Quick Hitters
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — The IndyCar series won’t return to ISM Raceway in 2019, ending a threeyear run at the track in the Phoenix suburbs.
IndyCar said attendance at the oval in Avondale, Arizona, was disappointing despite “considerable investment” by the open-wheel series and track organizers.
The move was announced Friday in a joint statement from IndyCar and the track.
IndyCar says track president Bryan Sperber and his team were good partners with the series and that it hoped to return when “conditions are right for both parties.”
ISM Raceway is one of 12 tracks operated by International Speedway Corporation. Sperber says IndyCar is talking with ISC about other potential venues for next season.
IndyCar had returned to ISM Raceway in 2016 after 11 years away from the track.
Billie Jean King to be grand marshal of NYC pride march
NEW YORK — Tennis legend Billie Jean King will be one of the grand marshals of New York City’s gay pride march as cities around the world hold LGBT pride events.
The marches commemorate the riots that erupted in response to a police raid at a New York gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in June 1969. A park across the street from the Stonewall was designated a national monument in 2016.
New York’s march will pass by the Stonewall National Monument in the Greenwich Village on Sunday before heading up Fifth Avenue.
The march will be both a celebration of the diversity of LGBT culture and a protest against anti-LGBT policies promoted by Republican President Donald Trump, such as Trump’s attempt to ban all transgender people from serving in the military.
The theme of this year’s march is “Defiantly Different.” Eighty floats and tens of thousands of marchers are expected.
In addition to King, the grand marshals include transgender advocate Tyler Ford and civil rights organization Lambda Legal.
IndyCar racers prepare for Wisconsin
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Defending IndyCar series champion Josef Newgarden won the pole Saturday for the race at Road America, leading a Team Penske sweep of the front row.
Newgarden turned in a lap time of 1 minute, 43.20 seconds for his fifth career pole and second straight after taking pole position two weeks ago at Texas.
He edged teammate Will Power by 0.05 seconds.
Andretti Autosport drivers locked down the second row for the 222-mile race Sunday, with Ryan Hunter-Reay starting third and Alexander Rossi taking fourth.
Sports editor’s note:
This is part six of a series where I compete against Yuma-area coaches at their sport and write about the experience.
Richy Leon and Cesar Castillo have known each other for decades. They’re two of the best baseball player Yuma County produced in the 1990s. They both played collegiately at Arizona State. They’ve coached against each other for the past 12 years.
They consider themselves “great friends,” and one considered the other a role model on the diamond growing up.
But up until this past week, as far as they can remember, they’d never before competed against each other in a home run derby.
For round six of my Yuma Sun vs. Coaches series, we made it happen.
Rather than compete against just one coach for the baseball part of this series, I figured I’d invite all five Yuma Union High School District baseball coaches to take part in the fun. Not to say other same-sport YUHSD coaches don’t get along, but there seems to be a particularly strong connection among the baseball group.
All five played high school ball here once upon a time — Leon (Kofa Class of 1994) and Castillo (Yuma High 1997) in the 1990s; Gila Ridge’s James Kuzniak (Cibola 2003), Cibola’s Larsen Jones (Cibola 2004) and Yuma High’s Nick Johnson (Yuma High 2005) in the early 2000s.
Unfortunately Jones and Johnson were unable to attend, but the other three made it out for what turned out to be an hour of playful banter and an impressive display of “old man strength,” as they regularly referred to it.
“I haven’t swung in —“Leon started to say as we walked onto the Cibola softball field.
Kuzniak cut Leon off: “Twenty minutes.”
All three were downplaying their own chances, and at least Kuzniak was accusing the others of preparing when they claimed they didn’t.
They were taking this seriously. This was going to be fun.
Earlier on Twitter, I’d posted a poll asking who’d win the derby.