Today's Sports

One good turn might deserve another, but Jennifer Mooday was not the beneficiary of that good turn Saturday. Quite the opposite.
Mooday, a senior on the Los Alamos Hilltopper girls cross country team, was pointed in the wrong direction on one of the many loops during the first race of Saturday’s Los Lunas Invitational. Mooday, who had a sizeable lead at the time, lost out on that lead.
The bum steer may have cost Mooday an individual win at the race, hosted by the Class 4A Los Lunas Tigers, but the Hilltoppers as a team were hardly worse off for it.
Both the Hilltopper boys and girls picked up big victories at the meet. The Hilltopper girls finished with 20 points, far outdistancing runner up Santa Fe Indian School. The Hilltopper boys, meanwhile, just missed a perfect scoring, picking up 16 team points, paced by Sean Reardon’s individual victory and Nick Hill’s second place finish, less than a second behind.
Los Alamos’ boys started off the race a little too conservatively, said coaches Rob and Kathy Hipwood, but recovered well in the latter stages of the race.
Reardon and Hill were shoulder-to-shoulder through the bulk of the race, while Colin Hemez and Zak Kennison both finished within six seconds of the front-runners.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the end, it made sense that Yadier Molina and David Freese would work those key walks, and that Daniel Descalso and Pete Kozma would come through with those tying and go-ahead, two-run hits.
The names might change. Not the outcomes. This is what the St. Louis Cardinals do.
Pushed to the brink, they never blink.
Trailing by three runs before they recorded an out Friday night, then six before the third inning was over, and still behind when down to their last strike over and over again with two outs in the ninth inning, the defending World Series champions fashioned the sort of comeback they’ve made their specialty.
Waiting until after midnight to finally take the lead, the never-give-up Cardinals erased the biggest deficit ever overcome in a winner-take-all postseason contest and beat the Washington Nationals 9-7 in Game 5 of the NL division series.
“How did that happen?!” Carlos Beltran asked, speaking to no one in particular in the visiting clubhouse at Nationals Park.
Not long before that, a blue bin stuffed with ice and beer cans had been hurriedly wheeled from the Nationals’ side of the stadium to the Cardinals’ room. Yes, the Cardinals turn losses into wins — and then they steal the other guys’ bubbly, too.

BERNALILLO – A game against two evenly matched teams started as a nip-and-tuck affair, but ended in a rout.

And the routing team, the Los Alamos Hilltoppers, could be in a position at the end of this week to all but sewing-up the District 2-4A title.

Los Alamos opened its district title defense campaign Friday nigh at Spartan Field in Bernalillo, a place Los Alamos has struggled at in the past, to take on Bernalillo’s Spartans, one of three teams along with the Hilltoppers and Santa Fe’s Demons, that appear to have the best crack at earning the 2-4A championship.

The two teams matched each other’s running attack for a good share of the ballgame, but a 95-yard touchdown toss in the third quarter from Hilltopper Brice Van Etten to slotback Seth Drop broke the back of the Spartans.

The Spartans fell apart following the huge play, which put the Hilltoppers up by three scores at the time. The Hilltoppers would break open the game late, giving them a 34-0 victory on the road.

Hilltopper Arnoldo Ortiz, who led all rushers with 116 yards on the contest, said Los Alamos went into Bernalillo Friday ready to win.

It was an opportunity not many people get, but the Los Alamos Hilltopper girls soccer team took advantage of it Thursday night.

The Strongsville, Ohio, Mustangs, traveling through northern New Mexico this week, wanted to take in some local sights and sounds, as well as play some soccer.

Strongsville, however, is not just a bunch of ordinary tourists. It so happens to be the No. 1-ranked team prep team in the country.

Thursday, it dropped in for a visit to Sullivan Field to take on the Hilltoppers, one of the premier teams in the area.

Strongsville is a suburb of Cleveland and the Mustangs make annual treks to various places across the country. This year’s trip just happened to be through the area.

In the offseason, Mustangs’ head coach Jon Felton got in touch with girls soccer organizers in Taos and asked if his team could drop by for a visit. From Taos, Felton was connected with Hilltopper head coach Jiri Kubicek, who jumped at the chance for his team to host an elite program such as Strongsville.

In Thursday’s contest, the Hilltoppers had a solid showing, keeping pace with the Mustangs for most of the way despite having to play most of the contest a man down after drawing a first half red card.