WASHINGTON – American University Athletics is excited to once again celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD) with a free postgame clinic on Saturday, February 7, following the 1 p.m. women’s basketball game against Navy.

Youth in attendance are invited onto the Bender Arena court for hands-on skills sessions led by a range of AU varsity programs — typically including basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, and members of the cheer and dance teams. Kids of all ages can learn new skills and meet AU student-athletes. The clinic is free with a game ticket, and participants are encouraged to wear athletic shoes.

“We’re proud to continue this tradition in honor of National Girls and Women in Sports Day,” said Deputy Athletics Director Katie Benoit. “Sports can shape confidence and resilience, foster teamwork, and inspire young girls and women to pursue their goals. This event is a special opportunity for our student-athletes to share their passion and give back to the community.”

Purchase tickets to the basketball game in advance online for just $7 by using the code “NGWSD26” at checkout by clicking here. Call (202) 885-2617 for more information.

All participants are also asked to register and fill out a waiver prior to the clinic, which can be found HERE.

2025 NGWSD Video

2025 NGWSD Photo Gallery

For the latest on American University Athletics, stay tuned to AUEagles.com and follow us on Twitter (@AUEagles) and Instagram (@AUEagles).

About National Girls and Women in Sports Day

NGWSD is celebrated in all states with community-based events, award ceremonies, & activities honoring the achievements & encouraging participation of girls & women in sports.  NGWSD began in 1987 as a day to remember Olympian volleyball player Flo Hyman for her athletic achievements & her work to assure equality for women’s sports.

 

Dec. 16, 2025

Bernalillo County – In response to a class action lawsuit filed against the Bernalillo County Assessor, Damian Lara is sending letters to property owners who received incomplete legal representation regarding their trust filings, which resulted in the loss of the 3% cap on their property valuation.

“This is a clear case of property owners wanting to convey their property into a Living Trust – not being properly represented”, says BernCo Assessor Damian Lara. “Many property owners who transferred their properties into a trust were misled or misinformed about the statutory requirement necessary to remain on the 3% cap.”

Typically, in New Mexico by statute, a residential property is capped at a 3% increase unless there’s a change of ownership. Transferring a property into a trust may be considered a change of ownership per state law.

For property owners who consider trusts, a revocable trust must identify only the transferor, a spouse, or a child as the beneficiary of the trust to stay on the 3% cap. In the class action suit, many property owners were removed from the cap because their trust filings did not identify those beneficiaries.

“Approximately 2,000 properties in Bernalillo County were transferred to a revocable trust in 2024,”, says BernCo Assessor Damian Lara. “Of those, only those property owners represented by one attorney continue to have issues. Only 96 properties were identified in the complaint, and of those many have already filed protests and settled their assessments. Those property owners already had their tax bills decreased, including a veteran who now has zero property tax liability”, adds Assessor Lara.

Property owners in Bernalillo County, who missed the protest deadline, have until Jan. 9, 2026 to file a Claim for Refund with the Second Judicial District Court. 

Forms to file a Claim for Refund with the District Court are available on the Office of the Assessor website at https://www.bernco.gov/assessor/protest-process/.

You can also go directly to the Second Judicial District Court at 400 Lomas Blvd. NW, first floor, room 119.

Questions regarding the Office of the Bernalillo County Assessor can be directed to A.C.E., the Assessor’s online chatbot at BernCo.gov/Assessor, or speak directly with a customer service representative at 505.222.3700. 

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About Bernalillo County

Bernalillo County is 1,160 square miles and is New Mexico’s most populous county with more than 676,000 residents. The Bernalillo County government provides a wide range of public services to residents who live in Albuquerque, Los Ranchos and Tijeras with approximately 106,000 residents living in unincorporated areas of the county. Bernalillo County employs approximately 2,500 people and has an annual operating budget, capital investments and other funds of more than $1 billion. Elected officials include five County Commissioners, Assessor, Clerk, Probate Judge, Sheriff, and Treasurer.

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – The youth sports community in central Indiana is mourning the loss of a beloved referee who died during a high school basketball game.

