Sports

EARL WATT

    • Leader & Times

Liberal returned to Brent Gould Filed Sunday and Monday for a two-game series with Western Nebraska after completing a five-game road trip and came away with a sweep.

The Bee Jays started the road trip with a non-league game at Dodge City and came away with an 8-6 win.

The Bee Jays headed to Western Nebraska for a two-game set and won the first game 12-6 before dropping the second game of the series 12-7.

EARL WATT

   • Leader & Times

One rocky inning in the season opener led to a loss for the Liberal Bee Jays to kick off the 2024 season, but better outings at the plate led to back-to-back wins in the final two games of the opening series for a 2-1 start to the season.

Liberal kicked off the season Saturday but only played three-and-a-half innings before a lightning delay and rain led to the game being postponed.

EARL WATT

   • Leader & Times

Liberal completed its athletic season for the school year Saturday at the Kansas State Track Meet in Wichita.

The boys 4X400 meter relay was the highlight with a third place finish with the team’s record time of the season in back-to-back weeks.

Bentley Fitzgerald qualified for State in the 400 meter dash but finished 12th in the preliminaries with a time of 1:01.51.

EARL WATT

    • Leader & Times

Grasshopper Soccer was Emmanuel Ortuño’s first experience with the game of soccer during his childhood in Liberal. He then played Kids Inc. and participated on traveling teams. He moved on to middle school and high school before becoming the first-ever soccer player to sign for Seward County Community College.

His journey with the game took him beyond Kansas and beyond the United States, and now Ortuño is chasing his dream of not only being a professional soccer player but also playing against some of the best soccer players on the planet.