Whether they were trying to get past defending champion and fellow division unbeaten Montrose at home or holding back up-and-coming Blue Ridge on the road, Elk Lake used the same formula to get through the final week of the first half in Lackawanna League Division 4 boys’ basketball.
The Warriors used aggressive defense to start strong, put together balanced scoring attacks and hit late free throws to finish off opponents while winning twice to claim the division’s first-half championship.
Even the scores were very similar.
Elk Lake won a first-place battle with Montrose, 58-49, Jan. 19 to clinch at least a tie for the first-half title, then secured the title outright with a 58-50 victory over Blue Ridge Thursday.
“Everybody in the league just battles,” Elk Lake coach John Warnero said after going through the schedule 6-0, but with five of the games by a dozen points or less.
Montrose came to Elk Lake on a 19-game division winning streak, but soon found itself in a 23-4 hole after one quarter.
The initial fast start established that Elk Lake was ready to play on a championship level. The next one showed that the Warriors were not ready to rest once they were in first place.
Elk Lake opened an 8-0 lead in the first three minutes.
“You don’t want to have one of those games where you come out of a big rivalry game and a big atmosphere and then you’re not done because you didn’t take care of business yet,” Warnero said. “This one was every bit as important.
“It’s worrisome, especially with just one day to prepare.”
Hunter Watkins scored 16 points to lead the win over Montrose, but he had plenty of help. Bailey Newhart (14), Seth Tewksbury (12) and Ben Woolcock (10) also scored in double figures.
Cole Tyler led the way against Blue Ridge with 17 points. Newhart added 13 points while Tewksbury and Watkins had 12 points.
Against Montrose, Elk Lake had the entire 19-point lead after one quarter get away.
The teams were tied, 40-40, into the fourth quarter.
Woolcock scored nine points in the quarter, going 5-for-5 from the line. Watkins was 3-for-4 from the line while adding six points in the quarter.
Elk Lake opened a 10-point lead in the second quarter, but Blue Ridge cut the gap all the way to three midway through the fourth quarter.
Blue Ridge was within four points into the final 33 seconds before Tyler and Newhart each hit both ends of a one-and-one to close the scoring.
Montrose had made the first-place battle interesting when it outscored Elk Lake, 25-7, in the third quarter.
Austin Smith had 10 of his 18 points and Travis Birchard eight of his 15 during the quarter.
Tewksbury had 13 rebounds and Watkins 10 to help Elk Lake outrebound Blue Ridge, 43-33, in the clincher. Tewksbury also blocked three shots.
The balance came in many different forms. Newhart, Woolcock and Tyler each had four assists. Tewksbury, Woolcock and Tyler had two assists each.
Blue Ridge was led by Jeff Morris with 14 points and Ty Herbert with 12. Jarred Mills had five steals and four assists.
Before facing Elk Lake, Blue Ridge defeated Susquehanna, 60-45.
Morris and Herbert scored 13 points each and Austin Harper added 10.
Adam Rockwell led Susquehanna with 15 points while Eric Lee had 11.
Forest City defeated Lackawanna Trail, 58-49, to move into a tie for second-place and keep its title hopes alive going into the final day of the half.
Montrose then ripped Forest City, 74-36, to finish second when Blue Ridge was unable to produce the upset.
Final first-half Division 4 standings: Elk Lake 6-0, Montrose 5-1, Forest City 4-2, Blue Ridge 3-3, Lackawanna Trail 2-4, Mountain View 1-5, Susquehanna 0-6.
WEEK IN REVIEW
Forest City won two more games to close out an unbeaten first half in Lackawanna League Division 4 girls’ basketball.
The Lady Foresters rallied past Lackawanna Trail, 50-43, Jan. 18 to clinch at least a tie for the first-half title, then took it outright by running over defending champion Montrose, 60-32, Wednesday.
Kendra Bendyk and MacKenzie Hartman each scored 16 points and Forest City overcame a deficit in the fourth quarter in the win over Lackawanna Trail.
Bendyk scored 24 points and Anna Congdon had 12 against Montrose. The Lady Foresters opened a 30-11 lead at halftime.
Final first half Lackawanna Division 4 girls’ standings: Forest City 6-0, Elk Lake 5-1, Blue Ridge 3-3, Lackawanna Trail 3-3, Montrose 2-4, Susquehanna 2-4, Mountain View 0-6.
In high school wrestling, Montrose split a pair of matches at home Wednesday to remain above .500 in Division 2 of the Lackawanna League at 3-2.
The Meteors defeated Elk Lake, 54-12, and lost to division leader Western Wayne, 49-14.
