Latest news with #NAIA
Miami Herald
19 hours ago
- Sport
- Miami Herald
HBCU coach becomes D1 assistant
An HBCU coaching standout is making the leap to Division I. Delano Thomas, who recently led Florida Memorial University to national success, has joined the men's basketball staff at High Point University for the 2025-26 season. Thomas arrives at High Point after a two-year stint at Florida Memorial, an HBCU in the NAIA ranks. From 2023 to 2025, he compiled a 47-15 overall record and guided the team to a 2024 Sun Conference Tournament championship and national tournament berth. His success at FMU built upon a remarkable coaching journey that began at his alma mater, Shawnee State. At Shawnee State, Thomas engineered one of the most impressive turnarounds in small-college basketball history. After taking over in 2017, he led the Bears to a 31-2 record in the 2020-21 season, culminating in the program's first-ever NAIA national championship. The Bears captured the Mid-South regular season and tournament titles during that run, with Thomas earning national honors including NAIA Coach of the Year and the Don Meyer Coach of the Year Award. In total, Thomas has coached multiple All-Americans and sent nine players into the professional ranks, including one currently in the NBA G-League. His reputation for player development and program-building has been firmly established in the HBCU and NAIA coaching communities. Thomas also brings international experience to the Division I ranks. After starring at Shawnee State from 2002 to 2004-where he remains the school's all-time leader in blocks and rebounds per game-he played professionally for nine years in six countries. His coaching career also includes successful stints in Norway and Uruguay at various youth and high school levels. A native of Columbus, Ohio, and a 2017 Shawnee State Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, Thomas now begins a new chapter in High Point with his wife and two children, continuing a basketball journey rooted in HBCU excellence and international experience. The post HBCU coach becomes D1 assistant appeared first on HBCU Gameday. Copyright HBCU Gameday 2012-2025
New York Times
12-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Quarterback Brady Quinn impresses Notre Dame on unofficial visit — wait, what?
Brady Quinn was on Notre Dame's campus on Monday afternoon to spend some time with head coach Marcus Freeman and his assistants. He felt great being back in South Bend, having last visited in early April. And when he picked up a football to show off his arm in front of the coaches, Quinn felt as confident — and as accurate — as ever. Advertisement '(Quarterbacks) coach Gino (Guidugli) said I killed it,' Quinn said. 'I just think I had a really good performance.' Oh, by the way, this Brady Quinn is 16 years old and lives in Naples, Fla. — not the Brady Quinn who starred at Notre Dame in the mid-2000s and departed with 36 school records. This Brady Quinn is a Class of 2028 quarterback recruit who has already garnered 20-plus offers — but not one from Notre Dame (yet). And yes, he is named after the other Brady Quinn. 'I guess when I was born was around the time when Brady Quinn was really good,' young Brady said. '(My dad) was a big Notre Dame guy, so I guess I just got the name from that. 'But he never expected me to be a quarterback or to be this good. So it's kind of a shocking coincidence that this is all happening right now.' Indeed, Steve Quinn, Brady's father, has been a passionate Notre Dame football fan since he was a young boy. 'Both of my uncles went to school there,' Steve said. 'And so as far back as I can remember, I remember watching the games.' Steve, who played collegiately at Valley City State, an NAIA school in North Dakota, has been to at least one Notre Dame game every year since he was about 8. When the Fighting Irish beat Penn State in the Orange Bowl in January to clinch a spot in the national championship game, he may or may not have received a couple of noise complaints from other guests at the hotel in which he was staying. His fandom runs deep. 'I'm one of those homers,' he said with a contagious laugh. When Steve and Lori Quinn were thinking of names for their first son in the mid-2000s, the father-to-be made a pitch for Brady. It was not well received. 'She said, 'No. You can't do that,'' Steve recalls. They named him Carter instead, and he, too, is a quarterback, in the Class of 2026. Advertisement The next time around, with the couple expecting a second child, Steve tried again. And this time, Lori agreed. If the baby were a boy, fine, he would be Brady Quinn. 'I remember when we got the ultrasound and the nurse looked over to me and she goes, 'Do you want a boy or a girl?' And I went, 'Well, I want another boy, of course,'' Steve said. 'And she looked over at my wife and she's like, 'Do you always give him everything he wants?' That's how she told me we were having a boy. I was like, 'YES! It's gonna be Brady Quinn!'' The other Brady Quinn acknowledged this is a first. 'I've had parts of the name like, obviously, 'Brady' or 'Quinn' or something along those lines,' the former Notre Dame QB said of people naming loved ones after him. 