PWHL Seattle names Steve O'Rourke as first coach
June 20 - SEATTLE -- PWHL Seattle named Steve O'Rourke as the expansion franchise's first head coach on Friday.
O'Rourke spent the 2024-25 season as the head coach of the OHL's Oshawa Generals after serving as an assistant coach with the team for two seasons. In all, he brings more than 15 years of coaching experience to Seattle.
"We're proud to welcome Steve as the first head coach in PWHL Seattle's history," general manager Meghan Turner said. "He brings a great hockey mind, a clear vision for the game, and a strong commitment to developing both our team and our players as individuals. We're confident in his leadership and excited to start this next chapter with him behind the bench."
A native of Summerland, B.C., O'Rourke played in the WHL before being selected by the New York Islanders in the 1992 NHL Draft. His coaching career also includes stints with the Prince George Cougars and Red Deer Rebels in the WHL and the AHL's Abbotsford Heat.
O'Rourke, 50, also served as an assistant coach for Canada's Team Red at the 2019-20 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, and spent one season as the general manager and head coach of the BCHL's Langley Rivermen.
"I'm incredibly excited to be joining the Professional Women's Hockey League," O'Rourke said. "This is something I've thought about since the league was first announced. To now be given the opportunity to work with the best players in the world and be part of a professional league that is thriving both on and off the ice is truly amazing.
"Being from the West and having played hockey in Washington State, I've seen first-hand how much the game has grown in this region. The passion and support for hockey here is real, and I'm proud to now be part of it in a new way. To have the opportunity to help shape the Seattle team alongside Meghan Turner and the players is something I don't take for granted. It's an exciting challenge, and I'm looking forward to building something special with this group."
--Field Level Media
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
MLB roundup: Cal Raleigh's 2 homers power M's past Cubs
June 21 - Cal Raleigh hit his major-league-leading 28th and 29th home runs of the season to help the visiting Seattle Mariners to a 9-4 win against the Chicago Cubs on Friday afternoon. Raleigh, who passed Johnny Bench for the most home runs by a catcher before the All-Star break, also singled, walked and scored four times. Mitch Garver homered twice and drove in five runs, and Donovan Solano had three hits and an RBI for the Mariners, who have won five of seven. Seattle starter George Kirby allowed four runs and seven hits over five innings. Reliever Eduard Bazardo (2-0) threw one scoreless inning. Caleb Thielbar (2-2) gave up two runs in two-thirds of an inning for the Cubs, who have lost two straight for just the second time since early May. Reese McGuire and Ian Happ homered for Chicago, and Michael Busch had three hits. Red Sox 7, Giants 5 Ceddanne Rafaela and David Hamilton combined for five hits, three runs and four RBIs out of the bottom two spots in the batting order and Boston spoiled Rafael Devers' reunion with a road victory over San Francisco. Meeting just five days after completing a blockbuster trade with Devers at the heart, the Red Sox rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win for the eighth time in their last nine games. While Boston improved to 3-1 since the deal, the Giants lost for the third time in four games, with Devers going 0-for-5 in the opener of a three-game series. Diamondbacks 14, Rockies 8 Eugenio Suarez hit two of Arizona's four home runs to reach 300 for his career, and the Diamondbacks beat Colorado in Denver. Suarez tied his season high with four hits. Ketel Marte homered, doubled twice and drove in five runs and Ildemaro Vargas finished a triple shy of the cycle to pace the Diamondbacks' season-high 21-hit attack. Mickey Moniak homered among his two hits and Ryan McMahon also went deep for the Rockies. Arizona's Zac Gallen (5-8) allowed seven runs on 10 hits in five innings to beat Austin Gomber (0-1), who permitted nine runs on 12 hits in 4 2/3 innings. Brewers 17, Twins 6 Christian Yelich went 4-for-6 with two doubles and a career-high eight RBIs, Jacob Misiorowski carried a perfect game into the seventh inning, and Milwaukee trounced Minnesota in Minneapolis. Yelich twice hit bases-clearing doubles for Milwaukee, which matched a season high in runs. Jackson Chourio went 2-for-3 with two doubles and three RBIs, and Joey Ortiz finished 3-for-5 with three RBIs. Misiorowski (2-0) continued his dominant start to his big-league career. After pitching five hitless innings before cramps cut his major league debut short on June 12, the 23-year-old was perfect through six innings in his second start before the Twins finally dinged him for two runs in the seventh. He left with two runs allowed on one hit in six innings, and he walked one and struck out six. Rangers 6, Pirates 2 Adolis Garcia had three hits, including a home run, drove in two runs and made two great diving catches in right field to help Texas beat host Pittsburgh. Garcia backed up a strong outing by starter Jacob deGrom (7-2), who pitched six innings, allowing two runs as the Rangers snapped a three-game losing streak. Joey Bart had three hits for the Pirates, who took their fifth loss in six games. Mike Burrows was tagged for four runs on seven hits in 4 2/3 innings. White