(NEW YORK) — Coco Gauff earned a hard-fought round one comeback win over German qualifier Laura Siegemund in Flushing, New York at the U.S. Open on Monday night to advance to the second round.
Laura Siegemund falls to Coco Gauff at US Open
The No. 6 seed began her bid for the final Grand Slam of 2023 with a first-set loss, followed by her taking the next two sets for a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 win.
But Gauff vocalized frustrations on the court about her opponent who repeatedly went over the time limit when she served.
“She’s never ready when I’m serving, she went over to talk like four times … how is this fair?” Gauff questioned the chair umpire on the court mid-match.
By the middle of the third set, Gauff had enough, telling the umpire, “It’s not like we’re having two 30-ball rallies. It’s two balls … I’m going a normal speed.”
When the head umpire eventually called a second time violation against Siegemund, Gauff earned a free point to go up 5-1 in the final set.
“She is serving extremely fast and one time I go to the towel,” Siegemund said. “So I can’t go to the towel at all anymore?” she posited to the umpire as the crowd roared, rallying for Gauff.
The 35-year-old, who is ranked No. 121, didn’t give up without a fight and won three more games in a row before Gauff closed out the third set.
When asked to describe what it was like playing the match, Gauff responded on court, “Slow.”
Gauff is looking to surpass her quarterfinal finish from last year, though it did push her into the top 10 for the first time in her career.
Recently, Gauff has attributed her success to a surge in confidence in her own game and ability to trust herself even when she’s not feeling in top form.
Who is Laura Siegemund?
Sigemund entered the year-end Grand Slam second in the WTA for first-serve percentage of 75.8%.
Against Gauff, Siegemund’s first-serve percentage stood at 80% and she finished the match winning 33 of 53 net points.
Djokovic off to smooth start in round one straight-sets win
Following Gauff, Novak Djokovic won a late-night match in straight sets that wrapped up shortly before 1 a.m.
“These children should go to sleep … but adults, adults you can stay,” Djokovic said on the court with a laugh.
Djokovic, whose last U.S. Open title came in 2018, is coming in hot off of a thrilling Cincinnati title that was the result of a three-set final victory over Wimbledon winner Carlos Alcaraz.
(NEW YORK) — For Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning, returning to the New York Giants’ practice facility is always special.
The two joined the legendary NFL team as head coach and quarterback, respectively, in 2004. Their 12 seasons together resulted in two Super Bowl titles and countless memories along the way.
Now, they’re teaming up, not for football, but for September’s Child Cancer Awareness Month. While cancer in children and adolescents is rare, it’s one of the leading causes of death by disease past infancy for children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ahead of next month, Coughlin and Manning filmed a promotional video for their campaign, themed around teamwork, urging viewers to take a selfie with people they lean on and post it with the hashtag #ShowUsYourTeam.
“When you have cancer, you’re not going through it alone, and you’re not going to beat it alone,” Manning told ABC News. “You’re going to need a team of support from your family, your friends, your community, your nurses and doctors in the hospital.”
Since 2015, Manning has partnered with Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey for the initiative “Tackle Childhood Cancer,” which raises money for pediatric cancer research and patient care programs. He represented the cause on the field for NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” campaign for four seasons from 2016 to 2019. Manning’s work with the charity, in part, helped him earn the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award for 2016-17.
“It started with going to visit the children in the hospital, try to lift their spirits. And it just became, what else can I do? How else can I be helpful? How can I make a bigger impact? And now, you know, eight years later, I’ve raised over $20 million,” Manning said.
Manning credits Coughlin with being the one to inspire him to give back. While Manning’s charity work has focused on cancer research, Coughlin’s Jay Fund works on supporting families, especially with financial help.
“A form of medication may cost a family over $200,000 in one year, OK? And you think about, 87% of families find that their income is depleted,” Coughlin said.
The Jay Fund is named after Jay McGillis, a former defensive back who played for Coughlin at Boston College and passed away in 1992 after a battle with leukemia.
“At that point in time, having gone through it with his family, I knew if I ever had a chance to give back, this was how I would give back,” Coughlin said.
Over three decades later, Coughlin says he still thinks of McGillis while doing this work.
Visiting with patients and families now, it’s hard not to get attached, Coughlin said.
“They’re just little guys going through something that, God forbid, you wouldn’t want anybody to go through,” Coughlin said.
Both Coughlin and Manning also know that making a difference can take many forms, including just showing up. Coughlin recalls Manning meeting with a young boy with cancer shortly before he died.
“His dad said that that was the greatest thing that ever happened to that little boy, was spending a half an hour with Eli Manning,” Coughlin said.
“I remember it. I remember it well,” Manning added. “You feel for, obviously, the kid. You feel for the families, the parents. I know how I feel when one of my kids has the flu, let alone cancer. And you want to do anything to help.”
