College baseball
UMC picks up win: Minnesota-Crookston defeated St. Cloud State 6-1 on Thursday in a loser-out game of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference tournament in Sioux Falls, S.D..
The Eagles and Augustana met in a loser-out game late Thursday night in Sioux Falls. The winner of that game will meet Minnesota State-Mankato for the postseason championship and automatic berth in the NCAA Division II national tournament.
Former Grand Forks Central standout Brock Reller hit two home runs to pace the Golden Eagles. Will Zimmerman, a former Park River/Fordville-Lankin standout, went 3-for-5. Ben Thoma also hit a home run for UMC.
Conner Richardson, a former Red River standout, was the winning pitcher for the Golden Eagles. Another ex-Red River standout, Brody Sorenson threw 1.2 innings of scoreless relief.
UMC improved to 26-11 with the win.
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UMC came into the tournament as the No. 5 seed. UMC had never reached the final four of the NSIC tournament in program history.
Auto racing
Lineup change at RCS: For the second straight week, the lineup at River Cities Speedway for Friday night’s program has been altered.
Late models, one of the four regular classes, won’t race at RCS this week. Instead, most of the late models will take part in the season-opening NLRA program at the I-94 Speedway in Fergus Falls, Minn.
Lightning sprints will be added to this week’s program at RCS, joining streets, Midwest modifieds and sprints.
Sprints will return to RCS this week after not racing last week.
Last week, the sprints that run regularly at RCS went on a three-day tour of tracks in South Dakota and Minnesota as all three were NOSA-sanctioned events.
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Austin Pierce, last season’s RCS champion, won one of the three features as he took the main event at the I-90 Speedway in Hartford, S.D.
In two weeks, RCS will hold its first special night as the World of Outlaws will make the first of its two visits to the quarter-mile track this season. The Outlaws have raced regularly at RCS since 2007.
Brad Sweet leads the Outlaws before this weekend’s races. David Gravel and Carson Macedo round out the top three. Donny Schatz, a 10-time series champion from Fargo, is sixth in points.
