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Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sharks get the job done in a hurry as they make it two from two in Blast
Sussex claimed a swift and comfortable T20 Vitality Blast home victory over last year's champions Gloucestershire, winning by 80 runs as Tom Alsop and James Coles set up a commanding total, with skipper Tymal Mills claiming three wickets. After being put in to bat, Sussex started brightly, with opener Daniel Hughes twice finding the boundary in the first over. Advertisement Fellow opener Harrison Ward fell for one in the second over, clean bowled by the off-spin of Ollie Price after going back and trying to cut a straight delivery which wasn't that short. Hughes kept his foot on the gas, hitting powerfully down the ground and square of the wicket, before tamely chipping a short delivery from Price into the hands of James Taylor at mid-off for 35 from 19. Hammond took a wonderful diving catch in the sixth over to dismiss John Simpson for eight off the bowling of Taylor, and the Sharks finished the powerplay on 53-3. James Coles started slowly, but Alsop hit both of his first two balls for four and didn't look back, thumping Tom Smith back over his head for the first six of the innings in the 11th over, and managing to hit the clock face above the scoreboard with another huge blow shortly after. Advertisement Coles got in on the act too, twice hitting Taylor over the square leg boundary in the 13th, almost striking the clock himself. Alsop reached his 50 from 30 in the 14th over, and the pair brought up their 100 partnership in the 15th. Sussex were well on top by this point, but David Payne seemed to have swung momentum back in Gloucestershire's favour when he dismissed Alsop (58 off 35) and then Coles (43 off 27) in the 16th over - Alsop stretching for a wide slower ball and looping it to short third man, Coles pulling a shortish delivery straight to mid wicket, leaving the Sharks 149-5. No subsequent batter could add more than ten runs to the total in the remaining four overs. Advertisement Smith took an amazing caught and bowled after Tom Clark smashed one back towards his face for two, and Jack Carson holed out at long on off Aman Rao's bowling, just after hitting an impressive pull shot over square leg for six. Nathan McAndrew was also caught on the boundary, becoming Payne's third wicket in an outstanding spell of 4-24 in his four overs. Tom Alsop adds to his tally (Image: Simon Dack) Ollie Robinson tried a few scoops, but eventually lobbed one straight to the keeper for six, and skipper Tymal Mills was out off the final ball of the innings, caught for one off the bowling of Taylor, with Sussex setting Gloucestershire a target of 174 to win. That seemed at the halfway point just above a par score, on a good wicket with a lightning outfield. Advertisement However, it became apparent quite quickly that Sussex's total would be far out of Gloucestershire's reach. Robinson showed his class with a high quality opening spell, clean bowling Australian opener Bancroft for seven in the third over with a world class delivery that kissed the top of off stump. He was very unfortunate not to have Price in the third over with lbw and, by the time Robinson had completed his third over, Gloucestershire were 29-2, with Currie having removed D'arcy Short for a duck. Hammond looked good for 24, but when he fell to Mills in the final over of the powerplay, Gloucestershire looked in trouble at 34-3. Advertisement Bracey looked in decent nick but also couldn't get past 24, joint top-scoring with Hammond. Mills bamboozled the lower order with his slower deliveries, finishing with 3-13, but everyone chipped in with Coles and Carson picking up two wickets each, and McAndrew claiming another. Gloucestershire were dismissed for 93 in the 14th over, with Sussex winning by a huge 80 runs.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Defense of Academic Freedom
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic's archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. Why defend academic freedom even when the ideas in question are wrongheaded or harmful? 'It is precisely because any kind of purge opens the gate to all kinds of purge, that freedom of thought necessarily means the freedom to think bad thoughts as well as good.' Those words, written in 1953 by Joseph Alsop, an alumnus of Harvard who later served on its Board of Overseers, are relevant today, as the Trump administration cancels the visas of foreign students for viewpoints that it deems 'bad.' And they were relevant in recent years as institutions of higher education investigated and disciplined members of their communities for expressing views that ran afoul of various progressive social-justice orthodoxies. But Alsop wrote them in response to the McCarthy era's efforts to identify and punish Communists who were working in academia. Hundreds of professors were summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, forced to appear as witnesses, and pressured to name names––that is, to identify fellow academics with ties to the Communist Party. Many were then censured or fired and blacklisted by their employers. 'I have been profoundly and actively anti-Communist all my life,' Alsop declared in a letter to the president and fellows of Harvard, published in The Atlantic. 