Polar Plunge coming up

EAST LIVERPOOL – The Ohio Valley YMCA will host its inaugural Polar Plunge at 1 p.m. on March 2 at Austin Lake in Toronto. The event is being done as a competition between area swim teams. The school that boasts the highest number of participants will receive a trophy.

To participate in the Polar Plunge, all attendees must sign waivers, with guardians required to sign for participants under the age of 18. Donations will be accepted to support future youth programs and youth in need.

For more information and to register for the event, please contact Maria Parfitt at 330-385-6400 or mparfitt@ovymca.org.

No more college prop bets

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Casino Control Commission eliminated prop bets on college athletes on Friday after a request from Governor Mike DeWine and the NCAA.

Bettors will now no longer be able to wager on how an individual college athlete will perform in a contest.

The move is being done to protect athletes from being harassed by bettors or giving out possible insider information.

Sportsbooks have until March 1 to implement the change.

PAC success for area athletes

YOUNGSTOWN — A pair of former area standouts placed at the Presidents’ Athletic Conference (PAC) Championships in leading their teams to victory Thursday night.

Westminster College sophomore Shelby Rambo from Crestview and Grove City College junior Andrew Coffee from West Branch earned high finishes at the Watson and Tressel Training Site.

Rambo was fourth in the shot put (38-feet-7) and was fifth in the 60-meter hurdles (a personal-best time of 9.63 seconds) as Westminster captured its first women’s indoor championship since winning back-to-back titles in 2019 and 2020. The Titans totaled 141 points, followed by Allegheny with 111.

Coffee was eighth in the 60-meter hurdles (9.23 seconds) as Grove City captured its first conference title in men’s indoor track and field. The Wolverines scored 140 1/2 points to finish ahead of Washington & Jefferson with 125 1/2.

Nastari has good preliminary time

GENEVA, Ohio — Former United High School state champion Kaleb Nastari is off to a fast start at the Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships.

Nastari, a Penn State freshman, posted the third-fastest time in Friday’s preliminaries of the men’s 800 meters at the SPIRE Institute.

His time of 1:48.62 is third behind Penn State teammates Olivier Desmeules (1:48.56) and Handal Roban (1:48.60).

Nastari will run in the 800-meter finals at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

Big Ten women’s tourney sells out

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Caitlin Clark can claim another off-the-court feat: The Big Ten women’s basketball tournament has sold out in advance for the first time in the history of the event.

The conference announced Friday that it expects a five-day attendance total of more than 109,000 at Target Center, where the previous record was set last year at 47,923. Tickets are only available on the secondary market for the tournament that runs March 6-10.

The proximity to Iowa — less than a 5-hour drive from campus — has made Minneapolis an ideal site for the Big Ten to capitalize on the presence of the superstar Clark, who set the NCAA women’s career scoring record last week. The Hawkeyes won the conference tournament last year and beat Ohio State in front of a Big Ten tournament-record crowd of 9,505.

3 University of Wyoming swimmers killed

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Three members of the University of Wyoming swimming and diving team were killed and two others were injured when their sport utility vehicle veered off-road and rolled over along a rural highway known for deadly wrecks, including one that killed eight other Wyoming athletes.

The latest crash happened Thursday afternoon on U.S. 287 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the Wyoming-Colorado line between Laramie and Fort Collins, Colo.

The crash happened when the Toyota RAV4 sport utility vehicle with five people inside swerved and went off the pavement, and the vehicle rolled over multiple times.

Two people were ejected. The crash killed Charlie Clark, 19, a sophomore psychology major from Las Vegas; Luke Slabber, 21, a junior studying construction management from Cape Town, South Africa; and Carson Muir, 18, a freshman on the women’s team and an animal and veterinary sciences major from Birmingham, Alabama, according to the university.

The two injured team members, including the driver, were released from the hospital Friday, according to a Colorado State Patrol statement that did not identify the survivors.

The driver may have been avoiding a vehicle ahead that had slowed, possibly to make a turn, according to the state patrol statement.

The accident was still being investigated. Possible causes including driving too fast, impairment and distractions were not being ruled out, the statement said.

The SUV was headed south and apparently not on an official team trip, according to the patrol.

“We are heartsick at the news of this terrible tragedy for our university, our state, our student-athlete community and, most importantly, the families and friends of these young people,” University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel said in the statement.

The weather was fair and conditions clear at the time on the often busy, two- and three-lane highway that winds through the scenic Rocky Mountain foothills. Typical hazards include blind curves, wildlife, passing vehicles and traffic entering and exiting at intersections.

University of Wyoming students often take the road for shopping, socializing and entertainment in Fort Collins and Denver.

In 2001, a head-on crash with a drunken driver on the same highway killed eight members of the University of Wyoming cross-country team. Clint Haskins, also a University of Wyoming student, swerved into the lane in front of the northbound sport utility vehicle.

Haskins was the only survivor of that crash 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Laramie. He pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was paroled after 9 1/2 years in prison.

The crash days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks shocked the state and helped lead to safety improvements on the highway in Wyoming.

In 2021, three University of Wyoming students were killed when their car slid on icy pavement and was struck by an oncoming vehicle near the scene of Thursday’s wreck.

Portions of the road in Colorado have above-average crash rates, making the highway a good candidate for more safety improvements, according to a summary of a 2023 Colorado Department of Transportation report.

The same 30-mile (48-kilometer) section from north of Fort Collins to the Wyoming line where the crash occurred has had 570 crashes, including 15 fatal wrecks, in the past five years, according to the summary.