Volleyball Mocs fall 3-1 to Samford in SoCon final and more regional sports news

Assorted Sports Equipment on Black
Assorted Sports Equipment on Black

Host Samford defeated the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 3-1 in the Southern Conference volleyball tournament championship match Monday night in Birmingham. The set scores were 25-19, 20-25, 25-20, 25-22 in favor of the Bulldogs (21-13), who got 28 kills and 16 digs from Erin Bognar, 14 and 17 from Kate Neisler, 32 assists from Erika Pifer and 22 assists and 16 digs from Taylor Anderton. For UTC (18-13), Dani Szczepanski had team highs of 14 kills, a .737 attack percentage and five block assists and Kristy Wieser had 13 kills. Setters Madison Bergren and Lauren Greenspoon contributed 29 and 20 assists and 14 and 11 digs for the Mocs, while Miranda Elpers had nine kills and 10 digs, Eden Murray also had nine kills and Lindsey Farrell and Allie Davenport had 20 and 16 digs.

Auto Racing

* Kevin Rodden of Cleveland won the $2,500 Super Pro first prize on the last night of 2016 racing Saturday night at the Brainerd Optimist Drag Strip. Rodden won with the low elapsed time and top speed of the meet, 4.43 seconds and 149.25 mph, on a 4.42 dial in his supercharged Chevrolet dragster. Ryan Truitt of Chattanooga was second with a 4.75-second burst on a 4.74 dial in his Chevy dragster. Steven Clanton of Fort Payne won the Foot Brake eliminations with a 6.67 run on a 6.67 dial in a 1972 Volkswagen sedan - the first win for a VW at the strip in more than 20 years, according to a Brainerd Optimist official - and Curtis Snodgrass of Calhoun, Ga., was second with a 5.89 run on a 5.88 dial in a 1965 Ford Falcon. First-time driver Drew Brown of Chickamauga was the Junior Dragster winner with Kaleb Winters of Soddy-Daisy second.

Basketball

* Sewanee sophomore Bella Taylor was the first Southern Athletic Association women's basketball player of the week for 2016-17 after averaging a league-high 17.7 points a game in the Tigers' first three games. She shot a league-best 53.5 percent from the field and also averaged 4.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.0 steals.

Running

* Dalton State College sophomore Emily Poole from Heritage High School repeated as an NAIA All-America cross country runner with a 27th-place finish in the national meet this past Saturday at Elsah, Ill., and Bryan College senior Tyler Boone finished 39th out of 331 men's participants. The two-time Appalachian Athletic Conference runner of the year finished the 8-kilometer course in 25 minutes, 23.8 seconds. Dalton State's Ryan Gebelein and David Murillo finished in 26:31 and 27:08. Poole's 5k time was 17:47.87, and teammate Natalie Hensley from Heritage finished her career with a 19:19 that was the second best time for a Southern States Athletic Conference woman.

Soccer

* In their first tournament together, the Red Bank-based Premier Soccer Academy Las Leonas under-17 girls won the Challenger Cup gold division in Atlanta this past weekend. The team coached by Pedro Kozak and assistant Kevin Stophel, with Sherry Ricketts as manager, won 1-0 over the Impact SC 01 Elite, 5-1 over the Excel 2000 White, 3-0 over the Lady Chefs Premier 01 and 5-0 in the final over the Oconee FC 00 Red.

Golf

* Dalton State moved up to second Monday in the NAIA men's golf rankings, the final Fall Bushnell poll of 2016. Oklahoma City University got nine of the 10 first-place votes and 248 points, and the Roadrunners are second with 223 in moving up from No. 6. Tennessee Wesleyan made its debut in the men's poll at No. 25. Dalton State already was No. 3 in the final women's poll of 2016, leading into the season's spring semester.

* The Sewanee men's golf team is ranked No. 25 in NCAA Division III after the fall portion of its 2016-17 season. The Tigers won the Piedmont Fall Invitational and finished third in the Rhodes College Fall Classic, sixth at the Chick-fil-A Collegiate and 10th in the Royal Lakes/Oglethorpe Fall Invitational.

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