Sports Briefs
Published 12:33 am Tuesday, August 18, 2009
White earns third in national 400
Bonney Lake’s Mason White finished third in the 9- to 10-year-old division of the 400-meter dash at the Hershey’s Track and Field Games North American Final in Hershey, Pa., Aug. 1.
White, a fifth-grade student at Daffodil Elementary School, was among more than 500 of the top young track and field athletes in North America to compete in the 32nd year of the event.
From April through July, boys and girls ages 9 through 14 competed in local, district, state and provincial meets. At least five participants from each state and 10 Canadian provinces and three territories then traveled to Pennsylvania to compete in the North American Final Meet at Henry Hershey Field on the campus of the Milton Hershey School.
White earned his trip to the national finals with a first-place finish in the district and state competition. He finished third at the national meet behind fellow 10-year-olds Jallah Galimah of Rockdale, Ga., and Sheldon Davis of Peekskill, N.Y. White’s time for the final was 1 minute, 06.11 seconds.
At Daffodil Elementary School, White has been selected to participate in the gifted and highly capable programs. He is also a soccer player with the Mount Rainier Futbol Club U11 team and plays piano.
Plateau golfers stay close at tournament
Enumclaw golfers Jake Erickson, Tyler Salsbury and Jordan Beals finished in the top 35 Sunday, competing in a field of 98 young golfers at the Pacific Northwest Golf Association Championships Junior Boys Amateur Championships at the University of Idaho Golf Course in Moscow.
The tournament was set up for 36-hole stroke play qualifying followed by single-elimination match play with a Championship Flight of 32 players and additional flights of eight players.
After the first two days of stroke play, there was a possiblity of five matches to win the championship.
Salsbury birdied the second playoff hole to get into the championship flight.
All three Enumclaw golfers won two matches and Salsbury made it to the quarterfinals in the championship flight.
Erickson finished at 77 and 74 for 23rd in stroke-play results. Salsbury went 81 and 72 for 26th and Beals shot 73 and 81 for his two days.
Kahne holds on to eighth in title race
An 11th-place finish at Michigan International Speedway Sunday helped Kasey Kahne maintain his eighth-place standing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers’ points race for the title.
With three races remaining until the final 10-race shootout, Kahne is 616 points behind leader Tony Stewart and in the thick of a tightly-locked battle with Juan Montoya, Ryan Newman, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Brian Vickers, Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch to be one of the top 12 drivers after the Sept. 12 race in Richmond, Va.
Racing continues Saturday night under the lights at the Bristol Motorspeedway short track. Television coverage begins at 3:30 on ESPN.
Brian Vickers picked up his second career victory Sunday in Michigan. Kahne, who qualified 10th, had to start from the back of the 43-car field after an engine change.
“Overall, bringing home an 11th in our Budweiser Dodge was a great effort by everyone on this team,” Kahne said. “It was a great finish considering where we ran all day. We got the best finish that we could. The pit crew did a great job. Considering we started 43rd, we had a lot of cars that we had to pass on a very slick race track and we were able to pass a lot of cars. Kenny (Francis, crew chief) did a great job on top of the box making adjustments to try and get our Budweiser Dodge to handle better. We’ll take the points and be happy to head to Bristol next weekend.”