Sox 7, Blue Jays 1 Luis Robert Jr. hit a two-run home run, Tyler Alexander pitched four scoreless relief innings and visiting Chicago defeated Toronto. Andrew Benintendi added a solo shot and had two RBIs while Josh Rojas contributed two RBIs for the White Sox, who ended an eight-game losing streak by taking the opener of a three-game series. Bo Bichette had three hits and an RBI for the Blue Jays, who have lost two straight. Marlins 6, Braves 2 Rookie Agustin Ramirez homered and matched a season high with four RBIs to help lift host Miami past Atlanta, spoiling the major league debut of Didier Fuentes. Janson Junk (2-0) allowed one run on five hits in five innings while making his first major league start since 2023. He struck out five without walking a batter as Miami ended a two-game losing streak. Fuentes, who turned 20 on Tuesday, yielded four runs on six hits in five innings before departing after 87 pitches. He fanned three and walked one. He became the major leagues' youngest starting pitcher since 2016. Orioles 5, Yankees 3 Ramon Urias started the eighth inning by hitting a tiebreaking homer and visiting Baltimore continued its recent surge by beating New York. Urias allowed the Orioles to regain the lead when he hit a full-count fastball off Luke Weaver (1-2). Pinch hitter Gunnar Henderson added an RBI single off Tim Hill later in the eighth. The Yankees lost for the seventh time in eight games and wasted a big night from Aaron Judge, who hit a solo homer for a 3-2 lead, collected three hits and ended the night with a .371 average. Phillies 10, Mets 2 Trea Turner's RBI double snapped a tie and sparked a six-run seventh inning for Philadelphia, which completed its surge into first place in the National League East by beating reeling New York. The Phillies have won eight of nine while the Mets have lost seven straight by a combined 51-16. The losing streak is the longest for New York since a seven-game skid from June 2-9, 2023. Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil hit back-to-back homers off former teammate Taijuan Walker to tie the game in the sixth before the Phillies mounted their rally against Reed Garrett (2-3) and Justin Garza. Rays 14, Tigers 8 Yandy Diaz homered twice and Matt Thaiss scored twice and drove in four runs to help host Tampa Bay hammer Detroit, moving the Rays to a league-best 21-8 since May 20. Curtis Mead scored three times and drove in a run for Tampa Bay, which has won six of its past eight games. Rays starter Shane Baz (7-3) allowed five runs on four hits over 5 1/3 innings. Riley Greene led the Tigers with two home runs and four RBIs. Detroit starter Jack Flaherty (5-8) lasted only 2 1/3 innings and allowed eight runs on six hits. Astros 3, Angels 2 (10 innings) Mauricio Dubon scored the go-ahead run on a wild pitch in the 10th inning as Houston defeated Los Angeles in Anaheim, Calif. Jeremy Pena went 3-for-4 with a home run as the Astros earned their eighth win in 10 tries. Pena and Isaac Paredes homered as Houston's first two batters of the game. Josh Hader (5-1) threw a perfect ninth inning, and Bennett Sousa worked the 10th for his second save. Hunter Strickland (1-1) took the loss after Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi allowed two runs on six hits in seven innings. Jo Adell and Christian Moore homered for Los Angeles, which was without manager Ron Washington (health concerns). Royals 6, Padres 5 Salvador Perez's RBI single snapped a tie in the eighth inning as visiting Kansas City stopped San Diego. Lucas Erceg (2-2) got the win despite allowing a game-tying two-run single by Gavin Sheets in the seventh that capped the Padres' rally from a 4-0 deficit. Bobby Witt Jr. and Jonathan India homered for the Royals, while India and Maikel Garcia had three hits apiece. Carlos Estevez worked the ninth for his 22nd save despite giving up a homer to Manny Machado. Xander Bogaerts tied the Padres' franchise record by collecting hits in his first three at-bats, giving him eight straight hits. The streak ended when he popped out in the ninth. Cardinals 6, Reds 1 St. Louis scored five runs in the seventh inning to beat visiting Cincinnati for its fourth consecutive win. Cardinals starter Andre Pallante (5-3) was effective through six scoreless innings, allowing just two hits for the Cardinals, who have won four in a row and five of six. Masyn Winn and Lars Nootbaar each had two hits and an RBI. Brady Singer (7-5) gave up one run on four hits in six innings for the Reds, who have lost two straight. Cincinnati's lone run scored on an eighth-inning error. Dodgers 6, Nationals 5 Miguel Rojas hit a two-run homer and Clayton Kershaw inched closer to 3,000 career strikeouts as Los Angeles earned a victory over visiting Washington. Kershaw (3-0) gave up two runs on five hits and two walks in five innings. He fanned four to move within eight of becoming the 20th pitcher with 3,000 strikeouts and the fourth left-hander. Amed Rosario, Riley Adams and CJ Abrams homered for the Nationals, who had ended an 11-game losing streak on Thursday. A's 5, Guardians 1 Nick Kurtz homered for the fifth time in six games and Jeffrey Springs pitched 7 1/3 strong innings to lead the Athletics to a victory over Cleveland in West Sacramento, Calif. Lawrence Butler had three hits and an RBI and Jacob Wilson and Luis Urias added run-scoring singles for the Athletics, who won for the sixth time in eight games. Springs (6-5) yielded a run on three hits. Angel Martinez homered for the Guardians, who lost for the 10th time in 14 games. Tanner Bibee (4-7) gave up five runs (four earned) and 11 hits in his first career complete game, albeit an eight-inning outing. --Field Level Media
