Latest news with #undefeated
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Forbes
LA Mad Drops Show Up Big At Major League Pickleball Daytona Beach
Quang Duong (R) and Hunter Johnson (L) led the LA Mad Drops to an undefeated weekend, raising ... More eyebrows around the sport. Major League Pickleball (MLP) presented by DoorDash held its third straight weekend of matches at one of the sport's most historic pro venues, Pictona in Holly Hill outside of Daytona Beach. This weekend featured a hodge podge of teams, including some of the best (St Louis and NJ), and some of the worst (NY, Carolina, and SoCal). All told, nine of the 16 teams were in action and we had some huge surprises on the court. Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP's YouTube channel and on Ahead of the weekend, the following transactions were announced: - Atlanta and Chicago swapped ladies in a trade: Atlanta traded Vivian Glozman to the Chicago Slice in exchange even-up for Vivienne David. It is a bit of a strange move: David is a right-sided expert and was just about 50% in all aspects this season (she won 50% of her Women's doubles, 50% of her mixed, and exactly 50% of the DreamBreaker points she's played despite not regularly featuring in singles). Meanwhile Glozman was just 5-10 in Women's doubles this season, splitting time with Atlanta's two females DiMuzio & Rettger. Now Glozman takes the right-side (?) teaming up with Callie Smith for Chicago, while David forces DiMuzio to play left and ramps up the pressure even more. There were reports of major team chemistry issues on Atlanta already, and this trade seems to make them worse. Meanwhile, Glozman remains in PPA contract purgatory, and is not getting any regular tournament reps at a time when the tour is rapidly improving. - Last week we tried to take note of all the bench players who got into the action, but it proved to be too difficult to keep up. Daytona Beach also saw a slew of bench players replacing the 'starters,' sometimes for absence and other times for performance (especially on the 2nd division teams). If notable, we'll call out bench players and their contributions day by day. On Friday both onsite subs were already called into action, and I wonder if the back-to-back nature of these events is starting to wear down the players. Ahead of the event, here's some news and noteworthy items for MLP. - 6/3/25: Word comes out that MLP did no paddle testing at its Arizona event .... because the testing machine was stolen somewhere between the Austin and Arizona events. This leaks out on various podcasts with two questions: Who would steal a paddle deflection testing machine, and why isn't there a backup? - 6/4/25: MLP shares slight tweaks to its Waiver period, moving up the challenger period and also clarifying that anyone signed to a UPA deal is now eligible to be picked. This is a slight change from the beginning of the year, where a deadline was initially imposed that players had to sign by in order to be eligible for the season. Clearly that's been relaxed, as teams have signed players a few minutes before they played. Will Howells (R) goes airborne for a backhand flip volley alongside New Jersey 5's teammate Zane ... More Navratil (L). Day 1 Observations Day 2 Observations Day 3 Observations St. Louis Shock's Hayden Patriquin makes a nifty little backhand cross court shot. Day 4 Observations Here's the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event. Reminder, thanks to the unbalanced schedule I refer points per match as the rankings determiner, not total points earned. In Premier In Premier What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend? MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick'em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating. Here's how we did this week, and where we stand overall. Summary: it was a brutal prediction weekend, with a slew of upsets. I count at least six major upsets this past weekend, fewer if you believed from the get-go that the LA Mad Drops were better than they were presenting early. I went just 4-4 for the weekend but remain in 1st place in the Pick'em contest through five weeks with a 32-8 overall record. Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, MLP takes a small hiatus for the third PPA Major of the year on the 6/22/25 weekend in San Clemente. Then, the MLP keeps the UPA players at the same facility for a second week with the 6th event of the MLP event the following weekend. Before then, MLP will have another waiver period and we'll cover it in this space. All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours. Also, a great thanks to The Dink's Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link. Tice's data has proved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Local high school secures 1st state softball title, finishes with perfect record
A second area high school softball team has won its first state title after a perfect season. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Tri-Village High School won the Division VI state championship, 6-0, over Garaway on Sunday in Akron. Advertisement The Patriots finished the season 30-0 and secured their first softball state title. TRENDING STORIES: Emma Greer had two hits and drove in a run. Elizabeth Poling pitched a three-hit shutout with three strikeouts. Tri-Village is the second area high school to win a state softball championship and finish the season undefeated. As previously reported by News Center 7, Kenton Ridge won the Division IV state softball championship and finished with a 32-0 record. The Tri-Village softball team returned to New Madison Sunday night, according to the school's Facebook page. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
59-0! The College Baseball Team That Never Lost a Game.
