By EDWARD SEVERN, Staff Writer
The Lyford Lady Bulldogs will play host to the last tournament of the season starting today.
The Lady Bulldogs, who are (8-0) in district play this season, have walked through their IDEA-heavy district so far. Donna IDEA gave them a game, only losing 50-39.
“The tournaments are really important for us because of how big our district is,” Lady Bulldogs coach Teresa Gutierrez said. “We play 20 district games, so we can only schedule one non-district game.”
They play Donna IDEA again in the middle of January with the district title on the line. In the meantime, the Lady Bulldogs need competition and they will get that during the next few days.
“The girls get to shake the rust off after having the last few days off of not being able to play,” Gutierrez said. “Being able to play a lot of games these next few days is big for us also because our district is not the toughest. We get to test ourselves during these tourneys.”
Plenty of East Valley schools will participate in the tourney, including Port Isabel, Brownsville IDEA Frontier, Santa Maria, Santa Rosa, Riverview, La Feria and Raymondville.
Harvest Christian headlines teams from the west side of the Rio Grande Valley.
“We make huge sacrifice to put this tournament on,” Gutierrez said. “It is the holidays, and our coaches will be busy all day these next few days to help put this tournament on, but it is really needed for our program to have success this season.”
La Feria and Brownsville IDEA Frontier will start off the tournament at 8:30 a.m. Host Lyford will take on Progreso at 1 p.m.