(NEW YORK) — The University of Alabama condemned the behavior of its fans heard shouting racist and homophobic slurs at three Texas Longhorn players during a Saturday night game after a video of the incident went viral on social media.
The video shows Alabama fans behind the Texas sideline at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, shouting the slurs at Black Longhorns players, including defensive backs Jelani McDonald and X’Avion Brice and running back Quintrevion “Tre” Wisner, who appeared to be celebrating the team’s performance after defeating Alabama 34-24.
A representative for the University of Alabama told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday that the university is “disgusted” by the incident.
“We are disgusted by reports of vile language and inappropriate behavior Saturday night. To be clear, we condemn this behavior, and it will not be tolerated in our venues. It is not representative of UA or our values,” the representative said. “We expect all attendees to act with class and respect towards others.”
The statement added, “Fans are strongly encouraged to report issues to our security resources on-site. Gameday and delayed reports are appropriately addressed, and anyone found to be in violation of our rules and expectations will be promptly removed and may be banned from future events.”
The university spokesperson declined to comment further when asked if the fans shouting the slurs had been identified.
Representatives for the University of Texas did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
X’Avion Brice’s father, Stuart Brice, also responded to the video in a social media post, praising his son for taking the high road and not responding to the slurs.
“Great job son blocking out all the noise. Stay humble,” he wrote, along with a photo of his son.
ABC News’ Brittany Gaddy contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Houston Rockets guard Kevin Porter Jr. was arrested in New York City on Monday for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, former WNBA player Kysre Gondrezick, police sources told ABC News.
Porter, 23, was formally charged with assault and strangulation.
On Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty and was released on $75,000 cash bail. The judge imposed a temporary order of protection.
Porter returned early Monday morning from an evening out to the Millennium Hilton near U.N. Plaza, where he and Gondrezick were staying. Gondrezick was upset with the late hour of his return and locked the door, according to police sources. Once he entered with the help of hotel security, Porter beat up the woman, the sources said.
Gondrezick told police Porter struck her “repeatedly about the face with a closed fist, causing a laceration above her right eye and bruising and substantial pain to her face,” according to the criminal complaint.
She said Porter applied “pressure to her neck by forcefully squeezing it, causing her to experience difficulty breathing, redness and bruising to her neck, and substantial pain,” the complaint said.
Gondrezick was taken NYU Langone Medical Center, where doctors said she suffered a fractured vertebrae in her neck.
Porter is due back in court on Oct. 16.
The pair was in New York City for Fashion Week. Porter and Gondrezick were photographed at the Vogue Smart Tox NYFW Kickoff event on Sept. 7.
Porter was drafted with the No. 30 pick in the 2019 NBA draft out of the University of Southern California, but has developed into a star player for the Rockets. He had his best career season in 2022-23 with 19.2 points, 5.3 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game.
Gondrezick, 26, played college basketball for Michigan and West Virginia, before being drafted No. 4 overall in the 2021 WNBA draft by Indiana. She played one season for the Fever before being waived. She has not played the last two WNBA seasons and is currently a free agent.
Porter was previously arrested in November 2020 in Ohio on a weapons charge, but a grand jury declined to indict him. However, the Cleveland Cavaliers made him inactive for the first half of the season and he was traded to Houston in January 2021.
ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Monday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
San Francisco 5, Cleveland 4 (10)
Baltimore 11, St. Louis 5
AMERICAN LEAGUE
NY Yankees at Boston (Postponed)
Kansas City at Chi White Sox (Postponed)
LA Angels 8 Seattle 5
Texas 10, Toronto 4
Oakland 4, Houston 0
Tampa Bay 7, Minnesota 4
NATIONAL LEAGUE
San Diego 11, LA Dodgers 8
Atlanta 10, Philadelphia 8
Washington 6, Pittsburgh 2
Philadelphia 7, Atlanta 5
Arizona 4, NY Mets 3
Milwaukee 12, Miami 0
Chi Cubs 5, Colorado 4
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
NY Jets 22, Buffalo 16 (OT)
(NEW YORK) — Novak Djokovic won the U.S. Open on Sunday, beating Russian Daniil Medvedev in straight sets.
The three-hour and 17-minute slugfest ended with the Serbian winning 6-3, 7-6 and 6-3.
“It obviously means the world to me. … I have to say it every time — that I’m really living my childhood dream: to compete at the highest level in the sport that has given me and my family so much,” Djokovic said of his win in a post-match interview at center court.