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
United States temperatures will serve England players well ahead of World Cup, Harry Kane insists prior to weather that could cause extreme heat risks
Harry Kane insists that he isn't concerned by the extreme hot weather in America and that the England players at the Club World Cup can only benefit from the experience, ahead of the World Cup next summer which will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. 'I'm not concerned. It's part and parcel of football. You have to be able to adapt. It's a great experience for me and some of the other England guys who are playing this year and who will be playing next summer,' Kane told Mail Sport. 'There's always something special about these World Cup games and next year will be the same. 'When you come off that pitch and you're sweating and you're dripping and you're cramping and you've given everything out there, there's a special feeling inside, especially when you win,' he added. Kane scored as Bayern Munich beat Boca Juniors in Miami to confirm qualification for the knockouts, with Michael Olise getting a late winner for Vincent Kompany 's side after Miguel Merentiel had equalised for Boca. Temperatures were around 30 degrees in Miami on Friday and a heatwave is expected next week, with Campaign group Fossil Free Football saying that 10 Club World Cup matches are due to be played in the next week with either a major or extreme heat risk, as temperatures could reach 41C. But the England captain stressed that he and his team-mates will use this tournament as a learning curve, as they look to succeed next year under Thomas Tuchel. 'We (the players) are not in touch with each other right now but it's something we'll talk about at upcoming camps - how we all adapted to it and what training methods we used,' said Kane. 'All of this is good experience because it's going to be tough next summer without a doubt. And we have to use our experiences as an advantage,' the Bayern Munich striker added. Tuchel was watching on in Miami and said last month that he expects his players to 'suffer' next summer. There have been warnings that temperatures at 14 of the 16 stadiums being used for the 2026 World Cup could exceed 'potentially dangerous levels' during the tournament. 'It is important to see matches now in America, and in Miami at three in the afternoon,' said Tuchel. 'I will see that. And how it looks and we need to understand how to cool the players down, to drink and what our options are. I have done pre-season there in Orlando and I will be very surprised if we do not suffer. Suffering is one of the headlines for this World Cup,' the England boss added.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
America is showing us football in its final dictator form – we can't afford to look away
Should we give it a miss? Is it best to stay away from next summer's Trump-Infantino US World Cup? Depending on your politics the answer may be a resounding no or a bemused shrug. Some will see pure drive-by entertainment. Why would anyone want to boycott a month-long end-of-days Grand Soccer Parade staged by two of the world's most cinematic egomaniacs? But it is a question that has been asked, and will be asked a lot more in the next year. Those who intend to travel will need to answer it by action or omission. Would it be better for dissenting media and discomfited football fans to simply no-platform this event? The picture is at least clearer now. After a week of the new steroid-fed Club World Cup we know what this thing will feel like and who it will benefit. There is no mystery with these events now, no sense of politics lurking coyly out of sight. Under Gianni Infantino Fifa has become a kind of mobile propaganda agency for indulgent regimes, right out in front twirling its pompoms, hitching its leotard, twerking along at the front of the parade like an unholy Uncle Sam. So we had the grisly sight this week of Donald Trump not just borrowing football's light, but wrestling it on to his lap and ruffling its hair, burbling like a random hot-button word generator about women and trans people, while Juventus players gawped in the background. We have the spectacle of both club and international football hijacked as a personal vanity platform for Infantino, the dictator's fluffer, the man who sold the world not once but twice. Infantino's status as a wildly over-promoted administrator has always had an operatic quality. But there is something far more sinister in his political over-reach, out there nodding along at the latest Oval Office freak-off, helping to legitimise each divisive statement, each casual erasure of process. Nobody gave Fifa a mandate to behave like this. Its mission is to promote and regulate. And yet here is it acting as a commercial disruptor in its own sport and as a lickspittle to the powerful, disregarding the human rights fluff and political neutrality enshrined in its 'statutes', offering zero transparency or accountability. To date Infantino's only public interface in the US is a 'fireside chat', AKA approved PR interview, at the Dick's Sporting Goods stage in New York. There he is, up there on the Stage of Dick's, mouthing platitudes to pre-programmed questions, high on his own power