Local Sports Headlines: May 6, 2022

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Indiana Men’s Golf earns NCAA bid
The Indiana men’s golf team has earned a bid in the 2022 NCAA Palm Beach Gardens Regional played at the PGA National Resort – Champion Course. After making the 2021 NCAA Tallahassee Regional, Indiana has made back-to-back regional appearances as a team for the first time since 2012 and ’13. In total, the Hoosiers have made it to 11 NCAA Regionals under head coach Mike Mayer Mike Mayer.
 
“We are thrilled to make the NCAA postseason for the second-straight year,” Mayer said in Press Release. “We are excited to go down to the PGA National Resort. It is a great golf course, truly a championship golf course that we know very well. If we go down there and play to our potential, we will have a good chance to make it to the finals.”
 
The 2022 NCAA Regionals will be held May 15-18 at one of six sites across the country: Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club (Norman, Okla.), PGA National Resort (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.), The Course at Yale (New Haven, Conn.), The Reserve at Spanos Park (Stockton, Calif.), Ol’ Colony Golf Complex (Tuscaloosa, Ala.) and the OSU Golf Club (Columbus, Ohio). Three of the regional sites will have 13 teams and 10 individuals competing, while three will have 14 teams and five individuals. The top five teams (30 teams total) and the low individual not on an advancing team from each regional site (six individuals total) will advance to the NCAA Championships, set for May 27-June 1 at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
 
Indiana finished the 2021-22 season with a victory at the Purdue Fall Invitational, the first team tournament victory for IU since 2014, a second-straight victory at the Big Ten Match Play Championship and a third-place finish at the Hoosier Collegiate.
 

Bloomington South Grad Jonathan Holmes named Men’s Basketball Assistant at Miami Ohio
Bloomington South Grad Jonathan Holmes has been assistant Men’s Basketball Coach at Miami Ohio. Holmes spent that past three seasons as an assistant coach at Elon. This past season Holmes participated in the Top Connect Leadership Symposium with some of the nation’s top assistant coaches and took part in Jay Bilias’ Coaches Leadership program in 2021. Holmes, who worked primarily with the guards at Elon, helped produce four different members of the basketball program to all-conference honors during his time with the Phoenix. Holmes Spent 11 seasons at William & Mary and as an assistant coach at the Division II and NAIA levels. Holmes spent two seasons at Francis Marion in Florence, S.C., and one as an assistant coach and head junior varsity coach at Montreat College in 2005-06. Montreat compiled a 22-10 mark and won both the Appalachian Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament titles while reaching the second round of the NAIA Division II national tournament. Holmes has also served as a counselor at numerous North Carolina Men’s Basketball Camps, as well as at his own Jonathan Holmes Basketball Camp in Bloomington, Ind., which started in 2002.
 
Holmes is a 2003 graduate of North Carolina, where he was a four-year letterman on the basketball team and graduated with a degree in communications with a 3.6 grade point average. He played in 76 career games and recorded nearly a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio. A member of UNC teams that advanced to the 2000 Final Four, appeared in the 2003 NIT postseason tournament and won both the 1999 Maui Invitational and the 2002 Preseason NIT, Holmes was named to the 2003 ACC All-Academic Team.
 
After graduation, Holmes played professionally overseas for two seasons. He was a member of the Leicester Riders in the British Basketball League (England) during the 2003-04 season. The following season, Holmes was a member of the IC Horsens in the Basketligaen Danish League (Denmark). He averaged 14 points and five assists in helping IC Horsens to a runner-up finish during the regular season on the way to a tournament semifinal appearance in 2005.
 
Holmes was a four-year varsity starter for his father, J.R., Indiana’s all-time winningest boy’s high school basketball coach, at Bloomington South High School and capped his career as the runner-up for Indiana Mr. Basketball in 1999. He was the recipient of the John Wooden Citizenship Award in 1999, along with being a Nike High School All-American in the summer of 1998, a McDonald’s All-American Nominee, a two-time first team All-State honoree and an Indiana All-Star team honoree.

