Yurcich to speak at Curbstone

Youngstown State football offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich will be the guest speaker at Monday’s luncheon meeting of The Curbstone Coaches at the Avion Banquet Center on Western Reserve Road in Beaver Township.

He will be recapping spring practice with a couple of players.

The event begins at 11:45 a.m., and the public is welcome to attend.

All sports fans are welcome and you do not need to be a current or former coach.

Richards runs PR for Penguins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – McKinley Fielding crushed her school record in the 1,500m run as the distance members of the Youngstown State men’s and women’s track and field teams had a strong two days of running at Kentner Stadium.

Of the small group of Penguins competing, seven ran personal-best times and moved up the top 10 charts in program history.

Fielding ran a time of 4:18.06 on Friday evening to lower her school record which was 4:26.20 which set last April 12. She finished fourth in her race at the meet.

In the 5,000m, both Caleigh Richards (Maplewood) and Jenna Razavi set personal best times on Friday. Richards clocked a time of 16:42.02 while Razavi ran a race of 16:50.20. Richards’ time was a personal best by eight seconds while Razavi dropped 18 seconds off of her previous fastest effort.

On Thursday, Trenton Shutters won his race in the 800m with a personal-best time of 1:49.89 becoming the second YSU men’s runner to go faster than 1:50 in the event. He was 0.32 seconds off the school record. In the steeplechase, Connor Shingleton clocked a personal-best time of 9:01.64 which moved him into seventh in program history.

On Friday, Patrick Burgos ran a personal-best time of 14:12.99 in the 5,000m which ranks him third all-time at YSU behind Hunter Christopher and Ryan Meadows. Blaze Fichter also had personal-best time in the 5K of 14:24.42 which moves him into the top 10 in school history.

Fitzpatrick leads at Hilton Head

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Matt Fitzpatrick had one good break and a lot of great golf for an 8-under 63 to take a one-shot lead Friday over Viktor Hovland on a blistering day of heat and big numbers in the RBC Heritage.

Fitzpatrick was cruising along when his tee shot on the par-3 14th turned hard to the left, headed for sand and trees when it caught what appeared to be the edge of a cart path that sent the ball back down a slope onto the green and headed for the water.

It was slowed just enough by a sprinkler to stay dry, and he holed a 30-footer for a most unlikely birdie. Fitzpatrick birdied two of the next three and completed bogey-free.

Hovland had it far tougher in the afternoon when the wind got stronger, and it doesn’t take much around tree-lined Harbour Town for players to get indecisive or catch the wrong gust.

Hovland got the right club on the exposed par-3 17th to 12 feet for his eighth birdie of the day and a hard-earned 65. That included a birdie on the par-5 fifth when he was still 205 yards out for his third shot and wound up holing a 30-footer.

Fitzpatrick, who won the RBC Heritage in a playoff over Jordan Spieth in 2023, was at 14-under 128.

Harris English got the wrong gust on the 11th hole and went from scrambling for par to figuring out how to escape with double bogey from a plugged lie in the sand. He overcame that, had a 68 and was three shots behind.

Scottie Scheffler, who played alongside Fitzpatrick, hit all 14 fairways for only the fourth time in his career — two of those were on the runway-wide fairways of Kapalua — and had a steady diet of birdie chances in the 18-foot range. He managed a bogey-free 67 and was seven behind.

Patrick Cantlay, who took a big step last week with consecutive bogey-free rounds at the Masters after opening with a 77, shot 64 and was four shots behind along with Sepp Straka (67) and Ludvig Aberg, who was closing in on Fitzpatrick until three bogeys on the back nine led to a 71.

Robert MacIntyre also was in the mix, three shots behind, until the wind died enough to keep his ball from finding the 17th green, and then he took two to get out of a bunker for a double bogey. That wiped out a lot of good work, and a bogey on the 18th dropped him to a 68, six behind.

There were 20 double bogeys on the day from the 82-man field on 11 of the holes at Harbour Town. Spieth made three of them and scratched out a 73.