'Unfortunately, however, the question that confronts us is not how we feel about Communists and ex-Communists. The question is, rather, how we feel about the three great principles which have run, like threads of gold, through the long, proud Harvard story.' The first principle he listed was the freedom to make personal choices within the limits of the law. The second principle was 'unrestricted freedom of thought.' And the third principle was one's right to due process when accused of breaking the law. 'A member of our faculty is not to be penalized for any legal choice he may make, however eccentric or controversial,' Alsop wrote. 'He may become a nudist or a Zoroastrian, imitate Origen or adopt the Pythagorean rules of diet. If called before a Congressional investigating committee, he may seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and refuse to testify on grounds of possible self-incrimination. However much we disapprove, we may not interfere.' By standing for 'unrestricted free trade in ideas,' Alsop sought to conserve the university's ability to extend the frontiers of human thought and knowledge at a moment that has long been regarded as one of the darkest in the history of American academia. But as Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), documented in a 2023 Atlantic article, the threat to academic freedom today arguably surpasses the threat that existed in the 1950s. 'According to the largest study at the time, about 100 professors were fired over a 10-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties,' he wrote. 'We found that, in the past nine years, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was closer to 200.' More recently, FIRE has objected to the Trump administration's infringements on academic freedom, including the unprecedented demands that it sent to Harvard last month. Supporters of academic freedom have every reason to fear that more colleges will be similarly targeted in coming months. One defense should involve consulting similar situations from bygone eras. Doing so can help identify principles and arguments that have stood the test of time—and it can be a source of hope. After all, the authoritarian excesses of McCarthyism, which intimidated so many, did not long endure. 'From the perspective of the sixties, the whole period has an air of unreality' for many students, a 1965 Harvard Crimson article—written in an era of 'sit-ins, summer projects, and full page ads criticizing U.S. foreign policy placed in the Times by hundreds of academics'—declared. But just several years prior, it pointed out, 'tenured professors thought long and hard before risking a statement on public issues; teaching fellows, fearful of antagonizing Governing Boards, were politically inert; and students retreated into silence and inactivity.' I hope that, circa 2030, incoming college students will have trouble understanding the mounting attacks on academic freedom that began about a decade ago. Perhaps this period, echoing the Red Scare's aftermath, may yet be followed by a new flourishing of academic freedom. A renaissance of that sort will require defending people's rights—no matter how abhorrent one may find a given opinion. As Alsop put it, 'In these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
In Defense of Academic Freedom
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic 's archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. Why defend academic freedom even when the ideas in question are wrongheaded or harmful? 'It is precisely because any kind of purge opens the gate to all kinds of purge, that freedom of thought necessarily means the freedom to think bad thoughts as well as good.' Those words, written in 1953 by Joseph Alsop, an alumnus of Harvard who later served on its Board of Overseers, are relevant today, as the Trump administration cancels the visas of foreign students for viewpoints that it deems 'bad.' And they were relevant in recent years as institutions of higher education investigated and disciplined members of their communities for expressing views that ran afoul of various progressive social-justice orthodoxies. But Alsop wrote them in response to the McCarthy era's efforts to identify and punish Communists who were working in academia. Hundreds of professors were summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, forced to appear as witnesses, and pressured to name names––that is, to identify fellow academics with ties to the Communist Party. Many were then censured or fired and blacklisted by their employers. 'I have been profoundly and actively anti-Communist all my life,' Alsop declared in a letter to the president and fellows of Harvard, published in The Atlantic. 'Unfortunately, however, the question that confronts us is not how we feel about Communists and ex-Communists. The question is, rather, how we feel about the three great principles which have run, like threads of gold, through the long, proud Harvard story.' The first principle he listed was the freedom to make personal choices within the limits of the law. The second principle was 'unrestricted freedom of thought.' And the third principle was one's right to due process when accused of breaking the law. 