Forest City and Elk Lake had the most successful athletic programs among small public schools in District 2 during the 2015-16 school year, according to NPFSports.com.
The website, which covers District 2 sports, awarded its first Toyota Cups based on a point system that ranked athletic success across all sports.
Abington Heights won the Big School cup over Scranton Prep while Holy Redeemer won the Small School cup over Holy Cross.
Forest City ranked third out of 21 Small Schools. Elk Lake was fifth behind Wyoming Seminary.
Holy Redeemer compiled 374 points in the system, which gave points for regular-season winning percentage as well as success in District 2 and state competition.
Holy Cross was next with 251, followed by Forest City 233, Wyoming Seminary 210 and Elk Lake 208.
Forest City was led by its golf and baseball teams, which won district titles and finished among the top eight in the state. It also got a boost from its district championship girls basketball team and district finalist boys basketball team.
Elk Lake was led by its girls cross country team, which finished sixth in the state.
Montrose had the best combined league record of Susquehanna County schools in an annual comparison calculated by the Susquehanna County Transcript.
Counting all divisional games in other sports and every regular-season game in football, where each is used to determine playoff qualification, Montrose easily produced the best record at 130-61-1 for a 68.0 winning percentage.
Montrose had the best combined record for boys’ sports and the best for girls’ sports.
Although Forest City scored points in the Toyota Cup for its success on the district and state levels, its teams had an overall losing record in regular season play.
Elk Lake was second overall at 108-89 for a .548 winning percentage, followed by: Forest City, 57-71-1, .446; Blue Ridge, 69-87-1, .446; Mountain View, 62-101-1, .383; and Susquehanna, 20-96, 17.2.
The best combined boys’ record was Montrose at 73-29-1 for a .714 winning percentage. Elk Lake (54-45, .545) had the only other winning boys’ program overall.
Forest City was third at 38-40-1 for a .490 percentage, followed by: Mountain View, 42-48-1, .467; Blue Ridge, 32-58-1, .359; and Susquehanna, 3-48, .059.
The Montrose girls’ teams combined to go 57-32 (.640).
Blue Ridge (37-29, .561) and Elk Lake (54-44, .551) also had winning girls’ programs.
Forest City was next at 19-31 and .380, followed by: Mountain View, 20-53, .274; and Susquehanna, 17-48, .262.
AWARD TIME
Montrose’s Anastasia Hester and Elk Lake’s Darci Warner led a group of five county girls who were named all-state by the Pennsylvania Softball Coaches Association.
Hester, a senior catcher, and Warner, a senior first baseman, were first-team selections in Class AA.
Sophomore pitcher Madelynn Guinane and senior shortstop Katie Warner, both from Montrose, were honorable mention all-state in Class AA.
Mountain View sophomore shortstop Lucy Adams received honorable mention in Class A.
A total of 65 District 2 players were among the 388 recognized as all-state.
NPFSports.com recognized 42 players on its all-District 2 teams.
Elk Lake junior Whitney Tyler was named Small School all-District 2 second baseman by the website. Tyler also helped the team as a pitcher.
Guinane, Darci Warner and Susquehanna outfielder junior Gabrielle Glover were second-team Small School all-district choices.
Hester was named Lackawanna League Division 4 Player of the Year by coaches.
In high school baseball, Blue Ridge junior pitcher Jake Decker was an all-District 2 Small School choice. He also played shortstop and catcher.
Montrose shortstop Hunter Traver, Blue Ridge outfielder Jordan Goff and Forest City pitcher R.J. Kuruts were second-team choices. Goff also pitched and Kuruts played shortstop.
Traver was named Lackawanna League Division 4 Player of the Year by the division’s coaches.
In professional baseball, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRIders outfielder Aaron Judge was named International League Player of the Month for June.
The 6-foot-7, 275-pound slugger batted .343 in June while leading IL players for the month in home runs (9), runs scored (30) and on-base percentage (.477). He was also in the top three in the league in RBI (25), extra-base hits (16), total bases (70), walks (21) and slugging percentage (.686) for the month.
Judge reached base in 25 of 28 games and had 11 multi-hit efforts, including a four-hit game in which he hit two homers. He had batted just .183 in May before helping the RailRiders go 19-10 for June and take a 2 ½-game lead in the IL North Division.
The 24-year-old shares the league home run lead with 16.
The RailRiders extended what was minor-league baseball’s longest active winning streak to nine games before losing July 5.
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.
