Sports briefs
Cal’s Franklin gets PSAC honor
Following a standout spring campaign, California University senior Divonne Franklinwas voted the PSAC Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year.
Franklin swept the PSAC Track Athlete of the Year honors this season, as she also received the award following the indoor campaign. She became only the third women’s standout in league history, and the first from Cal, to accomplish the feat since the conference began presenting the postseason award in 2006.
This spring, Franklin repeated as the conference champion in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes while eclipsing a pair of PSAC championship records that stood since 1984. She set both the school record and meet record in the 200 meters with a time of 23.93 seconds during the preliminaries before winning the finals in 23.99 seconds. Franklin broke the championship mark in the 100 meters in both the preliminaries and finals at the league meet, capturing the conference title with a time of 11.66.
Franklin set the school record in the 100 meters (11.58) in April. She competed in both the 100 and 200 meters at the NCAA Championships last month.
In the NBA
New Orleans Pelicans center Jaxson Hayes was sentenced Tuesday to three years of probation, 450 hours of community service and a year of weekly domestic violence classes for a scuffle with officers responding to a domestic violence call last summer in Los Angeles.
The sentencing comes after Hayes – the eighth overall pick out of Texas in the 2019 NBA draft – pleaded no contest on Feb. 24 to misdemeanor counts of false imprisonment and resisting an officer.
Hayes was arrested on July 28, 2021, when police responded to a 3 a.m. domestic disturbance call. Police body camera video showed Hayes scuffling with officers and being hit twice with an electronic stun gun after they ordered him out of the home while they sought to question a woman inside.
GW to drop Colonials nickname
George Washington University is dropping its “Colonials” moniker because “it can no longer serve its purpose as a name that unifies,” the school announced Wednesday.
GW will keep using “Colonials” until a new name is introduced. That is expected by the 2023-24 academic year.
The school has used “Colonials” since 1926.
A special committee looked into the name’s history and delivered a report to the school president in March 2021.
According to an online statement from the university, a that committee determined that supporters of “Colonials” view it as referring to “those who lived in the American colonies, especially those who fought for independence and democracy,” while opponents see the term as referring to “colonizers who stole land and resources from indigenous groups, killed or exiled Native peoples and introduced slavery into the colonies.”
In Olympic sports
Nordic combined, which uniquely tests skiers on jaw-dropping jumps and heart-pounding trails, has been a part of the Winter Olympics since 1924. Its time might be up.
It is the only Olympic sport without women and the International Olympic Committee is to make a decision later this month about whether to allow women to compete in Nordic combined at the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Games. There is the possibility, however, that Nordic combined is dropped entirely from the Olympics.
The IOC said final decisions on the 2026 Olympics program of medal events are to be decided June 24.