'Sometimes there's been, 'Hey we have a couple dogs, one's name is Brady, one's name is Quinn,' something like that. I think this is the first that I can recall that happens to fit the bill, has the name, but also happens to be a quarterback, and obviously he's getting recruited by Notre Dame, which is pretty cool.' The younger Brady Quinn has leaned into the fun and laughs right along with people who crack jokes about his name or ask him how he got it. It's neat, he said, to have the same name as someone so highly regarded as Quinn. When Notre Dame Brady Quinn found out about Florida Brady Quinn from Peter Vaas, the former quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame, he sent him a private message: 'If I can ever be of any help,' it read, 'let me know. God bless.' Now the younger Brady Quinn is hoping he'll have the chance to play at Notre Dame, too. 'A Notre Dame offer would mean a lot to me,' he said. 'Notre Dame would probably be one of my top schools. Can you really say no to Notre Dame? With everything and the history of that university and stuff like that, it would mean a lot to me.' Advertisement Quinn hopes an offer arrives this summer. Guidugli liked what he saw from Quinn on Monday and told him that Notre Dame plans to turn its attention to 2028 quarterbacks after it decides who to offer in the Class of 2027. Just this week, Quinn picked up offers from Michigan and Indiana, which joined South Carolina, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Pitt and Miami among the Power 4 schools that are pursuing him. The younger Quinn finished his freshman season at First Baptist Academy with 2,549 passing yards and 33 touchdowns against nine interceptions after taking over the starting role in Week 4. Notre Dame and Clemson would be his two 'dream' offers, he said. Meanwhile, Steve has already joked that if Brady ends up at Notre Dame, he's buying a house in town. The other Brady Quinn is rooting for his namesake. 'Maybe he shatters every record I have,' he said. 'It'd be awesome if that story came full circle.' (Top photo of Brady Quinn courtesy of Brady Quinn)
GMA Network
08-06-2025
- Business
- GMA Network
Marcos: No EDSA rehab until rerouting plans ‘solid,' LGUs ready
The rehabilitation of the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue or EDSA, the country's busiest highway, will not take place until a 'solid' rerouting plans have been put in place and local government units (LGUs) are ready, President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. said over the weekend. Marcos last week announced the one-month postponement of the EDSA rehabilitation, initially scheduled to start on June 13, 2025, as he said the two-year timetable would be a big sacrifice as this would lead to heavy traffic conditions. 'Ang sabi ko nga ay masyadong matagal naman 'yung dalawang taon para maabala ang mga kababayan natin (Like I said, two years is too long for our countrymen to be inconvenienced),' he said in a vlog on Sunday. 'Hangga't wala akong nakikitang solid na mga rerouting plans at masiguro na handang handa na ang mga LGU, 'wag muna natin gawin, ayusin muna natin ang mga plano,' he added. (Until I see solid rerouting plans and we ensure that LGUs are thoroughly ready, let us postpone and fine-tune plans first.) Transportation Secretary Vivencio 'Vince' Dizon on Tuesday said Marcos wants to expedite the rebuilding of the major thoroughfare — which spans 23.8 kilometers — from two years to six months. An P8.7-billion cost has been estimated to modernize EDSA and make it flood-free. The rehabilitation was supposed to pave the way for the 24-hour odd-even scheme on EDSA, and the waiving of toll in parts of Skyway Stage 3, among other interventions. A study conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in September 2014 in conjunction with the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) found that the gridlock plaguing the streets of Metro Manila is costing the Philippines at least P2.4 billion a day. Economists now expect this to be higher. In the same vlog, the President also cited the rehabilitation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), spearheaded by the New NAIA Infra Corp. (NNIC) under a public-private partnership. 'Bilang gateway ng ating bansa, itong mga airport natin kumbaga ang first and last experience nila sa ating bansa, kaya't hindi sapat na magaganda ang tourist spot natin. Kailangan ganon din kaganda ang mga airport natin. Hindi lamang ang Manila airport dinedevelop natin pati ang mga regional airport,' Marcos said. (As the gateway to the Philippines, our airports are the first and last experience in our country, so it is not enough that our tourist spots are beautiful. Our airports also need to be as beautiful. Not only the Manila airport, but we are also developing our regional airports.) The NNIC, made up of San Miguel Holdings Corp., RMM Asian Logistics Inc., RLW Aviation Development Inc., and Incheon International Airport Corp., took over NAIA on September 14, 2024. It inked a P170.6-billion concession agreement with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to take over NAIA in March 2024, after it offered the highest share of its future revenues from operating the gateway to the government. —RF, GMA Integrated News
Wall Street Journal
06-06-2025
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
59-0! The College Baseball Team That Never Lost a Game.