Raymond Parks and Richard Petty in 2009 at Atlanta
NASCAR has announced the five persons that will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in March, 2017.
Topping the list is Raymond Parks, one of stock-car racing’s earliest – and most successful – team owners. Funded by successful business and real estate ventures in Atlanta, Parks began his career as a stock-car owner in 1938 with drivers Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall. His pairing with another Atlantian, mechanic Red Vogt, produced equipment good enough to dominate the sport in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Red Byron won the first NASCAR title (modified, 1948) and first premier series title (1949) in a Parks-owned car.
Though Parks’ team competed for only four seasons – 1949, 1950, 1954 and 1955 – his place in NASCAR history is secure. Parks’ team produced two premier series wins, two poles, 11 top fives and 12 top 10s in 18 events. Drivers Red Byron, Bob Flock and Roy Hall drove his cars during the 1949 season. Byron drove for him again in 1950. Fonty Flock drove for Parks in 1954, and NASCAR Hall of Famer Curtis Turner drove for him in 1955. Parks retired from racing in the mid-1950s.
Born in Dawson County, Georgia, on June 5, 1914, Raymond was the oldest of 16 children. Just 10 when his mother Leila died, his father Alfred married her sister Ila and bore another 10 kids to the family. They lived in Dawsonville, Georgia until he was two, and then moved to Brown’s Bridge Road in nearby Hall County.
“Daddy Operated ‘Five Mile Store’ (because it was five miles from Gainesville),” Raymond’s sister Lucille Shirley told us. “As far as I know, the old home place and store remain there today. Other than farming and general stores, the mountains didn’t have much to offer.”
Unless you were in the whiskey business, which Raymond wasn’t…until he began his new life working at a still near Winder, Georgia for Walter Day. Mr. Day was the man who picked him up that morning in 1928.
“I met Walter Day in the Hall County jail,” Raymond told us. “I had gone up the road to get my daddy something to drink, but instead I got three months. If I had told them I was 14, I wouldn’t have been locked up. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I stuck to my story of being older.”
With a little help from a hometown judge, within a year Raymond went from errand boy to whiskey maker.
But it didn’t last long.
“In 1930 my aunt and uncle paid a visit,” Raymond said.
Maude and Miller Parks had located him and convinced the boy to come to Atlanta to work with Miller at his service station and garage.
“So after Mr. Day found a replacement, I went to the ‘city’ for my first time,” Mr. Parks said.
While making whiskey, Raymond earned enough money to buy two vehicles – a 1929 Chevrolet and a 1926 Ford T-Model.
“I didn’t know how to get there from Winder, but my uncle had left me directions to Sears Roebuck on Ponce de Leon Avenue, the most direct route. From there, I followed him to the station in my Ford. I went back later for my Chevy.”
Uncle Miller’s Garage, known as Northside Auto Service and gas station, known as Hemphill Service Station, were at Hemphill and Kontz Avenues (now Atlantic Drive) in northwest Atlanta. Raymond bought half interest in the business.
“The work was hard but honest,” Raymond joked.
However, come nighttime, the enterprising 16 year old had his personal graveyard shift.
“I would head to Dawsonville right after we locked up, load 60 gallons in my T-Model, come back through Tate, Georgia on Highway 5,” he told us. “At the creek I’d wash the dirt and mud off so not to attract attention, then drive to Marietta and blend with any morning traffic into Atlanta.”
Netting about 30 cents a gallon, he bought out Uncle Miller, who later bought a farm in South Georgia and moved his family out of the mountains.
“They needed a change of climate,” he said.
In 1932 Parks retired from his red eye shuttles.
“I quit the delivery business after two years,” he said. “By then we were just running our own stills from South Georgia, and I let others do the driving.
“By 1936 we shut down that business completely. Prohibition was over and we added a package store at Hemphill (Northside Beverage). I needed to concentrate more on more important matters.”
By 1938 he expanded his ventures to include the “novelty” business, which included the placement of such things as pool tables, jukeboxes and cigarette machines throughout the metro area.
So at the tender age of 21, young Raymond Parks left his moonshine days behind.
The soul, the spirit, the guts of NASCAR all sprang from the passion of Parks, long before there was a NASCAR.
Bill France Sr., couldn't have made it without him -- without the money loaned, the fancy pace cars and fabulous race cars, the dashing, colorful, charismatic drivers who became NASCAR's first champions.
Throughout the birth years of NASCAR, Parks had kept it afloat. He loaned Bill France money; loaned him new Cadillacs as pace cars; nurtured the entire concept of stock cars as brightly painted and clean, rather than ragtag jalopies.
