LEHMAN TOWNSHIP – Blue Ridge was the only Susquehanna County team to qualify for the District 2 Class AA Dual Meet Wrestling Championships before losing in the quarterfinals Friday night.
The Raiders lost their first match of the tournament, 47-24, to Hanover Area.
Lackawanna League Division 2 champion Western Wayne defeated Lake-Lehman, 38-28, in Saturday night’s Class AA championship as part of a doubleheader at Pittston Area. In the other match, Lackawanna League Division 1 champion Delaware Valley won the Class AAA title with a 48-9 rout of Wyoming Valley West.
Edward Gorick and Dalton Hogle won bouts on the match for Blue Ridge Friday.
After Zach Edwards picked up a forfeit at 132 pounds, Gorick defeated Matt Izen, 6-2, at 138 to give the Raiders an early 9-0 lead.
The match was tied again at 15-15 after Justin Carpenter’s forfeit win at 170.
After Hanover Area clinched the victory, Hogle edged Shane Elick, 4-2, at 120 pounds and Troy Maby picked up a forfeit at 126.
Blue Ridge’s wrestling program includes athletes from Susquehanna in a cooperative sponsorship.
The Raiders qualified for the tournament by finishing second in Division 2 of the Lackawanna League.
The final standings were: Western Wayne 5-0, Blue Ridge 4-1, Scranton Prep 2-3, Montrose 2-3, Lackawanna Trail 2-3, Elk Lake 0-5.
WEEK IN REVIEW
Goaltenders from the two nearest professional hockey teams, each with a history of success, received the latest two periodic awards from the American Hockey League with more strong performances.
Brad Thiessen of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the 2010-11 Aldege “Baz” Bastien Memorial Award winner as the AHL Goaltender of the Year, is the league’s latest Goaltender of the Month. He went 5-2 with three shutouts, a 1.36 goals against average and .940 save percentage in January.
Thiessen turned around his season after going winless in five decisions in December.
Robin Lehner of the Binghamton Senators, the 2011 Calder Cup Playoffs MVP, won the AHL Player of the Week award for the period ending January 27. Lehner was 2-0 with a shutout, an 0.92 GAA and .975 save percentage to help Binghamton reach the all-star break with the league’s best record.
Chad Kolarik, a new acquisition by the Penguins led the Eastern Conference with two goals during a 7-6 loss to the Western Conference in the AHL All-Star Classic January 28 in Providence, R.I.
Ryan Hamilton of the Toronto Marlies had a hat trick, including the game-winning goal with 11.2 seconds left.
In high school basketball, after a week of Coaches vs. Cancer benefit games worked into the league schedule, the same two boys’ and two girls’ teams that fought for first-half titles emerged on top of the second-half standings.
Elk Lake (3-0) leads Montrose (2-0) in Lackawanna League Division 4 boys after beating the Meteors in a playoff for the first-half title.
Montrose rallied in the fourth quarter to defeat Susquehanna, 61-56.
First-half champion Montrose and Forest City are each 2-0 in Lackawanna Division 4 girls.
LOOKING BACK
Montrose graduate Chris Snee delayed offseason hip surgery in order to be able to play in the Pro Bowl for the fourth time in five years January 27.
Snee did not play in the Pro Bowl last season because the New York Giants were on their way to the second Super Bowl title in his career.
Snee started for the National Football Conference and played both guard positions during the NFC’s 62-35 rout of the AFC in Hawaii.
COLLEGE CORNER
Lauren Findley, a senior from Blue Ridge, has worked primarily as a sprinter during her career at Division I Rider University.
Findley has moved toward longer distances so far this indoor track and field season.
After running distances between 60 and 800 meters in her first three seasons, Findley has run between 400 and 1000 meters this season.
Findley was part of the fifth-place 1600 relay in the season-opening Blue-White Invitational at Monmouth and placed 10th in the 800. She started, but did not finish, the 1000 meters in the team’s first dual meet.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Montrose will be at Forest City Tuesday, Feb. 12 in a Lackawanna League Division 4 girls’ basketball game. The teams finished 1-2 in the standings in the first half of league play.
In professional hockey, the Binghamton Senators will be at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins Tuesday, Feb. 12 in an AHL game.
TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column for the Susquehanna County Transcript. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com or followed on Twitter at @tomjrobinson.
LEONARD WOOD, NASCAR PIONEER
The 2013 NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held Fri., Feb. 8, in Charlotte, NC.
Buck Baker, Cotton Owens, Herb Thomas, Rusty Wallace and Leonard Wood are the five inductees
Leonard Wood joins his older brother Glen Wood, the fabled Wood Brothers No. 21 racing team’s original driver and owner.
“He’s the most dedicated, talented all-around mechanic NASCAR has ever seen,” said Wood’s nephew, Len, co-owner of the current Wood Brothers team. “He fit the term ‘chief mechanic.’ He could do anything with the car.”
Leonard Wood in 1967, working as a tire changer. Furnished by Wood Bros. Racing
In 990 races as a crew chief for the No. 21 Ford and Mercury cars, he won 96 times. His cars also won 117 poles. After Glen stepped out of the cockpit, Leonard worked with some of the sport’s greatest drivers including David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones.
