Modesto’s Devenport earns checkered flag for national title

Modesto’s Jim Devenport waited a long time for victory and, when it happened, it was sweet.

Devenport, 61, earned his first Sports Car Club of America national championship last week with a Prototype 1 class win at the SCCA National Championship Runoffs at Lexington, Ohio.

Devenport’s No. 23 Cranbrook Group/Bulldog Motorsports Norma Auto Concept M20/Honda took the checkered flag under full-course caution. He won from the pole position and took the SCCA Super Sweep after winning his first U.S. Majors Tour Conference Championship.

It was a sweep. He won the tour title, the national point championship, a key regular season event, and the Runoffs.

“It’s been such a journey,” Devenport said. “We started three years ago at the Runoffs; I got into this at 50 and I’m 61 now. It’s been a long time getting here, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”

The eventual champion led the opening stanza, through a full-course caution on lap three to retrieve one of the high-strung race machines that had stopped on the track. Gianpaolo Ciancimino, the 2015 class champion, took the lead on the lap six restart and turned the fastest lap of the race in 1:19.407. He then slowed one lap later.

Kirk Kindsfater of Eaton, Colo., and Jim Hallman of Kitchener, Ontario, earned their first Runoffs podium finishes.

Powell Roos on Pac-12 All-Century team – Suzy Powell Roos, Modesto’s three-time Olympian, added to her impressive résumé earlier this year with her selection to the Pacific-12 Conference All-Century Women’s Track and Field Team.

Powell Roos, a discus and javelin star for UCLA (1995-98), was one of four discus athletes to be selected to the 51-member team. She was chosen from 220 nominees and voted on by a panel of 35 coaches, former athletes, administrators and media members.

The Modestan, a graduate of Downey High, won the Pac-12 discus title in 1997 and, the year before, won the U.S. Olympic Trials. Also in 1996, Powell Roos placed second in the Pac-12 and second in the NCAA in the discus. In 1998, the former American record-holder was third in the Pac-12 and fourth in the NCAA in the discus.

The team was announced on the Pac-12 Sports Report show on the Pac-12 Network.

Modestan to be honored in San Leandro – Ben Ramos of Modesto, a former left-handed pitcher who reached the Triple-A Seattle Rainiers (L.A. Angels) in 1996, will be inducted into the San Leandro Sports Foundation Hall of Fame on Oct. 14. Ramos, born in Hawaii, was a football and basketball star at San Leandro’s Pacific High, where he graduated in 1964. He signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization the same year.

Ramos has applied for induction into the Hawaii Hall of Fame. He set a Hawaii (Waianae) Little League strikeout record in 1959: 177 strikeouts in 11 games, with a 9-2 record.

Former Livingston, MJC star scores for San Jose State – Yaritza Arista, a former soccer star for Livingston High and Modesto Junior College who’s now a junior at San Jose State, scored her first goal of the season last week in the Spartans’ 2-1 win over UNLV. San Jose State was 5-2-3 for the season and 2-0 in the Mountain West Conference going into this weekend’s games.

This story was originally published September 30, 2016 at 5:42 PM with the headline "Modesto’s Devenport earns checkered flag for national title."