supply, the newly acquired Gianni glow-up eyebrows arched in a patina of inauthenticity. They say celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. Take a look at what football can do to you. And so far this tournament has presented the full grotesquery in store. What is the Club World Cup like on the ground? Pretty much the same as it is on the screen given this event is invisible in physical form beyond the stadiums. The key takeaway is confirmation of the weirdly jackboot, cult-like nature of the Infantino-shaped universe. Even the optics are trying to tell you something, all black holes, hard surfaces, gold, power-flash. Why does Fifa have its own vast lighted branding on the pitch like a global super-corporation or a military dictatorship? What is the Club World Cup logo supposed to represent, with its weird angular lines, the void at its heart? An obscure Stalinist plug socket? Darth Vader's space fighter? Not to mention the bizarre obsession with that shapeless and indefinable trophy, present on the big screen in every ground in weird scrolling closeup, one minute a Sauron's eye, the next some kind of finger-snapping torture instrument, with its secret draws full of ectoplasm, a dead crow, the personal effects of Pol Pot. Mainly there is the very openly manipulative nature of the spectacle, football in its final dictator form, with a sense of utter disdain for its captive consumer-subjects. Yes, they will literally put up with anything if we pipe it into their smartphones. So here is beauty, love, colour, connection, the things you're hard-wired to respond to, cattle-prodded into your nervous system for the benefit of assorted interests. Here is football reimagined as a kind of mass online pornography. Fifa even calls its media website Fifahub. With all this in mind some have suggested a World Cup and US boycott is the correct and logical response, not least in two recent articles published in these pages. The organisation Human Rights Watch has carried a warning about the implications of staging the tournament under the Trump regime. Guardian readers and social media voices have asked the same question from all sides of discourse. The hostile versions of this: if you don't like it then just don't come, we don't want you anyway [expletives deleted]. If you were worried about us in Qatar, western imperialist, why are you going to the US? And from the liberal left a concern that to report on sport is also to condone a regime that sends deportation officers to games, imposes travel bans on Fifa members and is edging towards another remote war. And all the while marches football around in a headlock, snapping its underwear elastic, saying thanks, Gianni, for the distracting firework show. This is not a normal situation. So why normalise it? Why give it legitimising light and heat? And yet, one week into the World Cup's rehearsal dinner, the only logical response is: you just have to go. Not only would a boycott serve no practical purpose; it would be counterproductive, an act of compliance for a regime that will happily operate without an opposing voice on the stage. There are two structural reasons for this. And a third that relates to the United States itself, or at least to the idea of the United States, to its possibilities, which are not defined by Trump, by the latest military action, or by Infantino. Most obviously, if you leave the stage you abandon the argument to the other person. Dissent remains a useful commodity. However pointless, ineffective and landlocked the process of pointing out the flaws and contradictions may have become, it is necessary to keep doing so. Qatar 2022 was a dictator show that simply sailed above the criticisms. But someone, however minor, has to make them, to offer at least some kind of counter-view. No-platforming an autocrat's show makes no sense on a basic level. These people would prefer you weren't there in any case. Whereas in reality the people platforming and enabling Trump and Infantino are not journalists trying to give another version of events, but the people who keep voting them into power, friendly dictators, subservient football associations and client media who will be present whatever happens. Fifa and its Saudi-backed broadcast partner Dazn are glossing up an army of in-house influencers and content-wanglers to generate a wall of approving noise. Is it healthy if these are the only voices at the show? Shouting into a void may have little effect. But you still have to shout. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Second, football does still have a value that steps outside the normal rules of show and spectacle. This is why it is coveted, courted and used like a weapon. Last week these pages carnied a logical, entirely legitimate wider view, written by two academics from City University New York, which concluded that a boycott was not just an option but 'necessary'. At the same time, the article defined the football World Cup as something that basically has no value, 'spectacles of recreation designed to distract people from their day-to-day lives, cultural and political branding opportunities for their hosts. For authoritarians, they have long been used as a tool to distract from or launder stains of human rights violations and corruption.' Which is definitely true. But it also reads like a vision of sport defined by the most joyless version of AI invented. Under this version of events no World Cup or Olympics would have taken place, because