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East Palestine youth camp
EAST PALESTINE -- East Palestine Volleyball Youth Camp will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday in the high school gym.
It is open to any child entering grades K-8. Cost is $30 and attendees can register the day of the event starting at 8:30 a.m. For more information, email coach John Bistarkey at marnie340@yahoo.com.
Beaver Local Athletic HOF
CALCUTTA -- The reorganization of the Beaver Local Athletic Hall of Fame will include the next induction in the fall of 2025. The organization plans to continue awarding two $1,000 scholarships each year.
To raise money for the scholarships, committee members are selling $10 tickets for a chance on four tickets to the Pittsburgh Pirates at Cleveland Guardians baseball game on Aug. 31 plus $500 cash. There's a second chance drawing for a 65-inch Smart TV.
Tickets are available with Eric Lowe at Beaver Local, Shelley Roberts at The Upper Ohio Valley Museum at the Lou Holtz Hall of Fame and at Campbell Signs & Apparel or from any committee member.
Nomination information is available at https://forms.gle/b5TcnLb43kYKRrVf7 or on Facebook.
Cy Young Days Festival features Barker
NEWCOMERSTOWN -- The Cy Young Days Festival luncheon featuring former Cleveland Indians pitcher Len Barker will be held June 29 at Newcomerstown High School.
Doors will open at 11:30 a.m. and lunch will be at 12:30 p.m. Cost is $25 for adults and $15 for children under 12. Reservations are required by calling (740) 227-1544 or emailing chaney.janet8@gmail.com.
Five full-sized numbered Louisville Slugger wood bats engraved the the name of the festival and date and home of CyYoung will be auctioned at the luncheon.
Barker also will be the marshal of the parade starting at 6 p.m. After the parade, Barker will be at the Olde Main Street Museum for autographs.
Cy Young -- who holds the major league record with 511 career victories -- was born and raised in Tuscarawas County, pitching for teams from Carrollton and Canton before making his major league debut in 1890. He lived near Newcomerstown until his death in 1955.
Pirates trade Hernandez
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles Dodgers acquired pitcher Jose Hernandez from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for cash on Thursday.
Hernandez was designated for assignment on Tuesday after appearing in seven games for the Pirates. The 26-year-old left-hander was 1-1 with a 3.38 ERA in 5 1/3 innings.
IndyCar moving to Fox Sports in 2025
(AP) -- Fox Sports said Thursday it has acquired the rights to broadcast IndyCar starting in 2025, a move that gives the network two of the biggest races in the world -- the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR's Daytona 500.
Fox Sports already broadcasts the first half of the NASCAR schedule. NASCAR in November announced a seven-year media rights deal that added two new partners and streaming elements as the 38-race schedule is spread over multiple networks and platforms.
Terms of the deal between IndyCar and Fox Sports were not revealed, but Fox promised all 17 races would receive network broadcasts, as well as the two days of qualifying for the Indy 500. That guarantee covers the lifetime of the deal with IndyCar.
IndyCar said NBC Sports could not offer the same amount of national broadcast slots.
"This represents unrivaled exposure and provides an unparalleled growth opportunity for the most competitive and entertaining motorsport on the planet," IndyCar CEO Mark Miles said. "Fox Sports is a fully committed partner, ready to bring engaging and technically innovative coverage to millions of fans across the country while also promoting IndyCar thoroughly across all its platforms."
Wilson building Rio Grande football
By BOB HERTZEL
WV News
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Quincy Wilson, a one-time Kennedy Award winner as West Virginia's best high school player, a star running back at West Virginia University who authored one of the greatest plays in the school's history and a former NFL running back, takes another step in fulfilling his football odyssey as he has accepted the head coaching job at the University of Rio Grande (Ohio).
