James C Ellis Park Schedual

Spring Hill driver wins 4th feature at Citrus track

Hernando County motor sports drivers — led by Jeff Eberly of Spring Hill — had success Saturday night at the Citrus County Speedway in Inverness.

Eberly won the mini stocks feature race at the track. The feature win was his fourth of the season after joining the schedule midway through the campaign. No other driver has more than one. After Week 11, Eberly sits 11th in the points race with 430. Sonya Heater leads with 996.

Other local participants who did well at the track were Kenny May of Spring Hill and James Ellis and Daniel Webster of Brooksville. May took fourth in the street stocks feature, while Webster placed third in the super late models race. Ellis, who has been a perennial top contender in his division, came in 10th in the modified mini stocks feature.

Among Hernando drivers, May ranks highest in the season standings. He is in fourth place in his division, with 891 points, although he has yet to win a feature race. Curtis Flanagan leads with 1,048 points. Ellis sits in seventh with 395 points in the modified mini stocks standings, fewer than 150 points behind leader Chris Allen.

COPELAND FOOTBALL CAMP: The Hernando County Recreation Department will host the Horace Copeland Football Camp on July 22-23 at Springstead High School in Spring Hill.

Copeland is a former University of Miami and Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver. The clinic curriculum will be aimed at developing fundamental football skills to enhance individual and team skills at all positions.

The cost is $110 per person, with youths ages 7 to 14 welcome. The times for the camp will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days. All campers will be provided an official Horace "Hi-C" Copeland camp shirt, a personalized participation certification, lunch daily, and a special autograph session with Copeland and other former pro players at the conclusion of camp.

Register online by visiting horacecopeland.com or hernandocounty.us/parks_rec, where registration and waiver forms may be printed.

Call Harry Johnson or Christie Williams at (352) 754-4031 or send e-mail to recreation@hernandocounty.us.

PHCC BASKETBALL CAMP: Pasco-Hernando Community College is offering a youth basketball camp at the West Campus in New Port Richey next week.

Sessions include emphasis on fundamental skills, individual player development and team competitions. Fees include registration, camp T-shirts and instruction.

The camp will be from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through June 16 and is open to ages 7 to 16. It will be run by PHCC coach James Johnson and assistant coach Michael Jones. The fee is $75.

arts dispatch: Kids and horses at risk: Willy Vlautin's 'Lean on Pete'

My grandfather kept a portrait of the great Count Fleet in his house in Clay, Kentucky. Other family portraits had their space, too, but I remember that horse better than I remember my ancestors. My grandfather and grandmother took me to the races every Friday afternoon in August at the track in Henderson, Kentucky, Ellis Park, or as they called it, Dandy Dade, which had been its name before James C. Ellis bought it in 1925. Yeah, we're going back a ways. Since the late 1950s, I have followed the Kentucky Derby, some years with more interest than others. The first Derby winner I can remember was Tim Tam, who would have won the Triple Crown in 1958 if he hadn't fractured a sesamoid bone during the Belmont. He still finished second. Just as my interest started to wane, after I'd moved from Kentucky and gone to college, Secretariat scooped me back into the fold in 1973. And tomorrow, the first Saturday in May, I'll be watching when this year's top 3-year-olds, minus several of the early favorites already brought down by injury or gastro-intenstinal distress (Uncle Mo), test the Churchill Downs oval and that long home stretch. My original intention was to compare it to another recent horse racing novel, Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule , which won the National Book Award. Gordon's novel is set at a small track in West Virginia, but it swings into mythic territory pretty quickly. Gordon knows her racetrack, and the descriptive passages in Lord of Misrule sound absolutely authentic to me -- and if you're new to the horse racing game, it even serves as a good primer to how the business end of it works. But magic is afoot in Lord of Misrule , poetry even, multiple voices and points of view, characters cracking and re-assembling themselves, and the horses take on the characteristics of "winged steeds," creatures that are only partly biological. Charley narrates Lean on Pete.  Among other things, that means he recounts the contents of just about every meal he has during the time period the novel covers. Partly, that's because the teen brain is focused on the next feeding with an almost shocking single-mindedness, I've come to learn. But mostly, it's because Charley often doesn't know exactly how he's going to get himself fed from breakfast to supper. Through Charley,  Lean on Pete shows us just how precarious the lives of children can be in an America with a very moth-eaten safety net and fragile families.

Woodall's Campground Directories 1989, North American Addition

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Amoco Motor Club guide to mini-vacations in the Southeast

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