Karin Mowry’s softball season ended with a series of awards and rankings among the national batting leaders.
The Baptist Bible College junior from Elk Lake was named Colonial States Athletic Conference Co-Player of the Year. She finished in the top 25 in the country in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III statistics in four categories and in the top 100 in two others.
Mowry finished 12th in batting average at .493. She was also 16th in runs per game with 53 during Baptist Bible’s 22-21 season for an average of 1.2. She was 19th in fewest strikeouts (3 in 143 at-bats) and 25th in on-base percentage (.538).
Mowry had 22 stolen bases in 26 attempts to rank 60th with 0.54 stolen bases per game. She was 98th with four triples.
The list of Mowry’s awards also included a selection to the CSAC All-Academic Team along with Kim Caines, another Elk Lake graduate. All-Academic honors go to athletes with grade point averages of 3.2 or higher. Mowry is majoring in sports ministries. Caines is majoring in health and physical education.
Mowry was a second-team National Christian College Athletic Association All-American and a first-team CSAC all-star.
Mowry also drove in 33 runs and had eight doubles and two home runs.
Caines, a sophomore outfielder, batted .154 in 18 games, including 16 starts.
A recap of the spring college season for other athletes from Susquehanna County:
DIVISION I
Erin Keene closed out her career as the top home run hitter for the Cornell University softball team that reached the Ivy League playoffs.
Keene, a third baseman and clean-up hitter, had eight home runs while batting .280. She made 44 starts and drove in 26 runs, the second-best total on the team. She was also second on the team with a .497 slugging percentage.
The senior from Blue Ridge finished fourth in the Ivy League in home runs. She hit one in a win over Ivy League champion Harvard and had a grand slam against Hartford.
Cornell went 15-5 in the Ivy League and 25-23 overall.
Brooke Darling was the top pitcher at Columbia University as a freshman.
The Elk Lake graduate was the 2011 Susquehanna County Transcript Athlete of the Month.
Darling led the pitching staff in games (32), starts (24), complete games (17) and earned run average (4.03). She allowed 224 hits and 67 walks while striking out 83 in 151 innings pitched.
Columbia went 6-14 in the Ivy League and 12-33 overall.
Julia Koloski was 13th out of 17 competitors in the Big East Championship in the triple jump while competing for the University of Pittsburgh.
Koloski was a sophomore from Montrose.
Syracuse’s Sean Carney placed fifth in the Cornell Big Red Invitational with a season-best time of 1:55.80 in the 800-meter run.
Carney, a freshman from Elk Lake, also ran the 800 for the Syracuse indoor team in the winter.
DIVISION II
Kutztown’s Sarah Kimsey, a sophomore from Montrose, finished seventh in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Championships in the triple jump with 36-2 3⁄4.
California’s Laurie Hall was eighth in the PSAC in the 1500-meter run in 4:44.87. She also placed 15th at 3000 meters.
Laurie Hall, a senior, was one of three distance runners from Blue Ridge on the California roster. Junior Megan Kleiner and freshman Allison Hall, Laurie’s sister, were the others.
Cody DeBoer, a junior from Montrose, was ninth in the men’s long jump at the PSAC Championships.
DIVISION III
Susquehanna graduates Brent Keyes and Kirk Fallon, both seniors, were named to the winter and spring CSAC All-Academic team in both basketball and golf. They were part of Marywood University’s first golf team.
Dan Downton, another senior from Susquehanna, helped the Marywood baseball team (22-19) to its best season ever.
The senior designated hitter/catcher drove in 16 runs while batting .270 in 35 games, including 34 as a starter.
Jared Conklin, a sophomore thrower from Blue Ridge, was a CSAC track and field all-star for Keystone College.
Conklin set school records in the shot put (49-4 1⁄4) and hammer throw (158-11) in addition to the discus record (137-4) he set in his freshman season.
Forest City graduate Mike Kubus and Montrose graduate Brackney Brotzman also competed for the Keystone track teams as middle distance runners.
JUNIOR COLLEGE
Lackawanna College’s Dustin Barton tied for the lowest one-round score in the country this year in National Junior College Athletic Association Division II golf.
Barton shot 4-under-par, 68 while winning the individual title at the Brookdale Invitational Tournament in New Jersey while helping the Falcons to a school record team total of 288 and the team championship.