With their latest initiative, Manning and Coughlin hope to leverage their teamwork and combined platforms to get help to those who need it.
“I think we’ll be able to have a big impact, raise a lot of awareness and continue to help more families that are dealing with cancer,” Manning said.
(NEW YORK) — Two years ago, a blowout high school football loss that aired on ESPN raised widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of Ohio-based Bishop Sycamore High School.
National powerhouse IMG Academy won 58-0, and ESPN broadcasters quickly noted the mismatch and commented on it during the game, citing player safety, ESPN reported at the time. As the game unfolded, commentators also said they became suspicious when information about the team and its players was hard to come by.
Now, a new HBO documentary, BS High tells the story of what was going on behind the scenes leading up to the televised game and the subsequent fraud it exposed. Director Travon Free spoke to ABC News’ Jay O’Brien about the film and why interviewing the players was the “one of the hardest things” he’s ever had to do.
O’BRIEN: You talk to a lot of people for this documentary. You talk to players and students and parents and community members. You even talk to the coach. He was a central part in all of this. How did you get him to talk to you?
FREE: Honestly, it’s hard to get Roy [Johnson] not to talk, if you really think about it. He actually came to us after me and Martin – my co-director, Martin Desmond Rowe – saw the game like everybody else. And Martin happened to be friends with a guy who works for [Michael] Strahan’s production company, Ethan Lewis.
And Ethan called up Martin and was like, “Hey, we have the coach and he wants to talk. Are you guys interested in directing this movie, potentially?” And so we got on the phone with Roy and, after like 5 minutes, we were like, “Absolutely, we have to do this.”
O’BRIEN: He’s a talker?
FREE: Very much.
O’BRIEN: So, we learn a lot about the students, too, in this film – their stories and their dreams. In a lot of those cases, these were upended by the events of this team. What was it like hearing what they went through?
FREE: You know, that was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, just probably in life, too, to sit across from these kids and hear them tell the stories of this really heartbreaking and painful experience they went through. Because as directors, we also had to get them to a place where they were willing to talk about it in a vulnerable way, because they weren’t initially.
They were very hardened and, you know, hurt by it, and they didn’t want to talk about it. They wanted to keep that pushed down and keep it away and try to move forward. And we were asking them to go back to a time in their lives, where something that was so important to them was taken away.
O’BRIEN: And does it have ripple effects to a lot of these guys now?
FREE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, a lot of them found themselves in the position where, had they gone to a real school or played for a real coach in that time frame that they had to actually play football? They might have actually landed somewhere. They might not have necessarily landed at an Alabama or an LSU or something like that, but they would have actually had a shot.
Playing for Roy meant they had no shot. There was just no way that was going to work out for them, because there was no school, so there was no eligibility. So you were basically playing for nothing.
O’BRIEN: You talk about the school. A lot of people figured out pretty quickly that this school was a fraud, pretty quickly into that game against IMG. But also in the film, there are forged checks, assaults and killing geese. I’m looking at it here, everything that’s in it. I mean, was there anything that stood out to you and surprised you?
FREE: You know, the geese story was definitely surprising. I did not see that coming until Pahokee started telling that story. And we thought that there’s no way Roy [Johnson] is going to admit to doing this. And as you see in the movie, he does immediately.
But I mean, it was also kind of surprising to see just how far the tentacles of his manipulation spread. Because it wasn’t just manipulating the kids, because a lot of people think and I’ve seen people say like, ‘Oh, well, like the parents are dumb and to blame. How could they let their kids? How could they fall for this?”
And when you watch the film, you get to see and hear how [Johnson] lied to them, too. And as a parent, you’re trying to protect your child’s dreams, right? But you’re also trying to protect your child from danger, from predators. And so when a predator shows up who’s specifically preying on your child’s dream, it’s even more difficult to protect them from that, because you as a parent don’t want to say, “Hey, I know football is your dream and this is your last chance to potentially make something of it, but I don’t want to let you go play for this guy.”
O’BRIEN: Well, this story, it gripped the country when it came out and that game happened. And we know that officials in Ohio called for some legislative fixes to try to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. The state legislature didn’t do anything. Can this happen again, and what should be in place to make sure it doesn’t?
FREE: This can absolutely happen again. And the reason that the state of Ohio used in not doing anything about it was because Bishop Sycamore used a religious exemption for their school, and they have no governance over the churches, right? And so what we should be doing is looking at just how far that exemption goes when it comes to damaging the lives of not just kids, but anybody.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Simone Biles is commonly hailed the G.O.A.T. — greatest of all time — for good reason. She proved why once again with her historic all-around win at the 2023 U.S. Gymnastics Championships.
Biles, who claimed three titles on the night, made history in San Jose, California, as the first gymnast to win eight U.S. all-around titles and also became the oldest woman ever to win the all-around.