“Anywhere he showed up, he had the best cars,” Hall of Fame inductee Junior Johnson said,
But with NASCAR safely off the ground, its first two championships won, Parks tired of fielding racing teams. He returned to Atlanta to run his liquor stores, and was largely forgotten in the NASCAR community.
Far deeper run the roots of NASCAR through Raymond Parks than just the fact the first two champion drivers won in his cars, Fonty Flock in 1948 in modifieds and then Red Byron in '49 in "Strictly Stock," ancestor of the Sprint Cup series.
When asked how much money he thought he might have spent in NASCAR, he replied, “I have no idea. No records were ever kept. We paid for everything in cash.”
Through it all he never acted like a punk or a tough guy; he always kept his dignity and his kindness, always behaved more like one of Atlanta's most sophisticated businessmen, always was dapper in the finest hats and tailored suits.
Mr. Parks passed away in his sleep on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010, at the age of 96.
The other four 2017 inductees are Mark Martin, Benny Parson, Richard Childress, and Rick Hendrick.
Weekend Racing: Get ready for three night's of racing at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway.
Thurs., July 7, Truck Series race race 10 of 23; Starting time: 8:30 pm ET; TV: Foxsports1.
Fri., July 8, Xfinity Series race 16 of 33; Starting time: 8:30 pm ET; TV: NBCSN.
Sat., July 9, Sprint Cup Series race 18 of 36; Starting time: 7:30 pm ET; TV: NBCSN.
Brad Keselowski picked up his third Sprint Cup win of the season
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.--Brad Keselowski won Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 Sprint Cup Series race, in a dominating fashion. It was his third win of the season, and the 100th victory for Penske Racing. He led 115 laps of the 161-lap race that went into overtime after Tony Stewart hit the wall, bringing out the race’s last caution.
“The wins are never easy to come by, and I think this one means a lot to me for sure because looking at our past here, it hasn’t been all that rosy,” said Keselowski. “ I was telling Roger Penske when I was in victory lane and the fireworks were going off, usually I’m loading up the car and about to be to the airport, so it’s nice to be here and have a great finish.”
Kyle Busch, who started the race third was the runner-up.
“I just wish that we had a bit more in order to try and get the victory,” he said. “I had a big run from Trevor Bayne in the No. 6. He really helped us out there at the end by pushing us down the backstretch. But I just didn’t have enough. I just couldn’t get to the outside.”
Trevor Bayne’s third-place finish was his best of the season, and best of any Roush Racing team.
“It was wild out there,” added Stenhouse. “(Bowyer) was pushing me the whole last lap. I wasn’t sure that we would be able to be pushed all the way through the corners but we were able to hold it in a straight line as best we could and get a top-five out of it.”
Joey Logano was fourth, while Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Larson, Austin Dillon, Greg Biffle, Clint Bowyer, and Michael McDowell were the remaining top-10 finishers.
The race ended early for many drivers on lap 89. That’s when the race’s “big one” came, and involved 19 cars. Several of the top points leaders were caught up in it, including all four Hendrick teams; Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chase Elliott, and Kasey Kahne. The accident was triggered when Jamie McMurray drifted down the track into the side of the No. 42 car, driven by Kyle Larson.
“They just got tangled up ahead of me,” said Kevin Harvick, one of the victim’s. “I wound up with a car on my roof. But that’s what you can expect from a race like this when everyone is driving aggressively.”
Top-10 Chase leaders after 17 of 26: 1. Harvick-565, 2. Keselowsk-551, 3. Kurt Busch-445, 4. Logano-531, 5. Edwards-529, 6. Kyle Busch-492, 7. Truex-482, 8. Elliott-482, 9. Johnson-475, 10. Hamlin-446.
ALMIROLA WINS PHOTO FINISH XFINITY RACE
Aric Almirola won Friday’s night’s Daytona Xfinity Series race after a last-lap, multi-car crash froze the field and forced NASCAR to review video before announcing the winner.
NASCAR ruled Almirola was slightly ahead of Justin Allgaier’s No. 7 Chevrolet as the cars battled side-by-side in Turn 4 at Daytona International Speedway.
Ryan Sieg, Joey Logano, Brendan Gaughan, Ryan Reed, Jeff Green, Spencer Gallagher, Chase Elliott, and Erik Jones rounded out the top-10.
