Schools 
There must be something in the Gatorade cooler at Harker Heights, because for the second straight week a Knights boys basketball player has been voted the KDHPressbox.com Player of the Week.
A Harker Heights basketball player has won four straight player of the week awards with Thomas Cherry winning it two of the prior three weeks and Brianna Freeman winning it in between Cherry’s victories.
C.J. Rodriguez, who averaged 14 points-per-game in victories over Ellison and Temple, is the most recent after he received 605 votes to win the online poll.
Rodriguez was thrilled to discover his name was added to the growing list of the Harker Heights player of the week honorees.
“I’ve seen other teammates win it before, and I had to wait my turn. Now that I got it. It feels really good,” Rodriguez said.
He attributed the large quantity of votes to a multitude of sources, but Rodriguez was not one.
“I didn’t (vote). I saw that I was on there (KDHpressbox.com) and texted (former player) Royce O’Neale’s mom, Deb (Kingwood), and she got a lot of votes and put my name out there. (The Basketball community) pulled together,” he said.
The Knights have won 11 games in a row and own a season record of 22-6 and are tied with A&M Consolidated atop District 12-5A at 9-1.
The streak started at the M.T. Rice tournament and has continued through district play.
All the more impressive is the way they’ve been winning. Only three victories during the streak have been by less than 10 points — the other eight have been by more than 15.
Rodriguez credits time and team work.
“We have been playing better defense. Our man-to-man defense has improved so much. Plus we are coming together as a team, sharing the ball, and winning games,” he said.
Harker Heights puts their win streak on the line 7 p.m. tonight, when they travel to College Station to take on co-district leader A&M Consolidated. The Knights beat the Tigers at home on Jan. 10 by 16 points.
Salado’s Koby Spears finished second with 315 votes. He averaged 17.5 point-per-game in his team’s two wins against Lampasas and Taylor. Killeen’s Jasmine Goodwine and Belton’s Cameron Cooper were also nominated.
Goodwine averaged 27 points per game for the Lady Roos, as they won games against San Angelo Lake and Waco Midway. Cooper scored two goals and tallied three assists for the Tigers as they won all three games in the Round Rock ISD tournament.
