Hixson resident Miles Burghoff finished the first day in third place out of 165 anglers in the FLW Tour event on Grand Lake in Oklahoma. Burghoff’s five-bass limit Thursday weighed 19 pounds, 12 ounces, trailing only the 24-12 caught by Ohio pro Kyle Weisenburger and the 20-2 for Texan Todd Castledine. Whitwell’s Hensley Powell was 40th at 11-8. First place can be worth up to $125,000. Burghoff got the $500 award for the day’s biggest bass, an 8-pound largemouth.
Diving
» Signal Mountain’s Marissa Roth finished her collegiate diving career at South Carolina with a big splash everywhere except entering the water. After winning the Southeastern Conference platform championship, Roth had an All-America-worthy performance. She took 11th place in the NCAA Division I swimming and diving meet last weekend in Austin, Texas, with a score of 262.80.
Softball
» Tennessee Wesleyan’s 17-game softball streak ended Wednesday at Truett McConnell in their Appalachian Athletic Conference first-place showdown. TMU, ranked 16th in the NAIA, defeated the 23rd-ranked Lady Bulldogs 5-4 and 6-2. Catcher Briley Lawson batted in three runs with two homers for the Bears (26-6, 11-1) in the first game, and reigning AAC pitcher of the week Karley Hobbs (17-0) got a hitless save in that one and the win in game two, when Brie Levy from East Hamilton and Chattanooga State was 3-for-3 with two doubles, an RBI and a run. Shortstop Jaden Morrison from Trion leads TMU with a .487 batting average. For TWU (17-3, 14-2), Taylor Kirkus had a pinch-hit two-run single in game one and was 2-for-3 with a run scored in the rematch, and Courtney Black was 3-for-5 with an RBI and a run in the doubleheader. Baylee Sutton, the AAC player of the week, had two hits and an RBI in the first game. The former North Murray standout hit .588 with a 1.118 slugging percentage and 13 RBIs in four games last week.
General
» Tennessee Wesleyan and Bryan College are third and fourth in this year’s AAC Duard Walker All-Sports Trophy standings through the end of winter sports. Milligan leads with 480 points, followed by Reinhardt with 422.5, TWU with 335, Bryan with 207.5 and Montreat with 205.
Lacrosse
» Sewanee junior Grace Zechman became the female lacrosse Tigers’ career assists leader with nine in Wednesday night’s 17-8 home win over DePauw. That gave her 42 this season and 88 in all, breaking Ellie Murphy’s four-year-old program record by three. Preston Cooper scored four goals and Sarah Strand and Catherine Crigler netted three apiece for Sewanee (9-6), Strand adding six draw controls, while Brooke Winfield had two goals, forced seven turnovers and fielded eight ground balls. Leading 7-6 at halftime, the Tigers scored seven times in the first 10 minutes of the second half.
» Lee University lost 19-6 to 2018 league champion Young Harris in Gulf South Conference women’s lacrosse Wednesday. Shayna Ryan gave Lee (3-7, 0-3) a quick lead, but the visiting Mountain Lions (6-4, 3-1) scored the next 14 goals. Ryan and Emma Hill each had two goals in defeat.
Field Hockey
» Sewanee freshman Molly Wheeler and sophomore Abbie Wrather were listed Wednesday by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association among the ZAG Sports/NFHCA Division III scholars of distinction, Wrather for the second time. That honors players with cumulative grade point averages of at least 3.9 on a 4.0 scale through the first semester of the current academic year. Wrather and Wheeler already had been included on the ZAG/NFHCA national academic squad along with teammates Edith Amason, Anne Cleveland, Nikki Ereli and Jo Jo Young, and Sewanee earned a national academic team award for the 11th time and ninth in a row. The Tigers had a 3.124 team GPA for the fall semester.