Jan. 11, 2026

Hanford Insider: Community Updates, MLK Day Celebration, And Local Sports Highlights

Hanford Insider: Community Updates, MLK Day Celebration, And Local Sports Highlights

Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode! A new year only counts if the community moves with it. We open the season by catching you up on City Hall’s biggest storyline, celebrating neighbors doing extraordinary work, and inviting you to a Martin Luther King Jr. gathering designed to bring Hanford together in a real, human way. First, Rob breaks down the city manager search—from 46 inquiries across seven states to a focused shortlist and why interim manager Chris Tavarez now stands...

Send me a text and give me feedback on this episode!

A new year only counts if the community moves with it. We open the season by catching you up on City Hall’s biggest storyline, celebrating neighbors doing extraordinary work, and inviting you to a Martin Luther King Jr. gathering designed to bring Hanford together in a real, human way.

First, Rob breaks down the city manager search—from 46 inquiries across seven states to a focused shortlist and why interim manager Chris Tavarez now stands as the lone candidate. We share what this means for continuity, accountability, and the upcoming council announcement. Then we zoom in on public space: Kings County Library’s multi‑million dollar renovation centered on ADA accessibility, HVAC, and plumbing upgrades. It’s practical, overdue, and vital for turning the library into a reliable, inclusive hub for students, families, and job seekers.

Our guests, Paula Massey and Carolyn Hudgens of Women with Visions Unlimited, bring heart and detail to the MLK Day celebration at the Hanford Civic Auditorium. Think breakfast community time at 9 a.m., a powerful 10 a.m. program with speakers, praise dancers, poets, musicians, plus information booths and craft vendors. They make a compelling case for why honoring Dr. King is a “people thing”—a chance to replace online division with face‑to‑face connection, memory, and shared purpose. We also shout out the Hanford Police Activities League Boxing Club for being named the top USA Boxing club by win percentage, a testament to discipline and community support.

Eric rounds it out with a full sports rundown: clutch Sierra Pacific boys wins, Hanford High and Hanford West navigating tough stretches, and girls’ basketball and soccer setting the tone for league play. It’s the kind of scoreboard that gets you into the stands and cheering for the kids you know.

If this resonated, share it with a neighbor, subscribe to the newsletter at HanfordInsider.com, and leave a rating so more locals can find the show. Have a tip, event, or result? Email HanfordInsider@gmail.com and tell us what deserves the spotlight next.

You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
Thank you for supporting the show!

00:01 - New Year Welcome And Show Overview

01:13 - Community News And City Manager Update

04:17 - Library Renovation And Accessibility Plans

04:52 - Community Calendar Highlights

04:57 - MLK Day Guests And Event Purpose

06:00 - Program Schedule And Activities

07:10 - Lessons, Unity, And Coming Together

08:26 - Event Details And How To Join

09:48 - Local Sports Roundup

14:29 - Support The Show And Stay Connected

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On this episode of the Hanford Insider, we'll get an inside look into the Martin Luther King Jr.

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celebration being held next Monday.

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Rob will get you caught up on the latest city council actions, we'll highlight some of this week's community events, and I'll be back with your sports report.

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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, january twelfth.

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Welcome to a brand new year, the Hanford Insider Podcast, the show that celebrates the people, places, and stories that make Hanford such a great place to call home.

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January is the time for fresh starts, new ideas, and looking ahead.

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And today we're kicking off the year by spotlighting what's happening right here in our community.

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Whether it's local events, inspiring neighbors, or stories you won't hear anywhere else, you're in the right place.

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I'm Rob Bentley.

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Thanks for starting your year with us.

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In community news this week, Hanford Winter Winterland wrapped up its fifth year on Sunday.

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Even though we had a lot of rain, Brad Albert informs me that only a handful of sessions were actually cancelled with no full day closures.

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I'm sure we'll get a full report from Brad Albert in the coming weeks.

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It'll be nice to see the park cleaned back up and ready for events in the spring.

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City crews have already started disassembling the decorations.

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Last Monday, members of the community were to have a chance to meet the finalist for the position of the new Hanford City Manager, replacing Mario Sofuentes, who resigned last summer to take a position in Arizona closer to his family.

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Stephanie Dietz, a consultant from Bob Murray and Associates, announced that after a nationwide search, they received 46 inquiries about the position and 30 applications from seven different states.

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But only nine of the applicants met the minimum qualifications.

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Council members reviewed those nine applicants and ended up selecting four of them to interview.

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Over the holidays, three of the four candidates removed themselves from consideration for personal or professional reasons.

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This left our current interim city manager Chris Tavares as the lone candidate.