Chuck Rohan had pins in both matches. Jacob O’Brien won by pin against Elk Lake and technical fall against Western Wayne. Joseph Hester won a decision against Elk Lake and by forfeit against Western Wayne.
Marc Avila (152) and Robert Gregory (285) had first-period pins in the win over Elk Lake.
Blue Ridge used a double dual at Valley View to pick up its first win of the season. The Raiders beat Mountain View, 54-21, but lost to Valley View, 58-18.
Adam Roe and Evan Aldrich each had a pair of pins for Blue Ridge.
Roe (160), Chris Graff (182) and Evan Aldrich (285) all won by pins in under a minute against Mountain View.
Michael Kelly (145) and Wesley Richardson (195) also won by pins.
COLLEGE CORNER
Dallas Ely moved into third place on the West Chester University career scoring list Saturday during a 59-55, double-overtime win at Lock Haven University.
Ely, a 5-foot-9 senior guard from Montrose, had 19 points and 11 rebounds before fouling out, producing her second double-double during a five-game winning streak to improve West Chester to 10-4 in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and 13-5 overall.
On the season, Ely is averaging 13.6 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.7 steals. She is hitting 36.2 percent of her shots from the floor, 27.1 percent from 3-point range and 85.4 percent from the foul line.
Ely is less than 100 points away from the school career record of 1,556.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Montrose completes the Lackawanna League Division 2 wrestling season and tries to secure a spot in the District 2 Class AA Dual Meet Wrestling Championships when it competes in a double-dual Wednesday night.
The Meteors are at Mountain View where they also face second-place Scranton Prep.
In girls’ basketball, first-half champion Forest City is at Elk Lake, which finished in second place, in a Lackawanna League Division 4 game.
TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column for the Susquehanna County Transcript. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com and followed on Twitter at @tomjrobinson.
FIVE NEW NASCAR HOF MEMBERS
Curtis Turner in 1960
CHARLOTTE, N.C.-- NASCAR inducted five new members; Curtis Turner, Bruton Smith, Jerry Cook, Bobby Isaac, and Terry Labonte, into the Hall of Fame, Saturday, January 23.
Curtis Turner and Bruton Smith were the two biggest “movers and shakers” in NASCAR’s formative years. At times the two men were friends and at other times, they opposed each other.
Turner was one of racing’s earliest stars and perhaps its most controversial driver. He won 17 NASCAR races and 17 poles in a career that started in 1949 and ended in 1968.
Perhaps Turner is most remembered because of his suspension from NASCAR competition by Bill France Sr. from 1960 until 1965, after he tried to organize the drivers for the Teamsters Union.
In a storybook comeback in 1965, Turner won a 500-mile race at North Carolina Motor Speedway on October 31.
But what makes him stand out is the way he lived out his life.
He was a racer, party-thrower, moonshine hauler, pilot, and timber baron.
He threw parties that lasted all night and sometimes several days. A small party would consist of 250-300 people. Some came for the whiskey, while others came for the dancing, lie swapping and music.
“He could really throw them,” said Bobby Allison. “I was just a young hot shot driver at the time, but he could put on some big shindigs. I remember one time the police coming in about daylight and asking him if he didn’t think it was too late to party.
“It didn’t bother him, I think he just said something like, ‘hell no, it’s just beginning.’”
During World War II he served in the U. S. Navy. After the war he went back to running moonshine, and was quite often pursued by the law. After one run he found three bullets embedded in the rear of his 1942 Ford coupe.
A few years after the war ended Turner went into the timber business. In a 1968 Sports Illustrated interview, Turner said he had sold two million acres of North Carolina timberland during his lifetime.
Turner was always restless. He threatened to retire from racing after every big timber deal, but he usually wound up broke. This happened several times.
The years in which he planned and built the Charlotte Motor Speedway were the most tumultuous of his life. The bitter struggle with finances caused him many problems.
The financing of the speedway by Turner and his group of backers was very marginal to begin with. They started out with 2.3 million, but construction costs soared and Turner scratched, begged and borrowed from everyone.
He even bought a small bank. It was so small that the maximum it could loan was $12,000. But Turner gave himself a loan of $75,000, which wasn’t discovered for nearly two years.
Two days before the 1960 World 600, the paving contractors demanded their $75,000 immediately. To back up their demands they moved all their heavy equipment on the track in front of the paving machine, which still had about 100 yards to go to finish the track.
Turner and one or two other directors, took shotguns and pistols in hand and backed the operators against the wall, while Turner’s own men completed the job.
