For all the pride and tradition associated with Port Neches-Groves High School, Indian nation had waited 36 years to celebrate a team state championship.

When the PNG baseball team made it to the state semifinals in Round Rock, it would only be days before Class 5A baseball in Texas would crown a new champion. And greater Port Arthur would have its first baseball champion in 34 years.

PNG (34-8-2) knocked off regional powers en route to dethroning Grapevine in the June 10 state championship game on Dell Diamond. In a year of rare but grand achievements in Mid- and South County, the Indians’ crowning achievement has been ranked as The News’ No. 1 local sports story of 2017.

Senior Brandon Morse threw a four-hit complete game in the 4-2 victory over Grapevine and was named the 5A state tournament most valuable player. It would be his first MVP award since graduation.

Scott Carter, who had won two championships in Louisiana in the 1990s, went on to be named 5A coach of the year by the Texas Sports Writers Association and baseball coach of the year by the Southeast Texas Coaches Association. PNG pitcher Josh Hranicky was named the writers’ 5A player of the year.

PNG, which went unbeaten in District 22-5A play, drew national attention with the title. The CBS MaxPreps Xcellent 50 Baseball Rankings had the Indians ranked 12^th in its final version later in the month, putting them ahead of 6A state champion Deer Park.

Thomas Jefferson in 1983 was the last Mid- or South County baseball team to win state before PNG.

 

2. #PAspeed sets national 4×200 record

The time on the crust of Port Arthur Memorial’s rings says it all: 1:23.52.

That is how fast Memorial’s 4×200-meter boys relay team covered two laps of the track at the University of Texas’ Mike A. Myers Stadium during the May 12 Class 5A state meet. The hashtag #PAspeed was trending on Twitter.

Memorial’s 1-minute, 23.52-second run set a national record shortly after its 4×100-meter team narrowly missed a national mark in its championship run. The Titans bolted that relay in 39.80 seconds, setting a 5A record but missing out on the national mark set by Fort Worth Wyatt in 1998.

De’Andre Angelle, Ireon Brown, Xavier Hull and Kary Vincent Jr. ran both races. Those two victories, along with Vincent’s win in the 200 meters, helped Memorial finish second in team standings with 63 points. Manvel won with 85 points.

For the Titans’ efforts, the 4×100 team was named first-team All-America by track website MileSplit (a 4×200 All-America list was not organized), and Darrell Granger was named coach of the year by the Prairie View Interscholastic League Coaches Association and the Southeast Texas Coaches Association.

 

3. Super Bowl 51? Try Super Bowl 409

A year earlier, the Port Arthur ISD received eight gold footballs from the NFL commemorating the seven players and one head coach that had graduated from the district and participated in the Super Bowl.

Last February, two more players from Port Arthur came home, so to speak, to square off in Super Bowl 51 (Roman numeral LI). Even a Bridge City guy got in on the action.

Houston’s NRG Stadium hosted one of the greatest championships in history when Elandon Roberts (2012 Memorial graduate) and the New England Patriots took on an Atlanta Falcons team that included Jonathan Babineaux (2000 Lincoln grad) and Matt Bryant (1994 Bridge City alumnus). New England was digging out of a 28-3 hole when Roberts made a touchdown-saving tackle that actually led to the Patriots’ getting the ball back for a game-tying drive in the final minutes.

The Patriots won 34-28 in the first overtime Super Bowl ever, earning Roberts a place in the Museum of the Gulf Coast along with the two local Falcons. Bryant went 4 for 4 in extra points, and Babineaux, a free agent, hasn’t played a down since.

 

4. World belongs to Mid-County

Baseball season in Mid-County didn’t end with PNG’s 5A state baseball championship.

Mid-County Senior Babe Ruth brought home the Babe Ruth 16- to 18-year-old World Series title from Ephrata, Washington. To make it to Ephrata, the Nederland-based ballclub knocked off defending champion Mobile County, Alabama, in the Southwest Regional in the Panhandle town of Dumas. Then, the Jefferson County boys went 5-1 in Ephrata, including a semifinal win over host Columbia Basin and a 6-0 championship win over Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Zach Clark led Mid-Count batting .476 during the World Series. And, as he did wearing purple and white in Round Rock, Brandon Morse earned the series’ MVP award. He went 2-0 with 14 strikeouts and an ERA of less than 1.00.

It was not the first time a Mid-County team won a World Series. The 2002 16-year-old team took it all in Russellville, Arkansas.

 

5. Kennerson leads NCAA in scoring, currently 2nd

A Port Arthur woman, if only for a few days, led all of NCAA Division I women’s basketball in scoring average.

