ST. LOUIS (AP) – The Kansas City Royals game at the St. Louis Cardinals has been postponed by rain after a delay of 2 hours, 31 minutes.

No makeup date has been determined for the final game of the season series.

The Cardinals lead the season series 3-2.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Call-up Tyler Lyons had a solid outing and Mark Reynolds hit the go-ahead homer in the fifth inning for the St. Louis Cardinals, who beat the Kansas City Royals for the second straight day, 3-2 on Saturday.

Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez homered for the Royals, who took two of three from the Cardinals at home last month and will be trying to avoid a sweep in the finale.

Matt Carpenter and Jason Heyward each added an RBI for St. Louis, which is a major league-best 41-21 overall and 24-7 at home. The Cardinals used five relievers over the last four innings to hold a one-run lead with Trevor Rosenthal getting the last four outs for his league-leading 21st save in 22 chances.

The Royals’ eighth did not lack for dramatics. Heyward battled the sun to snare Kendrys Morales’ liner while falling on his backside and Rosenthal rallied from a 3-0 count to get Gordon on an infield popup with two on for the third out.

Due to the rain and a wet field at Rathert Field the scheduled doubleheader Saturday night between the Junction City Brigade and Topeka Golden Giants has been cancelled.

Makeup dates will be determined later.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jaime Garcia pitched eight innings of four-hit ball and helped himself with an RBI single for the St. Louis Cardinals, who ended the Kansas City Royals’ four-game winning streak with a 4-0 victory in the opener of a high-profile weekend interleague series on Friday night.

Jon Jay snapped a 2-for-24 slump this month with a two-out RBI triple in the second off Yordano Ventura (3-6), and Garcia followed with his 12th career RBI on an opposite-field single to left.

The Cardinals are 40-21 overall and 23-7 at home, both major league bests. They got a huge outing from Garcia (2-3), so far a success story off thoracic outlet surgery.

Ventura lasted just three innings for the second straight start, removed as a precaution due to weakness in his pitching hand. In those two starts, he’s allowed six earned runs.

Kansas State men’s basketbal walk-on Brian Rohleder will receive an athletic scholarship for the 2015-16 season, head coach Bruce Weber announced.

An Academic All-Big 12 First Team selection as a junior, Rohleder has seen action in 42 games in his three-year career at Kansas State, including playing in 16 games with one start in 2014-15.

“This is a really humbling experience for me,” said Rohleder. “It is what I have been working towards these last four years to be able to have a scholarship and finish off my career at K-State.”

The mechanical engineering major from Wichita, and product of Bishop Carroll High School has appeared on every Fall and Spring Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll since his freshman season in 2011-12, including earning a perfect 4.0 GPA during the spring semester.

The Junction City Brigade baseball game with the Topeka Golden Giants scheduled for Friday night at Rathert Field has been cancelled.

Recent rains have left the field too wet to play.

The Brigade are scheduled to host the Golden Giants in a doubleheader Saturday evening at Rathert Field. Game times are 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

EUGENE, Ore. – Akela Jones registered a performance of historic proportions, notching K-State Track and Field’s first individual national title by a women’s athlete since 2011 in the heptathlon and breaking the school record in the process. Tallying a gaudy 6,371 points, Jones broke Austra Skujyte’s school record of 6,275 points set in 2002, as well as became the sixth Wildcat women’s athlete ever to win an NCAA title outdoors.

 

Her record-setting performance came thanks to personal best showings in all but one of the heptathlon’s seven events. Jones dominated competition, leading the field for the remainder of the multi following the high jump on day one. She set one school record, three top-10 program heptathlon marks, as well as marked the second-best wind-assisted long jump mark in school history.

 

Entering the meet ranked No. 4 in the country, Jones, in only her second heptathlon of her career, bested the top-three heptathletes in the country, as well as reigning champion Kendell Williams of Georgia by 149 points for the victory.

 

Jones said she was elated to come out on top of a loaded field after leading following day one of competition.

Photo and story courtesy of Anthony Meier, K-State Graduate Assistant/ Athletic Communications

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) – Akela Jones of Kansas State won the collegiate title in just the second heptathlon of her career and DeAnna Price of Southern Illinois set a meet record in winning the hammer Thursday as the women took over competition at the revamped NCAA track and field championships.