Turner did not know it at the time, but the Teamsters Union could not have loaned him the money.
Turner, along with Tim Flock was barred from NASCAR. Meanwhile, the CMS board of directors, which included Bruton Smith, ousted him from control of the speedway.
France ended the suspension on Sept. 30, 1965, and Turner quickly showed that four years on the sidelines hadn’t diminished his skills. In his first race, the National 500, he finished third. Two weeks later, he won the inaugural race at North Carolina Motor Speedway.
“Turner was one of my early heroes,” continued Allison. “But the thing about the man is he could do so much. He could have made it in practically anything he chose. That’s how smart he was. He had that sixth sense that just told him where he needed to be on the track. That sometimes means more than horsepower or handling. He just had it. That’s all I can say.”
Turner died in a 1970 plane crash at the age of 46.
Bruton Smith promoted his first stock car race in Midland, North Carolina at the age of 18. His early endeavors included operating the rival National Stock Car Racing Association, which was seen as an early competitor to NASCAR, and helping build Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Olin Bruton Smith came into this world on March 3, 1927 in the small rural town of Oakboro, North Carolina, which is located about twenty five miles east of Charlotte. The current population census of the little town is twelve hundred, but at the start of the Depression it was no more than a hamlet of a few houses and cotton farmers.
Smith’s father, Lemuel Smith was one of the farmers that eked out a living from the North Carolina dirt. The family, like most sharecroppers and small farming families were poor.
“We had plenty of food, a great family, but no money,” Smith told Ed Hinton in a 1999 interview. “My parents worked hard and went to church. That was it. I never had things. And we all desire something.”
Smith said he became hooked on racing after his family took him as an eight-year-old to the old Charlotte Fairground for his first race.
“I loved it so damn much I needed another set of eyes because I couldn’t see enough,” said Smith, who was driving cars at eleven and figured out by sixteen the vehicles he had access to didn’t go fast enough for his liking.
Smith’s involvement in race promotion brought him into contact with veteran dirt-track driver Curtis Turner. Together the two conceived a grand plan to build a state-of-the-art race track in Charlotte.
The pair started preparations for the Charlotte Speedway in 1959 with financing from Smith’s wealthy brother-in-law.
When asked about that first race, Smith replied; “It was hot. God it was hot, but the World 600 was the longest race. There’d never been anything like it. It had the largest purse, $100,000, and nobody had ever heard of a purse of $100,000 for a stock car race. But we wanted to be the biggest and we wanted to be something special. So that’s what we did.
“Only thing, I was $400,000 in debt.”
Smith went bankrupt two years later. The track was turned over by Judge J.B. Craven to local furniture store owner Richard Howard, who ran the track and worked it out of its debts (the mortgage was burned publicly in 1967) while Smith moved to Illinois, eventually buying out other shares of stock in the track to regain control in the early 1970s.
CMS became the foundation of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which currently owns eight NASCAR tracks hosting 12 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events. Smith took SMI public in 1995, the first motorsports company to be traded at the New York Stock Exchange. He was inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame and National Motorsports Press Association's Hall of Fame, both in 2006; and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2007.
Terry Labonte is a two-nickname NASCAR champion. Early in his career he was known as the "Iceman" for his coolness under pressure. But his demeanor belied his determination. Later in his career he became known as the sport's "Iron Man" thanks to 665 consecutive starts. Winning two premier series championships, in 1984 and '96, is impressive; the 12-year gap distinguishes Labonte further. No other driver has won his first two championships that far apart and Labonte is one of only six drivers with championships in two decades. Labonte's stellar career is tucked between perfect bookends - his two Southern 500 wins, in 1980 and 2003. His 361 top-10 finishes ranks 10th all time.
Bobby Isaac’s uncanny skill at drawing speed from a race car puts him on a short list of NASCAR legends. His 49 career poles ranks 10th all time. In 1970, Isaac won the championship posting 11 victories, 32 top fives and 38 top 10s in 47 starts. Isaac won 37 races in NASCAR's top series, ranking 19th on the all-time list.
Jerry Cook made his name in modifieds, winning six NASCAR Modified championships, including four consecutively from 1974-77. After retiring from racing in 1982, Cook stayed with the sport and helped shape the series known today as the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. Cook served as the series' director when it began in 1985 and remains with NASCAR as competition administrator.
Racing Trivia Question: Which driver has the most Daytona 500 wins?
Last Week’s Question: Who won the first Daytona 500? Answer. It was Lee Petty.
You may contact the Racing Reporter by e-mail at: hodges@race500.com.
