Flames get French as pitching coach and other sports news

Friday, August 2, 2013

Lee University baseball coach Mark Brew moved quickly to fill his pitching coach position, and he got an NCAA Division I guy to help usher the Flames into Division II. Drew French comes to the Flames after two years with Florida International University, and before that he worked at Alabama. He helped the Crimson Tide make four SEC tournament appearances and one super regional, and FIU made the Sun Belt tourney both seasons he was there. Thirteen pitchers and three catchers from the two schools were major league draft picks the last six years. “He brings an impressive resume as a pitching coach, but after getting to know him, I have been very impressed with him as a person,” Brew said in a Lee release. “Drew has coached at the highest level of collegiate baseball. … As a coach and player [at Concordia in Texas], he has been mentored by some of the top college pitching minds in the game. His pedigree will allow him to bring a level of knowledge that will be a huge asset to our pitching staff and team in general.”

Basketball

• Chattanooga’s LaVantez Knight and Warren County’s Kendall Rutledge signed scholarship papers Thursday to continue their basketball careers at Tennessee Temple University. Both are guards. Rutledge averaged 13-plus points for the McMinnville high school last season, with 26 in one game, and was all-district in 6-AAA. He said Temple “is a great school with a bunch of great people.” His cousin, Bree Smith, is a point guard on the TTU women’s team, and he said he had watched some of the Lady Crusaders’ games. “He’s a good-shooting combo guard,” new Temple coach Jeff Haarlow said. “He’ll have a good chance for a year to learn our system from some veterans — and the work it takes to be a college player.” The same will be true for Knight, who averaged 21.2 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and 2.6 blocks per games at the beginning of his high school career for Berean Academy, where his coach was TTU’s No. 3 all-time scorer, but he made the rounds of District 6-AA after that — at Hixson, Brainerd and Howard — and played this past year as a postgrad for Gabriel Christian Academy in Smyrna, Tenn., and scored 17 points in one win and had 11 rebounds with nine points and seven assists in another. “He went through so much, but the kid is determined,” said Howard coach Walter McGary, who was at the signing. “He’s a real good kid and a real hard worker, and he’s got a great love for the game. I look for him to do good things at Temple. I really do.”

Wrestling

Brandyn Irwin on Thursday followed his brother, David Plank, as a former Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe wrestler signing scholarship papers for Tennessee Temple. Irwin graduated from LFO in 2012 after a 21-7 senior season at 152 pounds and played baseball last year for Hiwassee. He also played football in high school. “This was more about coming back home,” he said in giving reasons besides family ties for the switch in college sports. “We’re very excited to have him here,” Temple assistant coach Corey Wright said. “We had seven guys last year, and we lost matches because we were shorthanded. We’re bringing in good numbers this year, so we will be a lot more competitive. And I can tell Brandyn has a lot of potential.”

Staff Reports