59-0! What a ridiculous baseball accomplishment. Sounds like witchcraft, honestly. It might be unbreakable, like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Cal Ripken's 2,652 consecutive games played. The Louisiana State University Shreveport Pilots just completed a college baseball season in which they went 59-0. Baseball isn't supposed to work like that. This is a game in which even greatness is humbled by repeated failure. Miss 70% of the time at the plate and you might have the swing of a Major Leaguer. Juggernauts that win 100 games still lose 62 times. Even the Savannah Bananas drop a few. Baseball has long seasons, rainouts, injuries, bad days, double-headers, missed calls and quirky bounces. Fifty-nine and oh? Nobody goes 59-0. Until now. LSU Shreveport's run is historic. There's never been a college baseball season like it, at any level. The Pilots, who are part of the LSU system and play in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, won the school's first ever national championship at the NAIA World Series this past weekend. I'm still flabbergasted. How on earth do you go 59-0? LSU Shreveport isn't really sure, either. 'I don't think anybody sets a goal of trying to not lose a game,' says Pilots head coach Brad Neffendorf. 'We wanted to put ourselves in a position to win every game, but am I ever thinking we won't lose? No. Heck no. What we did was dang near impossible.' Not that the players were even talking about it. Neffendorf says he didn't have to warn his team about letting the win streak go to their helmeted heads. 'They never did,' says the coach. 'There were reminders about staying true to who we are, staying humble, staying focused on what we're trying to do. They were phenomenal with it.' LSU Shreveport has a tradition of stellar baseball—the school has won numerous conference titles and made multiple trips to the NAIA World Series. There have been some 40-plus win seasons and even 50-plus win ones. But 2025 was something else. The Pilots—by the way, these are riverboat pilots, not airplane ones—returned a talented team stacked with senior leadership and flew right out of the gate. They swept their season opening three-game series against McPherson by a combined score of 38-4, and it was pretty much off to the races from there. They didn't play many close games. In February there was a 7-6 walkoff win against Indiana University Southeast, a team coached by Neffendorf's brother, Brett. The Pilots had only three more one-run wins the rest of the way. LSU Shreveport never got taken to extra innings. They won a boatload of games by double digits. Translation: They were really, really good. 'We always talk about being different here,' says Neffendorf. 'We play fast, up-tempo and aggressive. But most of all I want to play the right way. We respect the opponent, the umpires, everyone.' Baseball is a superstitious sport—try yapping about a no-hitter during a no-hitter sometime. That was another reason not to talk about the streak. But as LSU Shreveport's winning snowballed, it became hard to ignore, says athletic director Lucas Morgan. 'I still remember the conversation I had with Brad,' Morgan says. 'We were like 30-0, approaching the best start in program history, and we were like, 'This is something we want to publicize, but we don't want to jinx it.'' The AD recalls thinking: 'We're going to lose eventually, so we'll just wait until we lose, and then we'll put the announcement out there.' 'And then we didn't lose.' Baseball in the NAIA is not a mega-money extravaganza. There's plenty of talent, including some D1 caliber players, but it's not awash in dilemmas over name, image, likeness or portal reform (NIL and the portal exist, however.) LSU Shreveport, which also has strong programs in basketball and soccer, tends to recruit from junior colleges and transfers from other four-year schools. Games aren't on prime-time TV; they're streamed. Plane rides? The Pilots took one plane ride the whole season—to Spokane for the World Series in Lewiston, Idaho. The rest of the year was spent on the bus, with one back-and-forth to New Mexico stretching 10 hours each way. Back in Shreveport, The Baseball Team That Didn't Lose became a point of pride. Pilot Field (capacity 1,000) was the hottest ticket in town. 'Our stands were packed,' says Morgan, the AD. 'You had huge groups of little kids trying to get autographs after the game. It's not that Shreveport hasn't supported our program before, but this was on a whole other level.' Streaks of any kind create pressure. Neffendorf, a longtime pitching coach who took his first collegiate head coach job with the Pilots in 2020, says he was often asked if he wanted his team to lose so they could relax. 