The 26-year-old seven-time Olympic medalist and 2016 Olympic individual all-around champion also took gold in the balance beam and floor exercises, posting a two-day score of 118.45 for all-around.
Biles previously shared the record for all-around national championships with Alfred Jochim, who won seven men’s all-around titles from 1925-30 and 1933.
Her two-day winning total included a 29.300 on beam and 30.200 on floor, plus she scored 28.400 on uneven bars for the bronze in that apparatus and put up a 30.550 on vault.
Biles now holds 27 U.S. titles and 35 national championship medals overall since her senior debut in 2013.
Following the competition, Biles was also named to the USA Gymnastics 2023-24 Senior Women’s National Team.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
NY Mets 3, LA Angels 2
Colorado 4, Baltimore 3
LA Dodgers 7, Boston 4
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Tampa Bay 7, NY Yankees 4
Chi White Sox 6, Oakland 1
Houston 17, Detroit 4
Cleveland 10, Toronto 7
Minnesota 7, Texas 6
Seattle 3, Kansas City 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Miami 2, Washington 1
Chi Cubs 10, Pittsburgh 1
Philadelphia 3, St. Louis 0
Milwaukee 10, San Diego 6
Arizona 5, Cincinnati 2
San Francisco 8, Atlanta 5
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE PRESEASON
Houston 17, New Orleans 13
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Connecticut 83, Los Angeles 68
Indiana 83, Atlanta 80
Dallas 77, Phoenix 74
Chi 90, Seattle 85
(SYDNEY) — FIFA announced Saturday that it has suspended Spanish soccer federation president Luis Rubiales while a committee investigates his behavior at the Women’s World Cup final, including kissing a player on the lips.
Rubiales refused to resign from his position at an emergency meeting on Friday. He had been expected to leave under intense pressure from the Spanish government, players, soccer clubs and officials.
Spain beat England 1-0 to take home the World Cup title.
“FIFA reiterates its absolute commitment to respect the integrity of all persons and therefore condemns with the utmost vigour any behaviour to the contrary,” the organization said in a statement.
Rubiales has also been prohibited from contacting Jennifer Hermoso, the player he kissed without her consent, directly or through third parties. He has been removed from soccer duties for 90 days “pending the disciplinary proceedings opened” against him Thursday.
“The FIFA Disciplinary Committee will not provide any further information on these disciplinary proceedings until a final decision has been taken,” FIFA said.
The incident had drawn widespread outrage with players from around the world who condemned Rubiales’ behavior.
“I’m disgusted by the public actions of Luis Rubiales. I stand by @Jennihermoso and the Spanish players. Winning a World Cup should be one of the best moments in these players’ lives but instead it’s overshadowed by assault, misogyny, and failures by the Spanish federation,” U.S. soccer player Alex Morgan said in a tweet.
In a joint statement, the players of the Spanish national team expressed their “strong and firm condemnation of behaviors that have undermined the dignity of women.”
“Given the statements made by the president of the RFEF, Jennifer Hermoso wants to emphasise that she did not give consent to Mr. Luis Manuel Rubailes Bejar to kiss her during the World Cup Final,” the team said. “No woman should find herself being doubted in this kind of sensitive situations, even more when there is such undeniable TV footage that has been viewed globally, and certainly, they should not be involved in non-consensual actions.”
The players also said they “expect a strong response from the public authorities so these actions do not go unpunished.”
Hermoso has pushed back against claims from Rubiales that the kiss was consensual.
“I want to clarify that, as seen in the footage, I never consented to the kiss he gave me, and of course, I never intended to lift the president in the air. I do not tolerate that my word is distrusted, and even less so, the invention of words I never said,” Hermoso said in a statement.
She added, “We ask the RFEF to implement the necessary protocols and to ensure the rights of our players and adopt exemplary measures. It is essential that our national team is represented by figures that project its values of equality and respect in all areas.”
(LONDON) — President of the Royal Spanish Football Association (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, will not resign following FIFA’s disciplinary investigation of his behavior at the Women’s World Cup final in Sydney.
The controversy follows his behavior last weekend when Rubiales was caught on video as he grabbed his crotch during the championship celebration — just a few seats away from Queen Letizia and her underage daughter — and then kissing player Jennifer Hermoso as the team was receiving the winners’ medals.
In a speech defending his actions, the president apologized but passionately defended himself from the accusations.
“The little kiss was spontaneous, mutual, euphoric and consensual,” he said.
The gesture was followed by immediate public backlash leading to government officials and football personalities asking for accountability and an assembly on Friday morning to address the situation.
Rubiales argued that Hermoso lifted him from the ground and hugged him on the podium and, saying she was still sad about the second-half penalty saved by England goalkeeper Mary Earps during the match.