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The City Council held a closed session on Tuesday morning to determine the next steps in the process, and they'll have an announcement at the January 20th City Council meeting.

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How about a huge congratulations to the Hanford Police Activities League Boxing Club?

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They were selected by the USA Boxing as the number one boxing club in the entire country based on win and loss records with an impressive 74.1% winning percentage.

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Keep up the great work, guys.

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Over the next few weeks, it's my goal to find some updates on current building projects in town.

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As you may have noticed, the fencing has gone up around the library for their big remodel.

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I was fortunate enough to have former library director Vicky Cervantes on the show back in 2024.

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And this is what she had to say about this massive project.

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For Kings County received just a little over$13 million to renovate the Hanford branch and the Lamar branch.

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And again, the grant funding from the state library is for critical maintenance.

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So that means that we're going to be making ADA improvements to the facilities from the parking lot in and to and inside the facility as well.

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Becoming ADA compliant facilities has always been very important to us.

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But now we can actually execute that.

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Also upgrading our HVAC system, our plumbing from, you know, it's dated, it's old, and really putting in that infrastructure that will allow us to continue to operate out of a county branch and move and move our services in a different direction to better serve our community.

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Let's take a look at this week's community calendar.

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This coming Monday is the Martin Luther King Jr.

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celebration at the Hanford Civic Auditorium.

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I'll have more on that in just a minute.

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The South Valley Winter Arts Association kicks off its 2026 competition season at Sierra Pacific High School on Saturday, January 24th.

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If you have an event coming up, large or small, and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.

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Send your information to HanfordInsider at gmail.com.

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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.

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It's the most comprehensive community calendar available.

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Coming up on January 19th is the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.

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birthday.

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And with us today, we have Paula Massey and Carolyn Hudgens with Women with Visions Unlimited.

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And we're very excited about this uh year's celebration.

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Welcome to the show, Paula.

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Well, thank you.

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Thank you for having us.

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So, Paula, what makes this celebration so special?

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Well, it's special because it's a celebration that we need at this time to remember uh who Dr.

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Martin Luther King was and what he did for all people.

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Um, you know, I have people calling me and I said, this is not a black thing.

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It's a people thing, it's a civil rights thing.

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And what we right now need more coming together.

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We need to remember some things that were happening during that time and what our parents, what our grandparents did together, and we need to pull together and see what we can do.

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With the event coming up on January 19th, Carolyn, I'm sure you've got a big schedule of things that are going to be happening.

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Can you kind of walk us through some of the special events that day?

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Oh, yes, absolutely.

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Um, that morning at nine o'clock from nine to ten, we do have the Breakfast Lions Club, which will be serving us breakfast.

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And um after that, we'll begin our great event uh with speakers, uh, praise dancers, uh, poets, musicians.

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You know, it's gonna be a good time uh for the community as a whole.

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And it's something that's very needed right now.

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Um, so people will be expressing their um uh their ideas toward Martin Luther King, his great accomplishments, uh his civil rights um uh activism.

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Um also we'll have uh informational booths there.

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Craft vendors will be there, so we'll have a host of vendors that'll be there so that people can see what's happening in the community.

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One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot recently is the discord in our country, and I think some lessons have been lost.

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Paula, would you agree?

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I do agree.

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Lessons have been lost.

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Um but I think that it could they could be remembered.

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If there's something that we could do, something that at this program that we can do to trigger trigger your mind, trigger your memory to go back and to remember the days of old.

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And I'm not talking about like 1960 or something like that, but like, you know, even when I first came here in 1983, it was a total different atmosphere.

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To me, I thought I was in Mayberry RFD.

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It was just a quaint little town.

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But, you know, people were nice, you know, we spoke and everything, you know, like that.

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So I think that this is gonna be important and I think bringing people together, especially with the breakfast that morning, you know, that's a time when you're eating, you can see people that you haven't seen in a while.

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And just the whole program.

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I remember there's a um there's a uh a brother that said, I think it was Buddy Jones that said that he when he was drumming, he asked people to come together.

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He says, Come together, let's gather around, gather around.

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He says, like a family.

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He said, a family doesn't separate themselves, but they come together.

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And that's what we have to be a family to come together.

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Certainly.

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Um, I think with the advent of social media, uh it's supposed to bring us together, but it's actually driven us a lot farther apart.

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Well, we're really excited about this uh ceremony and celebration on Monday, and and it's going to be held at the Hanford Civic Auditorium.

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Yes?

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Yes, Hamford Civic Auditorium, and um there will be breakfast.

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The breakfast will start at nine o'clock in the morning, and that'll go for about an hour, and then we'll start the program at 10 o'clock, and it's gonna be powerful.

