Unbeaten Tri-Cities baseball team advances at national Cal Ripkin invite

The Kennewick American 12-year-olds baseball team stayed unbeaten at the Cal Ripken National Invitational Tournament in Branson, Mo., with a 1-0 win over host Branson on Tuesday.

Trayce Teagle and Deegan Quesenberry each pitched three innings to combine for the shutout for Kennewick.

Teagle struck out three batters, while Quesenberry fanned two.

Kennewick scored its only run of the game in the first inning, when Tate Cissne reached base on an error, and eventually scored when Morgan Dodson grounded out to second base.

The game, which took just 1 hour and 43 minutes to play, was the final contest of pool play for the Tri-City team.

Kennewick finished 5-0 in pool play and was seeded in bracket play as the top team out of Pool B.

The team was scheduled to play later Thursday against Galesburg, Ill.

The championship is set for Saturday.

More baseball

• Cody Kehl, a Quincy High graduate who plays at Columbia Basin College, was able to find a rare roster spot for summer college baseball.

Kehl plays for the Western Nebraska Pioneers, part of the Expedition League in the Midwest.

The league had six of its 10 teams decide to play this summer despite the coronavirus.

Kehl has seen action in 30 games for the 16-29 Pioneers, hitting .228 with one home run and 11 RBIs.

• Richland grad Eric Yardley continues to pitch well for the Milwaukee Brewers. The sidearm-throwing right-handed relief pitcher has appeared in eight games for the Brewers.

In those contests, Yardley has gone 8.1 innings, struck out six batters, and has a 1.08 earned run average.

He’s given up just one earned run this season.

State junior golf

Kennewick’s Jillian Hui and Pasco’s Jillian Breedlove were the area’s top performers last weekend at the Washington Junior Golf Association’s state tournament at Manito Golf & Country Club in Spokane.

Both golfers were in the Girls 14-15 tournament, with Hui finishing tied for third with a three-round total of 227 strokes, good enough for 11 over par.

Breedlove finished sixth with a 231, 15 strokes over par.

Notes

• It should have come as no surprise to anyone who follows the Western Hockey League — and locally, the Tri-City Americans — that the league announced last week that it was delaying the start of the 2020-21 season by two months because of the coronavirus.

Instead of the planned Oct. 2 start, the league has now zeroed in on a Dec. 4 start date.

WHL commissioner Ron Robison said the league still plans on holding a full regular season, in which each team plays 68 games, and four rounds of postseason playoffs.

Robison has said before that while National Hockey League teams can play in a bubble without any fans because of television revenue, WHL teams need to have fans in attendance in order for those teams to survive.

• Chiawana grad Robby Vaughn won the Class 4A state wrestling title back in February at 138 pounds.

It finished off a great prep career, and Vaughn was all set to go to Ellsworth Community College in Iowa this coming fall, competing for the standout JC.

But there has been a change in plans. Vaughn has been signed by Little Rock University — which old-timers might remember as the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

So Vaughn will be competing in Division I wrestling this coming season.

• Here is a couple great things I learned about Richland’s Ben Fewel and Kamiakin’s Woodley Downard this past week during our podcasts at Sports in the Tri:

Besides the fact they are both outstanding football wide receivers who have verbally committed to FCS schools for the 2022 college football season — Fewel is committed to Georgetown University, while Woodard is headed to Eastern Washington University — they found time during the coronavirus lockdown for other things besides sports.

Fewel said he took to the kitchen, where he has found a love for cooking.

Downard has always liked to write, but he was able to pick things up a bit with his free time. He said he likes to write poems and songs, and has found it to be a great outlet.

• Nice to see that NAIA football teams will have a chance for a national title this coming school year.

The organization announced July 31 that the championship game will be held next spring, no matter when conferences play their football games.

Most have moved football from this fall to next spring.

Almost all NAIA schools in the Northwest have moved their football schedules to the spring.

• Ethan Copeland was Sunnyside High School’s top basketball player last season, and with Daniel Singletary, he helped give the Grizzlies a dangerous 1-2 punch.

But the senior-to-be was getting nervous about whether a basketball season in the state of Washington was going to get played.

As it is, boys basketball won’t even get to start practice until Dec. 28, and the schedule will be shortened to 14 regular-season contests.

Because of that uncertainty, Copeland announced last week that he was transferring to Lone Peak High School in Utah, where he’ll be able to get a full season in.

Copeland marks the second boys basketball player in the Yakima Valley to make this type of move.

A few days before Copeland made his announcement, Zillah’s Mason Landdeck — a two-time Class 1A all-state player — said he would be transferring to Desert Hills High School in St. George, Utah.

Landdeck said he felt he had to get a full season in for his final year of prep hoops.

• Kennewick’s Brittney Zamora will be racing at South Sound Speedway on Saturday night in Rochester, trying to pick up her fourth consecutive victory at the track.

Zamora will be competing in the Wofford 100, which will also be the first Northwest Super Late Model Series race of the 2020 season.

Zamora raced her car at South Sound two weeks ago to get a feel for the track again before this weekend’s race, and she won the Super Late Model event.

She is a two-time season champion in the Northwest Super Late Model series.