UCLA, Arizona ousted in softball
For the first time in more than two decades, neither of college softball’s traditional powers will be playing for the national championship.
Christina Enea had an RBI single and Kim Waleszonia scored on a first-inning error by pitcher Anjelica Selden as Florida eliminated second- seeded UCLA 2-0 Saturday night in the Women’s College World Series at Oklahoma City.
Two-time defending champion Arizona and World Series newcomer Virginia Tech were knocked out in earlier in the day.
UCLA and Arizona have combined to win 19 national championships, including one by the Bruins that was vacated by the NCAA, and at least one of the schools had been in the World Series finals every year since 1986.
The semifinals will feature fifth-seeded Texas A&M against Florida, which also knocked out Virginia Tech with a 2-0 victory earlier in the day to stay alive, and Arizona State against Alabama, which ended Arizona’s three-peat bid with a 5-1 victory. Alabama used three unearned runs errors to squeeze out its second win of the day, a 3-1 victory over Louisiana-Lafayette.
Football
Bears QBs battle
Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith is prepared to let quarterbacks Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton compete for the team’s starting spot until the fourth and last game of the preseason, though he’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.
“Ideally you would like to have someone in place going into that last week of the preseason,” Smith said, following the second practice of a three-day minicamp at Halas Hall. “But we’ll just let it play out.”
Miscellany
Brazil wants games
Brazil’s sports minister cited the country’s economic boom and the success of the 2007 Pan American Games as reasons why Rio de Janeiro should be picked to host the 2016 Olympics.
A short list will be released Wednesday of the finalists bidding for the 2016 games. Other bids are Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid, Spain.
•Jamaican sprinter Veronica Campbell-Brown won the 100 meters at the Reebok Grand Prix in 10.91 seconds at New York, the fastest time in the world this year.
•A youth league team from Vermont and New Hampshire plan to travel to Cuba to play baseball this summer.
Coach Ted Levin said he’s heard of only one other similar youth trip since the U.S. imposed embargo on Cuba nearly 50 years ago.
•Missy Conboy was named Notre Dame’s interim athletic director. Conboy replaces Kevin White, who was introduced as Duke’s new AD earlier in the day.
•An LSU spokesman says outgoing athletic director and former national championship baseball coach Skip Bertman has been hospitalized with what doctors believe are early signs of a heart attack.
•Ten German soccer players were picked at random for an unannounced doping control by UEFA in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, before the European Championship.
•Sheila Taormina appears to be in line for an Olympic spot in modern pentathlon, which would be the third sport she’s competed in at the Summer Games.
Margaux Isaksen finished 29th at the modern pentathlon world championship, but that isn’t expected to bump Taormina from the two U.S. spots available.
She won gold in 1996 as part of a swim relay and competed in the triathlon in 2000 and 2004.
•The ace of Oklahoma State’s pitching staff was declared ineligible for undisclosed reasons, hours before the Cowboys’ biggest baseball game of the year.
The team announced sophomore Andrew Oliver was ineligible hours before Oklahoma State’s NCAA tournament regional game against Wichita State at Stillwater, Okla., which the Cowboys lost 5-3.