As the fall sports at Bakersfield College come to an end, it’s time to look back and see how we have faired. Overall, I’ll give BC sports a solid B-plus for this semester.

I think this fall semester has been a lot better than last year’s, and it’s not just because of the football team making the State Championship game. When you look at the overall picture, you can see that mostly every sport has improved from last season to this season.

If you look at volleyball last year they made the playoffs and had a pretty good season, but this year’s team has played with much better consistency so I give them a B-plus and probably would get an A if L.A. Pierce didn’t exist. They probably would’ve gone undefeated if not for Pierce.

They lost to them four times and one of the losses against Pierce caused them to have a letdown against Citrus College, but they’ve been able to bounce back from those losses and are making a deep run in the playoffs and possibly looking at another shot to finally beat Pierce in the postseason.

The cross-country team had itself a pretty good year, so I give them a B. The men’s team was able to make Regionals, while the women made it even further by making it to State. I would like to have seen the women place a little higher in State, but several of them improved their times, so they did well.

The wrestling team is heading toward the end of the year and so far I got to give them a B-minus. They definitely have performed better as a team than last season. Most of it has to do with the fact that they had more wrestlers, and it looks like they are starting to hit their stride at the end of the season.

The women’s soccer team gets a C-plus. They started off the season looking pretty good at 5-2, but then they hit a string of bad performances losing four straight. Overall, I thought they performed pretty well. They were able to finish over .500 with a pretty young team, and forward Morgan Butterbredt shined in her first year at BC. If they had been more consistent in their play and not lost too many games in a row, I think they would’ve made the playoffs.

The women’s golf team gets a C-plus. They were very limited as far as players but managed to qualify one of the golfers to Regionals. Even though they didn’t have many players, I would’ve really liked to see them qualify to Regionals as a team and not just one golfer, so hopefully they will be able to do that next year.

Finally, let’s talk some BC football.

They deserve an A, not just for how far they’ve made it in the playoffs, but for how they responded after starting 2-2 and losing to Ventura in a four-overtime game. It really says a lot about the character of this year’s team and the ability of the coaches to keep them believing that they can still make a run in the postseason.

These fall sports teams have definitely started the year well for BC. Hopefully, men’s and women’s basketball can keep it up through the Winter.