Higgins sweeps at nationals again
Call it a triple-triple for Chattanoooga cyclist Durward Higgins. Higgins, 77, completed his third consecutive USA Cycling Masters Road Nationals men’s 75-79 sweep with the criterium victory Sunday in Colorado Springs. He previously won the age group’s individual time trial and road race, just as he had done along with crit triumphs in 2017 and 2018. Higgins also won the national road race in the next lower age group in 2016, when he won the inaugural Mountain Hill Climb up Pike’s Peak as well.
SOFTBALL
› Marc Weekly has returned as a volunteer assistant to the University of Tennessee softball coaching staff headed by his father and stepmother. An NAIA All-America quarterback and national football champion at Pacific Lutheran who chose the Canadian Football League over a professional baseball opportunity, he helped with the UT-Chattanooga football team while working on his master’s degree. He previously was a Lady Volunteers volunteer assistant from 2005 to 2013, during which time the team was 423-122-1 and went six times to the Women’s College World Series. He left to start a high school softball program at The King’s Academy, which went 207-41 and won state titles in 2016, 2017 and 2019, according to a UT release last week. “I am thrilled that Marc will be rejoining our staff after a six-year hiatus,” Karen Weekly said in the release. “Our former players who worked with Marc during his first stint remember him as an exceptional teacher and communicator. He has a passion for studying and learning the game, and his growth as a head coach these past six years make him an even more valuable asset to our team and staff. He has the distinction of winning a high school championship and a USA Softball championship in his final high school and travel ballgames.”
FISHING
› Hixson’s Miles Burghoff didn’t make the 10-man cut for Sunday’s final round in the FLW Cup bass tournament on Lake Hamilton in Arkansas, but he zoomed from deep in the field to a 16th-place finish Saturday with a five-fish limit totaling 12 pounds, 14 ounces — the second biggest bag of the second day. That got him to 19-15, just 17 ounces shy of the top 10. He received $15,000. Buddy Gross of Chickamauga, Georgia, who finished fifth in the FLW Tour’s season points standings, also made a second-day jump in the FLW Cup — to 31st at 16-10, good for $10,000. Bryan Thrift of Shelby, North Carolina, won the $300,200 top prize Sunday with a three-day total of 38-7.