Sunday’s win is the tennis champion’s fourth U.S. Open men’s title.
Djokovic has now matched Margaret Court for the most Grand Slam titles won in the Open era — 24 in all.
Djokovic said Sunday’s win took on an extra special meaning.
During his post-match interview, Djokovic sported a Mamba T-shirt on the court showing him and the late Kobe Bryant.
“Kobe was [a] close friend,” Djokovic said. “We chatted a lot about the winner’s mentality. When I was struggling with the injury and trying to make my comeback, make my way back to the top of the game, he was one of the people I relied on the most. He was always there for any kind of counsel, advice, any kind of support, in the most friendly way.”
Djokovic explained his T-shirt was a way to honor his late friend.
“24 is the jersey that he wore when he became a legend of [the] Lakers and world basketball, so I thought it could be a nice symbolic thing to acknowledge him for all the things he’s done,” he said.
Djokovic missed the U.S. Open last year due to his COVID-19 vaccination status. At the time, the U.S. government did not allow international travelers to come into the U.S. without proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
NY Mets 2, Minnesota 0
Houston 12, San Diego 2
NY Yankees 4, Milwaukee 3
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Tampa Bay 6, Seattle 3
Detroit 3, Chi White Sox 2
Toronto 5, Kansas City 2
Boston 7, Baltimore 3
Texas 9, Oakland 4
LA Angels 2, Cleveland 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Atlanta 5, Pittsburgh 2
Miami 5, Philadelphia 4
Cincinnati 7, St. Louis 1
Chi Cubs 5, Arizona 2
LA Dodgers 7, Washington 3
San Francisco 6, Colorado 3
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Atlanta 24, Carolina 10
Baltimore 25, Houston 9
Cleveland 24, Cincinnati 3
Jacksonville 31, Indianapolis 21
New Orleans 16, Tennessee 15
San Francisco 30, Pittsburgh 7
Tampa Bay 20, Minnesota 17
Washington 20, Arizona 16
Green Bay 38, Chicago 20
LA Rams 30, Seattle 13
Las Vegas 17, Denver 16
Miami 36, LA Chargers 34
Philadelphia 25, New England 20
Dallas 40, NY Giants 0
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Indiana 87, Minnesota 72
Washington 90, New York 88
Dallas 94, Atlanta 77
Chicago 102, Connecticut 91 (OT)
Las Vegas 100, Phoenix 85
Los Angeles 91, Seattle 89
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Saint Louis City SC 2, LA Galaxy 2 (Tie)
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Open women’s singles final is set to kick off Saturday afternoon, with 19-year-old American Coco Gauff playing against Aryna Sabalenka from Belarus.
The championship match, which is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. ET, marks the first appearance by both athletes in a U.S. Open final.
Gauff, the No. 6 seed, is the first American teenager to compete in the U.S. Open women’s final since then-19-year-old Serena Williams faced off against her older sister, Venus Williams, in 2001.
The Florida phenom is vying for her first Grand Slam tournament title. If she wins, Gauff will be the 10th teen to win the U.S. Open women’s singles championship — and the youngest American to claim the title since Serena Williams won in 1999 at the age of 17.
Gauff was also one of four Black American players — in addition to Frances Tiafoe, Madison Keys and Ben Shelton — to reach the quarterfinals of the Grand Slam tournament, the first time that has happened in the sport’s open era, which began in 1968.
She last played in a Grand Slam final in 2022, losing the French Open to Iga Swiatek. Last month, the teen won the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, becoming the youngest player to do so.
In an on-court interview after Thursday’s semifinal, Gauff said it means a lot to make it to the final.
“A lot to celebrate, but, you know, the job is not done,” Gauff said.
Sabalenka, 25, the No. 2 seed, reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 2021 and 2022. She won her first career major title in January, at the Australian Open.
Win or lose Saturday, Sabalenka will become the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world when the Women’s Tennis Association’s rankings are updated next week.
Saturday’s champion will take home $3 million, while the runner-up will claim $1.5 million.
Gauff reached the championship after beating Karolina Muchova, of the Czech Republic, in two sets on Thursday. The match was delayed for nearly an hour after four spectators protested against climate change. Two of the protesters were arrested.
Sabalenka defeated American Madison Keys on Thursday in three sets — two of which were tiebreakers — to reach the final.
She said she expects Gauff, who has been a crowd favorite during the tournament, to get a lot of support from fans during the final.
