Published: July 19, 2008 10:40 pm            

Column: Raisin Hope worthy cause

Saul Raisin is back in town and he’s on a mission. Raisin, the former professional cyclist whose career was cut short by a serious bike crash during a race in France in April 2006, is pushing for local support of the second Raisin Hope charity fundraising event coming up Oct. 4-5.

“I’m looking for sponsors,” Raisin said Saturday. “This year we’re going to have the charity ride, a bike race and a charity walk. We’re expecting about 1,000 people for the bike ride and walk, but I’m hoping for double that number. I want the whole community to come out and support my foundation.”

The ride is scheduled on Oct. 4 with a 100-mile bike race and the walk the following day. Riders in the race will go 100 laps around a 1-mile loop downtown.

Raisin, born and raised in Dalton, has two speaking engagements scheduled on Monday, starting with a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting with the Rotary Club. At noon, he’ll speak to a Kiwanis meeting at the trade center.

“I’m going into motivational speaking pretty soon,” Raisin said, “and I’m looking forward to that. It’s good for me and I’m good at it. It helps spread my message not to give up and maybe I can make a living doing it.”

• Lacie Coquerille, the former Dalton High School multisport standout, capped a successful freshman softball season at Tennessee Tech University by earning the Lady Eagles’ Best Defensive Infielder award.

Coquerille started all 63 games at second base and had nearly 300 chances while making only six errors for a .979 fielding percentage.

“Lacie had an outstanding defensive season,” TTU coach Tory Acheson said in a release from the university. “She made some amazing plays and looks to be the cornerstone of our infield for years to come.”

Coquerille, who played basketball, softball and golf for the Lady Catamounts, went 40-for-189 for a .212 batting average as TTU posted a 32-30-1 record this past season. She had seven doubles, two home runs and drove in 15 runs. She was tied with Beth Boden for the team lead in stolen bases with four, and was caught stealing just once.

Only Coquerille, Boden and Stephanie Fischer, the team’s most valuable player who led the nation with 27 home runs, started all 63 games for TTU.

Coquerille’s former rival, Taylor Horseman of Northwest Whitfield, played 52 games and started 36 for the Lady Eagles, batting .071. She had a double among three hits and scored 13 runs, although she only batted 42 times.

• The consensus among preseason college football magazines is that Georgia is a solid top 2 team heading into the season. Sporting News and Lindy’s ranked the Bulldogs No. 1, College Football News put them at No. 2 and Athlon rated them No. 5.

Sporting News and Lindy’s predicts Georgia will play for the national championship against Ohio State and Southern Cal, respectively. Composite preseason rankings have Georgia second behind Ohio State and Florida fifth.

Ironically, if one puts the collective thinking of the preseason magazines into one pot, Florida is picked to win the SEC East Division title and play Auburn in the SEC championship game in December.

• It’s seldom that my television watching includes golf. It bores me. The only game that bores me more these days is professional baseball. Snails move faster. In my advancing years, I’m not about to spend that amount of time watching a baseball game.

But Saturday morning, it was easy to pull for Greg Norman in his bid to take the British Open lead on a day when most slender golfers were in danger of being blown away by winds gusting to 40 mph.

By day’s end, Norman was atop the leaderboard with a two-shot lead over Padraig Harrington and K.J. Choi.

It was also easy to watch Chris Evert play at Wimbledon or anywhere else in the prime of her great tennis career. Now Norman, 53, and Evert, 52, are married. Nice couple.

I don’t think Evert is going to make a comeback.

But Norman has made the older folks around the world of sports sit up and take notice.

It’s almost enough to make us old geezers get up off the couch and head to the driving range.

Almost.

        

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