Mississippi College softballs thoughts before they head to South Region 2
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NASCAR Cup Series at Richmond Raceway, Cook Out 400: What to know
NASCAR's Cup Series racing returns to Richmond Raceway on August 16. Enjoy an action-packed Saturday night under the lights. The Cook Out 400 marks the 137th Cup race hosted by Richmond Raceway in the history of the series. NASCAR will only visit Richmond Raceway once in 2025. NASCAR racing at Richmond Raceway dates back to 1955. The 3/4-mile, oval track is D-shaped and has an asphalt racing surface. According to the Cook Out 400 is a 300-mile race that requires 400 laps to complete. USA Network will broadcast the race with radio coverage from MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. With and overtime finish, Austin Dillon, driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Richard Childress Racing, won the Cook Out 400 last year at Richmond Raceway. Tickets start at $35 for ages 13 and older, and $10 for children 12 and under. Cook Out 400 starts at 7:30 p.m. on August 16. Visit for more information and to purchase tickets. In Henrico County, Richmond Raceway is located at 600 East Laburnum Avenue in Richmond. 'Who's Your Driver' Richmond Raceway: NASCAR race weekend, presenting partner returns, get tickets Mexico's gain, Virginia's loss NASCAR fans alert: Richmond Raceway loses spring race weekend in 2025 Kristi K. Higgins aka The Social Butterfly, an award-winning columnist, is the trending topics and food Q&A reporter at The Progress-Index voted the 2022 Tri-Cities Best of the Best Social Media Personality. Have a news tip on local trends or businesses? Contact Kristi (she, her) at khiggins@ follow @KHiggins_PI on X and @socialbutterflykristi on Instagram. Your support is vital to local journalism. Please . This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: NASCAR in Richmond, Virginia: What to know about Cook Out 400
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UCF football's special teams unit undergoes overhaul, strives for unity
ORLANDO — Dalton Riggs excelled in his first pressure-packed situation as a UCF Knight. Before the Aug. 28 opener against Jacksonville State, each newcomer faces the task of standing in front of the team and showcasing a hidden talent. Riggs — a 6-foot-3, 230-pound redshirt junior long snapper — said he was put on the spot, given just 15 seconds to think of something. Instincts — and his training in hot yoga and Pilates — kicked in. Riggs dropped into a full split, drawing oohs, aahs, applause, and maybe a few groans and winces from his peers and coaches. UCF football: These 5 veterans are most pivotal on 2025 roster "You do something like (the split), it gets a little memorable. All of a sudden, the guys want to start talking to you, like, 'That's hilarious. I can't believe you did that. How did you learn how to do that?' You started striking convos with guys you hadn't talked to before," said Riggs, who transferred from Big 12 rival BYU. "I think it's definitely one of those things that unifies you." Building unity has been a core theme for Scott Frost ahead of his second stint on the UCF sidelines, and arguably no unit has undergone more change than its specialists. None of the six rostered kickers, punters or long snappers practiced for the Knights four months ago during spring camp. Riggs signed with UCF on Feb. 25 and arrived after graduating at his previous school. Redshirt senior kicker Noe Ruelas and redshirt junior punter Anthony Venneri joined via the transfer portal at the conclusion of spring practices — from James Madison and Ohio State, respectively. UCF rounded out the group with a trio of freshmen — long snapper Rocklyn Kelley, kicker Noah McGough and punter Mason Denaburg, who turned 26 this month and spent the previous seven years pitching in the Washington Nationals' farm system. Special teams coordinator Pete Alamar sought a blend of veteran experience and youth in his first crack at reshaping the room. "Statistics, obviously you're going to look at, but the other part of it is that you utilize all your resources. Film's a wonderful thing," Alamar said. "It was hard because I wasn't going to be able to go out and see a lot of these guys live. "It's like speed dating. It's fast. You have to try to get a grasp, personality-wise, in a very short period of time because everybody else is trying to talk to that guy, too." That vision aligned with Ruelas, who wanted to work with an experienced snapper (Riggs) and mentor a younger placekicker (McGough) for his final year of eligibility. He became a top target upon entering the portal, maintaining a career accuracy mark of 77.5% on field goal attempts with three makes beyond 50 yards. "Working together has brought us together," Ruelas said. "We're in here all the time, and we try to hang out off the field as well. That's been key for us, trying to build that friendship first before being teammates." Frost put faith in Alamar to fix a unit that was a major weakness in the Knights' first two Big 12 seasons. Among the league's 16 teams, UCF finished 15th in kicking accuracy (60%), 12th in net punting (37.8 yards), 14th in kick returns (16.7 yards) 11th in kick return coverage (21.2 yards allowed) and 15th in punt coverage (17.5 yards allowed). Alamar, who ended last season as Rice's interim head coach, has coached special teams at the Division I level since 1996. He enjoyed a 10-year tenure at Stanford (2012-22), during which he was once honored as Phil Steele's Special Teams Coach of the Year. Christian McCaffrey won the Jet Award in 2015 as the nation's top kick returner, and two-time All-American Joshua Karty was named a finalist in 2022 for the Lou Groza Award, given to the country's best college kicker. Frost got his first true glance at the special teams unit during UCF's Aug. 7 scrimmage and expressed satisfaction with the kicking results in his ensuing press conference. Riggs said the snapping-kicking operation has gone smoothly to this point due to effective communication during and after practices and a collective willingness to hit the ground running when camp opened. As of the team's Aug. 4 local media day, Ruelas had not yet taken his turn unveiling a hidden talent. He has, however, had the benefit of time to think — debating between a brief karate demonstration or singing in Spanish. "I'm not very advanced, just trying to think outside the box to make the team laugh or cheer," said Ruelas, who obtained a beginner-level yellow belt. "I'm not a good singer (either). I was thinking of singing 'Feliz Navidad' just because everyone knows that." This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: UCF Knights football: Special teams unit undergoes overhaul
