My attention has been on the winding up of area high school spring sports — postseasons for golf, tennis and track of late and the final soccer regular-season games — and the start of area high school baseball and softball next week. I still peek at my Kansas City Royals and the Triple Crown horse racing.
Of course, Thursday, Friday and Saturday are big days for Iowa high school track athletes and fans. Newton, Prairie City-Monroe, Lynnville-Sully, Colfax-Mingo and Baxter have combined to send 84 athletes to the 2018 Iowa High School Track and Field Championships at Drake University stadium in Des Moines.
Troy Hyde and myself will be covering the three-day state track meet for the Newton Daily News. We’ll have stories in Friday’s paper from the opening day — Thursday — and Monday’s sports paged will be filled with the final results from Friday and Saturday.
State track meets are amazing. I’ve covered the high school track state meets here the past five years and in Kansas for more than 30 years. It’s a lot of work for us but that’s a good sign because we’ve had area athletes competing in a variety of events.
Kansas has six classes merge at Wichita State University for two days. Iowa has its four classes coming together each year at Drake University to compete on the Blue Oval. Fans are treated to the opportunity to see the best track and field athletes from the small to large schools. It’s just down right fun.
We’ve got the Newton and PCM soccer teams finishing the regular season with playoffs beginning next week for both boys — early — and the girls — later in the week. Monday is the girls’ regional golf tournaments to determine qualifiers for the four state tournaments. The boys’ play golf district tournaments on Friday for state tournament berths on the line.
Newton’s tennis teams finished postseason play this week.
Oh, by the way, Monday signals the start of summer high school baseball and softball. The Newton Daily News has been running previews of the area teams this week. We may have a couple of those stretch into the start of next week.
Also, we’re just a month away from the 2018 Wide Opening Weekend for Iowa Speedway. The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and Xfinity Series come to the Newton racetrack on June 16-17 to kickoff the racing season. The Speedway has two July racing weekends — July 7-8 with ARCA Racing Series and the Verizon IndyCar Series and July 27-28 with NASCAR K&N Pro Series an the second NASCAR Xfinity Series race.
As you know, I’m a big Triple Crown horse racing fan. The second race of the Triple Crown is Saturday with the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Md. Only one horse, Kentucky Derby winner Justify has the opportunity to win the Triple Crown. Justify is the Preakness favorite as he runs against seven other horses at Pimlico Race Course.
I’ve had flashbacks to the 1990s and early 2000s when checking in each night on the Kansas City Royals. The Royals have lost five straight as they go into a weekend series at Kauffman Stadium against the New York Yankees.
The Royals will be commemorating the July 1983 “Pine-Tar” game with the Yankees when George Brett hit a home run, called out because of the placement of pine tar on his bat, an appeal by the Royals and the home run reinstated and the Royals won the game when it was resumed a few weeks later.
I love the Boys in Blue from Kansas City, but it’s rough right now.
Contact Jocelyn Sheets
at jsheets@newtondailynews.com