(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
(NEW YORK) — Some of the world’s most contentious land battles may take place at a baseball field’s home plate. Now Major League Baseball is turning to cameras and computers in an effort to settle some of those fights over balls and strikes.
MLB is testing a new technology in all the AAA parks across the country called the “automated ball and strike calling system,” or ABS. Engineers from MLB have been working on the system since 2019: it now consists of specialized cameras from Hawk-Eye, arranged around the park, that track the ball from the pitcher’s mound to the catcher’s mitt.
At a recent game for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, a AAA affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, the technology was used to handle a “challenge” call. The umpire calls balls and strikes, and the hitter, catcher or pitcher challenges a call. Then the in-stadium scoreboard displays ABS’ decision.
“I have a certain amount of challenges I can use and I’m gonna use that in this particular moment to argue balls and strikes,” says Doug Glanville, a former major leaguer with the Cubs, Phillies and Rangers and analyst for both ESPN and Marquee sports. “And then the technology will kind of be the, the final, uh, judge in all this.”
Glanville says one of the most important parts of testing ABS is making sure it doesn’t drag too much on the flow of the game:
“You want something that won’t interfere, where everybody’s spending more time adjudicating the sport then you are actually playing it,” he says.
He says that the technology adds a new layer to the game for players who are frustrated by what they believe to be incorrect calls.
“This will put the — your money where your mouth is,” says Glanville. “Now you’re gonna lose a challenge if you’re wrong. And I think people will kind of like, think twice a little bit about what actually is a ball, because are you willing to waste the challenge on it?”
“To me, it’s like I’m playing, like, a PlayStation,” says Rafael Marchán, catcher for the Iron Pigs.
Marchán has been in the middle of many challenge calls — both as catcher and as hitter. He says it’s another thing he has to think about at an already busy position.
“Couple pitches that maybe could be a strike… but I don’t want to call on that … because it’s not like a big situation for the game,” says Marchán. “So maybe I don’t want to lose that challenge at that time.”
The computer’s strike zone doesn’t change. But the strike zone for a human umpire can vary.
“They’re not robots. And I don’t know if you want everything to be robotic,” says Glanville.
Morgan Sword, executive vice president of baseball operations for the MLB, says several questions “remain unanswered” about how to integrate ABS into the game.
“We hope to use this season’s test at Triple-A to make progress on those questions in a highly competitive environment,” says Sword.
Anthony Pileggi, from Harmony, New Jersey, who attended the Iron Pigs game, says it ultimately comes back to fairness.
“I think the machine can, like, make it more accurate and make the game, like, more fair and, like, make less arguments with, like, the umpire and less ejections,” says Pileggi.
Justin Renn, who also was at the game, admits he’s a little old school, but could get on board with the challenge system in the big leagues.
“It’s kind of like baby steps. I don’t just jump in the pool, I like to go in slowly, so gimme some time to adjust,” says Renn.
But Ryan Lavala, another attendee, says he enjoys the process of the pitcher and hitter trying to figure out the ump’s interpretations.
“Trying to figure out the ump, the umpire’s interpretation, almost adds a little bit to the game to me,” says Lavala.
(NEW YORK) — Fiona Crawley, the top-ranked college tennis player in the nation, forfeited $81,000 in earnings after making it to the first round of the U.S. Open, due to an NCAA rule barring college athletes from claiming prize money above a certain threshold.
Crawely, a 21-year-old senior, plays college tennis for the North Carolina Tar Heels and is currently the No. 1 women’s Division I tennis player in the NCAA. She made it the U.S. Open as a wildcard and progressed through the singles qualifying tournament. Getting to the first round entitled Crawley to an $81,000 prize, but the NCAA prohibits athletes from claiming prize money greater than $10,000 per year. Rather than taking the price, Crawley gave up the earnings to finish her college career at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“I would never take the money and never risk my eligibility, but I worked my butt of this week and it seems unreal that there are football and basketball players making millions in NIL deals, and I can’t take the money that I worked so hard for,” Crawley told a reporter after her elimination.
