Check out the front page - center story on espn.com!!!

http://espn.com

I haven't read it yet - but wow!

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=nazareth

kudos for the recognition that everyone in/from the Panhandle knows about - girls bball in Nazareth!

A lot of good things, but a lot of horses**t, too. The selective pictures of the old abandoned farmsteads, the "water is going to run out in 5 years B.S. (I've heard that since 1970).

What in Hades is a "fertilizer shirt"? What does he mean "the corn won't rise"???

Texas Panhandle nights dark? I guess so, on a moonless, cloudy night. Tell him to come back on a clear night when he'll see more stars than he knew existed, or a full moon night when he can read a newspaper by moonlight.

Biggest horse manure of all: "This land should have never been farmed"

The basketball parts of that article were really cool. My mom talks about playing against Nazareth in the mid-70's at the regional tournament in Levelland. She was on a couple of the last teams other than Nazareth to get to go to state from that region before Naz started their run in '77.

Their guys have always been tough too. They beat us out of going to state in the regional championship game when I was in the 8th grade - our only loss of the season

All the other parts about the doom and gloom of living in the panhandle were pure crap though. The whole "this land should've never been farmed" thing really got me too. Obviously utilizing the land for the largest cotton patch in the US was a huge mistake.

The story is good. I happen to be from another small town dominated by girls b-ball but back to my point. I disagree with you CanyonAg. Water is running out and it is running out fast. My parents have a housewell that was forcasted to last a 100 years when drilled in 1975 and they have drilled another well due to that one running dry. My father farms and places that used to be irrigated are now dryland because the wells will not even allow for 2 or 3 rows to be irrigated over 24 hours. Many of his places hardly have enough water for cattle anymore and that is sad. Areas of the Panhandle and High Plains are in trouble. You may have water in one place but 5 miles down the road you may not. That is the problem. I just encourage everyone to remember that groundwater on the High Plains is a non-renewable natural resource and think about that next time you see water running down the streets or sidewalks.

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Biggest horse manure of all: "This land should have never been farmed"

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My farming cousins from Henry County, Iowa, used to say almost the same thing on those rare occasions when they would visit us in the Panhandle

Actually, they were fairly impressed with the ability of Texas farmers to get a marketable yield ...

I am from Nazareth

The story was good and it's always great to get recognition like that.

Some of the story was a little overdone, but, articles like that usually are.

I grew up in Hart and we farmed near Naz.

I thought it was a great article. I have always been so impressed with the people there. We used to laugh about the lights in the Gym; they were on year round. And you could here the thump, thump, thump, of the basketballs inside.

We started running low in the early '80s on water. But the guy farming the place now has pivot points and seems to be doing ok. But if you go East from there you run out of water very quickly. These places were once very good irrigated farms.

Dark nights? I can remember driving the back roads from Hart to Nazareth to buy beer and never turning the head lights on because of the brilliance of the stars and moon.

Of coarse we were wearing our "fertilizer shirts" at the time.

I played against the Nazareth mens b-ball team all through high school for Farwell. Obviously their gym is small but as soon as you walk in the first thing you see is the trophy case stocked with trophys, b-ball nets, and state titles. Their gym wall is covered in state title banners. It was intimidating. Their football team was good EVERY YEAR and I have much respect for that town.

I'm aware of the water problems, believe me. I've been farming in Randall and Hale counties since 1979. The "5 years" is garbage, though.

Yes, we are mining the aquifer, but there is some recharge, and the irrigation efficiencies are much, much better than even 10 years ago.

But the problems vary widely across the Ogalalla. Some areas are dry, some have tons of water. There is even some recharge occuring.

And I remember the predictions used to be that we'd run out of water by 1980.

Joe Lombard at Canyon won several titles with the girls team at Naz in the late 1970s. When he was there coaching class B (now called "A" ), his wife Babs was coaching class A (now called "AA" ) at Hale Center.

They faced each other in at least one tournament, and I believe Babs won. That was probably the year they both won the state tournament.

Back then, Panhandle teams often swept the tournament in all classes. The annual Christmas "Queens Classic" tournament in Plainview was one of the best BB tournaments in the state. Naz and Hale Center often beat the AAA and AAAA teams that came to the tournament, including Dallas South Oak Cliff, an all-black high school. Lots of culture shock going on both sides of the ball there.

Babs teaches Jr. High English now. When Joe first came to Canyon, he coached girls Cross Country. They put together a string of 5 state championships in that, too. I think Lombard has something like 18 state titles of all sorts under his belt.

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 2/8/2007 11:12p).]

Trivia question:

What year did girls basketball in Texas switch from half-court to full-court?

I don't know when it switched, but my grandmother was on one of the half-court championship teams.

60's?

I know it was A LOT earlier than Oklahoma.

I am probably really showing my ignorance

My friends all played 6v6, so after 1973.

I seem to recall they were still playing 6v6 1/2 court well into the mid-1970s. I'm thinking it was 1979 or thereafter ... CHS girls won the state championship in 1978 but were out of the running for a few years after that (I'm thinking it was in part due to the change to full-court, plus the coach leaving) ...

I watched 6v6 as a kid, so it had to go into the mid 70's

there are places north and west of Naz that never had irrigation to begin with...and are farmed "dryland"...they are still being farmed, so I assume they are at least paying the bills or they would convert it back into pastureland

Google Maps aerial view of Naz

Every circle is an irrigation system. Some of the other fields are irrigated, too.

The dry area seems to be mostly to the north, between Tule creek and Tierra Blanca creek.

Back to the Queen's Classic.

It was one of the great tourney's alright.

I remember watching 5'3' - 5'9" Naz girls playing the 5'10" - 6'2" Dallas Oak Cliff girls.

Classic games. Naz came out on top many times.

The representatives of the Panhandle were so quick and fundamental under Coach Lombard. The Dallas girls could not keep up with the quickness.

There was also the fact that they had been playing together since 1st grade.

Great tradition there in Nazareth.

CanyonAg....if you move your map up to the point that Arney shows up....it looks to be about 10 miles north of Naz...1075 runs east and it is a county road to the west....much of that land is dryland and to the best of my knowledge,much of it from there on north is also dry....though I haven't spent much time in the area in many years

that google map is amazing, but they must have thrown a bullseye with that dart to catch that much of the area green

Funny thing about those maps, at different zooms, you sometimes have different photo sets. While my Naz link is green, when you zoom in, some areas are obviously taken in winter.

Do you notice that a lot of the dry areas are around creeks? My guess is that the creeks cut into the caprock. This allows the aquifer to drain via springs and deplete it faster near the creeks.

I've got a place within a mile of Tierra Blanca creek. The redbed (bottom of the Ogallalla) is at about 112 feet, and I have a saturated thickness of only 10-15 feet.

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 2/12/2007 4:40p).]

we had a place out in the area (not on a creek) I described and if I remember right, the depth of the redbed was about what yours was....I was a kid when we drilled the well, so I could be off...but the well would only pump about 3 gallons a minute...just enough for a house and the cattle