correction
Jonathan Stokes’ volleyball coaching record at Wellsville was 54-3 in two seasons. The sign was wrong in Friday’s editions.
The southern range forms the state
CANTON – The Southern Range softball team clinched a state tournament berth with an 8-4 victory over the championship in Davie. III Region finals Friday at Willig Park.
Gretchen Bartels had two doubles and an RBI for the winners. Julie Stakovic was the winning pitcher with 10 strikeouts, one walk and two earned runs.
Gabe Gradisher took the loss for the championship with 10 strikeouts, one walk and four runs.
Southern Range (26-3) will face Wheelersburg in the state semifinals at Firestone Stadium in Akron on Thursday at 12:30 p.m.
Hiram was bowled in the opener
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – No. 21 Coe College scored four runs in the fifth inning and Eli Toro took over from there to beat Hiram 5-0 in the opening game of the NCAA Division III Super Regional on Friday. .
The two teams will face each other in the best-of-three series at Clark Field today at 2:00 p.m.
Toro gave up just one run in the top of the fourth inning to Angel Santalan. Toro improved to 14-4 with a 1.13 ERA on the season
Coe (36-9) is coming off its first NCAA regional championship since 2009.
Hiram (27-15), playing in its first super regional, lost for the second time in its last 12 games.
The winner of the series advances to the NCAA Championships in Marshall, Texas.
Schedule of SEC hearings
(AP) – Southeastern Conference leaders have been debating what to do with their football schedule for more than a year.
Play eight conference games per season with one opponent or go nine league games with three?
Whether ESPN is willing to pay to broadcast more SEC games will factor into the decision, though it’s unclear how much. As SEC officials head to the Florida panhandle for spring meetings next week, there is still no date to call on a format that will take effect next year.
“We have to make a decision and if we don’t make a decision, will it be the be all, end all? No,” Commissioner Greg Sankey said in an interview. “But at some point we have to get on the proverbial plane. I think we’re ready for that.”
Among other agenda items for the meeting in Destin, Florida: gambling, coming in on Alabama’s hopes of firing a baseball coach amid an investigation into questionable bets on a Crimson Tide game; how best to avoid storming—or at least encouraging—the field and the courts by fans after the game; And of course, name, image and likeness compensation for athletes.
The football schedule is headlined.
The SEC currently plays an eight-game conference schedule with 14 members in two divisions. Each team has an annual cross-division competition. In 2024, Texas and Oklahoma come together to form a 16-team SEC conference, and there will be no more divisions.
Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Texas A&M and Florida, schools that hope to consistently compete for playoff spots and contend for a national championship, prefer nine league games per season.
“We certainly don’t want to at A&M” Aggies athletic director Ross Bjork said. “We expanded for a reason. And people want more SEC content, right? Obviously, there’s a demand for it, especially football.
For some schools with more modest goals, where national titles are hoped for but not expected, playing an extra game in the nation’s toughest football conference doesn’t make sense.
Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart has publicly endorsed eight. Auburn AD John Cohen indicated support for eight while he was at Mississippi State. It is not clear whether changing jobs has changed his opinion.
There are concerns about the conference playing five road league games every other season instead of the current four. Home games are worth millions in revenue.
ESPN can significantly help make up for that. The SEC’s latest media rights deal with ESPN/ABC begins in 2024 and makes the network the exclusive home of the conference. SEC Vs. Replacing non-conference games with SEC games should give the network more value.
Sankey said the decision doesn’t come down to how much the network might spend to allow SEC schools to play more games against each other: “That’s the way, simplifying the matter.”
One Sankey owner had a slightly different message this week.
“I might say more than I want to say from Commissioner Sankey, but obviously if you’re going to go to a nine-game schedule, you’ve got to be compensated for going to a nine-game schedule.” Georgia president Jair Moreid told The Athletic this week. “There are still some dynamics that have to play out with our media partners.”
The SEC has more clarity on the schedule than it did a year ago, when it worked under the assumption Texas and Oklahoma would merge in 2025. Officials from Texas and Oklahoma will attend next week’s meetings, but they do not yet have voting privileges.
The expansion of the College Football Playoff was also up in the air a year ago. It’s settled now: The CFP will expand from four to 12 teams in 2024.
How to pick the annual contenders won’t be an easy discussion with the nine-team format.
“I’m always an advocate for playing more (conference) games.” Alabama coach Nick Saban told Sports Illustrated earlier this year. “But if you play more games, I think you’ve got to get three solid (opponents), right? They give us Tennessee, Auburn and LSU. I don’t know how they come up with that?”
There is no guarantee a vote on the new scheduling model will be taken in Destin, Sankey said. A majority vote is all that is needed to decide on a model, but, ideally, the SEC wants to have everyone on board with the final decision.
Sankey recalled former Tennessee AD Doug Dickey once telling Sankey’s predecessor, the late Mike Slive, that even close votes in the SEC needed to be unanimous after leaving the chamber.
“People will air their views, share their differences and then we’ll vote and life will go on and we’ll schedule and play football.” Sankey said.