Morris is Signal tourney champ
Adam Morris was the only golfer who shot in the 60s all three rounds of the 2017 Signal Mountain Invitational, and his closing 69 Sunday gave him a two-stroke win at 203. Mikey Feher carded a third-round 65 and was second at 205, five strokes ahead of Evan Kidwell and Tripp Harris in third place. Randy Yoder won the senior flight at 212 with a final 66, and Richard Keene followed at 214 with Kip Henley at 215.
Landon Hicks was the championship B winner at 222, Joshua James Baker won the championship C flight at 233, Billy Johnson and Mike Craig shared first-flight honors with 236s and Mike Granato won the Stableford group with a 246. The tournament had nearly 120 participants.
› Two Dalton residents were among the top three finishers in the Georgia Mid-Amateur Championship at Cartersville Country Club. David Noll Jr., a three-time winner of the Georgia State Golf Association tournament, shot a 4-under-par 68 but couldn’t catch winner David Denham of Athens, who closed with a 69 to finish at 14-under 202 in the three-day, 54-hole competition. Noll finished at 204, three strokes ahead of Vance Embry, who shot a 70 on Sunday. Calhoun’s
Cres Dodd closed with a 71 to finish in a three-way tie for seventh at 3-under 213, and former Calhoun resident Tre Lamb, now of Macon, shared 10th place with two others at 2-under 214 after a final-round 73.
› The SunTrust Tennessee State Open will run Tuesday through Thursday at Foxland Harbor Golf & Country Club in Gallatin with at least 11 former champions in the 144-player field, but 2016 champ Jason Millard will not be there to defend his title. Three-time champ Garrett Willis is participating, as are former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga star and 2012 U.S. Amateur winner
Steven Fox of Hendersonville and 11-time Tennessee Golf Association player of the year
Tim Jackson of Germantown.
FISHING
› Andy Morgan of Dayton, Tenn., was third and Wesley Strader of Spring City sixth at the FLW Tour bass fishing tournament that wrapped up Sunday on the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis. Morgan’s daily limit of five fish weighed in at 14 pounds, 8 ounces in the final round for a four-day total of 58-10, an ounce behind Joshua Weaver of Macon, Ga., and 2 pounds, 12 ounces behind winner Bryan Schmitt of Deale, Md. Strader finished at 56-14 after a Sunday haul of 13-11. Morgan, the FLW angler of the year three of the past four seasons, won $25,000 and moved into second place in the 2017 standings with 1,045 points.
BASEBALL
› Former Cleveland State player Jammer Strickland doubled and scored East Tennessee State’s first run and hit a tying home run in a five-run seventh inning as the Buccaneers completed a Southern Conference sweep at VMI with a 9-3 win Saturday. He had six hits for 12 total bases in the three games, and Hunter Parker from East Hamilton and Chattanooga State was one of three Bucs with seven hits in the series.
VOLLEYBALL
› New Georgia Northwestern volleyball coach Amber Weaver recently pulled in four recruits from Ridgeland High School’s senior class that won two region championships in the last three years: Shanna Burk, Jamese Miller, Jesse Owens and Morgen Simmons. “I’m really excited that it’s my first signing as (head) coach and I’m getting four, including an entire back row that has played together,” Weaver said in a GNTC release. “Being a two- or three-year school, you don’t have long to try and build up that chemistry, but these girls will come in here already having it, and that will be very beneficial for us.” Ridgeland went 29-10 and reached the Georgia Class AAAA final eight last fall.