, uh, I think that was one of those games where you needed the offense to do a little bit more. But between Salazar and Alcordi, you guys can pitch with just about anybody weeks like this where you're playing two games a week. You know, we, we can. And we also, we're very blessed that we have, you know, Christian Martinez, our shortstop probably our leader, best player.

13:22He's probably our best pitcher. There you go. So he's three and one on the year. And he had a, he had to have a bad game. We just didn't help him out against level N. He was cruising. How to hiccup? Couldn't get out of it when it wasn't that game. But we also have three kids that come out of the bullpen. Yep. That can help us at any time. So yes, you know, the pitching and defensive things that we're always going to do first. And then the hitting, you know, we'll find a way in which we have enough. But we do have to be sure that we're trying to sound weird. But you, you've got a team that's built for the playoffs. We do. Yeah, but that's, yeah, that's, that's the goal. You know, you got to have to do, you got to do both of those if you want to travel. Yep. And, and we just got to get that third piece to catch up. And once it does, I think we'll be okay. As Ticado plays at Memorial 7 p.m. Tuesday. It's actually on Sunday 97.7 Clint dot. I believe we'll have the call and then they play at Liberty 7 p.m. Thursday. We'll be back after this break to talk Monterey softball with Brian Kronk. We'll talk to Brandon Roberts from Robertson about as Ticado and Memorial later. Come back in and we'll be back in high school fans over in just a minute.