they are essentially worthless, home only to malevolent actors, lacking any notion of colour, human spirt, joy, art, beauty or connection. Who knows, maybe this is accurate now. It is undeniably true that the idea of football as a collective people's game is fairly absurd. Fans of football clubs struggle with this state of cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, the contrast of legacy identity and hard commercial reality. Liverpool are a community club owned by a US hedge fund. Manchester City see themselves as outsiders and underdogs, and are also owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family. Football is the enemy these days. But both sides of this are important, because without that emotional connection, without the act of faith that enables the warm, human part, everything becomes diminished, all our institutions toxic shells. To give up is to abandon sport for ever to the dictators and the sales people, to say, yeah, this just belongs to you now. No-platforming something that still means connection and culture and history. Are we ready for that yet? There will be another version of the present at some point. The final point is about the US, a deeply divided and unhappy place right now, and a much-derided host nation, not least by members of its own populace. What has it been like here? The evidence is that an actual World Cup is going to be very hard to negotiate, spread over vast spaces, with baffling travel times, unreliable infrastructure, and a 24-hour attention industry that is already busy gorging on every other spectacle available to the human race. The US has a reputation for peerless razzmatazz around public events. And while this is undeniably true with cultural spectacles it invented – rock'n'roll, presidential races, galactic shopping malls, enormous food, rural tornadoes, its own continental-scale sports – the US's version of other people's specialities, from cheese to professional football, can seem a little mannered. But the fact remains the actual games have been quite good. There has been a European-flavoured focus on tickets and empty seats. But 25,000 people on a weekday to watch Chelsea in an ill-defined game is decent evidence of willingness to stage this thing and develop the market. The dismay at 3,500 turning up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando overlooks the upside, the fact that 3,500 people actually turned up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando. Sundowns get 9,000-odd even at home. How many of their South African fans can afford to travel for this? Fifa, which uses its faux-benevolence cleverly, will point out an African team received $2m (£1.7m) for winning that game. Do we want to develop something or not? A wider point is that football here is a game beloved of immigrant populations. There is a different kind of warmth, often among people without a platform or the means to make it to the matches so far. The waiter who adores Cristiano Ronaldo. The taxi driver who wants to talk for 40 minutes about Chelsea's wastefulness with academy players. The cop who loves the Colombian national team and is desperate for his son to see them in the flesh. As for the US itself, it still feels like false equivalence to state that this is now an actual dictatorship, a lost land, a place that doesn't deserve this show because of its flaws and structural violence. This has always been a pretty brutal nation, human life as a constant pressure wave, mainlining heat and light into your veins, but also always taking a bite. The opening week in Miami captured this feeling, football's most hungrily transactional event staged on a sunken green peninsula, a place where the sea seems to be punching holes in the land, but which is still constantly throbbing with life and warmth and beautiful things. There is a nostalgic attachment to the idea of the US for people of a certain age, 20th-century holdovers, brought up on its flaws and imperialism, but also its culture and brilliance. But for the visitor America does seem in a worse state than it did 20 years ago. There is an unhappiness, a more obvious underclass, a sense of neglected parts and surfaces. All the things that were supposed to be good – cars, plenitude, markets, voting, empowerment, civil rights, cultural unity, all the Cokes being good and all the Cokes being the same – seem to have gone bad. But this is also a democracy with an elected leader, albeit one with a lust for executive power and some sinister tendencies. Mainly the US seems to have a massive self-loathing problem. Perhaps you can say it is correct in this, that Trump is enacting actual harms. But Trump is also a symptom of that alienation and perceived decline. He's an algorithm-driven apparition. Say his name enough times and this cartoon will appear. America remains a great, messy, dangerous, flawed idea of a place. What else is the world currently offering? This is in any case where football will now live for the next year, an unquestioning supplicant in the form of its own autocratic leader. The game is not an indestructible product. It can be stretched thin and ruined by greed, is already at war with itself in many key places. It will at some point be necessary to pay the ferryman, even as the US is packed away a year from now and the sails set at Fifa House for all corners of the globe and then Saudi Arabia. However stormy the prospects, it is not quite the moment to abandon this ship for good.