NIL deals refer to the ability of college athletes to profit off their “name, image and likeness” – something that also used to be prohibited by the NCAA but was permitted after the rules were changed in 2021.
Crawley spoke to ABC News’ Linsey Davis about qualifying for the U.S. Open and why she hopes future college athletes will be allowed to earn more prize money.
LINSEY DAVIS: Joining us now is the top ranked woman in all of college tennis who just made her debut at the US Open. Fiona Crawly joins us now. Fiona, thanks so much for coming on the show.
FIONA CRAWLEY: Hi, Linsey, thank you so much for having me.
DAVIS: So you fought your way through three qualifying rounds at the U.S. Open and managed to qualify for the main event. Talk to us about how it felt winning those key matches to get there.
CRAWLEY: I mean, it was one of the most incredible feelings I’ve ever had. Tennis has always been so exhilarating – winning and losing. Some of my favorite matches I’ve honestly lost. But being able to one, just get the wild card into qualies [qualifying competition] was the most extraordinary opportunity. And then being able to win that first match after being two match points down – the first ten-point tiebreak that I’ve ever played. That final qualifying match, being able to come out on top, it truly was just a dream come true, quite literally had dreams about qualifying for the U.S. Open.
DAVIS: I can imagine. And getting to the first round should have entitled you to at least $81,000. But NCAA rules prohibit athletes from claiming prize money greater than $10,000 a year. What would have happened to you if you took that prize money?
CRAWLEY: You know, I wouldn’t have been eligible to play college tennis per the NCAA rules. And that’s something that I never would have jeopardized. Rules are rules, and even though I feel like I do stand by what I said in my post-match interview, how I feel like I fought for that money and do deserve that money, it’s not something that I would risk for eligibility. I’m back in Chapel Hill, finally, after two weeks, two extraordinary weeks, chaotic weeks, and it feels incredible. And I’m finally going to my first day of class tomorrow. All of my professors had a two-hour academic advising appointment this morning, you know, working on school right now. But no, it is a little bit of an identity crisis going and competing and having that experience and not being able to take the money. I don’t think that I really realized exactly what it was until I was sitting in the purser’s office looking at all of the money.
DAVIS: You ended up playing for free professionally, just as you’re doing in college as well. But while you couldn’t take the prize money, if you got, say, a scholarship through an NIL [name, image and likeness], you could have kept the money offered in that deal. How do you reconcile that?
CRAWLEY: You know, I’m a student athlete. I’m an English and comparative literature major. I’m not a politician. I don’t know a lot about all of the rules, and I just spoke from what I felt once I qualified when they asked me how I felt about the NCAA rules with the money. I felt like I deserve that money, and so that’s what they said and that’s what I’ll stand by. I think that NIL is an incredible opportunity for athletes to advocate for themselves and use name, image, likeness in order to, you know, just get the money that I feel like – I mean, it’s a job, like let’s be real. Being a student athlete — You spend a lot of time on court in the gym and not to mention, like all of the meetings that you do and Zoom calls and, you know, we have as a team – lots of which I love, honestly – family therapy just together to get close and to build the team dynamic. You spend a lot of time and energy putting yourself into something, and it is a job.
DAVIS: And I may be being redundant really, because I think you’ve probably summed it up. But if officials at the NCAA are listening tonight, what’s your message to them?