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That's all that's all I can do is say it's gonna be powerful because I'm already excited about it.

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Just in putting it together, you know, our Carol and mine and my mind's coming together, it's gonna be explosive, and I'm excited about it.

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Well, I'm so glad that you put this event together.

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I would say annually, but we've had some bumps in the road lately.

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But it sounds like uh you're back on track, and this is going to be an annual event.

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Looking forward to seeing city leaders down there uh participating.

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And I I'm going to have this flyer um posted on the show notes so that my listeners can go ahead and listen and uh listen to the episode, and then they can actually click on the link and uh see the information that you've talked about just to kind of maybe even print it out and put it in their back pocket and share with friends.

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So thank you so much for joining us.

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I hope that this celebration is the best one yet.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for having us again.

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Thank you, Rob.

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And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.

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We'll start with boys basketball, where the Sierra Pacific boys are four and three in their last seven and sit at 11-7 on the year.

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The seven-game stretch was highlighted by a pair of close victories, a 66-61 win over Tularie Western in tournament action, and last Friday's back and forth 76-70 overtime win at Emanuel to start league play one and oh.

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A pair of league games versus Kingsburg and at CVC await this week for the Golden Bears before a Saturday non-league matchup with Stone Ridge Christian.

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The Hanford High Boys highlighted their winter break going 2-2 in tournament play, both victories in close fashion, 53-51 over Menache and 56-52 over Frontier.

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Last Friday's very hard-fought 64-62 loss to Dainuba got league play off to an 0-1 start, and the schedule this week doesn't get any easier with road games at Tularie Union and Taler Western.

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And it's been a tough stretch for the Hanford West boys who were winless in their last six.

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They'll be on the road this week at Washington Union and Exeter for a pair of league matchups.

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Over to Girls Basketball now, where the Sierra Pacific girls basketball team is five and three in their last eight, including a third place finish in the Glendora tournament over the winter break to improve to eight and eleven on the year.

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Unfortunately for the Golden Bears, a close 52-46 loss to Emmanuel on Friday got their league play off to an 0-1 start.

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A chance to bounce back this week at Hanford West on Monday before non-league action with Reidley and Bullard at home over the weekend.

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The Hanford West girls highlighted their winter break with a pair of tournament wins over Sunnyside and Exeter and will be in action this week against Sierra Pacific and Kerman.

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And the Hanford High girls will look to snap a six-game losing streak this week as they play at Tularie Union and Tularie Western in league action on Tuesday and Thursday with a non-league game at Redwood on Saturday.

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Out to soccer now will start with girls' soccer, where Hanford High finished non-league play with a 7-1-2 record, including six clean sheets with victories over Sierra Pacific 5-0 and Hanford West 7-0.

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Last week saw the start of league action as the Bullpups took down Dainuba on Friday 1-0 to improve to 1-0 in league.

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A trip down the 198 awaits this week with matches at Tularie Union and Tularie Western on Tuesday and Thursday.

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The Hanford West girls sit at 7-6-2 overall and 0-1 in league after a 2-1 defeat in Exeter last Thursday.

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The Huskies will host Sierra Pacific on Wednesday for the first of their two non-league matches before jumping back into league play versus Selma on Friday.

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And the Sierra Pacific girls sit at 5-5-2 on the year and will look at that match with Hanford West on Wednesday to snap their four-match winless streak, a draw with CVC to start league play, the only favorable result in their last four.

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League action resumes for the Golden Bears on Friday as they host Kingsburg.

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As for boys' soccer, after a slow start to the season, the Sierra Pacific boys have picked up momentum, winners of their last three and four-0-1 in their last five.

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Most recently, the Golden Bears picked up a four-to-one win at CVC to start League Play 1 0.

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Two tough league matches await this week, Tuesday versus Emmanuel and Thursday at Kingsburg.

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The Hanford High Boys were only in action twice over the last month, a 1-1 draw versus Hanford West and a 6-0 loss to Nanuba last week to start League Play 1-0.

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The Bullpups will play host to Taler Union and Taler Western on Tuesday and Thursday this week.

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And the Hanford West Boys soccer team are 1-1-1 in their last three, their first non-forfeit victory of the season coming back on December 17th with a 2-0 win over Leighton, then the 1-1 draw with the Bullpups, followed by a 6-0 defeat to Emmanuel to start League Action 0-1.

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The Huskies will face Washington Union in non-league action Tuesday before a league tilt with CBC on Thursday.

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As always, if you have a score report or a team update from any level, please let us know by emailing HanfordInsider at gmail.com.

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I'm Eric Bentley, and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.

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That's all the time we have for this week's show.

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Have a great week!