'I can't tell you how many people reached out and they're like, 'Man, what you're doing is unbelievable, but don't you feel like it'd be good if you lost one?'' the coach says. He understood what they meant, but he felt his ball club was handling the situation just fine. 'I didn't believe in the process of, like, 'Hey, we've got to lose a game.'' In the end, they didn't lose at all. They hit well, they pitched well, they played stellar defense. They mastered high-tempo Pilots baseball. They also stayed healthy. LSU Shreveport didn't suffer any season-ending injuries, says the school's sports medicine director, Meghan Neffendorf—Coach Brad's wife. 'I mean, that's just luck,' Meghan says. 'You have to have a little bit of luck to go 59-0.' You sure do. That's why you may never see it again—what the mighty riverboat Pilots of LSU Shreveport just pulled off. 'We made the impossible possible,' says Brad Neffendorf. Write to Jason Gay at
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Tony's Take Perfection Comparisons The Butcher Broken Record
By Tony Duckworth, tonyduckworthsr@ Perfection. 59 – 0 is the best baseball record in the history of college baseball. History didn't happen in the SEC or Big Ten. Historical runs don't happen often, so let's celebrate a small university who accomplished the unthinkable. Advertisement While you may have never heard of LSU Shreveport, the Pilots recently won the 2025 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics National Championship. For the record, this was the 68th Annual NAIA Baseball National Championship. LSUS won the championship game 13 – 7. In storybook fashion, the Pilots overcame a 7 – 6 deficit in the bottom of the 5th. How impressive is it that the squad embraced the pressure of the moment and kept this remarkable streak alive to win the hardware? Go Pilots! Comparisons. The most successful seasons in college baseball history include the 2019 Vanderbilt team (59-12), the 1975 Texas team (59-6), and the 1995 Cal State Fullerton team (57-9). Other notable seasons include the 2011 South Carolina team (55-14), the 1978 USC team (54-9), and the 1983 Texas team (66-14). 66 wins will never happen again, but that season didn't top the 59-0 LSUS season. It does make you wonder how many classes the 1983 team attended given they played 80 games. This was well before remote learning options. Gotta love it. Dynasty. One of the newest members of the SEC achieve dynasty status several season ago. While they have been eliminated from winning the 2025 national championship, the Oklahoma Sooner's recent successes under Patty Gasso are remarkable. Advertisement OU has won eight national championships including four in a row between 2021 – 2024. While the Sooners have taken advantage of playing in front of a home crowd, no one will argue the remarkable run they are on. The college softball world series has been played in Oklahoma City since 1990. The standard of excellence of winning four naty's in a row is the best in college softball history. The Butcher. As the AD at Northeastern State University, I told my Senior Associate AD my feelings following meetings with one of our highly successful head coaches. My right-hand man heard me say on more than one occasion that Coach ____ better be glad he wins at a high level. Meaning, this coach's on-the-field success kept me from moving in a different direction. The New York Knicks have been irrelevant for a quarter of a century until the arrival of Tom Thibodeau. The Butcher led the Knickerbockers to their first Eastern Conference finals since 2000. According to ESPN Research, Thib's led New York to 24 playoff wins which is 17 more than the team's past 13 coaches combined. Re-read the last sentence. Advertisement While Thib's isn't without flaws, it is hard to imagine the Knicks making a change despite the dysfunctional ownership. The Butcher made the NYK's relevant again while making the center of the basketball universe, Madison Square Garden, a high-energy home-court advantage again. I, along with the rest of the hoops community, will be watching what direction the organization goes. Broken Record. The Atlanta Braves do not get hits when runners are in scoring position. Follow Tony Duckworth on the X platform at @tonyduckworthsr. Duckworth is a native of Macon and serves as the President and CEO of the Albany Area YMCA. Tony worked in intercollegiate athletics for thirty-one years. He was an NCAA Division II Director of Athletics at three universities, including Albany State, following ten years as a head men's basketball coach at two colleges.