Jones, from Barbados, held a big lead after the first day and stayed there throughout Thursday’s final three events in the seven-event competition, finishing with 6,371 points. Defending champion Kendell Williams of Georgia was second at 6,223. Williams’ teammate Quintunya Chapman was third at 6,147.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – For the first time in more than 70 years, baseball’s two best teams reside in Missouri this late into a season.

The St. Louis Cardinals dropped two of three in Kansas City last month but managed to defeat Royals staff ace Yordano Ventura.

With their offense sputtering a bit, especially when Jaime Garcia starts, the Cardinals look to get to the struggling Ventura early in Friday night’s I-70 Series opener at Busch Stadium.

Kansas City (34-23) took over first place in the AL Central by sweeping a series from Minnesota to push their winning streak to four following a 2-9 stretch. Alex Gordon hit a three-run homer in Wednesday’s 7-2 victory while Salvador Perez singled twice to improve to 8 for 19 in his last five games.

“To get out of town sweeping the series is a good feeling,” manager Ned Yost said.

Pulling off another sweep will be a tall order since the Cardinals (39-21) are a major league-best 22-7 at home.

Ventura’s struggles are another cause for concern in the first matchup between Missouri teams holding baseball’s top two records this late into the season since Aug. 18, 1944, when the Cardinals and St. Louis Browns were atop the standings.

Ventura gave up four runs and six hits in a season-low three innings in Saturday’s 4-2 loss to Texas.

“He has to continue to develop, to understand that with power stuff, you still have to be able to locate and execute your pitches,” Yost said.

Ventura (3-5, 4.62 ERA) got off to another shaky start, allowing four runs in the first two innings. In six outings since the start of May, the right-hander has a 7.50 ERA in the first two innings. Opponents are batting .333 off him in the first on the season.

Against the Cardinals on May 24, Ventura walked Kolten Wong and Matt Carpenter to lead off the game and both came around to score. He ended up allowing two more runs on a Carpenter homer and was lifted after the seventh in a 6-1 loss.

St. Louis’ offense, though, hasn’t exactly been clicking, averaging 2.8 runs while batting .205 over a 2/3 stretch. Wong is 3 for 19 with no walks in the last five and Carpenter snapped an 0-for-13 slump by going 2 for 5 Wednesday as St. Louis defeated Colorado 4-2 to avoid a sweep.

“We’ve got the kind of lineup that’s going to be able to put some runs across, but overall, we know that our sustained success begins with our starting pitching,” manager Mike Matheny said.

The Cardinals lead the majors with a 2.71 ERA. No team has finished a season with a better ERA since Houston had a 2.66 in 1981.

Team chemistry will be an important factor for this years Kansas State Men’s Basketball team after a disappointing season last year.

This year Kansas State is welcoming in six newcomers and returning seven lettermen, including four with starting experience. The team first met for summer workouts last Friday and as of Thursday evening Coach Bruce Weber said that the team chemistry is developing.

“I think the young guys, there right now a little humble, they’re a little bit naive which is good I think that’s a positive thing,” said Weber. “There’s no messing around and that’s what summers for, to kind of build that chemistry, that camaraderie, that togetherness, and we need that. That’s the first thing I addressed when we got back together this weekend.”

Although they have only been together for about a week now the team seems to be getting along just fine together.

“Oh man we’re great,” said incoming freshman Kamau Stokes. “We spend a lot of time together on and off the court.”

He added that working together as a team helping to facilitate the youth summer camps at the Basketball Training facility has helped bring them together,”these kids definitely bring us together because when they’re it’s like we all have to work together to make them better.”

Family is a critical aspect of Kansas State as it shows up all over the University and the incoming Freshman realize that.

“It’s a very good chemistry with this team. I feel like we’re all a family, everybody has each others back,” said Dante Williams. “That’s really what brought me here to K-State. When I came here I could see that everybody was really close, I could see that they had each others backs, they were just counting on each other.”

Kansas State is looking to improve on a disappointing 15-17 2014-2015 season.

The non-conference schedule was released Thursday and it could include as many as six teams that participated in the postseason a year ago, including three from the 2015 NCAA Tournament.