“I’ll be fighting for every point,” Sabalenka said during an on-court interview after Thursday’s semifinal. “I’ll do my best.”
(NEW YORK) — Play at the U.S. Open was interrupted on Thursday night when climate change protesters began shouting during a match at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.
The delay of the Coco Gauff/Karolina Muchova match began at 8:05 p.m. ET when protesters appeared to be shouting about climate change. They were wearing shirts that read “End Fossil Fuels.”
“Following the first game of the second set in the Gauff-Muchova match, play was halted due to a protest conducted by four spectators,” the U.S. Tennis Association said in a statement Thursday night.
“Three of the four protesters were escorted out of the stadium without further incident. The fourth protester affixed their bare feet to the floor of the seating bowl. Due to the nature of this action, NYPD and medical personnel were needed in order to safely remove this individual from the stadium,” the statement continued.
According to the USTA, the NYPD took four protesters into custody.
Play resumed after the 49-minute incident.
Earlier this week, a spectator was ejected from a tennis match at the tournament after German player Alexander Zverev accused the man of quoting a phrase from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
“He said the most famous Hitler phrase to me,” Zverev told the umpire. “He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world. It’s unacceptable. This is unbelievable.”
The umpire immediately turned around to interrogate the crowd and ask the fan to identify himself.
“Put your hand up,” chair umpire James Keothavong said. “Who said that? Who said that? Who said that? We are going to get him out.”
Soon after, security officials were called in to remove the fan, who was apparently identified by spectators seated near him. The crowd cheered as the man was escorted out of the arena by security.
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor, Joshua Hoyoes and Darren Reynolds contributed to this story.
(NEW YORK) — When Serena Williams played the final match of her historic career at last year’s U.S. Open, countless headlines heralded the legacy that she, as a Black woman, left on the sport of tennis.
One year later, at the 2023 U.S. Open, the rise of America’s young Black tennis stars, many of whom Williams and her sister Venus helped inspire, is front and center.
Four Black American players — Coco Gauff, Frances Tiafoe, Madison Keys and Ben Shelton — reached the quarterfinals of the Grand Slam tournament, the first time that has happened in the sport’s open era, which began in 1968.
Gauff and Keys both reached the semifinals on the women’s side, and are playing different opponents, meaning the U.S. Open women’s final could feature two Black American female players.
Their potential meeting would come 22 years after the Williams sisters made history as the first two women of color to compete in the U.S. Open women’s final, in 2001.
On the men’s side, Shelton, whose father Bryan Shelton was also a groundbreaking Black American tennis professional, will play Friday in his first-ever Grand Slam singles semifinal, facing off against No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic.
Shelton moved onto the semifinals after beating Tiafoe Tuesday in four sets in the quarterfinals, in a match described by the U.S. Tennis Association’s general manager of player development Martin Blackman as a “watershed moment” for American tennis
The match was the first time in U.S. Open history that two Black men faced off in a men’s quarterfinal match.
“Watching Ben and Frances on that stage and connecting the dots between them playing on Arthur Ashe Stadium, in a facility that’s named after Billie Jean King, in a year that we’re celebrating 50 years of equal prize money, with a beautiful bust of Althea Gibson just outside, it made me think of the legacy and the pioneers and the people that had sacrificed and opened doors for all of us, and created these opportunities for Ben and Frances and Coco and so many others,” Blackman, himself a Black former professional tennis player, told “Good Morning America.” “Obviously it wasn’t the finals, but it was a watershed moment for American tennis.”
Prior to the match, Tiafoe, the tournament’s No. 10 seed, described facing off against his friend Shelton as a “monumental moment.” The court the two players competed on is of course named after Arthur Ashe, the late tennis star and civil rights champion who was the first Black man to win the U.S. Open, in addition to winning Wimbledon and countless other titles.
“Two people of color playing in the quarterfinals, huge match on Arthur Ashe. It’s a pretty monumental moment,” Tiafoe said in a press conference. “I’m pretty excited to compete against him. Hopefully it’s a great battle.”
The success of Tiafoe, ranked No. 10 in the world, is an example of efforts over the past two-plus decades to transform tennis from a predominantly white, country-club sport into one that is accessible to all, according to Blackman.
Tiafoe, who last year made history as the first Black American man to reach the U.S. Open semifinals since Ashe in 1972, got his start playing tennis as a kid at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland, where his dad, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, worked in maintenance and construction.
