Jeff Linder

Catching up with six WNBA players with Iowa ties, through games played Thursday.

The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union will release high school softball postseason pairings within the next week or two for a tournament series that begins July 8. For now, here are the The Gazette’s mock pairings.

Down four runs, the Cedar Rapids Kennedy softball team fought back and topped Iowa City Liberty 7-5 behind sixth-inning home runs by Dylan Amling and Cara Crock.

Two late winning at-bats by Katie Pilcher lifted Cedar Rapids Xavier past Western Dubuque in a 4A top-10 softball showdown.

Prep softball notes: A squad full of second-, third and fourth-year varsity players, Washington is 20-4 and ranked No. 7 in Class 3A.

Area softball Super Ten and standings: Western Dubuque remains No. 1 in the area by a slim margin over Williamsburg and Benton Community.

With Class 3A top-ranked Williamsburg trailing early in the nightcap of Monday’s Wamac twinbill with Center Point-Urbana, Curtin pitched six innings of one-hit, shutout ball, and the Raiders went on to pick up the sweep, 3-0 and 10-3, at Jim Turner Field.

Catching up with six WNBA players with Iowa ties, through games played Thursday.

Iowa women’s basketball announced that Ava Jones will medically retire. She will remain on a scholarship that will no longer count toward the program’s maximum of 15.

Peyton Stineman’s seventh-inning home run extended the second game of Thursday’s softball doubleheader at Niemeyer Field, then Class 5A eighth-ranked Cedar Rapids Kennedy won it in the eighth, 8-6. That forged a split between the Cougars and Cedar Rapids Jefferson. The host J-Hawks won the first game (the one that counted in Mississippi Valley Conference standings), 10-5.

Led by the Gookin sisters, Class 3A No. 4 Mount Vernon weathered some pregame distractions and swept Marion in a softball doubleheader.

New Iowa women’s basketball coach Jan Jensen sat for an hour-long one-on-one interview with The Gazette on Tuesday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Prep softball notes: Iowa City Liberty’s sweep of Dubuque Wahlert on Tuesday further tightens the anybody’s-race MVC Mississippi Division; all seven teams are within 1 1/2 games.

Area softball Super Ten and standings (June 5): Western Dubuque holds onto the top spot; the Bobcats are 8-0 in MVC play.

The Alburnett Pirates exude an aura. Call it a “their-year” vibe. The Class 2A third-ranked Pirates earned a Tri-Rivers Conference softball doubleheader sweep of Maquoketa Valley — 12-2 and 4-1 — Thursday at the Martin Sports Complex.