Top-10 leaders after 15 of 33: 1. Suarez-499, 2. Sadler-493, 3. T. Dillon-483, 4. Allgaier-462, 5. Gaughan-449, 6. E. Jones-442, 7. B. Jones-429, 8. Poole-422, 9. Wallace Jr.-394, 10. Reed-366.
GOODYEAR SWITCHES KENTUCKY TIRE
Goodyear announced they were changing the tire to be used in next weekend’s race at Kentucky after blistering was found.
Following a two-day NASCAR test at Kentucky Speedway on June 13 and 14 featuring 14 different Cup teams, Goodyear saw an unusual amount of wear on the right side tires - which featured a dual-zone tread. The tire manufacturer elected to incorporate what was originally two inches of a more durable compound throughout the entire tread. After discovering that the right side tires blistered on longer runs, Goodyear’s director of racing Greg Stucker said the organization scrapped the Michigan tire for something closer to what the teams use at Las Vegas with a revised right-side construction.
“Some guys were OK, but it just seemed to be too close to stay with what we had,” Stucker told Motorsport.com. “So we decided to go a little bit more conservative and move to a harder compound across the whole tire. But it’s not drastically different from what we’ve raced in the past.”
Goodyear will have a total of 1,200 new tires on hand for the race.
Kentucky Speedway underwent a complete repave starting in January with an increase from 14 to 17-degrees banking in Turns 1 and 2. By the time construction was complete, Goodyear did not have time for a specific tire test prior to the organizational test. With just 24 days between the NASCAR test and next week’s Quaker State 400, Goodyear had to scramble for a solution.
RAYMOND PARKS TOPS LIST OF HOF INDUCTEES
NASCAR has announced the five new members that will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in March, 2017.
Topping the list is Raymond Parks, one of stock-car racing’s earliest – and most successful – team owners. Funded by successful business and real estate ventures in Atlanta, Parks began his career as a stock-car owner in 1938 with drivers Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall. His pairing with another Atlantian, mechanic Red Vogt, produced equipment good enough to dominate the sport in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Red Byron won the first NASCAR title (modified, 1948) and first premier series title (1949) in a Parks-owned car.
Though Parks’ team competed for only four seasons – 1949, 1950, 1954 and 1955 – his place in NASCAR history is secure. Parks’ team produced two premier series wins, two poles, 11 top fives and 12 top 10s in 18 events. Drivers Red Byron, Bob Flock and Roy Hall drove his cars during the 1949 season. Byron drove for him again in 1950. Fonty Flock drove for Parks in 1954, and NASCAR Hall of Famer Curtis Turner drove for him in 1955. Parks retired from racing in the mid-1950s.
The soul, the spirit, the guts of NASCAR all sprang from the passion of Parks, long before there was a NASCAR.
Throughout the birth years of NASCAR, Parks had kept it afloat. He loaned Bill France money; loaned him new Cadillacs as pace cars; nurtured the entire concept of stock cars as brightly painted and clean, rather than ragtag jalopies.
“Anywhere he showed up, he had the best cars,” Hall of Fame inductee Junior Johnson said,
But with NASCAR safely off the ground, its first two championships won, Parks tired of fielding racing teams. He returned to Atlanta to run his liquor stores, and was largely forgotten in the NASCAR community.
Far deeper run the roots of NASCAR through Raymond Parks than just the fact the first two champion drivers won in his cars, Fonty Flock in 1948 in modifieds and then Red Byron in ‘49 in “Strictly Stock,” ancestor of the Sprint Cup series.
Through it all he never acted like a punk or a tough guy; he always kept his dignity and his kindness, always behaved more like one of Atlanta’s most sophisticated businessmen, always was dapper in the finest hats and tailored suits.
Mr. Parks passed away in his sleep on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010, at the age of 96.
The other four 2017 inductees are Mark Martin, Benny Parson, Richard Childress, and Rick Hendrick.
Weekend Racing: Get ready for three night’s of racing at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway.
Thurs., July 7, Truck Series race 10 of 23; Starting time: 8:30 pm ET; TV: Foxsports1.
Fri., July 8, Xfinity Series race 16 of 33; Starting time: 8:30 pm ET; TV: NBCSN.
Sat., July 9, Sprint Cup Series race 18 of 36; Starting time: 7:30 pm ET; TV: NBCSN.
Racing Trivia Question: Who has the most wins at Daytona International Speedway?
Last Week's Question? At which track does the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship begin? At Chicagoland on Sept. 18.
You may contact the Racing Reporter by e-mail at: hodges@race500.com
