Prep talk: Mike Erspamer of San Clemente shuts down hitters in Sea View League
Left-handed pitcher Mike Erspamer of San Clemente High completed Sea View League competition by throwing 27-2/3 scoreless innings in helping the Tritons clinch the league championship.
The Stanford commit has established himself among the best pitchers in coach David Gellatly's 31 seasons, ranking in the same breath as Andre Pallante, Michael McGreevy and Kolby Allard, all of whom reached the majors during Gellatly's tenure.
'It will be tough to rank pitchers through the years but he's right up there with the best I've had,' Gellatly said.
Overall, Erspamer is 6-3 with a 1.71 earned-run average and has 83 strikeouts in 49 innings. …
Here are updated Southern Section lacrosse results.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
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San Francisco Chronicle
4 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Stanford, Cal eye ‘the end of amateurism' in new revenue-sharing era
Nearly three months before the start of college football season, on May 31 and June 1, two sellout crowds totaling about 90,000 people flooded into Stanford Stadium. They came to see Coldplay, the first live concert ever held at the on-campus facility. The timing was hardly coincidental. One week later, last Friday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken formally approved the long-anticipated House settlement. That $2.8 billion agreement, to settle three antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and Power Five conferences, officially ushered in a new era of major-college sports, with schools now permitted to directly share revenue with student-athletes. And sharing revenue for the first time means finding new revenue. That helps explain how Coldplay landed on stage at Stanford, bringing its 'Music of the Spheres' world tour to the same venue where John Elway, Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey once performed. 'It was an inspiring example of what our campus can pull off,' Stanford interim athletic director Alden Mitchell said in a Chronicle interview Wednesday. 'And it's a great positive from a financial perspective.' Cal and other Bay Area athletic programs no doubt will also try to tap fresh revenue streams, in one form or another. Donor fundraising, rising the past four years with the proliferation of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes, can stretch only so far. The new expenses are significant: Friday's landmark approval allows schools to share up to an estimated $20.5 million in revenue in the 2025-26 fiscal year, starting July 1. That limit initially will rise by 4% annually, to $21.3 million the next year and $22.2 million the year after that. Cal and Stanford are not required to spend the maximum amount, essentially a salary cap. But they realistically must hit the cap to compete with their Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. This leaves athletic department leaders expanding already-strapped budgets, with a full menu of sports (36 for Stanford and 30 for Cal). Mitchell, who joined Stanford last year as chief operating officer, hopes to implement a new structure in ways 'that keep college sports special for student-athletes, and distinct from pro sports.' That's a challenging quest on a landscape now dominated by chatter about money, money and more money. 'It is fair to say we're living through the end of amateurism as we know it,' Mitchell said. The transformation creates more questions than answers on the Bay Area scene. Will revenue-sharing make it even more difficult for Cal and Stanford to keep pace with their ACC rivals in football and basketball? How much will San Jose State spend at a time when one CSU campus (Sacramento State) is ramping up and another (Sonoma State) is eliminating athletics entirely? And how will St. Mary's, USF and Santa Clara — schools without football programs but Division I in basketball and other sports — compete with deeper-pocketed foes from larger conferences? The Gaels offer an interesting case, given their perpetual and uncommon success in men's hoops. They made the NCAA Tournament again this past season, beating Vanderbilt in the first round before falling to Alabama, another SEC team, in the round of 32. Mike Matoso, vice president of intercollegiate athletics at St. Mary's, acknowledged his school is prepared to participate in the revenue-sharing era — but not with the resources of bigger schools, which figure to quickly reach $20.5 million. Matoso described St. Mary's as more of a 'Moneyball' operation, trying to find undervalued assets the way former Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane once did. 'I don't want to go into numbers, but we're not knocking on the door,' Matoso said of the $20.5 million ceiling. 'Nobody at our level (size) is coming close to numbers like that.' One question the Power Five commissioners addressed this week, in a video news conference with reporters, was the expected distribution of revenue sharing. They suggested each school will decide how to allocate revenue to its various sports programs. Most are expected to devote approximately 75% of their spending to football (pending any Title IX challenges), given the outsized money it generates in media contracts. About 20% would go to men's and women's basketball, and 5% to other sports. Neither Cal deputy athletic director Jay Larson nor Stanford's Mitchell specified how they plan to divide revenue-sharing among their various teams. Mitchell called the information 'proprietary' and Larson said Cal has a framework 'within the national norm.' Make no mistake: The norm revolves around football, the economic engine fueling this whole revolution. 'I think everyone realizes how critical it is for there to be investment in football and basketball programs,' Larson said. 