The Dallas Post Ee Es i A Se Se Section 2 Wednesday, June 11, 1997 S » »Umps do job through rain, snow, catcalls o o - @ By CHRIS BELL Post Correspondent DALLAS TWP. - There are people who go unnoticed in any volunteer orgai:ization. But, in Little League, the group who is most often overlooked is the um- pires. Actually, if an umpire is doing a good job, he shouldn’t be no- ticed. More often than not, the only time he or she gets any atten- tion is over a controversial call. But in between all the close calls, umpires are there in the heat, cold and rain and in the Back Mountain, sometimes snow. In the Back Mountain Major League, the most familiar faces behind the masks are Larry Lettie, Jim McMonagle, Bob Bayer, Joan Conrad, Scott Yoh, Tom Mosier and umpire-in-chief Steve With- ers. They work the majority of the games on the major league level which features 16 games a week, including two per day Monday through Thursday and seven on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. As the umpire-in-chief for Back Mountain Baseball, Withers schedules umpires for those games as well as the AAA minor league games and the junior and senior teener league games. For Withers and his umpiring Golf tourney features '97 Nissan crew, the job is a labor of love. “Our Little League umpires work on a volunteer basis,” he ex- plained. “They are people who have jobs and families and other things to do. But, they come out to umpire because they really enjoy doing it.” Withers has been involved in baseball as a player and coach his whole life and views umpiring as an opportunity to give something back to the game he loves. “I started playing when I was six years old and I can’t remember a year when I wasn’t involved with baseball. I decided I didn’t want to coach anymore after last year and when Jack Snyder became president of the league, I told him I would be his umpire-in-chief. “Baseball has been a part of my life for 38 years and has given See UMPIRES, pg 10 A new 1997 Nissan, donated by Automobile City and a trip for two to Disney World, donated by Tennenbaum Travel, are the prizes to be awarded to the first golfers to make a hole-in-one on selected holes during the 5th Annual St. Therese’s/Joe Brennan Memorial Golf Tournament to be held on Fri., June 20. The Captain & Crew tourney will be held at Four Seasons Golf Course in Exeter and features a 1 p.m. shotgun start. Prizes will be awarded to the winning teams in men’s, women’s and mixed flights. The $55 entry fee includes 18 holes of golf, a cart, delicious barbecue, refreshments, and prizes. To sign up to play, sponsor a hole, or become a patron, contact St. Therese’s Church at 696- 1140. An added highlight for this year’s tournament will be the opportunity to purchase a chance for an autographed watercolor painting of HarbourTown’s 18th hole, donated by noted local artist Sue Hand. Organizers of the event, admiring the car which may be awarded to one lucky golfer are from left, Dave Schuler, Automobile City, car sponsor, Gary Williams, Father J. Peter Crynes, Fran Williams and Jean Brennan. Kelly will instruct at PSU soccer camp Brian Kelly, the New York/New Jersey MetroStars midfielder, and graduate of Lake-Lehman High School, will be a guest instructor on the first day of Penn State Wilkes-Barre's | soccer camp which begins Mon., June 23. The Shaver- town native, who was selected as the 1993 Parade Magazine High School Player of the Year, and later served as cap- tain of Duke University’s soccer team, has appeared in the MetroStars last three MLS games since recently joining the club after his graduation from Duke. BRIAN KELLY Kelly will work with both morning and afternoon sessions of the soc- cer camp, addressing each group on how to master elementary soc- cer skills- dribbling, trapping, passing and shooting. The soccer camp, under the direction of head coach Bill Tooley for the third year, has a morning session for grades K-5, which is now full, and two afternoon ses- sions, for grades K-5 and 6-12, which runs form 12:30-3:30 p.m. and have openings. Travel teams are encouragd to enroll as a group and will be kept together for more advanced training. For additional information and/ or registration forms for the soc- Cer: camp, contact Jennifer Youngman, Penn State Wilkes- Barre, 675-9220. Wennington returns to basketball camp Bill Wenningon of the Chicago Bulls will be the guest speaker at the Cougars Basketball School for Boys this summer at College Misericor- dia. The camp is open to boys ages eight to 15 and will be offered in two sessons, June 