Apr 30, 2019 4 min read

College baseball

James Artale homered and drove in three runs as Washington & Jefferson defeated La Roche 10-6 in a non-conference game Tuesday. The game was called after eight innings.

W&J (26-10) led 8-0 in the second inning. Artale was 3-for-5 and Justin Griffin hit two doubles for the Presidents.

Winning pitcher Nick Drake threw five innings and Michael Zito followed with a three-inning save.

W&J’s Johnson gets PAC honor

After putting together a terrific individual final week to conclude her collegiate softball career, Washington & Jefferson senior Rachel Johnson was named Hitter of the Week by the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.

Johnson compiled a .773 (17-for-22) batting average with a pair of doubles, eight RBIs and seven runs scored last week. The senior also stole three bases. Johnson had at least two hits in all six games.

The shortstop reached base at a .792 clip and posted a .864 slugging percentage as the Presidents went 3-3.

At the conclusion of the regular season, Johnson ranks first in the PAC in batting average (.472) and on-base percentage (.552) and is second in slugging percentage (.642) and runs (36).

WVU basketball schedule

West Virginia will play seven men’s nonconference basketball games at home next season.

WVU announced the nonconference portion of its schedule Monday.

The Mountaineers open the 2019-20 season at home against Akron on Nov. 8. After playing at Pitt Nov. 15, WVU will host Northern Colorado on Nov. 18 and Boston University on Nov. 22 as part of the Cancun Challenge before completing the tournament with two more games in Mexico on Nov. 26 and Nov. 27.

Other nonconference home games are Dec. 1 against Rhode Island, Dec. 12 against Austin Peay, Dec. 14 against Nicholls State and the Big 12-SEC Challenge against an undetermined opponent Jan. 25.

Other road games include Dec. 7 or 8 at St. John’s, against Youngstown State at an off-campus site in Youngstown, Ohio, on Dec. 21, and a neutral-site game against Ohio State in Cleveland on Dec. 29.

ESPN The Magazine to stop print edition

ESPN The Magazine is ending its print edition in September after 21 years.

The magazine launched in March 1988 and was a competitor to Sports Illustrated. ESPN says in a statement that the types of stories the magazine had run will be produced for online distribution.

“Consumer habits are evolving rapidly, and this requires ESPN to evolve as well,” the company said Tuesday. “The only change here is that we are moving away from printing it on paper and sending it in the mail, following September’s release of The Body Issue. Our data shows the vast majority of readers already consume our print journalism on digital platforms.”

ESPN says it will explore future special editions in print.

Revised LA Olympics budget nearly $7 billion

The price tag on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics is now $6.88 billion, a $1.36 billion increase that comes mainly because of accounting measures designed to better reflect inflation over the long lead-up to those games.

Most key numbers the organizing committee released Tuesday are essentially the same as those in the original bid documents, only adjusted from 2016 dollars to reflect the real value of the dollars at the time they’ll be received or spent — mainly in the later part of the 2020s.

That includes the cost of venue infrastructure (increase from $1.19 billion to $1.46 billion) and the contingency fund being guaranteed by the city and state ($487 million to $615 million).

If LA runs the games without any cost overruns, it will become the first host since at least 1984 — also a year that LA hosted — to do so.

Next year’s Olympics in Tokyo originally were budgeted at $7.3 billion but are now expected to run $12.6 billion.