'A member of our faculty is not to be penalized for any legal choice he may make, however eccentric or controversial,' Alsop wrote. 'He may become a nudist or a Zoroastrian, imitate Origen or adopt the Pythagorean rules of diet. If called before a Congressional investigating committee, he may seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and refuse to testify on grounds of possible self-incrimination. However much we disapprove, we may not interfere.' By standing for 'unrestricted free trade in ideas,' Alsop sought to conserve the university's ability to extend the frontiers of human thought and knowledge at a moment that has long been regarded as one of the darkest in the history of American academia. But as Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), documented in a 2023 Atlantic article, the threat to academic freedom today arguably surpasses the threat that existed in the 1950s. 'According to the largest study at the time, about 100 professors were fired over a 10-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties,' he wrote. 'We found that, in the past nine years, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was closer to 200.' More recently, FIRE has objected to the Trump administration's infringements on academic freedom, including the unprecedented demands that it sent to Harvard last month. Supporters of academic freedom have every reason to fear that more colleges will be similarly targeted in coming months. One defense should involve consulting similar situations from bygone eras. Doing so can help identify principles and arguments that have stood the test of time—and it can be a source of hope. After all, the authoritarian excesses of McCarthyism, which intimidated so many, did not long endure. 'From the perspective of the sixties, the whole period has an air of unreality' for many students, a 1965 Harvard Crimson article —written in an era of 'sit-ins, summer projects, and full page ads criticizing U.S. foreign policy placed in the Times by hundreds of academics'—declared. But just several years prior, it pointed out, 'tenured professors thought long and hard before risking a statement on public issues; teaching fellows, fearful of antagonizing Governing Boards, were politically inert; and students retreated into silence and inactivity.' I hope that, circa 2030, incoming college students will have trouble understanding the mounting attacks on academic freedom that began about a decade ago. Perhaps this period, echoing the Red Scare's aftermath, may yet be followed by a new flourishing of academic freedom. A renaissance of that sort will require defending people's rights—no matter how abhorrent one may find a given opinion. As Alsop put it, 'In these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything.'
Dominion Post
20-05-2025
- Sport
- Dominion Post
Elza's walk-off lifts University to Game 1 victory over Morgantown in regional championship series
MORGANTOWN – The University High School softball team seemed to have been beaten multiple times in Game 1 of the Class AAAA, Region I championship series on Monday against crosstown rival Morgantown High before finding a late rally to steal the opening game. The Hawks dug their claws in when their backs were against the wall and worked their way back from a 3-1 deficit in the bottom of the seventh inning to force extras, eventually taking Game 1 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth on a bases-loaded, walk-off single by Lexi Elza. Seven different Mohigans earned a hit with Liz Alsop and Beth Robinson each tallying a pair. Maddie Wisman went the distance for MHS in the defeat, throwing 8.2 innings with nine hits, four runs, and eight strikeouts. Each team had nine hits in the contest. UHS junior Maddie Campbell went 3 for 5 at the plate while also tossing seven innings with only one run allowed and 12 strikeouts. 'We had plenty of chances throughout the game, but seemed a little bit unsure at the start and left a lot of runners on base, but we never gave up,' UHS head coach Mindy Parks said. 'We knew we had it in us, and I think our mentality was great. It feels good to get the first win.' MHS took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning on a double by senior Anne Robinson, scoring her sister Beth and Kira Smith. The Hawks cut the deficit in half in the bottom half of the same frame as Adalyn Brown laid down a sacrifice bunt that brought Whitney Cox home to score. Campbell entered the game in relief of UHS starter Sophia Lehosit to open the third inning and held the Mohigans scoreless through the next three frames. But the Hawks offense didn't produce a run either, and MHS added another in the sixth as Haley Street took home on a wild pitch. The Hawks blanked again in their offensive half of the sixth as Wisman worked MHS out of a bases-loaded jam. But Campbell matched the effort and didn't allow the lead to grow any more than two runs. 'Honestly, I love coming in to relieve in games,' Campbell said. 