YSU

YSU

Tops Blue Streaks

BOARDMAN — The Penguin hockey team defeated John Carroll 6-2 to improve to 4-25-2.

LOCAL

Meo recognized

FRISCO, TX. — Forward Johnny Meo of the Mahoning Valley Phantoms earned an honorable mention for Player of the Week in the North Division of the North American Hockey League.

Meo, 19, tallied three points in a two-game weekend series against the NAHL’s top team – the St. Louis Bandits.

Meo’s two goals on Friday helped the Phantoms overcome a late 3-1 deficit. He has scored 11 points in his last 10 games.

Still in first

BOARDMAN — Despite suffering their first two setbacks of the season, the Phantom Fireworks Bantam A team continues to hold onto first place in the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League.

After starting the season with an 11-0-0 record, the Phantoms are now 14-2-0 and two games ahead of every other team in the race for the division title.

Prep hiring

McDONALD — The McDonald Board of Education Monday approved appointment of the following as coaches for the district: Jeannette Domitrovich, girls junior high track coach, Mary Domitrovich, boys/girls track coach, volunteer and Michael Richards, girls head cross country coach.

NATION

Hockey change

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh’ Penguins Feb. 10 home game against the Philadelphia Flyers will start at 1 p.m. and will not be televised nationally.

The Penguins had not previously announced a starting time because the game was under consideration for an NBC telecast. Instead, the network will show the Anaheim-Detroit game.

The Penguins still have not set starting times for three Sunday home games in March: March 2, Atlanta; March 16, Philadelphia; and March 30, the New York Rangers. The NHL’s tentative schedule lists all three games at 3 p.m.

Pittsburgh plays eight Sunday games during the final nine weeks of the regular season after playing only one during the first four months of the season. NBC is televising NHL regular season games on eight Sunday afternoons in February, March and April.

WNBA players ratify
new labor deal

NEW YORK — The WNBA players union ratified its new six-year collective bargaining agreement with the league on Tuesday.

Approval of the agreement needed a simple majority — 88 of the 174 eligible players — to pass.

According to Women’s National Basketball Players Association spokesman Dan Wasserman, that threshold was passed with 97 percent of the ballots cast in favor of the new deal.

Although the deal is ratified, several players — many of whom are competing overseas — had not voted as of late Tuesday afternoon. There is no deadline for those remaining votes to be received by the union.

The new deal, the third labor agreement for the league entering its 12th season, was announced Monday and includes increases in wages, a dual salary-cap system, and improvements to rules structuring player appearances.

Helmet use on the
rise in rodeo

FORT WORTH, Texas — Nearly eight seconds into the ride at a rodeo this month, a wildly bucking, 1,400-pound bull named Bruiser thrust a horn toward Justin Koon’s face and tossed him into the air. He hit the ground head first — but walked away with only minor cuts.

Almost a decade ago, a similar spill left Koon with a fractured skull and in a coma. After that, he traded his cowboy hat for a protective helmet.

“I would never put one on because I wanted to look like a cowboy, with my boots, long-sleeved shirt and cowboy hat,” said Koon, now 24, said at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. “Now I don’t think I’d get on without one.”

Rodeo, a sport in which the cowboy hat is as much an icon as a bucking bronco, has been reluctant to require its riders to wear helmets. Even for children as young as 5, they remain optional under association rules. But bull riders, including some of the sport’s stars, are increasingly donning their own. Rodeo officials estimate just under 40 percent of adult riders now wear helmets, up from 10 percent five years ago.

WORLD

Ian Thorpe heads list

CANBERRA, Australia — Five-time Olympic gold medalist Ian Thorpe and runner Ron Clarke, who lit the Olympic cauldron in Melbourne 52 years ago, head the list of Australians participating in the Beijing Games torch relay.

“It is a great honor to be a small part of the torch relay,” Thorpe said from Beijing, “in what will truly be an amazing event.”

A total of 80 people, including past and present Olympians, will take part in the only Australian leg of the relay on April 24 in Canberra.

Thorpe won a record nine Olympic medals before his retirement in November 2006.

Vindicator staff/wire reports