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16 minutes ago
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As U.S. Ryder Cup captain, Keegan Bradley needs to take himself out of it
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — One way to look at the impending Ryder Cup fiasco is that Keegan Bradley, PGA Tour pro, has played unexpectedly good golf for most of this season. He has made the job of Keegan Bradley, U.S. Ryder Cup captain, quite difficult. Earn his way onto his own team for next month's competition? It remains possible. Another way to look at it: Regardless of how he plays in the remaining two PGA Tour events before he must choose his team, Bradley should stand down. Step aside. Being the team captain is enough. Playing would be too much. For reference, let's take the 2027 Ryder Cup in Ireland. Rory McIlroy is from Northern Ireland. Wouldn't he be a perfect fit for captain of the European team? Why not take on that challenge of playing and captaining? 'The idea of me being a playing captain sometime soon … has come up,' McIlroy revealed Wednesday. 'And I've shot it down straightaway.' Why? 'Because I don't think you can do it.' That's a reasonable take. But Bradley doesn't have to listen to a star on the rival team. He should, however, listen to reason. 'He might be right,' Bradley said. 'We don't know. No one knows.' Let's not find out. Here we are, less than two weeks from Bradley naming his team, and the captain clearly still is mulling his standing for his own squad. He is 10th in the U.S. standings. The top six make the team automatically. The next six are captain's picks. Perform well at this week's BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club, where he spoke Wednesday, and he will move up in the standings. Perform well at next week's Tour Championship, and Bradley the player will put more pressure on Bradley the captain. 'I certainly have a lot of concerns, as well as everybody else,' Bradley said. '… I can truly sit here right now and say I don't know what's going to happen. I have to look at myself just like any other player trying to make the team.' Except he's not any other player trying to make the team. He's the captain charged with leading it. Bradley said Wednesday that the enormity of his impending task is beginning to weigh on him in ways that it hadn't before now. The matches are Sept. 26-28 at Bethpage Black on Long Island. That's six weeks away. There's much to do. 'The Ryder Cup has always been so far away, and now it's right there,' Bradley said. '… I'm thinking a lot more about it now. I'm laying in bed thinking about golf balls that the guys play, thinking about pairings. Certainly amped up.' As is most of the sport. The Ryder Cup has morphed from a biennial exhibition between Europe and the United States into something of a golf behemoth. The challenge for Bradley's American charges is gargantuan. The crowds at Bethpage should be somewhere between boisterous and unreasonable and could bring a brand of partisanship that borders on embarrassing. The American captain should be in charge of quieting that noise for his team, not playing through it. He isn't just responsible for announcing his six captain's picks Aug. 27. He has a say in course setup. He will choose who plays with whom and when. He must organize. He must inspire. It's a lot. Why complicate it, then? If you're already thinking about which brand of golf ball one of your players uses and what the impact might be on a partner who plays a different brand, and that keeps you up at night — why introduce your own swing into the mix? Maybe because he has significant support. 'I think if it's something that Keegan wants to be part of the team and wants to play, I think he's a guy we'd all love to have on the team,' said none other than Scottie Scheffler, the best golfer on the planet. 'The intensity that he's brought as a captain — I mean, he has definitely exceeded my expectations as a captain.' That's a strong endorsement from perhaps the most important voice. And it is added to a chorus of American players who have backed Bradley's candidacy to play. Back to McIlroy. Maybe he's merely trying to mess with his opponents' minds, but his answers about why he already has shot down the idea of being a playing captain one day seemed genuine. 'You think about the extra media that a captain has to do,' he said. 'You think about the extra meetings that the captains have to do with the vice captains, with the PGA of America, in Keegan's case, preparing your speech for the opening ceremony. There's a lot of things that people don't see that the captain does the week of the Ryder Cup — especially now that the Ryder Cup has become so big.' This dilemma is only partly Bradley's fault, and all he did to get here was play pretty good golf. He won the Travelers Championship in June to rise to seventh in the world rankings. He has four other top-10 finishes this calendar year. Even as his past four events have yielded a missed cut and no finish higher than a tie for 30th — dropping him to 12th in the rankings — he certainly would be under consideration by any other American captain. 'I definitely think he's one of the best 12 American players right now,' McIlroy said. 'That's why everyone is so interested and it's such a compelling case.' It could have been compelling to watch Bradley the player try to earn his way on. The PGA of America — the organization that stages the Ryder Cup and that is wholly separate and different from the PGA Tour — made it a potential debacle by naming Bradley captain for a Ryder Cup in which he was going to be just 39 years old. The interview process essentially went like this: Seth Waugh, former CEO of the PGA of America: 'Keegan, this is Seth. Would you like to be Ryder Cup captain?' Bradley, dumbfounded: 'Uh, sure?' Maybe wait for him to be a vice captain a time or two before offering him the big chair? Maybe wait for him to be in his mid- to late 40s, when he would have less of a chance to put himself in the position he's in? But here we are. Not that anyone should make choices based on how they could be second-guessed, but think of it this way: Should Europe win, what are the odds that the main American lament is 'What if Keegan had just played himself?' A much more likely frustration would seem to be 'Why in the world did Keegan include himself?' The Ryder Cup is a month and a half away. Keegan Bradley is still wrestling with a decision. He should stop. Play the next two weeks, then put the clubs away. The captain's enormous responsibility is to put his players in the best position to excel. He can't do that if he's at the range working on his own game, too.
