Bryan College and Union College shared the favorites’ role in preseason voting for Appalachian Athletic Conference volleyball supremacy. Bryan’s Lady Lions and the Barbourville, Ky., team each got 94 voting points, Union with five first-place votes and Bryan with four, and Milligan was third in the 11-team league with 80, 14 ahead of fourth-place St. Andrews. Tennessee Wesleyan was eighth with 38. “Preseason polls are nice, but I think our players realize that they don’t mean very much,” Bryan coach Dave Shumaker said in a release. “We will have to produce where it counts – on the court.” His teams have won the AAC regular season the last three years and were undefeated in league play last year, but Union edged the Lady Lions 3-2 for the tournament title.
* The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga volleyball program has received an AVCA Team Academic Award for the third year in a row. That requires at least a 3.30 aggregate grade point average, and UTC’s team had a 3.40 for 2014-15. “This award truly represents all of the hard work our student-athletes put into their studies and the way in which they are striving for academic excellence,” coach Travis Filar said in a school release, praising “their competitive mindset to be successful in all areas of their lives.”
Auto Racing
* Adam Babcock from Rock Spring, Ga., won the $2,500 top prize in the Super Pro class last Saturday night at the Brainerd Optimist Drag Strip, and 22-year-old Kelsey Keener from Whitwell, the only female in the class, finished second. Babcock won with a 5.27-second run on a 5.25 dial in a Chevrolet dragster with a 500-cubic-inch big-block engine. Keener’s final run was a 5.22 on a 5.19 in her Chevy dragster. Richie Clayton of Chattanooga was third with a 5.40 on a 5.39. Charles McRae, a 20-year strip veteran from LaFayette, won the Foot Brake class with a 9.48 run on a 9.47 dial in his 1985 Ford Mustang convertible, and Jeff Montgomery of Centerville, Ga., was second in a 1986 Mustang. Tyler Dennis of Hixson won the Junior Dragster class with an 8.83 on an 8.82, with LaFayette’s Bryson Kaiser the runner-up. Kevin Rodden of Cleveland had the low elapsed time (4.52) and top speed (153.25 mph) of the meet in his big-block Chevy dragster.
Football
* Tusculum College senior wide receiver Justin Houston from Bradley Central High School and Carson-Newman senior offensive lineman Tyler Scott from Ridgeland were among the preseason first-team football selections the South Atlantic Conference announced Tuesday. Scott was one of five first-teamers from the Eagles, who also had four second-team picks. He started all 10 games last year at right tackle and had an average grade of 71.1 with 10 knockdown blocks for Carson-Newman, which was in the top five in NCAA Division II in rushing yards per game. Houston was a first-team choice at wide receiver and a second-team return specialist after leading the SAC in pass receptions the past two years and recording kickoff-return touchdowns in 2014. He has 10 games with more than 100 receiving yards in his Tusculum career.
Track & Field
* Three members of the Chattanooga Jets Track Club totaled five top-eight finishes for All-American status in the USATF National Junior Olympic meet July 27-Aug. 2 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, led by Danielle Dunning with a fourth place in the 9-10 girls’ 100-meter dash and Brevin Sims with a fifth in 13-14 boys’ 100 hurdles. Dunning, who ran a 13.87-second 100, also finished sixth in the 200 and 23rd in long jump, and Lennex Walker was seventh in 15-16 girls’ 100 hurdles and eighth in triple jump. Nicole Johnson was 13th in the 15-16 100 and she, Walker, Tia Davis and Deshayla Wiley were 20th in the 4×100 relay. Sims was 15th in the 200 hurdles for his age group, and the Jets’ Jeremiah Chopane was 15th in 11-12 boys’ long jump. in the 17-18 girls’ division, the Jets’ Alexis Wilson was 24th in the 100 and Jada Hall was 25th in the 1500.