Montrose got its weather-delayed season underway by winning three times in four days to take the lead in Lackawanna League Division 4 softball.

The Lady Meteors handed Mountain View its first two losses and are the only unbeaten team left in the division.

Madelynn Guinane allowed just one earned run on seven hits while striking out 19 in 18 innings during the week.

Montrose opened with a 6-2 win over the Mountain View when Guinane threw a four-hitter with nine strikeouts and Alana Jerrauld went 2-for-2 Wednesday.

Hailey Rapisardi was 2-for-2 with four RBI and Guinane threw a one-hitter in a 16-0, four-inning rout over Forest City Friday.

The Lady Meteors then beat the Lady Eagles again, 6-1, Saturday when Guinane threw a two-hitter with seven strikeouts while Katie Warner was producing two runs, two hits and two RBI.

WEEK IN REVIEW

Abington Heights outlasted Mountain View in five games in a match for first place in the Lackawanna League.

The Comets won the battle of unbeatens, 19-25, 25-15, 25-21, 21-25, 15-7.

When the week ended, Abington Heights was 5-0 and Mountain View was 5-1.

In high school baseball, Blue Ridge won its only game, 7-1, over Lackawanna Trail and is the only unbeaten in Lackawanna Division 4 at 1-0.

Montrose is second in the division with a 3-1 record.

In girls’ track, Elk Lake is alone in first place in Division 4 of the Lackawanna Track Conference after beating Susquehanna, 98½-47½, while Blue Ridge was handing Montrose its first defeat, 78½-70½.

In boys’ track, Montrose, Elk Lake and Lackawanna Trail ended the week tied for first in the division at 2-0.

In professional hockey, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins finished the regular season 43-27-4-2 to place third out of eight teams in the American Hockey League Atlantic Division and make the Calder Cup Playoffs.

The Binghamton Senators won the last two games, but still finished last of seven teams in the North Division with a 31-38-1-6 record.

COLLEGE CORNER

Taylor Watkins is a thrower on the East Stroudsburg University women’s track and field team.

Watkins, a sophomore from Elk Lake, finished 21st of 33 in the javelin, competing against many National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletes, with a throw of 118-2. Watkins had the team’s best throw April 2 with 126-10.

East Stroudsburg is an NCAA Division II school competing on the NCAA Division II level.

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins open the AHL’s Calder Cup Playoffs at home Wednesday and Thursday against the Providence Bruins.

The best-of-five series then moves to Providence for Game Three Saturday night.

If necessary, Game Four and Game Five would be Monday and Tuesday, April 25 and 26.

All games in the series start at 7:05 p.m.

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.

CARL EDWARDS MASTERS BRISTOL

BRISTOL, Tenn.--Carl Edwards put on a masterful display of driving in Sunday's Sprint Cup race. While cars were wrecking left and right behind him, Edwards, who started on the pole led 276 laps of the 500-lap race, for his fourth career victory at Bristol.

Carl Edwards Masters Bristol

“Man, all those restarts were something,” said Edwards. “At no point did I feel like I had the race under control. I at no point felt comfortable. Even the last lap I felt pretty good, but it's just so easy to mess up here. I guess I was on edge the entire time. For me it was a really tough race in the car. I felt like I had to go really hard. But now that we've got a win and our Chase ticket has been punched, we can go out and have some fun racing.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. did not lead any laps but gained his third runner up finish.

“We had a lot of luck on the track to be able to finish where we did,” said Earnhardt. “A lot of things happened. We had about a 10th-place car. We weren't really that good all day. We tried a setup that we've never really ran here before, just trying to learn a little something going forward, and we'll go home and science it out a little bit.

“We got real lucky the last three restarts to be on the outside line. We restarted 10th, 6th and 4th, and when you restart 4th you're typically going to come out in second place after that. I was hoping we didn't have any more cautions after that. So it was good. We'll take it.”

Kurt Busch finished third, while Chase Elliott ran fourth.

“We didn't start off like we wanted to, but we were able to kind of work through some things, lean on our teammates a lot,” said Elliott. “Friday night, kind of looked at some notes and what our teammates were doing that we felt like they were doing really well, and I feel like that saved us a lot this weekend, just to try to get in the ballpark and then start fine tuning what we needed personally.”

Trevor Bayne was fifth, while Matt Dibenedetto, Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, Ryan Newman, and Joey Logano rounded out the top-10 finishers.

Matt Kenseth started on the outside pole and led 142 laps but hit the wall twice and did not finish the race.

Kyle Busch also had problems. He was caught speeding on pit road twice, and was involved in two wrecks. The last one occurred during lap 462 and he finished 35th.

Top-10 leaders after 8 of 36: 1. Harvick-287, 2. Edwards-286, 3. Johnson-271, 4. Logano-266, 5. Kyle Busch-262, 6. Earnhardt-250, 7. Kurt Busch-247, 8. Keselowski-224, 9. Hamlin-222, 10. Truex-214.

There were 15 caution periods for 102 laps, involving 29 cars.

