Baseball and NASCAR

Since it's early March, spring sports have arrived. Now that basketball is over, it's now onto High School baseball. Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to college basketball's March Madness and we can talk about that next week.

Weather has plagued everyone from playing baseball, but they did get game one of the year in on Friday.

R-S Central's softball and baseball teams beat East Rutherford 4-0. I expect all four teams to be competitive if not vie conference championships. R-S Central has South Point on Friday (3/9).

Chase beat Shelby 7-6 in the first game of the baseball season, while softball won 11-1.

They will be at rival East Rutherford on Friday (3/9).

Both Thomas Jefferson Softball and baseball lost to Lincoln Charter in the opener. They host Bessemer City on Friday (3/9).

Baseball

R-S Central has nine back from last year's 26 win season in Jace Crowe with Cam and Keaton Snethen.

East Rutherford has Issac Toney pitching and Josh Searcy bat returning and eight others. Chase has nine returning as well with Chipper McGinnis and Grant Lanser among the top returnees.

Softball

R-S Central will miss a decent amount of offense from a year ago, but still be pretty good with at least two solid pitchers in a dominant Haley White and backup Madison Crain.

Chase has the hitting of Ciera Hardin and Makayla Gordon back with Faith Harrill in the pitching circle. This year, they do have enough returning to make the playoffs again.

East Rutherford missed out on the playoffs a season ago, but have Breonna Twitty and Crennan Davis back for infield security.

NASCAR

Kevin Harvick has won two in a row and winning with ease. The Toyota's and Chevy's are still trying to work some things out, but the Ford's have figured it out so far.

Harvick has never won three Monster Energy Cup races in a row. However, the series heads to Phoenix and he has eight of his 39 career wins there.

Underdogs: Aric Almirola nor Clint Bowyer has finished worse than 13th in three races. Both are Stewart-Haas owned cars, which are teammates of Kevin Harvick.

Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano are not far off.

I'm going out on a limb this weekend and saying that Ryan Blaney will win his first race of 2018 with his new team. Harvick could be the sure thing though. Chase Elliott should be a factor too.