The 2016 national semifinalist Chattanooga Football Club will have a different conference path in the 2017 National Premier Soccer League season. The NPSL announced Monday that its Southeast Conference will include 10 teams separated into East and West divisions. Chattanooga FC will be in the West with the Birmingham Hammers, New Orleans Jesters, Memphis City FC and first-year member Inter Nashville FC. Comprising the East Division will be the Knoxville Force, Atlanta Silverbacks, Georgia Revolution, FC Carolina Discoveries and league newcomer Asheville (N.C.) City SC. The Revolution and Carolina Discoveries were elsewhere within the NPSL last year. “The Southeast Conference has historically been one of the more competitive conferences in the NPSL,” Chattanooga FC general manager Sean McDaniel said in a club release. “With the addition of the Carolina teams, a new Nashville group and our long-term rivals from Atlanta, we expect this trend to continue. Coach (Bill) Elliott is aggressively pursuing new talent and our veteran players are already training. We realize this will be a battle as always, but I’m confident we are up to the challenge.” Schedules should be released next month.
* Covenant College teams won two of the four USA South Sportsmanship awards for the conference’s fall sports. The Covenant men’s soccer team won for the fourth year in a row, while the volleyball Lady Scots repeated their 2015 honor. Mary Baldwin University was the women’s soccer sportsmanship winner for the fifth year in a row, and Greensboro College won for football, which Covenant doesn’t play. The school that wins the most team sportsmanship awards through the winter and spring seasons will receive the overall USA South Sportsmanship Trophy. Covenant has earned at least a share of that distinction the last three years.
Tennis
* The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s tennis team is following its former coach to McCallie School – at least for indoor home matches early in the spring semester. That home schedule, announced Monday, begins with a match on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 16, against Austin Peay. Now coached by Chris Camper, who was hired after Jeff Clark left for a job at McCallie, the Mocs will host Kennesaw State on Jan. 27, Brenau on Feb. 10, Murray State on Feb. 20 and Middle Tennessee State on Feb. 27 at McCallie. They will switch to the Champions Club for outdoor matches, beginning with a Southern Conference battle against UNC Greensboro on March 5. Before that UTC will play Tennessee and Air Force in Knoxville on Jan. 22, Nashville matches at Belmont and Lipscomb on Feb. 3 and 4, at Georgia Tech on Feb. 18 and at Jacksonville State on Feb. 25. UTC has five letter winners back from last year’s team that went 15-8, 5-2 in the SoCon.
Swimming
* Sewanee’s Michael Whitehead won the men’s 400-yard individual medley Sunday on the final day of the Transylvania Invitational swimming and diving meet in Lexington, Ky. His time of 4 minutes, 10.07 seconds beat his previous season best by nearly five seconds and beat the runner-up from Rose-Hulman by more than three seconds. Sewanee’s Caty Hueske was third in the women’s 100 backstroke, and Emily Gay and Meghan Mulhern were fifth in the 400 IM and 200 freestyle, respectively. Andrew Freibert was sixth in two men’s events, the 50 free and 100 butterfly, as the Tigers finished fifth out of seven schools in the team standings. The Sewanee women were seventh out of eight. Saturday, Hueske was second in the women’s 200 IM and fourth in the 200 backstroke, Mulhern was second in the 500 free, and those two, Ashley Krueger and Gay were fourth in the 800 free relay. Mary McCarthy was fourth in the 200 fly. Whitehead was third in the men’s 200 IM, Freibert was fifth in the 100 free and they, Kipling Klimas and Kyle Schnell finished third in the 200 medley relay after Freibert, Klimas, Dylan Presswood and Whitehead were fourth in the 800 free relay.