23-27, and July 14-18. Specialized training in all areas of the game will be featured, including shooting, passing, defense, dribbling and philosophy. Cost of the camp is $110 per student per week and includes a camp T-shirt, and basketball, lunch and an optional swim period in the Anderson Center pool. In addition to Wennington, Misericordia head men’s basketball coach Dave Martin will serve as camp director. oF ol P orts\Veek POST PHOTO/JIM PHILLIPS Joan Conrad made the call Saturday when the Yankees met the Rangers. She umpires several games each week. The catcher is David Glicini, batter is Nate Yoh. Softball camp June 17-20 Back Mountain Softball will be holding softball camp for youth ages 8 through 18 at the Back Mountain Little Complex, Dallas. Camp dates are June 17-June 20, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. The fee is $80 with a $25 registration fee deposit required. Camp staff will include Denise Davis, former University of Rhode Island assistant coach, Lake-Le- hman graduate; Kellie Cookus, senior University of Rhode Island, Bishop Hoban graduate; Karen Stefanovich, Trenton State All- Track talk Dave Beccaris A big weekend on Memorial Day for CART, NASCAR, and of course Indianapolis. But before those events, I wanted to mention how several Back Mountain resi- dents did at the first SSCA race at Pocono for the ‘97 season. The largest race group of the weekend was the touring class which had 38 starters. Among those entered were Will Dannert in his yellow submarine Corvette, Jon Valentine in another Corvette, Charles Baylor with his ultra fast RX 7. and 1 with the MV Motorsports Z28. This was a double regional with a race on Saturday and Sunday. In Saturday’s race, Will Dannert started second and finished sec- ond after leading 90% of the way. He would have won had he not needed to get past a lapped car on the last lap. That slow car allowed Joe Aquilante, of Phoenixville, to close in and bump Dannert just enough to get buy. Jon Valentine started 27th after a terrible quali- fying session in the rain, but drove to seventh in adry race. I finished ninth in a steady, but uneventful run. Charles Baylor was tenth in the ITA class. Of the 38 starters, 14 were in ITE, the fastest cars of the group, 15 in ITA, and the 9 cars in ITC completed the field. In other races, George Issacs finished third both Saturday and Sunday in his SSC Motorworld Neon. Alan Dukes got a third place finish with his GT3 BMW 2002 on Saturday, but had an engine problem on Sunday and did not start that race. In Sunday’s race, both Will it i 1 8 American/Lake-Lehman gradu- ate; Robin Davies, University of Rhode Island/Tunkhannock graduate; Sam Zigmont, Univer- sity of Rhode Island/Moosic graduate; Sue Kessler, Univ. of Rhode Island /East Northport, NY graduate; Merrie Cloutier, Uni- versity ‘of Rhode Island/ Middletown, RI graduate; Kara Simonsen, Lehigh University, Barrington, RI graduate. Registration forms can be pro- vided by contacting Mary Wright 675-0751. POST PHOTO/DAVE KOZEMCHAK Jimmy Spencer was on hand for the Pocono 500 last weekend. Dannert and Joe Aquilante chose not to enter giving the win to Fernando Maldonado in a Mazda RX 7. 1 again started tenth but had a great start to finish sev- enth. Jon Valentine qualified well and ran to fourth, while Charles Baylor was even faster than he was on Saturday and finished a strong sixth in the ITA race. The next SCCA event at Pocono will be June 21. Rather than challenge India- napolis for television ratings, CART ran their race at St. Louis on Saturday at the new Gateway. This could be the first sign that some CART teams may try to run both their race and the IRL Indy next year since the race will not be on the same day. A monumental task, but the big dollar teams like Penske might try with different drivers for each race. Paul Tracy and the Penske team, winless for a year and a half, won their third race in a row to extend Tracy's point lead to 18. He passed fellow Canadian, Patrick Carpentier, with just two laps left. An interesting look at racing in the CART series shows that of the top ten finishers, only three are Local racers fare well from the USA. Also, of the top ten cars, only one had an engine from an American manufacturer. Nascar’s big show at Charlotte was also delayed by rain and fin- ished at 1:00 a.m. Nothing con- troversial here. Actually it was quite typical. Gordon won once again with Wallace close behind. No need for me to mention which Wallace as we both know only one will ever be able to win because of the team they are with. It must be