Former IU Men’s Basketball Player Matt Roth named Boys Basketball Coach at Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian
Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian has a new boys basketball coach. Former Indiana University basketball player Matt Roth will take over the job after serving as an assistant coach this past season at Heritage. He will replace Marc Davidson, who’s nine season run as the Braves head coach recently came to an end. Roth currently works as the Director of Sports Medicine-Performance for OPS, a position he will leave in order to move to Blackhawk Christian. At the school, Roth will serve as a physical education and health teacher in addition to his head coaching duties.

While Roth spent the 2021–2022 season on the boys’ basketball staff under Adam Gray at Heritage, he does have experience coaching locally prior to that. Roth was a varsity assistant at Blackhawk Christian from 2013-2016. Through OPS, Roth has worked with many of the area’s best boys’ basketball players in the past few years, including Caleb Furst, Luke Goode, and Fletcher Loyer. He has also acted as a high school basketball official in recent seasons in Northeast Indiana.

Roth played at Indiana University from 2008-2012. He then stayed at the school to complete his masters in Sports and Fitness Administration/Management. As a player for coach Tom Crean at IU, Roth averaged 4.8 points while hitting 41.6% of his three pointers and 88.2% from the free throw line over four seasons. In his final year, Roth helped Indiana to a Sweet Sixteen berth while playing in a career best 34 games and averaging 4.3 points per contest. Roth’s final season saw him shoot 54.5% from three-point range, the best percentage in the Big Ten.

Blackhawk Christian is coming off of a Sectional championship season and will return numerous key pieces from the team, including Outside Huddle All-Area Player Gage Sefton, as well as Josh Furst, Jimmy Davidson and sophomore-to-be post Kellen Pickett, who many have tabbed to be a potential breakout star in the area next season.

IHSAA Approves Boys Volleyball and Girls Wrestling as emerging sports
During its annual review of the by-laws the Indiana High School Athletic Association Board of Directors. voted unanimously to add girls wrestling and boys’ volleyball to its new Emerging Sport Process. The Emerging Sport Process, known as Rule 1-4 and approved a year ago by the IHSAA Board of Directors, helps pave a way for those sports and participation to continue to grow with an eye toward eventually becoming a recognized sport and sponsorship of an official state tournament.

The two sports become the first to earn the designation. By earning the designation as an emerging sport, the IHSAA will now provide rule books, conduct coaches’ rules meetings, and provide coverage in the IHSAA’s Catastrophic Medical program. Both sports will now be subject to all IHSAA rules and policies, including the General Eligibility Rules. For a sport to become officially recognized and an IHSAA state tournament be sponsored, 50 percent of the membership must be participating in the sport. The IHSAA currently has 407 member schools around the state. The Indiana Boys Volleyball Coaches Association has been administering its state tournament since 1994 while the Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association has been conducting a girl wrestling state tournament since 2017. Representatives of both coaches’ associations submitted requested information in recent weeks including data on participants in Indiana as well as other states, suggested playing rules and potential practice seasons as well as letters of commitment from member schools that either currently sponsor or intend to sponsor a program. According to the data submitted from those coaches’ associations, there are 42 schools fielding boys’ volleyball teams around the state while 350 girls representing 113 schools in this year’s girls wrestling state tournament.
 

Indianapolis Indians Coverage  

Indians-Bats Suspended in 9th Inning Will Finish This Evening

After a back-and-forth contest in the third game of a six-game series between the Indianapolis Indians and Louisville Bats, Thursday afternoon’s affair was suspended in the middle of the ninth inning tied 5-5. The game will resume play at 5:30pm this evening, with the regularly scheduled game beginning no earlier than 7:05pm. The nightcap will be a nine-inning contest. The Teams play Saturday at 6:35pm and Sunday afternoon at 1:35pm to conclude the six-game series

For more local news . . .
Check out our archived episodes of What’s Happenin’ and Talkin’ Sports with Nick Jenkinson here