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A Staten Island, New York, man has been charged with third-degree aggravated assault and fourth-degree assault at a youth sporting event for the violent attack of a 72-year-old baseball umpire during a game June 4 in Branchburg. Jerry Otero, 40, a coach from the Staten Island-based New York Prospects travel team, was arrested Tuesday by Branchburg police and charged with committing the attack. The assault occurred during a 13-and-under U.S. Amateur Baseball League tournament game earlier this month and left the umpire with a broken jaw that required extensive dental surgery. Acting Somerset County Prosecutor Annmarie Taggart said Branchburg police...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — “Tomorrow, Rhode Island — with a few exceptions — will be reopened.” Gov. Dan McKee spoke those words Thursday afternoon as he and other state leaders discussed the imminent lifting of restrictions during their weekly COVID-19 briefing. On Friday, Rhode Island will be the closest to normal that it’s been since before the pandemic, with most businesses and services able to start operating at 100% capacity and the social gathering limit coming to an end.McKee said those changes have been made possible by the downward-trending public health data and rising vaccination rates. “It’s safe for people...

A teenager who collapsed during a basketball tryout while wearing a mask said Tuesday on "Fox & Friends" that she believes mask mandates are harmful to athletes. On the second day of basketball tryouts at Crooks County High School in Prineville, Oregon, Savannah Lay said she experienced what she called a near-death collapse due to lack of oxygen. Lay told "Fox & Friends" that she was doing "drills" that were usually easy to do, but, after she told the coach that she had "difficulty breathing," she asked for a break and removed her mask. She said she was confronted by...

One of the joys of coaching little kids’ sports is watching them express delight and satisfaction when they do something well. I remember a particular little girl a few years ago who played on my daughter’s tee ball team. This child was tiny. She was hardly larger than the trophy. All the bats were way too big for her - she might as well have been trying to swing a telephone pole. Then, one day she managed to get the bat around and hit a little dribbler in front of home plate. We all shouted “Run to first, run to...

A high school track coach in Oregon is calling for an end to rules mandating mask-wearing during competition after one of his athletes collapsed from “complete oxygen debt.” After a nearly two-year break from track meets, high schools in Oregon once again began competing, but the state added a new rule, requiring students to wear masks at all times, even when competing in sports. Summit coach Dave Turnbull was not thrilled about the masks The biggest problem for the coach and his runners came in the 800-meter race when student Maggie Williams collapsed on the track just meters short of...

Michigan’s high school sports association rejected a call from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to pause high school sports because of high virus transmission rates. “We’re going to play two days of basketball and really make no changes for the spring,” Michigan High School Athletic Association executive director Mark Uyl told the Free Press on Friday. “We followed the orders—every order—going back to July. Whenever the orders have allowed us to play, we’ve played. So, obviously, local schools will have decisions to make, it could be on a league-wide basis. But once we get through basketball tomorrow night, everything is outdoors.” Whitmer,...

WHP Facebook Share Icon Twitter Share Icon Email Share Icon When asked what could be behind a surge of COVID-19 cases in young people, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci pointed to youth sports as a possible factor. "School sports, particularly team sports, which people engage in close contact without masks. I think that's what is explaining these surges of cases in young individuals." Fauci said. But representatives of Central PA youth sports leagues pushed back, saying they had seen little to no difference. "I wouldn't be able to give you a good answer if its worse, better...

Pennsylvania Health Department Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine took to Pittsburgh’s KDKA NewsRadio on Thursday morning to further explain the expanded mask-wearing order she signed on Wednesday. Levine hit on a number of familiar talking points. She repeated her familiar refrain: “my mask protects you and your mask protects me.” And she said that the order, which says citizens should wear a face-covering anytime they leave their home and will be around other people unless they’re under the age of two or have a medical or work-related reason not to, is not political. Rather, it’s meant to help prevent an outburst...

We thought it would be clear to most readers that the script was a fictional account. Interestingly, the blog article garnered attention on several web sites and a number of readers on those sites mistakenly thought the article was a non-fiction article. While we're sure some of the scenarios presented in the article have been encountered by parents of youth athletes, we also found it telling about the current state of youth sports that so many people took the script seriously. Installment one ended with a quote from the player who just left practice in tears that read, "Dad, I...

President Barack Obama is a lover of games played on hard courts, baseball diamonds and in 10-yard increments. His two daughters are active in sports and, like many parents with children on athletic teams, he worries about their safety. But unlike many of those parents, Obama is uniquely positioned to help address the concerns. […] Obama once said he’d “have to think long and hard” before allowing a son to play football because of the risk of head injury. …

If you're a parent whose children love sports, you've probably been focused on Penn State University. And my guess is, you're sick to your stomach and thinking about the predators out there, the ones that hunt children and use youth sports as cover. At Penn State it's all crisis management and agendas and process and finger-pointing, as administrators' heads are lopped off and fact-finding commissions are formed in the hopes of studying what went wrong. But that's all a bunch of public relations garbage, as if their writs and commissions and carefully lawyered-up anguish can make up for the young...

In one of the most disturbing youth sports incidents in recent years, coaches of a Sarasota, Florida youth football team instigated a brawl with a referee which eventually led to both the coaching staff and a player violently attacking the referee in question during a massive brawl which embroiled both teams. As reported by Sarasota Patch, quickly followed by a variety of Tampa Bay news outlets, details of the incident were first gleaned from an amateur video ofa game involving the Sarasota Gators and North Port Huskies on Saturday. The video in question was eventually turned over to the Sarasota...

You might remember Jason McElwain, the senior manager for the Greece Athena High School basketball team in Rochester, N.Y. Back in February, McElwain, who is autistic, was added to the roster for the season's final game. He entered with four minutes to play and, after his first shot was an air ball, made six 3-pointers and another shot to produce 20 points in three minutes. His teammates carried him off the court, the crowd embraced him and it was hard not to be moved. Jason's story, relayed around the country by ESPN's "SportsCenter," became the newest, brightest thread in the...

A neurologist from Washington, D.C., an autonomic nervous system specialist from Philadelphia and a neuron-psychologist and psycho-pharmacologist -- both from Manhattan -- have spent a lot of time with Steven Domalewski lately.  They, and others, have been at his bedside in a Paterson hospital, using cutting-edge treatments while trying to bring the 12-year-old pitcher out of a coma."He's progressing at a really good rate," Dr. Philip De Fina said Friday. "He has definitely improved. His alertness has improved. His dad has been feeding him little bits of Italian ice, and he's breathing very well on his own."  De Fina...

Suit against coach strikes out in court http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_3649335 By Gene Maddaus Staff Writer ARCADIA - A judge has made it safe again for high school coaches to lose their tempers, tossing out a lawsuit that accused a coach of inflicting "emotional distress" on a softball player by calling her "a 2-year-old." "I'm just glad it's over," said Coach Don Riggio, who manages the junior varsity softball team at Arcadia High School. "Now we can move forward and do what we're there for, and that's to coach." Attorney Michael Oddenino filed the lawsuit in October, alleging that Riggio yelled at his...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Nine-year-old Jean Carlos Chera, who stands 1.37 meters (4-foot-6), is attracting interest from Manchester United and other top European football teams. Chera, who weighs 35 kilograms (77 pounds), currently plays for the youth teams of Associacao Desportiva Atletica, a small club in the southern Brazilian state of Parana. "Seven or eight European clubs have already contacted us to know more about Jean," team president Adilson Batista Prado said on Thursday. "They want to know what he is all about, and I tell them he's a phenomenon, probably the best player to come out of Brazil."...