The JTCC is considered a center of excellence in the USTA’s National Junior Tennis and Learning program, which provides tennis and educational opportunities to kids in underserved communities
“One of the most powerful and impactful things that the USTA does is to administer a network of about 150 tennis and education programs throughout the country, mostly in inner-cities, for kids to be able to have a safe place to go, be physically active, learn tennis, get tutoring and to use tennis as a vehicle to get to college,” said Blackman, adding of the JTCC in particular, where he previously worked as director, “They are developing hundreds of kids every year, and that’s where Frances got his start.”
Blackman said the success people are seeing now in players like Tiafoe as well as Gauff, Shelton, Keys, Taylor Townsend, Chris Eubanks and more is also the result of a new approach to player development the USTA started in 2009, when, outside of the Williams sisters, American tennis was at a low. At that time, the USTA began to work with private-sector coaches and began to offer camps at the local, regional and national levels to develop more players from all backgrounds.
“Those camps were the vehicle not only for evaluating players, but really building relationships with their parents and their coaches and delivering education,” Blackman said. “And player development was not cookie-cutter but really dependent on the on the unique needs of every player and the recognition that every player is different.”
Blackman said that among American players, anyone ranked in the top 100 today and under the age of 26 came through that new pathway of development.
“We kind of look back to that 2009 to the end of 2019 period as building the house,” he said. “And now we’re so excited to be reaping the fruit of that work.”
Blackman acknowledged that even with all the best development efforts, progress is not made without representation.
He said the USTA has put a focus internally on diversifying to recruit more female, Black and Hispanic coaches, saying, “We need our coaching community, just like our playing community, to look like America.”
On the players’ side, the so-called “Williams sister effect” has undoubtedly helped lead to the surge of Black players in tennis, at all levels, according to Blackman.
Serena Williams stepped away from tennis last year at the age of 40 after a record-breaking, decades-long professional career that saw her win 23 Grand Slam singles titles. Venus Williams, a winner of seven Grand Slam singles titles, continues to play professional tennis today at the age of 43.
“At the end of the day, when families are choosing a sport, when they’re thinking about what sport to put their daughter or their son in, it’s really because they’re attracted to something for some reason,” Blackman said. “And the Venus and Serena effect has pulled so many girls of color into the sport that it’s just been a game-changer.”
He continued, “It’s been a trajectory-changing period of 20 years when girls of color and girls in general, regardless of color, have been able to look up to Venus and Serena, and see two authentic women who are proud of who they are and are representing themselves as strong Black champions. There’s no substitute for that.”
When Serena Williams played her last match last year, Gauff, now America’s young Black tennis phenom, reflected on how much of an impact she had on players like herself.
“Growing up, I never thought that I was different because, you know, the No. 1 player in the world was somebody who looked like me,” Gauff told NPR, referring to Serena Williams. “A lot of times, being a woman in the world, a Black woman in the world, you kind of settle for less. And I feel like Serena just taught me that from watching her. She never settled for less. I can’t think of a moment in her career, in her life, that she settled for less.”
The Williams sisters have had an impact on the men’s side too, according to Blackman, along with Black male players ranging from MaliVai Washington and James Blake to Shelton’s dad Bryan, who was a record-breaking college tennis coach before stepping down earlier this year to coach his son’s professional career.
The result of tennis becoming more diverse is that it has also become more culturally relevant, with tennis stars on the covers of magazines and featured on shows like Netflix’s “Breaking Point.” Blackman said this era of American tennis reminds him of the 1970s — when Ashe was dominant but largely alone on tour as a Black American player — but greatly improved.
“In the late ’70s, tennis was so cool and so relevant,” Blackman said. “This time around, it’s the same energy, it’s the same momentum, but it’s so much more diverse.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Seattle 8, Cincinnati 4
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Cleveland 2, Minnesota 1
Oakland 5, Toronto 2
Tampa Bay 3, Boston 1
NY Yankees 4, Detroit 3
Chi White Sox 6, Kansas City 4
Houston 12, Texas 3
Baltimore 10, LA Angels 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Pittsburgh 5, Milwaukee 4
Chi Cubs 8, San Francisco 2
Arizona 12, Colorado 5
Philadelphia 5, San Diego 1
Miami 11, LA Dodgers 4
Washington 3, NY Mets 2
St. Louis 11, Atlanta 6
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Atlanta 79, Seattle 68
