by Keith Gisser, assistant publicity director, Northfield Park

Northfield, OH — Northfield Park has several early opening dates in April, and in cooperation with our new sponsor, Dunkin Donuts, free coffee and donuts will be available to patrons from 12:00 noon until 2:00 p.m. on Wednesdays, April 4 and 25, and on Mondays, April 9 and 16.

Also available will be great simulcasting action on tracks including Monticello, Freehold, Aqueduct/Belmont, Gulfstream and more. Wednesday, April 25 kicks off five straight weeks of early Wednesday openings and no live Wednesday racing. Live Wednesday racing returns on May 30.

Battle update: Trainer Virgil Morgan, Jr. has told Director of Racing Greg Keidel that he is pointing Joe Muscara’s Mister Big toward the $125,000 Battle of Lake Erie on Saturday, April 21. The son of Grinfromeartoear is five of seven this year, winning the $74,000 Aquarius Final at the Meadowlands on February 24 and the $47,292 Willowdale Final at Woodbine on January 27. Muscara and Morgan, who purchased the horse from the Pinske stable in early January, have given him a few weeks rest, and he will be fresh and ready to roll on Battle Night.

Meanwhile, Ataboyart has taken the lead in the race for a local Battle berth as he won his second straight Invitational here on Saturday night for owner-trainer Jeff Miller and driver Ray Fisher, Jr. Miller shares ownership of the son of Northfield Wall of Fame inductee Le Mistral with Dorothy Miller.

March madness: It’s a week later than usual, but we will not cheat on our NCAA bracket based on harness racing criteria.

We are already out of business in the Midwest, where we had Arizona, headquarters of Harness Tracks of America, and Wisconsin in the Elite Eight, and we have also been wiped out in the West, where Kentucky, within shouting distance of the Red Mile, fell to Kansas, and Indiana, representing a great harness racing state, couldn’t handle UCLA.

The right side of the bracket remains solid, as we have North Carolina’s Tar Heels, named in honor of the great stallion Tar Heel (or maybe it’s the other way around) meeting the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Final Four. OSU, just a couple blocks off High Street (the road on which Scioto Downs is located) runs the Agricultural Training Institute in Wooster that so many Standardbred farm managers and horse breeders have attended. So, half of our Final Four is still alive.

Short takes: Nearly $100,000 in Players Club rewards will be mailed to Northfield Park and Cedar Downs Players Club members who accumulated at least 2,000 points since the end of November.

Driver Ryan Stahl is closing in on the 1,000 career win mark. Through Saturday, he had tallied 970 victories.

Northfield hosts the Mildred Williams Driving Series, a 35-race North American Women’s Driving Championship, on Friday, May 12. More details coming soon. Williams, who officially broke harness racing’s gender barrier after repeatedly being denied a license by the U.S. Trotting Association, was granted a provisional license in 1968.