Jul 6, 2023 3 min read

Franklin gets PSAC’s top award

Penn West California graduate student Divonne Franklin was voted the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Pete Nevins Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the league announced Thursday.

The Pete Nevins Scholar-Athletes of the Year, who are selected by the league’s sports information directors, are presented to the top student-athletes who have achieved at least a 3.50 cumulative grade-point average (GPA) while competing at an outstanding athletic level.

Franklin becomes the eighth overall recipient from Cal, and the first since 2018-19. She joins former cross country All-American Alicia Belko and softball standout Kerry Novak as the only female recipients of the prestigious award in school history.

A Philadelphia native, Franklin has a 4.00 GPA while completing a master’s degree in exercise science and health promotion with a concentration. She completed her bachelor’s degree from Cal in 2022 with a 3.64 GPA while majoring in biology with a concentration in pre-medicine and a minor in chemistry.

Franklin won a pair of NCAA Division II national titles and earned NCAA first team All-America laurels four times in 2023. She became the first NCAA Division II sprinter to sweep the national championship in both the 100- and 200-meter dashes.

Franklin is the first PSAC women’s track & field student-athlete to win multiple national championships in more than two decades.

Franklin set four all-time PSAC records this year and shattered four league championship records while completing four three-peats at the PSAC Championships. She registered the second-fastest time in NCAA Division II history in the 200 meters during the finals of the PSAC Championships. Franklin later posted the fastest time in NCAA Division II history, regardless of conditions, during the finals of the NCAA Championships.

Tour de France

Two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar claimed a 10th career stage win at cycling’s biggest race on Thursday after launching a stunning counterattack and dropping defending champion Jonas Vingegaard in the finale.

A day after losing more than a minute to Vingegaard in the first Pyrenean stage, Pogacar showed he was not ready to give up and revived the suspense.

Vingegaard crossed the finish line 24 seconds behind Pogacar following their pulsating duel and seized the race leader’s yellow jersey, 25 seconds ahead of his Slovenian rival, according to provisional results.

Overnight leader Jai Hindley dropped to third place overall, one minute, 34 seconds off the pace.

In basketball

WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier are starting a new women’s basketball league to give top players another option to play in the U.S. in the offseason once the league’s prioritization rules go into effect next year.

The new league, which is called Unrivaled, will run from January through March and have 30 of the top women’s players playing on six teams. Instead of the traditional 5-on-5 game, the teams will play 3-on-3 and 1-on-1 at a custom-built soundstage in Miami.

The league was first reported by ESPN.

The hope is to raise enough funding to pay players roughly what they make in the WNBA season to help offset the money they’d be losing out on by not playing overseas in the offseason. The maximum base salary for WNBA players is just over $230,000. Players like Stewart have earned more than a million dollars playing overseas in the past.