The Susquehanna graduate also broke 80 in three of four rounds at the NJCAA Division II Championship. He shot 79-77-92-79 for a 39-over-par, 327. He was 105th out of 128 players in the field. Lackawanna finished 18th.
TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column for the Susquehanna County Transcript. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com.
STEWART IS “SMOKIN”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Tony Stewart pulled off a victory in Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sprint Cup race by making a stunning last-lap pass around Matt Kenseth.
“I wish I could explain it,” said Stewart, who has five restrictor-plate victories in Sprint Cup, with four coming at Daytona. “The great thing about restrictor-plate racing is that 43 cars all have the same shot at winning the race, but that’s also part of what makes it frustrating, too. It’s just being at the right place at the right time, and when those last two big wrecks happened, we were in the right spot. We were ahead of them both times.”
Stewart took the lead on lap 131 after a multi-car accident in turn four and led for 21 laps before relinquishing the spot to the duo of Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle on lap 152. When another massive crash set up a two-lap dash to the finish, Stewart regained the lead on the final lap with an impressive drive around Biffle and Kenseth off turn two and down the backstretch.
Tony Stewart celebrates his Daytona Cup win
As Stewart and the leaders approached the finish line, a massive wreck broke out that claimed the cars driven by Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, Marcos Ambrose, David Gilliland, David Ragan, Juan Montoya, and Trevor Bayne.
Jeff Burton finished behind Stewart in the runner-up spot as the race ended under caution, while Kenseth, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman rounded out the top-five. Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Brad Keselowski, Michael Waltrip and Bobby Labonte comprised the remainder of the top-10.
Kurt Busch, winner of Friday night’s Nationwide race was involved in a multi-car accident on lap 92, which proved to be the beginning of the end of the bid by the 2004 Sprint Cup champion for his second victory in as many nights at the 2.5-mile superspeedway and led to a disappointing 35th-place finish.
Jimmie Johnson wound up with a DNF after his car spun into the inside wall on lap 125, finishing 36th.
Top-12 Chase contenders after 18 of 36: 1. Kenseth-676, 2. Earnhardt-651, 3. Biffle-632, 4. Johnson-618, 5. Stewart-592, 6. Harvick-586, 7. Hamlin-584, 8. Truex-584, 9. Keselowski-572, 10. Bowyer-572, 11. Edwards-541, 12. Kyle Busch-516.
KURT BUSCH CAPTURES NATIONWIDE RACE
Kurt Busch left Daytona Friday night with total satisfaction, after winning the Nationwide race in a battered orange-colored Chevrolet that lacked even one sponsor.
With a strong push from defending series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Busch took the checkered flag in a wild race that ended with Austin Dillon wrecking in the tri-oval as Busch crossed the finish line.
“I showed up at the shop on Tuesday, and we talked about how our Kentucky week went, what we could have done better,” Busch said. “I went out back in the fab (fabrication) shop, and they were wrapping on both of our cars, this fluorescent orange color. And I'm like, 'What's going on?'
“It's just the energy James Finch has for Daytona. He wanted his cars orange, so they could be seen up front, so that car could be recognized without a sponsor on it. And we drove an unsponsored car into Victory Lane tonight. I was just being my normal sarcastic self on the radio, and I said, 'The Great Pumpkin is here, and the Great Pumpkin isn't going to lift coming to the checkered flag.' “
Stenhouse came home second, followed by Michael Annett, who was pushing Dillon during a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race one lap beyond its scheduled distance of 100 laps.
As the action intensified over the final quarter-mile, Dillon slid sideways across the stripe in fourth place, with Joey Logano and series leader Elliott Sadler taking fifth and sixth, respectively. The top-five for Logano, the series' top winner with five victories this season, took a sour turn in post-race inspection when his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was ruled too low in front. Penalties for the No. 18 team are possible early next week.
Danica Patrick was involved in a late race accident and finished 31st. Johanna Long, the other female driver was 12th.
Top-10 leaders after 16 of 33; 1. Sadler-591, 2. A. Dillon-589, 3. Stenhouse-573, 4. Hornish-556, 5. Allgaier-519, 6. Annett-496, 7. Whitt-488, 8. Bliss-427, 9. Patrick-383, 10. Malsam-369.