59-0! What a ridiculous baseball accomplishment. Sounds like witchcraft, honestly. It might be unbreakable, like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Cal Ripken's 2,652 consecutive games played. The Louisiana State University Shreveport Pilots just completed a college baseball season in which they went 59-0. Baseball isn't supposed to work like that. This is a game in which even greatness is humbled by repeated failure. Miss 70% of the time at the plate and you might have the swing of a Major Leaguer. Juggernauts that win 100 games still lose 62 times. Even the Savannah Bananas drop a few. Baseball has long seasons, rainouts, injuries, bad days, double-headers, missed calls and quirky bounces. Fifty-nine and oh? Nobody goes 59-0. Until now. LSU Shreveport's run is historic. There's never been a college baseball season like it, at any level. The Pilots, who are part of the LSU system and play in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, won the school's first ever national championship at the NAIA World Series this past weekend. I'm still flabbergasted. How on earth do you go 59-0? LSU Shreveport isn't really sure, either. 'I don't think anybody sets a goal of trying to not lose a game,' says Pilots head coach Brad Neffendorf. 'We wanted to put ourselves in a position to win every game, but am I ever thinking we won't lose? No. Heck no. What we did was dang near impossible.' Not that the players were even talking about it. Neffendorf says he didn't have to warn his team about letting the win streak go to their helmeted heads. 'They never did,' says the coach. 'There were reminders about staying true to who we are, staying humble, staying focused on what we're trying to do. They were phenomenal with it.' LSU Shreveport has a tradition of stellar baseball—the school has won numerous conference titles and made multiple trips to the NAIA World Series. There have been some 40-plus win seasons and even 50-plus win ones. But 2025 was something else. The Pilots—by the way, these are riverboat pilots, not airplane ones—returned a talented team stacked with senior leadership and flew right out of the gate. They swept their season opening three-game series against McPherson by a combined score of 38-4, and it was pretty much off to the races from there. They didn't play many close games. In February there was a 7-6 walkoff win against Indiana University Southeast, a team coached by Neffendorf's brother, Brett. The Pilots had only three more one-run wins the rest of the way. LSU Shreveport never got taken to extra innings. They won a boatload of games by double digits. Translation: They were really, really good. 'We always talk about being different here,' says Neffendorf. 'We play fast, up-tempo and aggressive. But most of all I want to play the right way. We respect the opponent, the umpires, everyone.' Baseball is a superstitious sport—try yapping about a no-hitter during a no-hitter sometime. That was another reason not to talk about the streak. But as LSU Shreveport's winning snowballed, it became hard to ignore, says athletic director Lucas Morgan. 'I still remember the conversation I had with Brad,' Morgan says. 'We were like 30-0, approaching the best start in program history, and we were like, 'This is something we want to publicize, but we don't want to jinx it.'' The AD recalls thinking: 'We're going to lose eventually, so we'll just wait until we lose, and then we'll put the announcement out there.' 'And then we didn't lose.' Baseball in the NAIA is not a mega-money extravaganza. There's plenty of talent, including some D1 caliber players, but it's not awash in dilemmas over name, image, likeness or portal reform (NIL and the portal exist, however.) LSU Shreveport, which also has strong programs in basketball and soccer, tends to recruit from junior colleges and transfers from other four-year schools. Games aren't on prime-time TV; they're streamed. Plane rides? The Pilots took one plane ride the whole season—to Spokane for the World Series in Lewiston, Idaho. The rest of the year was spent on the bus, with one back-and-forth to New Mexico stretching 10 hours each way. Back in Shreveport, The Baseball Team That Didn't Lose became a point of pride. Pilot Field (capacity 1,000) was the hottest ticket in town. 'Our stands were packed,' says Morgan, the AD. 'You had huge groups of little kids trying to get autographs after the game. It's not that Shreveport hasn't supported our program before, but this was on a whole other level.' Streaks of any kind create pressure. Neffendorf, a longtime pitching coach who took his first collegiate head coach job with the Pilots in 2020, says he was often asked if he wanted his team to lose so they could relax. 'I can't tell you how many people reached out and they're like, 'Man, what you're doing is unbelievable, but don't you feel like it'd be good if you lost one?'' the coach says. He understood what they meant, but he felt his ball club was handling the situation just fine. 'I didn't believe in the process of, like, 'Hey, we've got to lose a game.'' In the end, they didn't lose at all. They hit well, they pitched well, they played stellar defense. They mastered high-tempo Pilots baseball. They also stayed healthy. LSU Shreveport didn't suffer any season-ending injuries, says the school's sports medicine director, Meghan Neffendorf—Coach Brad's wife. 'I mean, that's just luck,' Meghan says. 'You have to have a little bit of luck to go 59-0.' You sure do. That's why you may never see it again—what the mighty riverboat Pilots of LSU Shreveport just pulled off. 'We made the impossible possible,' says Brad Neffendorf. Write to Jason Gay at
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'Being homeless made me the boxer I am today'
A professional boxer who was made homeless as a child said it had made him the fighter he is today. Jack Williams, 29, from Ipswich, will fight at Portman Road stadium on 7 June as part of an undercard match during the Fabio Wardley and Justis Huni fight. He said he was "fit and ready" for the bout and told fans to expect "fireworks" during his display. He said his "hard upbringing" was the reason for his success, and he "wouldn't change it". "I ended up being homeless at the age of eight," Williams said. "I lost my brother two weeks before becoming homeless, so my mum was still grieving at the time. "We ended up in hostels, being on the streets, in a campervan, so we had a hard upbringing, but it's made me who I am today, and I wouldn't change it." Williams is currently undefeated and looking for a third win at Portman Road against an opponent that is yet to be decided. He added there was "no better platform in Ipswich than Portman Road", and he was appreciative to Wardley for including him on an undercard. The boxer is coached by his younger brother, who he said, knew him "inside and out". "I'm his little big brother because he acts older than me, he's got his head screwed on more than me... he acts more as my older brother than my younger brother," he said. "It's been hard, but we've come out of it, we've both bought houses, and with boxing we can hopefully go all the way with that." Williams told fans he would put up a tough fight during his Portman Road appearance. "A lot of people haven't been through what we've been through, and you've got to knock me sparked out on that canvas to beat me," he continued. "I'll keep coming, I've been in the trenches my whole life, so it's nothing new for me." Younger brother and coach Jordan Williams, 27, agreed that the sibling's upbringing had made Williams "who he is today" and that his brother was a "ferocious" fighter. He added that the Portman Road event was a great way for the boxer to showcase his skills. "Not very many pros can say they've had all their professional fights in their hometown," Mr Williams said. "Now to be at the biggest venue in the town, at the actual stadium, is obviously incredible." Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. Wardley to face Huni after injured Miller pulls out Wardley to face Miller at Portman Road on 7 June Boxing schedule and results 2025 Local boxers step into the ring for pro fight night
