Local plays big role in JMU’s inning to remember
Though a young James Madison softball team hasn’t approached the eye-popping success of last year’s 41-4 season that ended in the College World Series semifinals, Greenbrier Christian Academy alumna Emily Phillips and her teammates recently set a record that seems awfully hard to break.
During Tuesday’s 14-2, five-inning victory to complete a doubleheader sweep at Radford, the Dukes socked six home runs in the fifth, an all-time NCAA record for one inning. Phillips, a redshirt sophomore who entered the game as a pinch hitter after catching Game 1 of the doubleheader, hit two of them.
JMU led only 3-2 after four innings, but Shifflett’s solo homer, Phillips’ two-run blast to left-center and Rogers’ solo drive to right made it 7-2.
With two out, an error by the Highlanders prolonged the inning. Hannah Hennessy’s two-run homer to center and Hallie Hall’s three-run blast to left followed. After Isabelle Fishman reached on another error, Phillips blasted a 3-1 pitch over the fence in left field for a 14-2 lead.
On a team that lost almost all of its top players to graduation, Phillips has been one of JMU’s top hitters, batting .391 (16 for 54) with an OPS of 1.150. She has seven homers and 16 RBIs.
Bethel grad in NFL hosting football camps in Ghana: Cleveland Browns linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, a former Bethel High and Notre Dame star, is traveling to the African nation of Ghana to host two football camps for 16-23-year-olds.
After the camps, some participants could attend the official NFL Africa camp in June.
Owusu-Koramoah has begun his JOK Charitable Fund, and Annie Bailey of Rise Sports Advisors says its website is https://sagamoreinstitute.org/jok-fund/
Norfolk Christian baseball alum starring in college: Luke Short, a former Norfolk Christian player from Virginia Beach, has made an immediate impact as a shortstop for the University of the South, located in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Short is hitting .310 (9 for 29) with three runs, four RBIs and an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) of .754.
Short, a 5-foot-9, 160-pounder who played plenty of travel baseball when he wasn’t competing for the Ambassadors, was part of the nation’s 10th-ranked D-III recruiting class, according to Perfect Game.
His team began the season 2-18, but has played several nationally ranked opponents.
Hokies’ Lewis highlights wrestling NCAAs: The college wrestling season ended last weekend with the NCAA Championships in Detroit, where Virginia Tech’s Mekhi Lewis added a runner-up finish at 174 pounds to his title — the first in Hokies history — at 165 pounds in 2019. He helped the Hokies place eighth in the team standings. Virginia tied Purdue for 30th.
Lewis fell to the defending national champion, No. 1 Carter Starocci of Penn State, via 5-4 sudden-victory ride-out criteria. Also earning All-America honors for the Hokies were Korbin Myers for the second time and Bryce Andonian for the first time. Myers was sixth at 133 pounds, while Andonian was third at 149.