DSC’s Lee again Nicklaus honoree
That it was no surprise did not change the amazing nature of the Thursday announcement that Dalton State sophomore S.M. Lee was a repeat winner of the NAIA Jack Nicklaus Award as the best male golfer in the association. As he did last year, Lee will join the NCAA Division I, II and III and NJCAA honorees in playing Saturday in the Barbasol Shootout at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio, and being honored by Nicklaus himself Sunday morning at the site of The Memorial Tournament. The Shootout winner will receive an exemption into the PGA Tour’s Barbasol Championship July 16-22 in Lexington, Kentucky. Lee’s five victories this year were capped by big-margin wins in the Southern States Athletic Conference and NAIA national tournaments. Already a PING first-team All-American, Lee also was just announced as a repeater on the NAIA All-America first team, where he was joined by DSC teammate P.J. Shields with Chase Cole making the third team. Another Dalton State sophomore, Tia Teiniketo from Baylor School, was a women’s first-team All-America repeater, and Katie Dalton and Caroline Griffin made the second team with DSC’s
Isabel Rijos and Bryan College’s Krista Reinhardt on the third team.
› Tess Davenport of Blairsville had the 10th best qualifying score, 154, Wednesday and Thursday in the Georgia Women’s Match Play Championship at the Reynolds Lake Oconee Great Waters course and begins match play today against
Sarah Harrison (149) from Augusta. They’re in the championship division. Savanah Satterfield of Chatsworth qualified 19th at 164 and is the third seed in the tournament division.
TRACK & FIELD
› Lee runners Amy Carpenter and Audrey Smith were announced this week by the College Sports Information Directors of America as Google Cloud Academic first-team All-District 5 track and field/cross country performers for NCAA Division II. Both were all-region and Smith earned two second-team All-America awards at the national meet last week. She has a 3.63 grade point average on a 4.0 scale as a biochemistry major. Carpenter compiled a 3.92 as a math major.
BASEBALL & SOFTBALL
› Bryan College had five 2018 Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes for baseball —
Tucker Cain, Timothy Hostetler, Kurt Meeberg, Caleb Perez and Cullen Royston — and Cheyenne Wilson for softball. Tennessee Wesleyan was represented by Aloysius Cruz and
Adrian Gonzalez in baseball and Courtney Calkins, Laken Collier, Kristen Givens, Alexis Henry, Courtney Jones, Briana Muller and Nathasa Robinson. The honor requires at least junior status academically and a 3.5 GPA. Reinhardt’s Grant Sane from Dalton, Northwestern Ohio’s Steven Amos from Soddy-Daisy and Ryan Mahaffey from Cleveland, Tennessee, and Freed-Hardeman’s Kyle Douglas from Manchester were other baseball Scholar-Athletes.
SWIMMING
› The Chattanooga Swim Fest will be held this weekend but at Chester Frost Park on Chickamauga Lake instead of the flood-stage Tennessee River in the downtown area. The two fun swims scheduled for today have been called off, but the USA Swimming Southern Zone championship competitions Saturday and Sunday and the Chattanooga Rat Race are still on at adjusted times. The zone open water races for ages 11-12 (3-kilometer) and 13-14, 15-16 and open age groups (5k) will begin at 10:30 a.m. Saturday with 203 participants from North Carolina, Georgia, Florida Swimming, Florida Gulf Coast, Southeastern (Tennessee, Alabama and Florida Panhandle), Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Texas. The 2 p.m. Rat Race for registered masters swimmers has 106 signed up. The zone pursuit races are 3k three-or-four-person relays for 14-younger and 15-older boys and girls; that is set for 8:30 a.m. Sunday.