With an eye on the future, GCHS Lady Buffs’ Hailey Enriquez will stay close to home

Little did she know that on May 16, 2019, the Class 6A regional championship would be the final time to don her Garden City High School Lady Buffs uniform. That was the day Hailey Enriquez and her Lady Buffs played host to Topeka High for a chance to land a berth in the state quarterfinals. But a late goal on a penalty kick by the Lady Trojans would result in a heartbreaking 1-0 setback that ended a season in which Enriquez and her teammates captured the Western Athletic Conference championship with a 5-0-3 record and an overall 11-2-5 mark.

One final season of baseball ends up as a lost chance for Carson Tanner

His final basketball season had just been completed with a sub-state basketball loss the first week of March. It was planning to be a normal transition into the spring sports and his senior year of playing baseball at Garden City High School. But things didn’t materialize that way for Carson Tanner, his three senior teammates and the rest of the Buffaloes’ baseball team and other spring sports squads as the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak stopped everything and everyone in their track.

Yaz Vargas misses final season to lead youthful Buffs softball

There was never a moment that Garden City High School softball coach Trina Moquett didn’t think Yazmin Vargas was going to be a standout player for her Buffaloes team. She was proven correct in her assessment of Vargas’ abilities when she first became the starting shortstop on a team that would finish third in the Class 6A state tournament for the program’s best performance there. Then, after three seasons of playing for Moquett, the speedy Vargas had established herself as one of the premier players in GCHS history.

Stars align with 4 Lady Buffs volleyball players becoming Lady Busters at GCCC

BUFFS ROUNDUP: Friday, April 17, 2020 VOLLEYBALL Sometimes things just have a way of working out. Sometimes the stars simply align themselves properly without any explanation. How else would you analyze the recent announcement of four starters off the 2019 Garden City High School volleyball team signing NJCAA letters-of-intent to play next season at Garden …

Having made tennis switch from doubles to singles, Buffs’ Morren misses final opportunity

When Nathan Morren walked off the courts at the 2019 Class 6A state tournament, he knew that his senior season in 2020 would look incrementally different. For more than one reason. He knew that he would no longer be playing doubles with his older brother, Tyler, who graduated in 2019 and headed off to Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Mich. The two had teamed up to produce a stellar 29-6 season record for the Garden City High School Buffaloes.

Jeremy Garcia’s hopes for state 400 medal dashed by spring cancellation

In a typical state high school championship track and field meet at Wichita State’s Cessna Stadium, it would be relatively easy to see who placed first through eighth in a single running event. Unless, of course, there was a need for a photo finish to determine which runner crossed the finish line first.

Lady Buffs’ swimmer Emma Dirks making the best of canceled season

Emma Dirks had been swimming for the better part of her youthful years, including her freshman, sophomore and junior seasons as a member of the Garden City High School Lady Buffs swim team. So it would be natural that she was looking forward to closing out her high school career with the sport that she loves most.

The last and lost spring sport for Buffs’ Kaylee Bridges

Kaylee Bridges knows what it feels like to be without a sport in which to compete. In the fall of her junior season at Garden City High School, Bridges suffered an Achilles injury that sidelined her for six months to recover just in time for the spring 2019 track and field season.

Buffs’ golfer Ortiz misses senior season, but eyes future with GCCC team

Noah Ortiz was excited about the prospects of his senior season on the Garden City High School golf team. After all, he had been playing his sophomore and junior seasons in the shadow of two-time Class 6A state champion Sion Audrain, who had graduated in 2019 and headed off to the University of Kansas to play for the Jayhawks. Ortiz had been an honorable mention all-Western Athletic Conference selection his junior year, highlighted by a medalist performance at the Ulysses Invitational and an eighth-place finish at the Class 6A regional tournament.