CRAWLEY: You know, I’m done in a year, so it won’t affect me any more, but I hope that that you get an opportunity for future college players to maybe earn some of the money if you if they do want to go play professionally. I have a lot of younger friends who are going to play college, who I tell to go play college, 100%, because I think that it’s an incredible opportunity. The past three years have been the best years of my life, and I’ve developed as a person, as a student, as a tennis player. But I think it’s also a good opportunity to segue into professional tennis after. So I think it would be cool to be able to accept that you do have some winnings, some earnings from professional tennis while you’re still playing collegiate tennis.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Cincinnati 7, Seattle 6
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Baltimore 5, LA Angels 4 (10)
Toronto 7, Oakland 1
Minnesota 8, Cleveland 3
NY Yankees 5, Detroit 1
Kansas City 7, Chi White Sox 6
Houston 14, Texas 1
Tampa Bay 8, Boston 6
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Colorado 3, Arizona 2
Miami 6, LA Dodgers 3
Milwaukee 7, Pittsburgh 3
NY Mets 11, Washington 5
St. Louis 10, Atlanta 6
Chi Cubs 11, San Francisco 8
San Diego 8, Philadelphia 0
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Chicago 96, Indiana 69
Connecticut 90, Los Angeles 76
New York 94, Dallas 93
Washington 100, Phoenix 77
(LONDON) — Jorge Vilda, the coach of the Spanish women’s national soccer team, was fired Tuesday by the Royal Federation of Spanish Football (RFEF) following promises of structural changes amidst the ongoing controversy in the wake of RFEF President Luis Rubiales’ kiss of women’s team player Jenni Hermoso following their recent World Cup victory.
“The Royal Spanish Football Federation, in one of the first renovation measures announced by President Pedro Rocha, has decided to dispense with the services of Jorge Vilda as sports director and women’s national coach,” the RFEF announced in a statement.
The statement made no mention of the reason for Vilda’s dismissal, but went on to list his accomplishments during his tenure. “The RFEF would like to express its gratitude to Jorge Vilda for the services he has provided, for his professionalism and dedication during all these years, wishing him the best of success in the future,” the statement said.
The RFEF also announced Tuesday that assistant coach Montse Tomé will take Vilda’s place as head coach of the women’s national team, the first woman ever to hold that position. Her first game as head coach will be the UEFA Women’s Nations League match against Sweden on Sept. 22.
Rubiales kissed Hermoso following the Spanish women’s soccer team’s first-ever World Cup victory on August 20, when they defeated England 1-0 in Sydney, Australia. Rubiales grabbed Hermoso’s head in both of his hands during the post-match medal ceremony and kissed her on the mouth. Hermoso subsequently said the kiss was non-consensual. The resulting backlash and criticism prompted FIFA to suspend Rubiales as they investigated the incident.
Vilda was a close ally of Rubiales, and was seen applauding the latter’s controversial “I will not resign” speech on August 25, five days after the kiss. On that occasion, Rubiales also said he would sign Vilda to a four-year contract extension with an annual salary of €500,000, just over $536,000 U.S. Vilda soon after criticized the kiss but did not call for Rubiales’ resignation.
Vilda was already unpopular with the players he coached. In September of last year, he refused to step down after 15 players on the women’s national team wrote a letter to the RFEF calling for his resignation because of alleged inappropriate methods of coaching, and issues revolving around the privacy and well-being of the players. The RFEF sided with Vilda at the time.
Support for Hermoso manifested over the subsequent weekend with mass resignations of players and Spain’s national team staff.
The new board of regional presidents headed by Pedro Rocha, which fired Vilda, was formed after Rubiales’ suspension and announced on Tuesday an “immediate opening of separate disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Luis Rubiales” in addition to FIFA’s suspension.
“The performance of Mr. Rubiales, both at that time and in the hours that followed, it is not acceptable under any circumstances,” the statement said.
The statement further offered the RFEF’s “most sincere apologies” to a long list of people and institutions, “especially the players of the Spanish National Team” and to “fans around the world, for the totally unacceptable behavior of your highest institutional representative during the final and in the subsequent moments, which did not respond in no way to the values of the whole of Spanish society, their institutions, their representatives, their athletes and the leaders of Spanish sport.”
Noting that “Spanish society is an example of tolerance and civility, in all social and political spheres,” the statement further declares, “The damage caused to Spanish football, Spanish sport, Spanish society and to the set of values of soccer and sport has been enormous.”
