The Jacksonville (Fla.) Express amateur development football team was supposed to have its first tryouts for its inaugural season this Friday and Saturday at Chattanooga Christian School, but those are being postponed to dates that may be announced by the end of the week. The same goes for Express tryouts scheduled two weeks later in Atlanta, leaving only an Oct. 8 tryout in Chicago as definitely in place. Coach Dale Evans said Tuesday night that tryouts in cities across the nation are expected to be worked out "within 24 to 48 hours." The Express's first game is scheduled for Feb. 3 in Nashville against the Middle Tennessee Bulldawgs, and training camp in Jacksonville starts Jan. 4. "The Jacksonville Express team was started June 1 with the premise of giving players who may have slipped through the cracks in recent years a chance to get attention or at least decent game film for building their careers," Evans said. "We want to pick the best 53 players from across the nation and we want to work with those players as mentors in helping them not make (career-blocking) mistakes."
Volleyball
* Bryan College and Tennessee Wesleyan were in a three-way for fifth place with Reinhardt in the Appalachian Athletic Conference volleyball coaches' preseason poll released Tuesday, each just three points behind fourth-place St. Andrews. Union College (Ky.) was the unanimous choice to win the league after going 34-11 overall and 20-2 in AAC play last year, and Milligan got all 13 second-place votes after a 31-8, 19-3 season. Montreat was third in the voting predicting the 2017 finish. Bluefield was eighth, Truett McConnell ninth, Point 10th, Brenau 11th, Columbia (S.C.) 12th and Allen 13th. Bryan finished fourth in the regular season in 2016 with a 13-9 AAC record as part of its 18-19 overall worksheet under first-year head coach Jessica Day. The league is going to North and South divisions this season with Bryan and Wesleyan in the six-team North. The top four teams in each will play in the AAC tournament Nov. 9-11 in Kingsport, Tenn.
Basketball
* Dalton State assistant basketball coach Hunter Hageman has resigned to "pursue opportunities closer to his family and friends in Kansas," a school release said Tuesday. Friday is his last day with the Roadrunners. "I knew when I hired him it was going to be difficult to keep him," coach Tony Ingle said. "What separates him from others is how much he served our team, students and community. His work ethic, intelligence and enthusiasm is contagious to all of us, and we are going to miss him dearly." Hageman is a Kansas native who played two years of basketball at Friends University in Wichita and then transferred to the University of Kansas and got a degree in sports management in 2014. He was working at the National Association of Basketball Coaches office in Kansas City, Mo., when Ingle persuaded him to move to Georgia two years ago. "I am so thankful for all of the great people I have met, and I will always take great pride in saying I was a member of the Dalton community," Hageman said in the release.
Running
* Cleveland State's new cross country program recently announced its fourth local male signee, Austin Tate, and its fifth female, Emily Colbaugh. Both graduated from Cleveland High, but Tate did so in 2015 and has been a part-time emergency medical technician since then. Colbaugh was known for basketball and softball with the Lady Blue Raiders but gives the Lady Cougars a full complement of runners for their first season, which opens Sept. 2 at the Reinhardt Invitational meet in Canton, Ga. Both teams opened practice Tuesday under coach David Kyle. The previous men's recruits were Parker Tullier and Blaine Boley from Cleveland High and Tyler Hollis from Walker Valley. Bradley Central's Whitney McConnell was the Lady Cougars' first signee, followed by Matilda Lee from Cleveland, Amber Rogers from Red Bank and Madison Guider from Lenoir City.