In a recent interview, Dale Jarrett, former Wood Brothers driver and current ESPN analyst, called Wood, “One of the smartest people to come through this sport, especially early on. They had so many ideas from the pit crew to other things that people don’t even know about, under the hood so to speak, that Leonard Wood was kind of in charge of making it happen.”
He sat by as his father, Walter, tore down the engine from the team’s first race car. Later, when the time had come to freshen it, Leonard – then in high school – volunteered for the task, which was done to perfection.
“It kind of blows your mind that somebody that young could do that,” said Glen Wood, noting that in the early days the chief mechanic was exactly that – a jack of all trades from fabricator to shock and spring specialist to engine builder. “He just learned by himself and he did it really well – anything he did. I could always depend on him. If the car wasn’t working right, I’d go off somewhere and sit while he worked on it. When I came back, it would be in winning shape.”
Pit stops weren’t a big part of NASCAR’s early years when many races were held on half-mile dirt tracks at distances of 200 and 250 laps. But the advent of longer races on superspeedways – Darlington Raceway followed by Daytona, Charlotte and Atlanta – significantly broadened the sport’s boundaries. With multiple stops necessary to add fuel, change tires and make adjustments, the Woods quickly recognized that less time spent on pit road meant fewer rivals to pass on the race track.
The model Leonard Wood established was copied by all other teams.
In the early years, floor jacks weighing 70 to 80 pounds were used to lift the race cars. They also required a strong man to pump the handle – up to 10 pumps for tire clearance. Wood took apart the jack, inserted larger pistons and – presto – his driver could get the car off the asphalt by pumping two or three times.
He ported and polished the mechanisms in the team’s air guns, allowing lug nuts to be removed and replaced more quickly. Finally, Wood modified the inside of the team’s dump cans so that gasoline flowed faster.
Hired by the Ford Motor Co. to pit Jim Clark’s Lotus at the Indianapolis 500, the Woods stunned the racing world as Clark spent 41.9 seconds on pit road en route to Victory Lane – thanks to “tweaking” of the gravity-fed refueling rig.
“We turned that thing on and it put in 58 gallons in 15 seconds,” said Wood. It just sucked the fuel out of there. We knew we were going to be under 20 seconds on the pit stops.
“We got the most publicity in the least amount of time we ever got in our lives,” he added. “We hit a home run for sure.”
Len Wood continues to marvel at his uncle’s fabrication skills. The team is completing a replica of the Ford Galaxie in which Tiny Lund won the 1963 Daytona 500. The car will be on display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame during NASCAR Acceleration Weekend, along with a 1/8-scale, gasoline-powered car fashioned from scraps of aluminum and the soles of shoes that Wood built decades ago. He tethered it to a pole, a kind of forerunner to today’s radio controlled cars.
“His fabrication skills; it’s all in his head; no blueprints,” said the younger Wood, recalling that they were going to use aluminum pieces to fasten the windshield to the Galaxie. “Leonard said, ‘No, I think we used steel back then. I’ll make steel ones.’
“If you can describe it, he can fix it or make it.”
The NASCAR HOF Induction Ceremony will be broadcast live on Friday, Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET on SPEED.
EDWARDS AND FENNIG MUST PICK UP THE PACE
Carl Edwards needs to find some answers that will allow him to pick up the pace next season. In hopes of turning the No. 99 team around, veteran Jimmy Fennig has been assigned the task.
Although Edwards doesn’t wish to dwell on last season, he acknowledges that his team didn’t evolve as quickly as the Nos. 16 and 17 of teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth. In a world where simulation plays an important element in setting up the cars for the racetrack, his teammates seem to acclimate quicker to the necessary adjustments throughout the weekend which made the cars faster.
Edwards knows he must get up to speed again.
For now, he’s adopted a back-to-basics approach.
“We have to qualify well,” he said. “We have to have cars that race fast. We have to have a fast pit crew. Jimmy and I have to work together. All of the basic things, we have to do right. If you look at the way that Matt (Kenseth) ran with Jimmy last year, it was head and shoulders better than we ran – than I ran – in that 99.
Edwards said his new crew chief has surprised him. Despite the veteran’s quiet demeanor – which Edwards acknowledges he might have mistaken for “not being engaged,” the driver firmly believes that Fennig’s rooted deeply in what’s going on in the garage.
“To me, from the outside, it appears to me that Jimmy has a very good perspective,” Edwards continued. “We’re going to work hard, we’re going to do a good job and we’re going to reap the benefits. That’s not something that he yells at people about – at least he hasn’t yelled at me about anything. It’s just expected. That’s the feeling I get from him. That he holds everybody at a high standard. And that’s good. When we’re at the racetrack, so far in the little time we spent there, it’s not a joke. It’s not a social event. We’re there to do a job.
“The more I get to know him the more excited I am because I see how good he is with the people and how engaged he is with the cars.
“I feel comfortable that he can help the 99 team find that winning groove again.”
Racing Trivia Question: Who will be Brad Keselowski’s teammate this year in the Cup series at Penske Racing?
Last Week’s Question: Kevin Harvick said next year will be his last season at Richard Childress Racing. Who will he be with in 2014? Answer. Harvick will switch to Stewart-Haas Racing.
You may contact the Racing Reporter at hodges@race500.com.
