Whitaker Wins, Earns Bout for Goodwill Gold Medal

Super heavyweight Lance Whitaker of Northridge soundly defeated Germany’s Erik Fuhrmann, 21-3, Thursday in a semifinal bout at the Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Whitaker (29-3), the country’s top-ranked amateur super heavyweight who played football and basketball at San Fernando High, will fight Russia’s Aleksei Lezin on Saturday for the gold medal. Lezin beat Edward Mahone of St. Louis, 17-5, in the other semifinal.

Golf

Brandon DiTullio of Thousand Oaks and Darren Angel of Northridge each won two matches Thursday to advance to the round of 16 at the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Echo Lake Country Club in Westfield, N.J.

Despite rain that was sometimes heavy, DiTullio, a senior at Westlake High, defeated David Gossett of Germantown, Tenn., in the morning round, 2 and 1.

In the afternoon, DiTullio knocked off Steve Scott of Coral Springs, Fla., 1-up. Scott finished in a two-way tie second in the stroke-play portion of the event with a 36-hole score of two-under-par 142.

Ben Cherney of Encino fired a two-over-par 74 to earn a berth in next week’s American Junior Golf Assn. boys’ junior championship in Dallas.

Cherney, a senior at Brentwood High, earned one of 10 available berths from among a field of 120 at Bear Creek Country Club in Dallas.

Baseball

Former Chatsworth High standout Ty Van Burkleo was called up by the Colorado Rockies to help replace injured first baseman Andres Galarraga.

Galarraga, the National League’s batting champion in 1993, suffered a broken right hand when he was hit by a pitch Thursday and will miss the rest of the season.

Van Burkleo has hit 17 home runs for Colorado Springs, the Rockies’ farm club in the triple-A Pacific Coast League.