Another spring in the books, bring on summer

Well, gang spring is finally over for the Newton Daily News sports staff. We had girls’ state golf tournaments to cover last week then Newton High’s girls lost in a soccer regional semifinal. That was it.

Now, we move forward with the focus on our high school summer sports — baseball and softball. When Mother Nature cooperates, we usually have games every night and a lot of Saturdays from now until the first of July. Postseason begins quickly after the Fourth of July.

You throw in three race weekends at Iowa Speedway and you can see Troy Hyde and myself don’t slow down much in the heat of the summer. We’re a week and a half out from opening weekend at Iowa Speedway.

NASCAR Xfinity Series cars and the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series come to Newton first for high speed racing on Father’s Day weekend, June 15-16.

In July, it will be back-to-back race weekends at “The Fastest Short Track on the Planet.” On July 19-20, we have ARCA racing on a Friday night then the NTT IndyCar Series hits the Speedway track under the lights Saturday.

The Xfinity Series comes back for the U.S. Cellular 250 July 27. That Friday features the NASCAR K&N Pro Series.

Yes, there are some series sponsorship name changes this season. This is the first season for Gander Outdoors as the title sponsor of the NASCAR Truck Series. NTT takes over as the series sponsor for IndyCar.

Back to softball and baseball, we’ve had a start-and-stop and now start again to the diamond sports this season. We’ve had to deal with all the rain.

I covered a couple of quality softball games featuring Jasper County teams squaring off the past week. On Friday I was in Sully as Colfax-Mingo’s Tigerhawks and the Lynnville-Sully Hawks played in a South Iowa Cedar League showdown. Both were both 4-0 going into the game.

The Hawks won 11-4 but the game was a good one as the two Jasper County squads battled. They’ll see each other again later this month in Colfax.

I was back in Sully Tuesday evening to see Newton High’s Cardinals take on Lynnville-Sully. The Hawks came out on top 5-2. Again, both teams were going full tilt, and it’s good to see the competitiveness on the field.

I haven’t seen much baseball yet. I’m looking forward to covering Newton’s Cardinals Wednesday at home against Grinnell. The Cardinal baseball team has just two games played as it was hit hard with rainouts.

Newton has home games Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday. So I’ll be out at Woodland Park quite a bit the rest of this week.

Just a little wrap-up of the spring season, I covered Newton High freshman Rylee Heryford at the 2019 Class 4A state girls’ golf tournament last Wednesday. It was the second day of the tournament at Coldwater Links in Ames. She claimed third place individually. We’re planning to be covering this young lady all four years at the state tournament.

Heryford told me she’s looking forward to going back to the state tournament but wants to go back with her teammates. That would be a great thing to happen for the Cardinal girls’ golf program.

One really personal note, a week ago on Tuesday as I sat here in Iowa with rain coming down, my hometown — Linwood, Kan., — was hit with a mile-wide EFA tornado. I spent most of the night on social media getting updates.

Because of health issues surfacing on Sunday, my father was not at home but 40 miles south at my sisters. His home was spared much damage. We lost some trees.

The town of 300-400 residents was not hit hard but the rural area was as several longtime friends had their farms destroyed. It’s been hard getting my head around it, but God watched out for everyone involved as there were no deaths and no serious injuries.

Contac Jocelyn Sheets at jsheets@newtondailynews.com