'Sophia and I work so well together. We are alike in pitching styles, yet we have different approaches. I think it's an advantage for us to have that option.' Trailing 3-1, the Hawks loaded the bases with one out as Kelsey Park came to the plate and sent a long fly ball into center field. Alsop tracked the ball down and snagged it out of the air, and the UHS runners took off on the catch. Maddie Walls scored easily from third, and Bri Royce came around from second to tie the game and force extra innings. MHS earned two hits, and Olivia Masoner pelted a double for UHS, but neither side found a run in the eighth. Alsop led off the ninth with a single, but three outs followed her hit to bring the Hawks back to the plate with a chance to end the game. With one out, Park reached on an error in the infield and Campbell slapped her third base hit, giving UHS two runners with one out. Lehosit walked to load the bases, and Masoner followed with a fly ball for out number two. That's when Elza took center stage and sent the third pitch of her at-bat into left field, which safely landed on the turf, giving UHS the win as Park touched home. Game 2 will be played on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. on ISS Field at Mylan Park. UHS leads 1-0 in the series, one win away from a ticket to the 2025 WVSSAC state softball tournament next week in South Charleston. If MHS wins on Tuesday, a decisive Game 3 will be played on Lynch Field on Wednesday evening. BOX SCORE University 4, Morgantown 3 MHS 020 001 000 – 3 9 4 UHS 010 000 201 – 4 9 0 Morgantown (0-1) – A. Robinson 4012 G. Robinson 5000 Alsop 4020 Wisman 3010 Rhodes 5000 Smith 4110 Messerly 4010 B. Robinson 3120 Stone 3010 2B: Wisman 3B: A. Robinson University (1-0) – Park 5102 Campbell 5030 Lehosit 4020 Masoner 5000 Elza 5021 Cox 2100 Brown 3020 Stevens 2000 shaver 2000 Royce 4100 2B: Brown (2) Lehosit (W): 2.0ip 1h 2r 4bb 1k (Campbell: 7.0ip 8h 1r 3bb 12k) Wisman (L): 8.2ip 9h 4r 3bb 8k
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Sussex on top after setting Worcs 351 to win
Rothesay County Championship Division One, 1st Central County Ground, Hove (day three) Sussex 284 & 256: Alsop 72; Allison 3-52 Worcestershire 180 & 117-3: Libby 64*; Robinson 1-18 Worcestershire (3 pts) need 244 more runs to beat Sussex (4 pts) Match scorecard Sussex go into the final day of their County Championship fixture against Worcestershire with their noses in front after dismissing New Zealand stalwart Henry Nicholls and number four batter Kashif Ali late in the evening session. An 81-run second-wicket stand from Nicholls and opening batter Jake Libby had steered the visitors into a decent position before Nicholls' mistimed pull shot found the gloves of wicketkeeper John Simpson and gave Sussex debutant James Hayes his maiden first-class wicket. England's Ollie Robinson snagged the day's final wicket in the penultimate over, extracting a thick edge from Ali, which fell to the grateful hands of James Coles at third slip. Closing on 117-3, Worcestershire require a further 244 runs to win after twin fifties from Tom Alsop and Coles, and some tail-end bashing helped the hosts to a second innings lead of 360. Any chance of a Worcestershire victory likely rests with Libby, who remains unbeaten on 64, accompanied by nightwatchman Ben Allison on three. Libby kept a steady head while wickets fell around him and cashed in on some loose Hayes deliveries to pass fifty with a thrashing cut shot. Ari Karvelas took Sussex's only wicket of the Worcestershire innings, bowling Gareth Roderick for four with a dipping yorker that snuck beneath the opener's bat. The home side secured its dominant position in the morning session with a sturdy batting performance from Alsop and Coles. Both began the day in the twenties and took advantage of some loose deliveries from Worcestershire's fast bowlers, striking 21 boundaries between them as the Sussex lead sailed past 250. All-rounder Coles was particularly strong through the leg side, passing fifty with a forceful clip for four off Ben Gibbon in the 39th over. Alsop was equally convincing and reached his half-century one over later against the same bowler. Their 125-run partnership took Sussex from a potentially dangerous situation to a likely insurmountable lead before both were dismissed lbw before the lunch break. Coles fell for a 132-ball 68, shouldering arms to an inswinger from Ben Waite before his batting partner played back to a sharp-spinning Fateh Singh delivery for 72. Their dismissals led to something of a mini-collapse for Sussex, who lost four wickets for 45 runs around the lunch break as captain Simpson 13 and Hudson-Prentice were both caught behind off the bowling of Allison, for took 3-52 in the innings. Despite the flurry of wickets, Sussex at 188-7 had extended their lead past 300 and now looked in the mood to attack as first-innings centurion Jack Carson combined with Robinson for a fiery rearguard stand of 47. Both targeted left-arm spinner Singh, who the former hit for consecutive fours in the 66th over, and the latter crashed for a long, straight six in the 72nd. The fun came to an end soon after when both batters sprinted to the same end after a single and Robinson was run out for a feisty 30. Singh, who finished with admirable figures of 3-58 from his 17.4 overs, took the final two Sussex wickets in quick succession as Sussex were dismissed for 256. He first bowled Karvelas for a single before last man Hayes edged a turning delivery to second slip. ECB Reporters' Network supported by Rothesay Notifications, social media and more with BBC Sport
