Catawba pitcher Shaefer Shepard was recently named the Southeast Region Pitcher of the Week to go along with his SAC honors.
Shepard leads the SAC in ERA with a stellar 1.35 mark.
• Catawba is seeded No. 1 for the SAC tournament that starts Thursday at Forest City’s McNair Field.
In the first round, Catawba will play No. 6 seed Anderson at noon, while Wingate will take on fifth-seeded Tusculum at 3:45 p.m. No. 3 Lincoln Memorial plays No. 4 Newberry at 7:30 p.m.
It’s unlikely any SAC teams will make the regional field other than the SAC tournament champion.
• Catawba hosts Belmont Abbey in a Senior Night game on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
It will be the final home game for a number of senior standouts including second baseman Julio Zubillaga (Carson) and pitcher John J. Tuttle (A.L. Brown), local products who have enjoyed great four-year careers.

Catawba qualified for the SAC tournament by finishing eighth in the league standings.
The tournament starts Thursday at Lincoln Memorial. Catawba plays top-seeded Lenoir-Rhyne in the first round at 5:30 p.m.

College track
The Wingate men and Queens women won the inaugurl SAC track championships on Saturday.
A.L. Brown grad Omar Ray ran on Wingate’s winning 4×400 team and placed third in the 400.

College basketball
Lenoir-Rhyne men’s basketball head coach John Lentz will be inducted into the Catawba County Sports Hall of Fame.
Lentz has won 424 games in 28 seasons at Lenoir-Rhyne. He also had 53 wins in three seasons at Pfeiffer in the 1980s before taking the L-R job.

College lacrosse
Queens won the SAC women’s lacrosse championship by beating Lenoir-Rhyne 14-5.
Queens also won the men’s title, by edging L-R 11-10.

Intimidators
Saturday’s game between the Kannapolis Intimidators and West Virginia Power was postponed due to continuing rain and unplayable field conditions at CMC-NorthEast Stadium. The teams will make up this week’s rainouts with doubleheaders in Kannapolis on April 29 and April 30. One ticket is good for both games of a doubleheader, which will consist of two seven-inning games.
Kannapolis plays at West Virginia tonight.

South Rowan Legion
South Rowan American Legion sign-ups are set for Saturday, April 26.
Sign-ups are at Gary’s Barbecue at 4 p.m. Players should bring a birth certificate and need to have a parent present. Contact coach Ben Hampton at 704-490-2691 or Craig Honeycutt at 980-521-2646 for information.

South Rowan Junior Legion sign-ups are Saturday, April 26 at 10 a.m. at the South Rowan field.
All players will need to have a parent present and bring a copy of their birth certificate. This is a sign-up/informational meeting only.
Contact Bret Johnson at 704-791-7734.
The big Easter baseball tournament at CMC-NorthEast Stadium wil be held April 23-25, with consolation games, except for the third-place game, being played at A.L. Brown.
Participants include Salisbury, South Rowan, North Rowan, Carson, A.L. Brown, Northwest Cabarrus, Robinson and Mount Pleasant.
• East Rowan is hosting a six-team round robin on April 24-26 at Staton Field. East, West Rowan, North Iredell, West Iredell, Mooresville and Uwharrie Charter are participating in that one.
Pairings for both tournaments are in Scoreboard.

Local golf
The first Member-Guest tournament of the year was held at Crescent on Saturday under less than ideal conditions.
Ten members and their guests braved the elements in a two-man Captain’s Choice format.
Justin Lefler-Derrick Lipe and Jared Barnette-Carl Moore Jr. shot 65s to lead low gross.
In the Net division, Charlie Andrew-Larry Lewis and Tom Weber-Derron Dulkoski led with 65s.
• The McCanless Couples played Sunday.
The team of Ricky Honeycutt, Tommy Reynolds and Frank Foster took first place. The team of Kim and Walt Kincaid, Bryan Reynolds and Phyllis Myers finished second.
Reynolds won closest to the pin. Myers won longest putt.

Local racing
Today’s inaugural SPEED SPORT Challenge May 21 at Millbridge Speedway will be produced by SPEED SPORT Productions and will be televised on MAVTV.
The SPEED SPORT Challenge will be the first televised Outlaw Kart race. The 30-lap event at the sixth-mile dirt track will feature drivers from across the United States with various racing backgrounds, including outlaw karts, sprint cars and stock cars, competing against the Millbridge Speedway stars in 500cc winged outlaw karts, which have the same power-to-weight ratio as 410 sprint cars.
“We are very excited SPEED SPORT will be showcasing our racers at Millbridge to a national audience on MAVTV,” promoter Ashly Burnett said. “We have a great weekly program and now the SPEED SPORT Challenge will help to increase the profile of our racers and our track to an even larger audience.”