SPORTS DIGEST | YSU football opening 2017 season at Pitt

YSU football opening 2017 season at Pitt

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown State football team will visit Pittsburgh to open the 2017 season on Sept. 2. It will mark the Penguins’ fifth visit to Heinz Field to take on the Panthers.

Both YSU and Pittsburgh are coming off highly-successful campaigns. The Penguins won 12 games and reached the FCS National Championship Game for the first time since 1999. Pittsburgh posted an 8-5 record and was the lone team to defeat College Football Playoff winner Clemson, 43-42 in Death Valley.

Pittsburgh won the first two meetings between the program’s handily before YSU defeated the Panthers 31-17 in 2012. The last contest between the team’s in 2015 marked the school coaching debuts of Bo Pelini and Pat Narduzzi. Pitt won a high-scoring affair 45-37 on Sept. 5, 2015, at Heinz Field.

The reminder of YSU’s 2017 schedule will be announced in the near future.

Correction

Kyle Benyo plays in right field for the Youngstown State baseball team. An incorrect first name was used In Monday’s story.

Nighthawks having youth night

cortland

The Youngstown Nighthawks are inviting teams or clubs to join them as they take on the Muskegon Risers Saturday night.

The semi-professional soccer team plays at Farmer Jim’s Sports Complex, located at 2971 Niles-Cortland Road in Cortland.

Kickoff is 7:30 p.m.

All players wearing club or high school jerseys will receive half price tickets.

Tickets cost $10 at the door.

The game will feature a disc jockey, 50/50 raffle and a meet-and-greet with players after the game.

NASCAR will have new format in 2017

charlotte, n.c.

Beginning with the season-opening Daytona 500, all races will be split into three stages designed to make every lap matter. Points will be awarded to the top 10 in the standings at the end of stages 1 and 2, and the third stage will decide the race winner. An overall victory is now worth five more points than second-place, and all the point collecting can be used as bonuses at the start of the playoffs.

With breaks between the stages — long enough for the segment winner to be interviewed, for television to air a block of commercials and for fans to grab a beer and a bathroom break — the system has been radicalized from NASCAR’s origins. The gritty, blue-collar days of the sport were built on drivers simply trying to make it to the finish line, often with parts and pieces hanging off their battered cars.

With so many different layers, the system seems complicated on paper and difficult to explain. But it boils down to essentially a pair of heat races, followed by the main event. The first two stages will be equal distance and comprise approximately the first half of the race in terms of distance, while the final stage will be about 50 percent of the race.

Lucic-Baroni back in Grand Slam semi

MELBOURNE, Australia

Mirjana Lucic-Baroni is back in the semifinals of a Grand Slam after a nearly 18-year wait, beating fifth-seeded Karolina Pliskova 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 to advance to the last four at the Australian Open.

The 79th-ranked Croatian collapsed to her knees after serving it out and broke into tears in a post-match interview on Rod Laver Arena.

“I can’t believe this. This is crazy,” Lucic-Baroni said. “I can’t believe I’m in the semifinals again. I feel a little bit in shock right now.”

Lucic-Baroni swept to the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1999 at the age of 17, but she was never able to build on that early success. Within years, she was out of the sport completely and wouldn’t play another Grand Slam match until 2010.

“One day I will say a long, big story about the things that happened to me,” the 34-year-old Lucic-Baroni said after the match, her voice cracking. “I never could dream about being here again.”

Staff/wire report