
13-year-old ElliReese Niday wins 10-meter title at USA Diving national championships
AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — ElliReese Niday became one of the youngest champions ever when she won the women's 10-meter title Thursday at the USA Diving national championships.
The 13-year-old from Moultrie, Georgia, scored 721.40 points to beat Texas sophomore Bayleigh Cranford by 10 points.
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'It doesn't feel real," Niday said. "I just tried to stay focused on my own dives and celebrate after.'
She's the youngest American diver to win a senior national title in an individual event since 2016, when former Olympian Hailey Hernandez won a 3-meter title at the same age.
'It's really crazy," Niday said. "Maybe one day when I grow up, I'll make the Olympic team possibly.'
She led after the semifinals, when she had three dives score over 80 points. Her inward 2 1/2 pike earned perfect 10s from three judges at the meet in Auburn, Alabama. Semifinal scores carried over to the final.
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On Thursday, Niday scored over 80 points on two of her five dives.
Niday finished fifth at last year's winter nationals. She's a seven-time junior national champion and won three gold medals at the 2023 Junior Pan American Championships.
Niday's mother, Lauryn McCalley Niday, was a standout diver at Tennessee and won national titles in 2000 and 2001 on 3-meter springboard.
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AP Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
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New York Times
30 minutes ago
- New York Times
Watch: Sue Bird discusses Caitlin Clark's passing and WNBA ownership
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On the latest episode of 'No Offseason,' Zena Keita and Ben Pickman interviewed Bird to discuss WNBA media, her passion for podcasting, the unique perspective she brings to team ownership, and what makes Caitlin Clark such a special passer. A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on the 'No Offseason' feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Keita: Sue, you officially retired in 2022, but you haven't really fully stepped away from the game and you've been very much involved since your retirement. One of the biggest things you've been doing since is podcasting, and you've inserted your voice in a unique way into the world of women's basketball. When you think about the media landscape right now, we know there's been a boom. … You know what it was like when there wasn't that much interest in your practices or games, and now everyone wants to get in there. 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Advertisement It's important to balance that ecosystem and to have an understanding, because with all the influx of people who were new to women's basketball, they were getting some of the narratives wrong. Some of them were just off, meaning those narratives took on a life of their own at times, and there wasn't something to counteract it, and there wasn't that balance. So the more that starts to increase, and as those of us who really know the game start to get larger platforms, it can all exist. Because sadly in our world today, you do need the hot take, you do need the wrong take, and you need to have these conversations to really get to the bottom of things. But what was missing was accuracy I would say. Keita: Exactly, and I imagine that's what you want to bring with 'Bird's Eye View.' 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Pickman: Sue, when we had Candace Parker on the show, she talked about sometimes needing to take the white gloves off and the importance of that in the ecosystem. What are your thoughts on how media can do things differently, or about the idea of being fair but also critical when the situation warrants it? Advertisement Bird: Fair but critical is a great way of saying it, and that's something that not just Candace and I have talked about, but really all of us have for a long time. There wasn't a lot of critique, and in fairness to everyone who's been around for 20-plus years, it felt too risky to critique at times because it was so easy for so long to jump on that critique and then paint it across the whole league. If you said one bad thing about one thing, that was it: the whole league had no value. So it felt risky. But I do think we're now getting into this place where you can have both. But the important part is to be fair while also critical; both have to exist. And like I said, no 'we got you' moments, but real conversations. And in those real conversations come shooting slumps, come a game or a play where you look back and wish you did something different, or maybe a relationship with a teammate you wish you handled differently. Those are just real conversations. Pickman: You've mentioned some of your conversations with players, but I'm also curious about your conversations with ownership. We know you have an ownership stake in the Seattle Storm, and obviously there's an ongoing CBA negotiation. What have you learned about being on that side of the business? Have you talked to Ginny Gilder, Lisa Brummel, and the other members of the Storm ownership group about the ongoing negotiation? And what do you bring to the mix in terms of those talks? Bird: Yeah, I definitely do stay in touch with them, and what I'm bringing is what I knew I was going to bring the minute I became an owner just over a year ago. 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I don't want to get too caught up in the games played because it is what it is. I don't feel any way about it because records are meant to be broken. But I played 34 games for the majority of my career. So the players today are on the clock with these records, they better break those things in like five years. Pickman: Very true, and they probably will. But I wanted to ask, what makes Caitlin Clark so special as a passer in your mind? And what separates her as a passer compared to all her peers? Bird: The important thing to recognize here with Caitlin, and this conversation is we're not even bringing her name up unless she has incredible court vision, and unless she has the type of vision where she's able to anticipate and read. What I would add to that and what I think separates her, on top of all the qualities that most great passers have, is that she has strength. 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Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
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