Sports digest 3/20/02

AREA

NOTRE DAME SWIMMERS FINISH SECOND TO OAKVILLE

ST. LOUIS -- Notre Dame's girls swim team finished second to Oakville in a three-team meet Tuesday. Lindsay Kuper (200 freestyle) won her event, and the team finished second in eight events.

Cape Girardeau's Schmitz fires a hole in one

Ken Schmitz of Cape Girardeau carded a hole in one Saturday at Cape Girardeau Country Club.

Schmitz used an 8-iron on No. 8, which played 145 yards. Witnesses were Bill Morgan, George Landre, Ron Seabaugh and Neil Prater.

Otahks split doubleheader with College of Charleston

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. -- Southeast Missouri State's softball team won the opener of a doubleheader 6-2 with College of Charleston, but settled for a split when it dropped the second game 3-1.

Reagan Hamlin had two of Southeast's nine hits in the opener as the Otahkians scored in four innings. Rachel Van Fleet (3-2) went the distance, allowing eight hits. Marissa Echenrique (6-7) allowed eight hits in six innings.

Southeast (3-10) managed just two hits in the second game off Melissa Creeger (3-7). The Otahkians led 1-0 entering the bottom of the fifth, but Charleston (11-16) scored three runs off Kristen King (0-4) on four hits.

In the four-game Winthrop Tournament over the weekend, senior shortstop Dawn Piantino had 10 hits, including her first career home run.

ELSEWHERE

BASEBALL

Steve Gromek, a right-handed pitcher who won 123 games in a 17-year major league career and helped the Cleveland Indians win the 1948 World Series, has died. He was 82. Gromek, who suffered from complications from diabetes, a stroke and pneumonia, died March 12, according to his wife, Jeanette.

Gromek won the fourth game of the '48 World Series, beating the Boston Braves and ace Johnny Sain. The victory gave Cleveland a 3-1 lead in the Series, which the Indians won in six games.

Colleges

Tennessee State University president James Hefner repeatedly kept athletic director James Smith from doing his job and then fired Smith to protect himself, according to a lawsuit. Smith was on the job only 21 months when Hefner abruptly fired him on June 1, 2001, making him the third permanant athletic director and sixth overall to leave during a 10-year period. The former athletic director is suing Hefner and the Tennessee Board of Regents in the lawsuit filed in Davidson County Chancery Court.

Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops has hired Oklahoma State assistant coach Darrell Wyatt to become his receivers coach.Wyatt spent the 2001 season at Oklahoma State after previously coaching at Kansas and Baylor.

Football

Steelers owner and president Dan Rooney was chosen NFL executive of the year by The Sporting News.

The St. Louis-based publication also announced the award was being renamed in honor of George Young, a five-time winner of the award while with the Giants and senior vice president of football operations for the NFL when he died last year.

Rooney, whose Steelers had the AFC's best record during the regular season and lost to New England in the AFC championship game, received 11 of 74 votes cast by general managers, presidents and other high-level league executives.

Motorsports

Jeff Boerger, the current vice president and general manager of the Kansas Speedway, has been named president, the speedway announced.

Boerger will replace Grant Lynch, who is president of Talledega Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill.

-- From staff, wire reports