Rio Grande, an NAIA school, is renewing its football program after it had been dormant since 1949. Wilson eagerly accepted the challenge after having spent his post-playing career as assistant director of football operations at WVU under Dana Holgorsen in 2012-15, then spent a year as an assistant at Glenville State before moving to West Virginia State
The son of the former NFL linebacker Otis Wilson with the Chicago Bears, Wilson takes his second shot at a head coaching position after a disastrous situation for four years and spent last year as running back coach at Fairmont State.
This is Wilson's second venture into a head coaching position, the first resulting in a total disaster. He took over a second-year team at the University of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with all the enthusiasm he could muster but soon found he had no support at the tiny school in a strip mall in the Florida resort city.
"I wanted to be a head coach so bad when I went down there that I ignored all of the red flags of 'we don't have this and we don't have that.' Once I got there, it was a nightmare," Wilson said in the press release of his hiring at Rio Grande. "But I'm looking at that whole situation there as becoming a blessing.
"It's kind of funny. I was telling everybody, even before the announcement was made, that I'd been on the Rio Grande campus before and said that this would be a great place to have football. Maybe I spoke it into existence."
His team at Fort Lauderdale played exactly one game. Actually, part of one game, losing 46-2, before being stopped early due to a lack of players. The rest of the games on the schedule were either canceled or forfeited and Wilson left with another former Mountaineer, Damon Cogdell, taking over.
Rather than being soured by the experience in Florida, the former Weir High School star was driven harder to get a team of his own and prove that he could run his own program.
He believes he has the tools necessary to get the program going at Rio Grande. They are going to take a patient approach, recruiting some players this fall, then adding some in January and putting together a full signing class in February so they will be ready to go in the fall of 2025.
"I think it's been proven that it can happen," Wilson said. "If we were trying to play this year, that would be too much of a battle. But we're at an advantage, I think, in that we've got a chance to be selective about who we want to bring in. We can dive into it and develop.
"We have the opportunity to attract good players and good coaches and, if that happens, we'll let the chips fall where they may."
Wilson, now 43, believes he has a well-rounded coaching background now.
"You try to take something from everywhere you've been. The great thing is, and it cracks me up because people always say 'the athletes are different' but, no, it's not the athletes. What's different is there's more accessibility to your kids, which means more educational stuff that we, as coaches, have to do for the players," he said.
"It's not like you have one meeting, explain all the rules and blah, blah, blah, and go on about your business. Now, you have to have a weekly approach where you're always selling your program and your culture. I'm big on retention -- I want to keep our guys once we get them here. You don't want to waste all the time you spend recruiting and then have them leave.
"Are you going to keep everybody? No. But we can keep the majority of them because they believe in what you're doing, they believe in the culture and the brotherhood and they believe that they're going to be champions one day."
"We're excited to welcome coach Wilson to our Rio family and look forward to the success of the football program under his guidance," Rio Grande athletic director Jeff Lanham said. "We believe his leadership will foster a culture of hard work and team work. His vision for the program's future aligns perfectly with our goals and aspirations. The energy and enthusiasm he brings to the role are truly inspiring and we can't wait to see the impact he'll make on the Rio Football program."
Wilson was a legendary player both in high school and college.
At Weir High School, he shared the Kennedy Award with Nitro's legendary quarterback JR House, who today is the third base coach for the Cincinnati Reds. Wilson was the first prep player in West Virginia history to rush for more than 3,000 yards in a single season, leading Weir to the 1998 Class AA state championship with a 14-0 record.
In his high school career he gained 6,161 yards and scored 90 touchdowns.
At WVU, he redshirted in 2000 after reconstructive knee surgery and by his senior year he was a third team AP All-American and All-Big East running back, rushing for 1,380 yards and 12 touchdowns that season.
He played 44 games in his career, gaining 2,608 yards on 474 carries and scored 12 touchdowns.
His finest moment came on a catch and run through nearly the entire defense of the No. 1 Miami Hurricanes in the Orange Bowl with two minutes to play to put the Mountaineers in position for a monumental upset.
But Miami's All-American tight end Kellen Winslow, Jr. made an equally impossible catch on fourth down to help set up a game-winning field goal for the Hurricanes.