'But many schools around the country have a proud tradition of Olympic sports programs, and Cal is one of them. We want and need those programs to succeed.' Stanford also boasts a long history of success in Olympic sports. That means school officials must balance the need to resuscitate their sagging football program — see Luck's appointment as general manager — with the desire to support swimming, water polo and other 'non-revenue' sports. As Mitchell put it, 'Ensuring we're not depriving those sports of oxygen is incredibly important.' Larson and other Cal athletic department leaders met with their head coaches several times over the past two months, in anticipation of Friday's news. They learned most coaches of Olympic sports desire new scholarships more than NIL funding or revenue to share. That's another notable element of the new world order: NCAA scholarship limits vanish July 1. Baseball, for example, could offer only 11.7 scholarships in the old system, divided among all players. Now the scholarship cap will increase to 34. This doesn't mean Cal, Stanford or St. Mary's — fresh off its first NCAA Tournament baseball victory in school history — will immediately offer 34 full scholarships in baseball. But they need to 'strategically' add scholarships in sports other than football and basketball, to borrow Mitchell's word, to stay competitive in recruiting. There are a lot of mouths to feed, so to speak, with more than 850 athletes at Stanford and an estimated 820 at Cal. Larson and Mitchell both welcomed the establishment of the new College Sports Commission, led by former MLB executive Bryan Seeley. That independent group will oversee enforcement of the reshaped rules governing college sports, to make sure schools aren't circumventing the salary cap by arranging outside deals for athletes. At least it's an effort to monitor the marketplace, after a chaotic stretch while those antitrust cases worked their way through the legal system. 'An unregulated market tends to favor those with the most resources, and I think we saw that play out the last couple of years,' Larson said. 'A regulated market allows for more competitive balance, and many people in our enterprise want to see it get there. … 'We'd like to see games decided on the field, by players and coaches, and not necessarily by who's writing the biggest checks. That's why the enforcement part of this is so critical.' Friday's approval of the House settlement not only marginalizes the NCAA on enforcement, it also shifts the NIL burden from 'collectives' to the schools themselves. Kevin Kennedy, president of the California Legends Collective — which raised money to benefit Cal athletes — announced his group will suspend operations at the end of June. So now it falls on Cal officials to find and spend more than $20 million to keep pace. That will include exploring new avenues to generate revenue, one source said, including potentially trying to better monetize Memorial Stadium. Worth noting: The school is still paying off its massive debt on the seismic retrofit and renovation of the stadium in 2010-12. That plunged the athletic department more than $440 million into debt, though the campus took over about $238 million in 2018. Cal's rival down the road monetized its stadium with Coldplay, and Mitchell said Stanford officials are working on booking more concerts. They're not alone: Last month, the University of Toledo's football stadium hosted its first major concert in 31 years. Clearly, the new reality in college sports is forcing campus leaders to think in a new way. 'Concerts are the most extreme example, but our competitive venues are often empty,' Mitchell said. 'That's something we're thinking about a lot.'
Fox News
2 days ago
- Fox News
Cameron Brink calls out fan for accusing WNBA player of prioritizing 'walking down red carpets' over rehab
Los Angeles Sparks forward Cameron Brink called out a fan on social media that accused the former first round pick of putting more time into "walking down red carpets and schmoozing" than rehabbing her ACL injury. Brink, who was selected by the Sparks with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, took to social media to call out a fan that criticized the former Stanford standout of not focusing on her recovery. The 23-year-old basketball player has been sidelined since she suffered a torn ACL in her left knee during a June 2024 game against the Connecticut Sun. "She should've been back on the court now, and something tells me that if she put as much work into rehab as she puts into walking down red carpets and schmoozing, she'd be back by now," the fan wrote in a comment that Brink posted on her Instagram Stories on Monday. The self-proclaimed Sparks fan went on to say Brink made "public appearances with no brace, crutches or anything," shortly after undergoing surgery last season. Brink responded to the comment publicly. "I'm working INCREDIBLY hard every day. I would give anything to be out on the court right now. Basketball is my passion and everything to me… to say this you aren't a real fan." She continued, "Thank you to those who understand ACLs can take a year & giving me grace. I cannot wait until I get to play again." Brink was averaging 8.1 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.5 blocks a game before getting injured. She was ruled out again for Wednesday's game against the Las Vegas Aces. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
USA Today
3 days ago
- USA Today
Solid three-week stretch on LPGA changes 2025 outlook for this former Stanford standout
Solid three-week stretch on LPGA changes 2025 outlook for this former Stanford standout A month ago, Aline Krauter was playing on the LET and Epson Tours, trying to make her way back to the LPGA. On Sunday at the ShopRite LPGA Classic, the former Stanford standout posted a career-best T-5 finish to vault into the top 80 on the CME Race to the Globe Points list. Now she's off to Oakmont to watch golf rather than play it. "Just to see something else, a change of scenery," said 25-year-old Krauter of heading to the men's U.S. Open to spectate, "and then go home, rest up, and get ready for the next major, which is super exciting. "My season was up in the air the last couple weeks, and I solidified everything with the last couple weeks and finishes, so I'm just super excited." Aline Krauter played into the U.S. Open Krauter's first LPGA start of 2025 was in late May at the Mexico Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba, where she finished in the top 25. The German played her way into the U.S. Women's Open, despite a slow-play penalty at sectional qualifying, and finished T-28 at Erin Hills, earning $82,017. Krauter then shot 66-69-68 at Seaview's Bay Course to finish at 10 under for the week, five strokes back of winner Jennifer Kupcho. She's now 71st on the CME points list (top 80 at season's end keep their full cards). She'll make her second major championship start of the season later this month at the KPMG Women's PGA in Texas. "I've played really solid golf over the last couple weeks, just nice to see everything come together," said Krauter. "My weekend golf has been pretty shaky, so to be under par again today is nice. Nice to see the golf game is trending in the right direction." Other players making big moves in the CME points list after ShopRite include Wei-Ling Hsu, who also took a share of fifth, Brooke Matthews (T-11) and Azahara Munoz (T-5). Runner-up Ilhee Lee, a part-time player on the LPGA, didn't have any CME points entering the week and moved to 47th.
