SPORTS DIGEST | Girard’s Barta leads bowling championship
Girard’s Barta leads bowling championship
LAS VEGAS
Girard native Adam Barta is on the leading team at the 2017 United States Bowling Congress Open Championships in Las Vegas.
Playing for Team NABR, which is based in Fairport, N.Y., the squad bowled games of 1,023, 1,082 and 1,161. Barta bowled 640, the third-best mark on the team.
Blandino quits job as NFL’s head ref
NEW YORK
Officiating director Dean Blandino is leaving the NFL to spend more time with his family and explore other opportunities.
Blandino has been the league’s vice president of officiating since 2013 and has overseen several changes in the way the game has been officiated, with an emphasis on player safety.
The 45-year-old Blandino has young children and the demands of his job have limited the time he has spent with them and his wife.
Blandino joined the NFL in 1994 as an intern and moved through the ranks. He was an instant replay official from 1999-2003 and worked two Super Bowls and two conference championship games. He managed the NFL’s instant replay program from 2003-2009, and from 2007-2009 he was director of officiating, supervising day-to-day operations and the game officials’ schedule under Mike Pereira.
He left the NFL in 2009 to form his own company, returned in 2012 and succeeded Carl Johnson as chief of officiating the next year.
NCAA adopts early signing period
INDIANAPOLIS
The NCAA has voted to allow high school football players to sign with colleges as early as December, make early official visits and put a two-year waiting period on Bowl Subdivision teams from hiring people close to a recruit.
If the package is approved by the Board of Governors on April 26, the signing period change would take effect Aug. 1.
The other significant change to the recruiting calendar would allow recruits to make official visits between April and June of their junior year in high school.
The Division I Council also approved a measure to eliminate two-a-day practices. It would take effect immediately if approved.
But most were approved in an effort to make recruiting and the sport more transparent.
Schools will now be limited to signing only 25 recruits per year, in hopes of eliminating “oversigning.”
Carew gets organs from NFL player
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CALIF.
Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew received a new heart and kidney from the late NFL player Konrad Reuland in what is believed to be the first such transplant involving pro athletes.
Carew underwent the procedure last December and met Reuland’s family in March after mutual friends connected Reuland’s death with news of Carew’s transplant on Dec. 16. Reuland had died four days earlier after a ruptured brain aneurysm at age 29.
Reuland attended middle school in Southern California with Carew’s children, and he met Carew when he was 11.
“The whole thing is just unbelievable,” Carew told American Heart Association News. “I’ve been given a second chance so I’m going to take advantage of it, and I’ve got another family.”
Plastic pigs interrupt English soccer game
COVENTRY, ENGLAND
Pigs were flying at a football match on Friday.
Fans threw so many of the small plastic pigs on to the pitch that the protest against team owners of Coventry City and Charlton Athletic delayed the start of their English League One (third-division) match.
The incident happened before the match, and when it did start, less than a minute later more pigs were tossed.
The referee made both teams leave the pitch.
The pigs were cleared and play resumed five minutes later.
Staff and wire reports