ARE MORE CAUTIONS NEEDED
Bruton Smith said NASCAR needs to implement mandatory cautions, or race stoppages, to bring more excitement to the races, but top NASCAR officials said, “Not so fast.”
“Call it what you want, but you've got to have caution flags,” Smith said last week. “That creates excitement. You can't just sit there with nothing happening. It ruins the event. It's damaging to our sport.
“Cautions flags and caution laps are down this year in NASCAR. Many races this season have produced long green-flag runs without a lot of passing up front.”
Smith said NASCAR needs to deliberately create more double-file restarts. NASCAR made a rule change in 2009 that moved all the lead-lap cars to the front of the field, double-file, on all restarts after a caution flag. Those restarts often cause bumping late in races, and sometimes additional accidents. Smith said he wouldn't mind seeing a pseudo halftime at each race to cause an additional restart.
“I'd rather have that than some mysterious debris caution,” Jeff Gordon said. “The integrity of racing is about letting the race play out, and sometimes that's the most exciting finish, sometimes it's not. Trying to get in the middle of that can be challenging. If you're going to do it, it's got to be something planned in advance, and you take a break. I'm not totally against it.”
Meanwhile NASCAR CEO Brian France met the media at Daytona to assess the sport as the season hits the halfway mark. But France was firm in saying there is no intention of creating mandatory caution periods for TV timeouts.
France said there is a possibility of more events being shortened in an effort to enhance competition and create better racing.
“Our product on the track is exciting, and sports is a true reality show in how it unfolds as an event,” NASCAR President Mike Helton said. “You have to be careful when you think about artificially creating the outcome of that.”
Greg Biffle seemed to offer the prevailing attitude of most drivers.
"I would not be against it if the races continue to run green the whole way with one or two cautions,” Biffle said. “I think over time that could lose the fans' interest sitting in the stands and watching on TV. That's not what we want.”
Weekend Racing: The Cup and Nationwide teams are at New Hampshire Speedway, while the trucks will be racing at the seven-eighths mile Iowa Speedway.
Sat., July 14, Nationwide New England 200, race 17 of 33; Starting time: 2:30 pm ET; TV: ESPN.
Sat., July 14, Camping World Trucks Iowa 200, race 9 of 22; Starting time: 8 pm ET; TV: SPEED.
Sun., Sprint Cup Lenox Tools 301, race 19 of 36; Starting time: Noon ET; TV: TNT.
Racing Trivia Question: Which Cup team has the most wins at Daytona Speedway?
Last Week's Question: How many Cup championships did Dale Jarrett win? His single championship came in 1999.
You may contact the Racing Reporter at hodges@race500.com.
Jackie Furch was the top returning hitter on a Blue Ridge softball team that lost seven starters to graduation.
She had less varsity experience as a pitcher, but it was there where she was relied on to keep a young Raiders team competitive.
Furch kept up her hitting production while striking out well over 100 batters – more than one per inning – to make the Raiders the only Susquehanna County spring high school team to extend its season past May.
For her efforts in leading Blue Ridge to its annual appearance in the District 2 Class A championship game, Furch has been selected as the Susquehanna County Transcript Athlete of the Month for June.
“I knew it was going to be tough, but we wanted to make it as far as we could,” said Furch, who went to pitching clinics in New York State to prepare for the season.
Jackie Furch
Blue Ridge completed the regular season with a 6-8 record then topped Forest City, 11-1, in the district quarterfinals.
A 5-2 win over MMI Prep put the Raiders into the district championship game where they lost, 4-1, to Northwest.
Furch had 12 strikeouts in a five-hitter against MMI. She was the only Blue Ridge player with two hits in the game and also scored two of the team’s runs.
“Our hitting came together,” Furch said of the semifinal in which Blue Ridge scored three first-inning runs. “And, our defense was really solid that game.”
Furch struck out seven and repeatedly worked out of trouble in the district final. She also drove in the only Blue Ridge run.
Furch plans to continue playing softball at Penn State-Hazleton.
While at Blue Ridge, Furch was also a four-year varsity basketball player and a starter the past two years. She played soccer as a freshman and sophomore.
Jackie is the daughter of Greg and Nicole Furch of Hallstead.