IT'S ERIK JONES AT BRISTOL

Erik Jones beat out his teammate and boss, Kyle Busch to win Saturday's Xfinity Series race at Bristol. Jones led 62 laps of the 200 lap race, and crossed the finish line .418-seconds ahead of Busch.

“I'm just so excited and you can tell – I'm out of breath,” said Jones. “I wasn't working that hard. Just so excited about the win and to be here in Victory Lane and beat those guys. This is a really big day for us.”

It was quite a role reversal since Jones has been runner up twice to Busch this season. Jones victory automatically qualifies him for the Xfinity Series Chase. He is the first regular Xfinity Series driver to win a race this season.

Jones took the lead from Kyle Larson on a green-white-checkered restart with two laps to go, and held off Kyle Busch for his third career Xfinity win.

Kyle Larson was third, followed by Austin Dillon, Justin Algaier, Daniel Suarez, Ty Dillon, Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, and Aric Almirola.

Top-10 leaders after 7 of 33: 1. Suarez-242, 2. E. Jones-236, 3. Allgaier-234, 4. Sadler-232, 5. B. Jones-223, 6. T. Dillon-221, 7. Gaughan-208, 8. Poole-180, 9. Reed-180, 10. Wallace-176.

LARRY MCCLURE AND THE GOOD OLD DAYS

For nearly 30 years, the  No. 4 Morgan McClure Motorsports Chevrolet was one of the top teams in NASCAR.

My first encounter with MMM team members came in November, 1996. We were all in line waiting to clear customs in Tokyo, Japan for the first-ever NASCAR race held in that country.

Very quietly, I mentioned to one of their guys that I had brought some southern grits for breakfast.

He smiled back at me, and unzipped his suitcase. Inside was a large smoked Virginia ham.

“Got three more just like it,” he said.

Even though NASCAR furnished acceptable meals each day, I chose to dine with the MMM team each morning. Their smoked ham and my grits made for some fine eating.

From then on, me and those Virginia boys were buddies. I spent four days in their Abingdon, Virginia shop and wrote a magazine article on the team.

Larry McClure served as general manager for MMM and was a co-owner along with his three brothers and businessman Tim Morgan.

In an interview with Allen Gregory of the Bristol Herald Courier, McClure talked about the ups and downs in his NASCAR adventure and personal life.

“We were a one-car team and part of the time we were under-budget, but we had good people,” said McClure. “At that time in the sport, you didn’t have to have all the money. If you had good people, you could be more innovative, work hard and have success.”

The long list of innovators who worked magic for the Abingdon team included crew chief Tony Glover and engine wizard Runt Pittman.

“In his time, Tony was as good of a crew chief as there was in the sport,” McClure continued. “We had basic setups and good race cars. When you add in a good driver, that makes for success.”

Ernie Irvan earned the first Cup victory in his career and the first win for MMM in 1990 at Bristol.

“I’ll never forget that race,” McClure said. “I don’t think we got to bed until after 4 that morning.”

Perhaps the highpoint of the team's career was in 1994 and 1995, when Sterling Marlin won back-to-back Daytona 500s. After losing Kodak as their major sponsor, wins became fewer and fewer. The team failed to qualify for the 2010 Cup race at Bristol, and the MMM shop was closed in 2012.

But it wasn't just racing problems that brought about the team's demise.

In 2009, McClure pleaded guilty to five counts of filing false income tax returns, obstructing the federal investigation and lying to IRS investigators. He served 18 months in prison.

“Our racing was already at the end by then,” McClure said. “I certainly wish that it hadn’t happened. I don’t know for sure how it happened or why it happened, but I made a couple of bad decisions after it happened because we hadn’t done anything wrong. It’s water over the dam now.”

McClure, 72, said his religious faith helped to carry him through the ordeal.

“My faith was pretty good before, but during that whole time I didn’t worry about one thing. I was at peace,” said McClure. “The good Lord will take care if you ask him. Every episode in your life will make you stronger.”

While he admits that it would be harder to field a competitive Sprint Cup team in Abingdon now, McClure hasn’t ruled out a return to the sport.

“We’re looking at some things,” McClure said. “If everything happened right, we may help somebody. We’ve got a person trying to put something together.”

The Morgan-McClure banner is now carried by Larry’s nephew, Eric McClure in the Xfinity Series.

Weekend Racing: The Cup and Xfinity teams are at the .75-mile Richmond International Raceway.

Sat., Apr. 23; Xfinity Series race 8 of 33; Starting time: 12:30 pm ET; TV: Foxsports1.

Sun., Apr. 24; Sprint Cup Series race 9 of 36; Starting time: 1 pm ET; TV: Fox.

Racing Trivia Question: Which former NASCAR champion was part owner in the Richmond track?

Last Week's Question. What is the maximum number of cars that NASCAR allows to start a Sprint Cup race? Answer. 40 cars is the maximum starting field.

You may contact the Racing Reporter by e-mail at: hodges@race500.com.