NW Briefs: Jim Pomeroy, motorcycle racer, dies

YAKIMA — Jim Pomeroy, the first U.S. motorcycle racer to win a World Championship Motocross event, was killed in a car accident Sunday morning. He was 53.

Pomeroy died when his 1979 Jeep CJ5 went off the road near Tampico, about 20 miles west of his hometown of Yakima, hit a telephone-pole wire and landed on its side, the Washington State Patrol said.

His 9-year-old daughter, Jamie, was treated for minor injuries at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and released, the troopers said in a news release.

The accident apparently was caused by driver inattention, investigators said.

Pomeroy was 20 when he became the first rider to win his debut world championship motocross race, the Spanish Grand Prix, in 1973. He was also the first U.S. racer to win a world Grand Prix event. He won many other top races before retiring from the tour in 1980. In 1999, the American Motorcyclist Association inducted him into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

He is also survived by his wife, Linda.

Golf

Former Washington Husky Paige Mackenzie joined two others with a one-stroke lead after the first day of stroke-play qualifying for the U.S. Women's Amateur. Mackenzie, Margaret Shirley of Roswell, Ga., and Mi Jung Hur of Korea each shot 2-under 69 at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains, Ore.

• Adrian Burtner shot a 6-under 66 to take a one-shot lead after the first round of the Pacific Northwest Section Assistants Championship at Tumwater Valley Golf Club.

• Ok Yun Lim shot a first-round gross 77 to lead Flight 1 of the Greater Seattle Women's Golf Association Championship at West Seattle Golf Course.

Notes

• The Seattle Studs were eliminated from the National Baseball Congress World Series with an 8-7 loss to the El Dorado (Kan.) Broncos.

• Michael Lane, a 1995 graduate of O'Dea High School, has been named women's crew coach at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Tacoma's Steve Phipps won the USA National Armwrestling Championship last weekend in Denver, earning a berth in October's world championships in Manchester, England.

• The USRowing Masters National Championships will be Thursday-Sunday at Green Lake Park. Athletes ages 21 to 80 will compete in 140 events.

• The Chuckanut Bay Rugby Club will host the USA Rugby Men's Club Sevens Championship Saturday and Sunday at the Bellingham Polo & Rugby Fields in Ferndale.

• The Seattle-based ocean-rowing team Ocean Adventure Racing Northwest was within 300 miles of crossing the finish line of the Shepherd Ocean Fours Rowing Race on Monday. The team departed New York on June 10 on a 2,863-nautical-mile race to Falmouth, England.

Compiled from wire

and sports-information reports

and other sources.