Sports briefs
W&J updates spectator policy
The Washington & Jefferson College department of athletics has announced spectators at home indoor athletic events through Jan. 30 will be limited to W&J students only.
W&J stated its goal is ensure that its student-athletes can safely continue to participate through the recent COVID-19 surge caused by the Omicron variant. All students who returned for the 2022 JayTerm have been tested and another large group of students will return Jan. 25 for the start of spring semester classes.
With the campus policy of required masking indoors, W&J students attending these athletic events must wear masks.
The policy will be re-evaluated during the final week of January.
Woman to manage Yankees’ farm team
Rachel Balkovec became the first woman hired to manage a minor league affiliate of a Major League Baseball team when she was promoted Tuesday by the New York Yankees to dugout boss of the Low-A Tampa Tarpons.
The 34-year-old joined the Yankees organization as a hitting coach in 2019, making her the first woman with that job full-time in affiliated baseball. She got her first position in pro ball with the St. Louis Cardinals as a minor league strength and conditioning coach in 2012.
Balkovec, a former softball catcher at Creighton and New Mexico, moved from the Cardinals to the Houston Astros in 2016. She was hired as the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator, a position for which she learned Spanish, and later became the strength and conditioning coach at Double-A Corpus Christi.
She briefly left baseball in 2018 to pursue a second master’s degree at Vrije University in the Netherlands, where she also worked with the country’s national baseball and softball teams. She then worked for Driveline Baseball, a data-driven center that has trained numerous major leaguers, before being hired by New York.
In the NHL
The Boston Bruins have signed Tuukka Rask for the rest of the season, bringing back the winningest goalie in franchise history after he recovered from offseason hip surgery.
Rask, 34, was a free agent who remained unsigned while he recovered from an operation to repair a torn labrum in his hip. He said at the end of last season that he did not want to play for anyone other than Boston.
- New York Islanders coach Barry Trotz and defenseman Ryan Pulock were placed in the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.
Trotz just returned to the team Saturday after taking a leave of absence. Pulock hasn’t played since Nov. 15 because of a lower-body injury.
In college basketball
Harrison Ingram and Spencer Jones scored 21 points apiece and Stanford beat No. 5 Southern California 75-69 Tuesday for its first win over a top five team in nearly 15 years.
The Cardinal (2-1 Pac-12, 9-4) returned from a nearly three-week break for COVID-19 protocols and delivered a big win in a nearly empty arena. Stanford had lost 14 straight games against teams in the top five of the AP poll since beating No. 3 UCLA 75-68 on Jan. 28, 2007.
In the NBA
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 30.8 seconds remaining and the Washington Wizards beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-118 Tuesday night despite being without star Bradley Beal because of health and safety protocols.