Gary Haskew, center, died Monday afternoon from a heart attack. He was the senior member of WGOW Radio's "SportTalk" show crew.
Eli ChristmanRon Lane, who owns Ron's Classic Cars in Soddy-Daisy, proved again Thursday night at Huntsville, Ala., that he still can handle a dragster. He won $25,000 for first place at Huntsville Dragway in the 2016 DRR Ultimate Series sponsored by DragRaceResults.com. Lane defeated Brad Taylor of Louisiana with a 4.56-second final run on a 4.56 dial-in with a .000 reaction time. Lane has reached four finals in his four competitions this year and said, "I am a blessed man who gets to enjoy working and playing with what I love - cars!"
General
* Longtime "SportTalk" radio show co-host Gary Haskew died Monday afternoon from a heart attack. Also known as "Dr. Basketball" or "Dr. B," Haskew was 74. In a released statement, WGOW interim program director Bill Lockhart said, "Gary was an incredible talent, an excellent storyteller, a true original and the largest of larger-than-life characters. In a world of wanna-bes, posers and imitators, Gary was the genuine article; a man's man, an entertainer extraordinaire, with a love for people. We are all lucky to have had Gary in our lives."
Running
* Former University of Tennessee NCAA champion and All-American Phoebe Wright from Red Bank High School and Signal Mountain finished sixth out of eight finalists Monday in the women's 800-meter race at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials at Eugene, Ore. With a time of 2 minutes, 2.55 seconds, Wright improved her preliminaries position by two spots, but she had to finish in the top three to make the Olympic team for Rio de Janeiro. Winner Kate Grace, Ajee Wilson and Chrishuna Williams were the qualifiers.
* Covenant College cross country coach Katie Stanford recently announced five additions to her 2016 teams: Anna Danek of Blairsville, Ga., Caroline Pepper of Kennesaw and Abbs Kern of Lexington, Ky., for the Lady Scots and Caleb Keitt of McDonough, Ga., and Phil Carrenard of Douglasville, Ga. for the men's team. Danek, who was the valedictorian at Union County High School and plans to study pre-engineering at Covenant, follows three brothers to the Lookout Mountain school. Pepper was a captain as a senior runner at Harrison High School, and Kern was a two-year captain for Trinity Christian Academy, which produced former Lady Scots standout Beth Burgess. Keitt was the Wendy's High School Heisman winner for the McDonough area and holds the Ola High School record of 10:02 for 3200 meters, as well as personal bests of 17:14 for the 5k, 4:22 for the 1500, 54:03 for the 400 and 25.94 for the 200. He has been a Junior Olympic national qualifier in track. Carrenard was a soccer all-star as well as a running standout at Harvester Christian Academy, where he had personal bests of 2:27 for the 800 and 5:20 for the 1600. He was second in his region and fourth in the state in the latter.
Shooting Sports
* Soddy-Daisy High School student Eli Christman weathered two seven-way shoot-offs and a six-way tiebreaker in sweeping titles in all four shotgun gauges Saturday at the Firecracker 4x50 at the Cedar City Gun Club in Lebanon, Tenn. He won the tournament high overall belt buckle and junior HOA silver dollar award and was the junior HOA in each of the four gauges in the competition that included 44 shooters from Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Illinois. Christman's total score was 198 out of 200, with HOA perfect 50s in 12-gauge and .410 and Class AA first-place 49s in 20- and 28-gauge. The runner-up from Florence, Ala., shot 195. Brian Carter of Winchester, Tenn., was third in Class B at 186, and Jimmy Floyd of Cleveland was second in Class C at 180, with a 50 in 12-gauge.