mimblr.com

Sacramento State’s women won the Big Sky Conference’s All-Sports Trophy, the league announced Wednesday.
The Hornets, who won conference titles in volleyball, soccer, indoor and outdoor track and field and tennis, claimed the trophy for the first time since joining the league in 1996-97. They finished with 91 points, well ahead of runner-up Northern Arizona’s 71.
Sac State’s men finished fourth among the Big Sky’s nine teams.
• Sac State sophomore Katrina Zheltova defeated Furman’s Laura Gioia 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the first round of the NCAA Division I Women’s Tennis Singles Championships in Tulsa, Okla. Yasmin Schnack, a UCLA sophomore from Sacramento, lost to Kelcy Tefft of Notre Dame 7-6 (5), 7-5.
• Sac State sophomore outfielder Tim Wheeler was named to the All-Western Athletic Conference baseball first team. Hornets outfielder Ryan Blair, third baseman David Flores and designated hitter Wes Oberlin – all seniors – made the second team with junior utilityman Gabe Jacobo.
• UC Davis was unable to complete the second round of the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships in Albuquerque, N.M., after high winds led to the suspension of play.
– Bee Sports staff
A group is suing the city of San Mateo in a last-ditch effort to delay the bulldozing of Bay Meadows Race Track to make way for an 84-acre development. The Friends of Bay Meadows argues that the city failed in its environmental report to consider changes to the track’s historic status and traffic around the development site.
• Saturday’s International Boxing Organization junior-lightweight championship fight in Manchester, England, between Sacramento resident Juan Lazcano and Ricky Hatton will be televised live at 12:30 p.m. on Versus.
– Bee Sports staff

sacbee.com

WENDELL Sailor scored two tries and was later subjected to a drug test as he made a successful comeback to rugby league last night.
Sailor proved himself on the field with a starring performance in a Jim Beam Cup match for St George Illawarra’s feader team, the Shellharbour Marlins.
But the stigma of his two-year ban for testing positive to cocaine remains something the dual international will have to deal with.
After the triumph of scoring the final two tries to lead the Marlins to a come-from-behind win over the Erina Eagles, Sailor was given a reality check when he was subjected to a drug test after the match.
Minutes earlier, Sailor had been followed around Ron Costello Oval by adoring fans, chanting his name. He had scored the final two tries, the Marlins coming back from a 22-0 half-time deficit to win 30-22.
"I probably would have liked to score a hat-trick, but you can’t have everything you want," Sailor said cheekily.
"I just wanted to come out and play well for the kids here and also so people don’t think I’m washed up."
St George coach Nathan Brown knows his new recruit is not short on confidence.
"I’m sure ‘Dell’ will tell me on Monday, or tonight or tomorrow (how he went). We all know big Dell," Brown said.
"We’ve been reliably informed and I’m sure big Dell will reliably inform us of that at training. He’ll turn up with video and cut his own tape and show everyone."
Sailor scored the try that put the Marlins in front for the first time, the giant winger showing he hasn’t lost his athleticism, leaping high to take a cross-field kick then stepping inside two defenders to score.
Six minutes from full-time, he demonstrated his power to crash through the Eagles’ defence for the match-winner.

news.com.au

PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Cornell senior centerfielder Jenna Campagnolo (Guelph, Ont.) led the Big Red this week picking up six victories to extend her team’s 18-game winstreak. Campagnolo notched a .667 batting average and 1.750 slugging percentage to help Cornell sweep Columbia, and move into a tie for first place in the South Division. The senior notched three home runs, a triple and two doubles to drive in nine runs this week. Campagnolo remains perfect in the field this season, while notching five putouts and an assist in the field this week. Against the Lions, from deep centerfield, she made a perfect throw to home plate to throw out a Columbia base runner. Campagnolo led her team with a .650 on base percentage for the week, and notched two stolen bases.
PITCHER OF THE WEEK
Cornell freshman pitcher Ali Tomlinson (Hamilton, N.J.) led the Big Red on the mound this weekend, while earning three wins. Tomlinson improved her record to 13-4 overall and has picked up eight-straight wins, while helping the Big Red increase its winning streak to 18 games. The rookie only allowed three earned runs for the week to total a 1.11 ERA for the week. Tomlinson struck out 10 of Columbia’s batters in Cornell’s 5-2 comeback win over the Lions on Saturday afternoon.
ROOKIE OF THE WEEK
Harvard freshman outfielder Emily Henderson (San Jose, Calif.) hit .500 (11-for-22), slugged .682 (team-high 15 total bases), shared the team lead with five runs and was seven-for-seven on stolen-base attempts this week to help Harvard clinch the Ivy League North Division title. With a three-steal game in the opener of Sunday’s doubleheader against Brown, Henderson tied the Harvard single-season record of 25 stolen bases. She had a hit in every game this week and scored a run in five of the six games. Henderson, the Crimson’s leadoff hitter and starting leftfielder, was 4 for 5 in Sunday’s doubleheader opener against Brown, hitting an inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the first inning. She had two other multi-hit games in the week.

