COLUMBUS — Initially bothered a bit after being tabbed to anchor Alter’s mighty 3,200-meter girls relay, Olivia Albers has found a home with the unit this spring.

“I’m so honored,” said the Knights junior after finishing another record-setting title in the event at Friday’s state high school track and field meet at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.

“Taking on the responsibility last year was a little nerve wracking, but it’s become my home. I think that we all like the positions that we’re in. It’s comfortable.”

The 3,200 relay was Friday’s only running final to go with some field events. The meet concludes today with all running finals and the rest of the field events.

Few teams have dominated an event like the Knights in the sport’s longest relay. Alter has placed first or second in the Division II race in seven of the last eight seasons, winning in 2011, ’09, ’07 and ’04.

Albers, Rebecca Esselstein and Ashley Rodgers all were members of the winning 2009 team, also. Joining last season was Austin Borton. That foursome ran 9:10.22 on Fr

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ST. LOUIS — Justin Upton hit a two-run homer and Joe Saunders threw five scoreless innings to lead the Arizona Diamondbacks to a 4-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday night.

The Diamondbacks won for the fourth time in the last six games.

St. Louis, which lost for the fourth time in six games, fell into the first-place tie with Milwaukee in the NL Central.

Saunders allowed one hit, struck out one and walked four. He was removed from the game after a 50-minute rain delay in the sixth inning.

Upton hit his 15th homer of the season off Kyle McClellan , who has not won since May 19, covering his last six starts. McClellan returned after the delay and gave up the homer to Upton on his sixth pitch following the layoff.

McClellan gave up four runs, three earned, and six hits in seven innings.

Ryan Roberts drew a walk to lead off the sixth before rain halted play.

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Brad Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald wrote a pretty big article over the weekend–a holiday weekend, no less. Not like any of us needed a vacation–saying that North Dakota has held formal discussions about moving out of the WCHA and creating a new conference that have “progressed beyond preliminary stages”.

The driving force behind these discussions is to create a conference composed primarily of larger programs that are willing to put a serious investment into their hockey program. Part of the reason for that is to stay competitive with the new Big Ten Hockey Conference. The other reason is that there seems to be dissatisfaction among certain teams with their current conference, and with college realigning the near future, now might be the best time to make a move.

As for the teams involved, North Dakota, Denver, and Colorado College all seem to be pretty closely aligned.

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The final tryout for the Section 1 team that will compete at the first BCANY Festival this summer will be determined tomorrow. There are 16 remaining players, and that list will be cut to 10 on Wednesday (tomorrow).

The workout will be held from 6-8 p.m. at New Rochelle High School. Heres a look at the list of 16 players who will vie for the final 10 spots.

Ill have an update on the final roster and will hopefully have it by Wednesday night.

COLUMBUS — Nothing worked out like Carly Hamilton had envisioned for the final race of an outstanding high school career. Good thing.

“I thought the race was going to come down to a final 100-meter kick,” the Springboro senior said after winning the Division I girls 1,600 meters (4 minutes, 48.10 seconds) on Saturday in the state track and field meet at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.

“It didn’t go like I thought it would be and I’m really happy about that.”

Hamilton took the early lead and stretched it each of the four laps to claim the only D-I victory by area girls. Area girls did especially well in the 3,200. Lebanon freshman Jacquelyn Crow was second, Katie Ollier of Carroll was third and Katie Landwehr of Tippecanoe was fifth.

Meadowdale freshman Oksana Lawrence made the 400 final with the last qualifying spot and rallied to place third (55.32).

The 1,600 is Hamilton’s featured distance. She was second at state as a freshman, slipped to seventh in 2009 and was third last year.

“This means so much,” said Hamilton, who’s headed to the University of Georgia to run. “It was my last chanc

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Before I finally post my thoughts from Tiger Camp, heres a few basketball nuggets:

Twitter is the best. It is there, thanks to Bob Cimmino, that you can read that senior guards Randy Stephens and Isaiah Cousins, senior forward Jarrel Marshall and junior point guard Josh Doughty all visited Hofstra on Thursday with their coach.

As you may already know if you read this blog, Hofstra was one of three schools to offer Cousins, a 6-foot-4 combo guard, a scholarship. Marshall, a 6-foot-6 forward, received an offer from Iona before his junior season.

I spoke to Cimmino on the phone last week and he said no other offers had been extended to his players since the ones received this spring by Cousins.

According to the website NYCHoops.net, Terry Brutus is headed to prep school.

As you know, Brutus was a starting forward for the second straight season at state power Long Island Lutheran before he returned home to Spring Valley around Christmas break.

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