Lee University golfer Peyton Sliger from Maryville held off University of Tennessee at Chattanooga captain Wes Gosselin from Knoxville to win the 100th Tennessee State Amateur Championship on Friday at Holston Hills Country Club in Knoxville. Playing together in the final round, Sliger and Gosselin went back and forth and came to the par-5 18th hole with Sliger one shot ahead at 10 under par for the tournament. Gosselin birdied the hole to get to 10 under also, but Sliger responded with a three-foot birdie putt for a 69 and an 11-under 269 total. Honors Course member Tim Jackson from Germantown finished fourth at 273, and Winston Brown of Chattanooga tied for 16th at even-par 280. Young Chattanoogans Scott Stevens and Brooks Thomas tied for 21st and 24th, respectively, at 282 and 284, and Lee golfer Taylor Davis also shot 284. Thomas closed with a 67. Signal Mountain's Mikey Feher tied for 30th at 285.
* Led by Gosselin's 4.0 grade point average for the entire school year, the UTC men's golfers had an aggregate 3.33 GPA and were named a Golf Coaches Association of America All-Academic team for 2014-15. The Mocs had a 3.47 for the spring semester, when Zac Stolz joined Gosselin with a perfect GPA. Stuart Thomas had a 4.0 last fall. "I'm very proud," coach Mark Guhne said in a UTC release. "We want to win in every area. That's on the course, in the classroom and in the community. We have an excellent support system to do just that."
Tennis
* Bronte Goodhue from Chattanooga and Girls Preparatory School has become the 32nd NCAA Postgraduate Scholar in University of the South (Sewanee) history. She completed her Sewanee career this past spring as the school's valedictorian (with a 4.08 cumulative GPA), a third-time Southern Athletic Association tennis player of the year and the overall SAA Woman of the Year. She was a five-time Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American at the NCAA Division III school. Goodhue is the third player under women's tennis coach Conchie Shackelford to be a postgraduate scholar, which comes with $7,500 for graduate study, and joins swimmer Brian Glatt as a 2014-15 honoree from Sewanee.
Basketball
* Shooting guard Antonio Finley from East Mississippi Community College is the most recent signee for Dalton State's reigning NAIA national basketball champions. Finley, who's from Meridian, Miss., led EMCC with 16.7 points a game last season and helped the Lions go 38-15 the last two years and reach the NJCAA Region 23 tournament semifinals both times. As a sophomore he averaged and NJCAA-high 4.3 made 3-point baskets a game, hitting 103 of 282. "Antonio is a very competitive player that has a very good shooting touch," Dalton State coach Tony Ingle said in a school release, "as was evident in the six 3-point shots he made in the Mississippi junior college all-star game. He is also a high-character young man that can give us depth at the shooting guard position."
Soccer/Volleyball
* The UTC women's soccer and volleyball teams will be at Hamilton Place mall today to distribute and autograph posters and meet members of the community taking part in tax-free-weekend shopping. The soccer Mocs with new coach Gavin McKinney will be near the Belk store from 3 to 5 p.m., and Travis Filar and his volleyball players will be there from 4 to 6. The soccer team, which had its first practice for the 2015 season Friday morning, has 17 returning players among the 27 on the roster, including seniors Lauren Thomas, Clare Latham, Skylar Brewer, Logan Higgins, Loryn Queen and Alanna Warrick, and former Soddy-Daisy star Hannah Wyatt is a redshirt junior after sitting out a season with an injury. Volleyball seniors are Briana Reid, Sarah Batterton, Lauren Gainer, Julimar Alvarado and Catherine Chason, and Kristy Wieser and Allie Davenport are the juniors.