ivyleaguesports.com

Frankie Howerd used to talk about Robin Day and his cruel glasses. The glint of Peter Taylor’s specs have lately become of interest to his directors, who tend to zoom in on them and his furrowed forehead as he ponders his past. Although he has worn them for as far back as I can remember, they are there, I would guess, to suggest age and wisdom. As a “green young reporter” in the 1960s, he told us last night on Age of Terror (BBC Two), he had hardly heard the word terrorism. Yet terrorism, particularly Irish terrorism, would become his specialist subject.
The first of this four-part series was a completely gripping and completely balanced account of the hijacking in 1976 of an Air France liner en route from Tel Aviv to Paris. The aircraft ended up in Entebbe airport in Uganda, leaving its Jewish passengers at the mercy of the four hijackers - two of them from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two Germans from something called Revolutionary Cells - and, God help them, Idi Amin.
After some government-level vacillation, the Israeli Defence Forces launched a night raid that saved 100 hostages. Partly the success was due to their hitting upon an inspired solution to the problem of transporting soldiers quietly from the airport to the terminal. They ordered a black Mercedes of the type Amin himself travelled in, to which the typical Ugandan response was a salute. When Mossad instead delivered a white one, they thought laterally, and painted it.
Most of us know the story roughly, if only through movies such as Raid on Entebbe, but many details have faded. That made for suspense as the story unfolded mainly in the words of the hostages but aided by news footage and some discreet re-enactments. I did not remember that the one Israel soldier killed was the leader of the assault, Yoni Netanyahu, a man with such iron nerves that he slept all through the flight over even as his comrades puked out of nerves and air turbulence. His older brother, Binyamin, went on to become Israeli Prime Minister in the 1990s. Nor did I recall the disgusting detail that after the operation, Amin ordered the murder of Nora Bloch, a 75-year-old taken from the plane with a choking fit in order to recover in hospital.

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

There may be hope yet for Comcast subscribers who want the Big Ten Network.
According to an online story this week by the SportsBusiness Journal, the two sides have agreed on the framework for a deal that would put the network in the almost 6 million homes Comcast reaches within the eight-state conference region.
The SportsBusiness Journal story warns that a deal “could still be weeks, or even months, away, as lawyers from both sides hammer out the specifics.” But it’s an encouraging sign for viewers who missed scores of football and basketball games due to the negotiating stalemate.
Naturally, both the Big Ten Network and Comcast played coy when asked about a possible deal.
“We cannot respond specifically to the Sports Business Journal story regarding our negotiations with Comcast, other than to say we continue to talk and we continue to make progress,” the Big Ten Network said in a statement. “Other than that, we cannot comment further.”
Comcast, the largest cable provider in West Michigan, was even more vague with its response: “We continue to negotiate with the Big Ten Network for an agreement that is fair for our customers.”
Those statements don’t exactly ring with optimism, but the SportsBusiness Journal claims a deal is at its closest point since the Big Ten Network launched in August.

read_more

Note: Content Producers were asked to create their own version of Oprah’s Big Give. Here is one of their ideas.
Each time I shut my eyes and picture what I could do if given the resources, one life long friend is always first on my list - Dean Baier from my home town of Redfield, South Dakota. He is a twenty-eight year old young man who is quite remarkable, despite circumstances. When Dean was brought into this world on November 14, 1979, he brought along with him heart troubles requiring surgery within weeks and again during his younger years. As his path through life drew on, many trips to the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota became rituals for Dean’s family. With his vivacious personality, one would never realize the struggle and stress his young body had gone through other than his reluctance to remove his t-shirt during the long summer days we spent at the local swimming pool or Cottonwood Lake. He was most self-conscious of his surgery scars.
Into his later twenties, Dean’s life continues to throw him curve balls, sending him to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota numerous times, even within the last couple months. Unfortunately, even with all the specialists no distinct diagnosis has yet been cultivated for current digestive ailments. The stress doesn’t get any easier to swallow as medical bills continue to pile on Dean’s plate despite inconclusive doctor visits.
Even with the life threatening issues he has faced, Dean manages to always give his heart to others. He is a tremendous and loving son, uncle to three nephews, one niece, and a great brother/brother-in-law to his two sisters and their husbands. He is a damn hard worker, and despite his quality of physical health always fluctuating, he puts his life on the line by serving on Redfield, South Dakota’s City and Rural Volunteer Fire Departments. I find this unspeakably heroic! It is very hard to see someone with such good intentions never get a break or a ray of sunshine after so many storms.
Sweetie, how about having your mama make another quilt and get people to make donations and have it for a ‘door prize’. In Maine we can’t have raffles without a special permit so I imagine raffles could be outlawed where you are too. What gas company owns Dean’s gas station? You are a writer, how about writing to the corporation and asking if they’d donate to help him. There are ways you can help him today. Good luck!

associatedcontent.com