Nashville likely to be site for regional, state hoops

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    Darius Hopkins scores for the Scrappers during their 72-43 victory over Prescott Dec. 15 at the Scrapper Arena.

    By John R. Schirmer
    News-Leader staff

    Nashville has submitted bids to the Arkansas Activities Association to host the Class 4A state basketball tournament, Class 4A South regional basketball and Class 4A state softball and baseball.

    Superintendent Doug Graham and Athletic Director James “Bunch” Nichols will attend the AAA meeting in Little Rock Thursday to make Nashville’s case for being selected as a site for the events.

    If the 4A state basketball tournament is awarded to another school, Nashville and Kirby have entered a bid to host the Class 1A state tournament, Graham said. Kirby Superintendent Pike Palmer will attend the meeting with Graham and Nichols.

    “Our priority is to secure the 4A state tournament,’ Graham said. “There are six or seven arenas in 4A. It will be highly competitive.”

    Graham said the Class 4A South regional basketball tournament went to Dumas last year. “We hope to return it to the west this time. We will aggressively try to get the regional.”

    Regional softball and baseball will go to the east this year, Graham said. “We didn’t bid on them” because they were in the west last year. “We did bid on 4A state baseball and softball.”

    There are two things going against Nashville’s prospects of securing state baseball and softball, according to Graham. “State softball has been at Mena the last two years. Baseball was at Ashdown last year. And there’s one school with a superintendent on the board. We’ll go to Little Rock and put our best foot forward to get one or all of the events. We have great facilities. We want to bring great competition to south Arkansas.”

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