Local wins award at Cooperstown tourney
Bits and pieces from the local sports scene:
Toluca player takes first in Golden Arm competition: The Fightin’ Titans, a Toluca Baseball Pony League team, enjoyed modest success recently at a Cooperstown Dreams Park Tournament.
During the event in New York that ended July 29, the Titans ended with a 4-3 record.
However, one member of the Toluca squad did bring home a championship.
In a field of 103 competitors from across the country, Landon Loock captured first place in the Golden Arm competition. In the event, players compete against one another in arm strength and accuracy, while making throws from center field to a home plate target. Loock advanced to the finals with 10 others before winning it all.
Loock is the first local player to win one of three individual competitions (Home Run Derby, Road Runner and Golden Arm) since they were started in 1996.
Resident nets sports information director job: Occidental College athletic director Jaime Hoffman has named Michael Wells as the school’s new sports information director.
Wells lives in Burbank with his older brothers John and Todd.
Wells, whose mother Jodie Burton and father David Wells were longtime basketball coaches for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, graduated from Dominican University of California with a bachelor of arts in communications in May and had been working as a sports reporter for the Marin Independent Journal for more than a year before arriving at Oxy.
During his time with the daily newspaper in Marin County, he covered college, high school and youth sports, as well as designing pages.
Wells, 23, takes over for Tracy Maple as the person in charge of covering, writing and disseminating news and statistics for the liberal arts institution’s 21 intercollegiate athletic teams, which participate in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
At Dominican University, Wells helped pioneer an effort to start ducnews.com, a student run news website and served as the site’s managing editor while holding a position as the sports editor for the campus newspaper. He also hosted sports talk radio shows on the school’s campus radio stations and broadcasted women’s basketball, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer games.
When the San Rafael university hosted one of the 2010 California Gubernatorial Debates, Wells worked for NBC Universal as an assistant to the executive producer.
A former student-athlete, Wells was a four-year letter winner on the men’s basketball team. He was the Cal Pac Conference Freshman of the Year Award in his first year and the Penguins’ captain during his senior year.
Tubert will play at home in SEC Championship: Award-winning women’s golfer Emily Tubert, a Burroughs High graduate who is poised to start her sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, will get a chance to play on her home venue for the 2011-12 Southeastern Conference Championship, which will be played on the Razorbacks’ home course.
It is the first time since the 2005-06 season that Arkansas will host a home women’s golf tournament and the first time since the 2000 season that the SEC Championship takes place in Northwest Arkansas.
The Razorbacks have a lot of work to do before getting to the SEC Championship. Their four-event fall begins Sept. 23-25, with the NCAA Fall Preview at the Vanderbilt Legends Club, site of the 2012 NCAA Championship. This invitation-only event is open to the top finishing teams at last year’s NCAA Championship.
Arkansas is coming off a program-best tie for fifth place at last year’s NCAA Championship. The Razorbacks return a solid corps of young players paced by Tubert, an All-American, as well as All-Southeastern Conference performer Emma Lavy. Junior Victoria Vela has two seasons under her belt as well and should again be a consistent performer for Arkansas.
Tubert was a former CIF Southern Section champion and a Leader Female Athlete of the Year while at Burroughs High.
Jeff Tully