tough running in NASCAR for an ' entire career knowing you will never win a race. If you do not have the correct car and the cor- rect team, you will never win no matter how good you are. The three days of Indy ended with a fouled up finish as only USAC can do. With the yellow lights on at every corner, the starter through the green flag with one lap left. Arie Luyendyk would have won with, or without that last lap, but it would be nice to see Indy get at least the last lap right after screwing up the entire month of May. Maybe in ten years that race will be back to what it was, but this year it was like watching the NFL play that season with re- placement players. So few of those drivers had a clue how to run a high speed oval. The entire fifth row took itself out on the pace lap. That fifth row was made up of foreign drivers, France, Brazil, and Sweden, none of which could com- plete one 80 mph pace lap. I point this out as Indianapolis presi- dent, Tony George has said a hun- dred times that he formed the Indy Racing League to help young American oval drivers who don’t have 50 million dollars to go rac- ing. Racing will never change, if you have the cash, you can race anywhere you want. The IRI pre- sents a great chance for Europe- ans and South Americans with zero oval experience to buy their way in. BMT BASEBALL & SOFTBALL MAJORS BASEBALL Red Sox 8, Reds 3 Chris Higdon struck out 6 while giving up 3 hits for the Red Sox win. Chris Marcikonis had a triple for the Red Sox hitting attack. Luke Marchakitus had two hits including a double along with Reds’ teammate Neil Buchman who hit a triple in the game. Red Sox 9, Yankees 5 David Lohin struck out 15 to pitch the win for the Red Sox's and getting 3 hits from the plate along with Steve Salavantis who had 3 hits and a double. Jim Larson also had 2 doubles for the Sox. Frank Buzin hit a triple for the Yanks. Rangers 13, Tigers 6 Ryan Macmillan pitched 6 in- nings with 8 strike outs for the win. Hitting for the Rangers were Macmillan going 4 for 4 , Phil Engler 3 for 3 and John McGeehan 2 for 3. The Tigers hitting attack was led by John Simonitis going 4 for 4 while Joe Austin, Dave Schultz and Marty Musto had doubles and Steve Chopick hit a triple. Mike Darling and Chris Eckman had fine defensive plays for the Rangers. Phillies 18, Yankees 8 The Phillies maintained their unbeaten season with Eric Fienstein at the mound. A com- bined Phillies hitting clinic was led by Phil Pineno going 4 for 4 with a double. The remainder of the Phillies contributing to the hitting spree were Nathan Carsman, Joel Leshinski, Mark Kapitula, Daniel Katyl and Mike Wills. Jeff Pace, Tim Kerestes, and Joe Butchko had doubles for the Yankees while Matt Rondina hit a triple. Indians 12, Orioles 2 Jim Jordan hit a home run and a single while John Barbose had a triple and Mike Yenason and Mike Fehlinger hit doubles for the Indi- ans. Jordan and Fehlinger scat- tered 6 hits in a combined win from the mound. Jeremy Taylor hit a triple and Tim Crossin hit two singles for the Orioles. Indians 19, Red Sox 1 The Indians finally had a bal- anced team against their oppo- nents and took advantage of the players to score 19 runs on the Red Sox. Jim Jordan and Mike Fehlinger combined for a 3 hitter from the mound. Jordan hit his 9th homer and a double while teammates Mike Yenason and Chris Roman had a triple and a single. Red Sox David Lohin and Steve Salavantis hit doubles while Chris Higdon picked up the only other hit . Rangers 5, Yankees 10 Nate Yoh, Joe Butchko, and Joe Bednach had doubles for the Yankees while Frank Buzin struck out 10 for the win. Phil Engler went 2 for 3 for the Rangers. SOFTBALL MAJORS White Sox 21, Phillies 7 Katie Rhodes was the winning pitcher for the White Sox. Rhodes, Elise Persico And Lauren Pyskoty had two hits in the game. White Sox 15, Phillies 2 Caitlin Ward and Lisa Wasser split the pitching for the winners. Wasser along with Sam Oschman had 3 hits in the game while Sam Lloyd and Erin Swepston placed two hits apiece for the Sox. White Sox 15, Harveys Lake Silver Bullets 13 In a typical Harveys Lake / Back Mountain confrontation the White Sox maintained the edge with Lisa Wasser coming as the relief pitcher for the win. Wasser also hit a double in the game while Sam Lloyd had two hits against Harveys Lake. Lindsay Walkowiak had two hits with a double for the Silver Bullets. AAA BASEBALL Orioles 5, Red Sox 8 Christopher Kester and Ryan Ulbrich combined as winning pitchers for the Red Sox. More BMT BALL, pg 10
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