“Jenni lifted me from the ground, held me close and after comforting her, I asked her for a piquito, a small kiss, and she said fine,” Rubiales said. “Do you believe I deserve this hunt? Does this deserve my resignation? Let me tell you something, I will not resign.”
On Monday, Hermoso dismissed the kiss amid outcry, calling it a “spontaneous gesture” that meant no harm. In an official statement on Wednesday however, she called for sanctions and measures to protect players.
Rubiales said he has been the victim of a “social murder” which is “far from the truth” and called the backlash “fake feminism” and said he is willing “to be vilified” to defend his ideals.
The assembly came just 24 hours after FIFA said it was opening a proceeding against the 46-year-old to evaluate his conduct.
“FIFA reiterates its unwavering commitment to respecting the integrity of all individuals and strongly condemns any behavior to the contrary,” the Federation said on Thursday.
The proceeding will look at potential violations of articles 13.1 and 13.2, which refer to offenses and violations of basic integrity and dignity in conduct that could harm the reputation of football and FIFA.
Miguel Galán, president of the CENAFE coaching school, was the first to formally complain about Rubiales to Spain’s Superior Sports Council (CSD).
“I thought it was an attack on Jenni Hermoso’s sexual dignity,” Galán said to ABC España on Thursday.
Government officials followed suit shortly after with Spanish acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling the gesture “unacceptable” and asking FIFA for accountability.
(NEW YORK) — Former football star Reggie Bush and his attorneys announced Wednesday he’s suing the NCAA, claiming the organization’s past statement suggesting that he had a “pay-for-play” arrangement was defamatory.
“Most recently, the NCAA has made a statement about me, accusing me of engaging in a pay-for-play arrangement, which is 100% not true. Not only is it not true, but there’s no evidence to even support that claim,” Bush said at the press conference.
The NCAA told ESPN in 2021 that it would not reinstate Bush’s 2005 season record and would not give him back the Heisman Trophy, despite rule changes that year that allowed college athletes to get paid for their name, image and likeness.
“Although college athletes can now receive benefits from their names, images and likenesses through activities like endorsements and appearances, NCAA rules still do not permit pay-for-play type arrangements,” an NCAA spokesperson told ESPN at the time. “The NCAA infractions process exists to promote fairness in college sports. The rules that govern fair play are voted on, agreed to and expected to be upheld by all NCAA member schools.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, one of the lawyers representing Bush, said Wednesday that his client didn’t have a pay for play arrangement with the University of South California, but that he played for the team out of devotion to the school.
“Devotion that earned him many collegiate records and awards, including the Heisman Trophy, the highest honor bestowed on a college football player,” Crump said.
The lawsuit states that Bush’s reputation in his profession was “substantially and irreparably damaged” because of the NCAA’s statement.
“This action seeks to hold the NCAA accountable for its unlawful conduct and for the damages, mental anguish, humiliation, and embarrassment it has caused Mr. Bush by the NCAA’s false and defamatory statement,” the lawsuit reads.
A spokesperson for the NCAA told ABC News the organization “has no additional comment at this time.”
The NCAA sanctioned USC in 2010 with a two-year postseason ban, loss of 30 scholarships and forfeiture of 14 victories, including the 2004 BCS national championship, for Bush receiving gifts from a pair of sports marketers who were trying to recruit him to USC, according to ESPN.
The organization accused the two sports marketers of paying for hotels, a rent-free home where Bush’s family lived, a limousine and a new suit for Bush which he wore when he accepted his 2005 Heisman, ESPN said.
As part of the sanction, Bush had to disassociate from the school for 10 years. The disassociation period ended in June 2020, according to ESPN.
Following the NCAA’s 2021 decision to allow college athletes to get paid for their likeness, the Heisman Trust, which awards the Heisman Trophy, said if the NCAA were to restore Bush’s 2005 season record, then he would be able to get his Heisman back, according to ESPN.
Bush’s name does not appear on a list of past Heisman Trophy winners on the Heisman Trust’s website.
“Give back the Heisman to Reggie,” Levi McCathern, another of Bush’s attorneys, said at the press conference. “Give back USC’s 14 wins, but more importantly, we’re asking the public here today … give Reggie Bush his good name back.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
LA Dodgers at Cleveland (Suspended)
Chi Cubs 6, Detroit 4
Milwaukee 8, Minnesota 7
Cincinnati 9, LA Angels 4
Cincinnati 7, LA Angels 3
Tampa Bay 6, Colorado 5
NY Yankees 9, Washington 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Chi White Sox 5, Seattle 4
Kansas City 4, Oakland 0
Baltimore 7, Toronto 0
Boston 7, Houston 5
NATIONAL LEAGUE
St. Louis 6, Pittsburgh 4
San Diego 4, Miami 0
San Francisco 8, Philadelphia 6
Atlanta 7, NY Mets 0
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Los Angeles 91, Phoenix 62