Joyce Kennerson has been the talk in Southwestern Athletic Conference circles for at least a year now, thanks to her offensive exploits and leadership in Texas Southern’s march to a conference tournament championship and first appearance in the NCAA tournament last March. The 5-foot-4 guard, who graduated from Memorial in 2015, topped the national scoring average chart for the first time Dec. 17 following a 33-point performance in a win over Paul Quinn College. That gave her a 26.6-point per game average, pushing her ahead of Ohio State’s Kelsey Mitchell (26.2 at the time).

Through games of Dec. 29, Mitchell (26.1) was ahead of Kennerson (25.9), with A’ja Wilson of defending national champion South Carolina in third at 24.5.

 

6. Mustangs’ win string reaches 40, Arlington

West Orange-Stark’s continued success amid adversity in Southeast Texas (see item No. 7) piqued the interest of its neighbors in Jefferson County as the Mustangs pursued their first three-peat of a state championship in school history.

The Mustangs won 40 straight games since a loss to Richmond Foster in their 2015 championship season. The streak took them back to Arlington for their fourth straight 4A Division II title game, but Texarkana Pleasant Grove wasn’t hearing anything of a Mustang dynasty.

West Orange-Stark scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to pull within 28-21, but back-to-back pick-sixes by the Hawks sealed their 41-21 win and first state title. The Mustangs finished 13-1.

 

7. District 22-5A football lifts up communities

The story of District 22-5A football in 2017 may have begun with the Jan. 2 announcement of Nederland coach Larry Neumann’s retirement, but the season as a whole came to the rescue of an area still dealing with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Harvey.

While Nederland and PNG began their season in Week 2 due to Harvey’s arrival days before their scheduled openers, Memorial didn’t kick off until the district slate began on a Wednesday — Sept. 20, to be exact. The first half of district play was compressed into four game dates in 18 days to keep up with standings to determine playoff qualifiers.

The success of all three teams was a microcosm of the resurgence of Mid- and South County. Memorial and PNG were unbeaten going into their Oct. 13 shootout, where the Indians came from 17-0 down to win 44-36. But the Titans came back to share the district title with the Indians after routing Vidor and PNG’s bid for a 9-0 regular season ended in Nederland.

Nederland reached the area round of the playoffs, while Memorial was just edged in the Region III semifinals to Temple and PNG fell to eventual state champion College Station in the same round the next day.

 

8. Bulldogs take back Bum Bowl trophy

Could Monte Barrow write a better chapter in the story of his first season as Nederland’s head football coach? Not with the way the Bum Phillips Bowl turned out.

The closest finish to the Mid-County Madness rivalry game (by score) since the Bum Bowl trophy was introduced in 2014 saw Colton Beeson haul in a two-point conversion pass from Blaysin Fernandez with 13 seconds left in Nederland’s 36-35 win over Port Neches-Groves. Kevon Latulas caught a 14-yard pass for the tying touchdown.

PNG was denied the opportunity to finish the regular season unbeaten for the first time since 2009.

The annual rivalry game, which drew an estimated 10,000-plus fans to Bulldog Stadium, will also be remembered for a rocketing red flare toward the game’s end that was fired from the direction of the PNG student section across an end zone to a row of lawn chairs on the home side.

 

9. Memorial boys hoops’ postseason thrill ride

Memorial hadn’t won a district championship in boys basketball since 2009 until the Titans tied Beaumont Central for the 22-5A title last winter.

But it was the Titans’ postseason run that brought statewide attention back to a town rich in basketball tradition.

Memorial, which finished 27-6 and 13-1 in 22-5A, handily defeated Dayton in the bi-district round. Against Texas City in the area round, Jyson Butler knocked down a three-point basket with 1.8 seconds left in the first overtime to even the score at 61, and scored four of the first five points of the second OT en route to a 68-64 win.

The Titans’ run ended in controversy against eventual state runner-up Fort Bend Marshall in the 5A Region III semifinals.

Butler again made a go-ahead jumper with 12 seconds left to put Memorial ahead 62-61, but a foul call on what appeared to be a vertical defensive play with no reach-in sent John Walker to the line for the tying and winning free throws with 2.4 seconds left.

 

10. Stroud earns first PGA win, goes on major run

Chris Stroud nearly took 300 starts on the PGA Tour to win a tournament.

After winning the Barracuda Championship in Reno, Nevada, via two-hole playoff on Aug. 6, Stroud said: “My whole body is shaking,” the Groves native said. “I was so calm all day but now I’m shaking.”

But the real fun began the next week in the PGA Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A year after fellow Groves product Andrew Landry’s U.S. Open run, Stroud surged into a third-place tie after weather delayed the completion of Round 2 into the third day. Stroud was one stroke behind Kevin Kisner through three rounds and had tied for the lead through nine holes, but a tough backstretch left him in a four-way tie for ninth, as Justin Thomas took home the Wanamaker Trophy.

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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews