Sports briefs
High school baseball
Waynesburg and Fort Cherry tuned for next week’s WPIAL playoffs by playing a nonsection game Friday with the visiting Raiders pulling out a 5-2 victory.
Waynesburg (10-4) scored three runs in the top of the first inning and never trailed. Luke Robinson had a double for the Raiders. He also drove in two runs. Kyle Shriver was 3-for-3 and Evan Zimmer was the winning pitcher, allowing four hits over five innings.
Hunter Terpack doubled for Fort Cherry (10-5).
Pony baseball
Chambers Insurance broke a tie game with a run in the sixth inning and went on to a 9-8 victory over McGuffey in Pony League action Friday night.
Matthew Smith was the winning pitcher.
Raptors fire
Coach of Year Casey
The Toronto Raptors fired Dwane Casey on Friday after the team was swept in the playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers for the second straight season.
Toronto President Masai Ujiri said the move was a “very difficult but necessary step.”
The 61-year-old Casey led the Raptors to a franchise-record 59 wins and a top seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time. He posted a 320-238 record in seven seasons and is the franchise’s winningest coach.
The Raptors won four Atlantic Division titles and advanced to the postseason five consecutive seasons. But Toronto could not get past the puzzle of the Cavaliers and LeBron James in the playoffs.
“As a team, we are constantly trying to grow and improve in order to get to the next level,” Ujiri said in the statement released by the team.
Ujiri thanked Casey for what he’s done for the organization, saying Casey was “instrumental in creating the identity and culture of who we are as a team.”
The move comes two days after Casey was honored as Coach of the Year by the National Basketball Coaches Association.
Hawks hire Pierce
The Atlanta Hawks are giving Lloyd Pierce his first head coaching job in the NBA, choosing a man who has been an assistant with Philadelphia and Memphis to rebuild the franchise.
The Hawks announced Friday they had agreed to terms on a deal with Pierce.
General manager Travis Schlenk says the Hawks wanted a teacher to develop their young core and feel Pierce checks every box.
Pierce, 42, spent the past five seasons as an assistant coach in Philadelphia where the 76ers just reached the Eastern Conference semifinals after finishing third in the conference with a 52-30 record. Pierce also spent two years as assistant coach with Memphis Grizzlies, including 2013 when they reached the 2013 Western Conference finals.
He replaces Mike Budenholzer who left last month after the Hawks went 24-58 this season.
Sapporo reconsiders Olympic bid
The Japanese city of Sapporo seems to be having second thoughts about bidding for the 2026 Winter Olympics and could focus instead on the 2030 Games.
Sapporo held the 1972 Winter Olympics and is one of seven cities showing interest in 2026. The International Olympic Committee will decide in October which bids are serious. The winner will be picked in September 2019.
Akihiro Okumura, a spokesman for the city’s bid promotion department, tells The Associated Press that public opinion polls seem to indicate a preference for 2030.
“Sapporo has not made an official decision yet,” he told AP in an email. He said the city and the Japanese Olympic Committee were still mulling all possibilities.
He said recent opinion polls conducted by local media and the Sapporo chamber of commerce indicated “it might be better for Sapporo to bid for 2030 instead of 2026. This is actually one of the factors we need to consider for the decision.”
The other interested cities are: Stockholm, Sweden; Calgary, Canada; Sion, Switzerland; Milan-Turin, Italy; Erzurum, Turkey; Graz, Austria.