AREA SPORTS NOTES Area golfers in match play
Chattanooga golfers Thomas Baird and Ronnie Law take on the top seeds today in the TGA Seniors and Super Seniors Match Play Championships at The Club at Fairvue Plantation in Gallatin. Bob Rice from Cleveland Country Club is the Seniors third seed after his 145 in qualifying Tuesday and Wednesday, and Tom Schreiner (151), Mike Poe (152) and Stewart Lawwill (152) also are in the 16-man bracket. Ooltewah’s Larry McGill (150) is a Super Seniors quarterfinalist along with Law (155). Baird (153), the 2010 champion, got the last Seniors berth in a four-way playoff for three spots and faces 2015 and 2017 champ Tim Jackson (139), who owns 19 TGA titles.
BASKETBALL
East Hamilton basketball player Carli Zeh signed Wednesday with Berry College. Zeh helped the Lady Hurricanes go 26-7 last season, which was a school record for victories in a season. They played in the
Region 3-AAA championship game for the first time and earned their first state-sectional berth. Zeh’s 38-percent shooting from behind the arc led the team, and she’s the program’s career leader in charges taken. “First of all, she’s a great kid,” East Hamilton coach Hunter Gremore said. “She’s a really good student and a very hard worker. She’s not really the most athletic, but she makes up for her athleticism with her smarts on the court. She’s a very good 3-point shooter. She knows the angles to take and is always in the right position defensively. I think she’s going to be a good asset for them.”
SWIMMING
Girls Preparatory School team captain Kate Schlegel has made it official that she will continue her swimming career at College of Wooster in Ohio. She plans to study archaeology and art history and chose the Division III school partly for its research opportunities. Schlegel was a 200- and 500-yard freestyle competitor for GPS and a three-time state-championships qualifier. She also was a two-time winner of the Bruiser Award as the ideal teammate. “GPS and Coach (John) Woods really set me on the path to be able to swim in college,” she said in a school release. “She’s always been a great example to all of us of perseverance and how you should handle yourself in workouts, at meets and as a teammate,” Woods said. “The coach of the Fighting Scots will be just as lucky as I was to have a great person on the team like Kate who is a committed athlete.”
VOLLEYBALL
LaFayette High School senior Katie Dixon has signed to continue her volleyball career in Walker County at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. Mainly an outside hitter, Dixon had 232 kills, 368 digs and 56 aces for the 2017 Lady Ramblers team that went 40-13. She was part of 101 wins in four seasons. “She’s been a big-time player since her freshman year,” LaFayette coach Chris Logan said in a GNTC release. “She has an all-around game, and Georgia Northwestern is getting a steal. I know there were a couple of other colleges that were interested in her.” Lady Bobcats coach Amber Weaver said Dixon planned to attend GNTC anyway but came to three of its open-gym workouts, and “when I saw what she could do, I was amazed at what we were going to get. … We’ve already had her at just about every position except setter.”
SOFTBALL
Catcher Shelby Hammontree from Heritage High School leads the 53-2 University of North Georgia softball team with 48 RBIs and is second with a .354 average and 11 home runs. She also has a triple and seven doubles and has scored 39 runs, and this week she was named to the Peach Belt Conference all-academic team with her 3.65 grade point average as a sophomore biology/ pre-medicine major. The Nighthawks are hosting the PBC tournament this weekend.