Witnesses said Jeff Tamarri collapsed on the court after a medical emergency Friday night.

Nicknamed Jeff the Ref, the 63-year-old Tamarri officiated thousands of youth sporting events over more than 30 years.

From the basketball court to the football field, officiating youth sports wasn’t just a job for Tamarri. It was a calling.

“We all love it, but of the people that I know that really love it, Jeff is certainly at the top of that list. He was always out there for the right reasons,” fellow referee Kevin Brown said.

That’s why Tamarri’s sudden death Friday night on the basketball court is so tough.

“He truly died doing what I know he loved,” Brown added.

Jeff the Ref, as the kids called him, connected with thousands of young athletes over three decades in central Indiana. He became an example of integrity, heart and love of the game.

“He had a calming presence, and I always said officials need to lower the temperature in the room,” Brown described. “Some people are really gifted at it. He was really gifted at it.”

Tamarri died just shy of his 64th birthday. He collapsed during a girls’ basketball game at Monrovia High School.

“It was a simple offensive rebound right in the middle of the second quarter, and he turned around to get position on it, and best I can tell, he had some sort of cardiac event,” Brown described.

The medical emergency prompted a massive response at Monrovia High School. The Monroe-Gregg School District superintendent said people in the crowd with medical training, staff and paramedics all tried to save Tamarri’s life. The gym was even cleared so witnesses and responders could work on him.

“I have no doubt in my mind that they did all they could,” Brown said. “Unfortunately, I just don’t think there was much to be done.”

Now, those who knew Tamarri best are honoring his legacy, his big smile, care for kids and his impact on coaches, crowds and colleagues. Those connected with Tamarri said games in Indiana just won’t be the same without Jeff the Ref.

“We’d see a lot of faces, same faces, different sports, so from Grand Park to the youth leagues in Danville and Zionsville is where we worked a lot in the last few years,” Terry Taylor, who refereed with Tamarri, said. “Yeah, there was a lot of upset kids Saturday when they found out.”

Copyright 2025 WTHR via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

Brent “Bundy” Krakau, 57, of Bentonville, Ark., passed away peacefully at home on December 14, 2025, surrounded by his loving family. He was born on August 6, 1968, in Euclid, Ohio, and carried Ohio in his heart throughout his life.
Bundy lived with energy, loyalty, and joy, loving deeply and fully.
He was the beloved husband of Stephanie Krakau, with whom he shared 30 years of marriage; the proud father of Lauren (DJ) Pittman and Mason Krakau; and the devoted Papa of Aella and Jolan Pittman.
Bundy grew up in Ohio, attending St. Joseph High School, and went on to study at Marquette University. He later moved to Arkansas, living and working in White Hall for several years, where he was active at Central Baptist Church and deeply involved in youth sports and community service. He and his family eventually settled in Bentonville.
A man of faith, Bundy trusted God through every season of life. He faced glioblastoma with courage and grace, never losing his fighting spirit.
Coaching was one of Bundy’s greatest joys. He poured his heart into every practice and game, teaching his players to improvise, adapt, and overcome, lessons that extended far beyond the field. Bundy was truly one of a kind, and he will be remembered for his passion, humor, and how he inspired others.
He was preceded in death by his parents, James and Jo Ann Krakau.
He is survived by his wife; children; and grandchildren; his siblings, Scott Krakau and Renee (Brian) Borowski of Ohio; his nieces, Anna and Alexis Rubertino; and many extended family members, friends, teammates, and players whose lives he touched.
Visitation will be held Friday, December 19, from 1-3:30 p.m. at Epting Funeral Home in Gravette, with the funeral service to follow. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Bundy’s memory to glioblastoma research or to The CALL in NWA, which supports foster children and families.
Arrangements by Epting Funeral Home. Online Condolences: www.eptingfuneralhome.com

_Decades of government missteps helped fuel Picher’s demise. The town’s empty streets now appear as warnings, as the Trump administration fast-tracks new mineral production projects.

In March, the administration issued the executive order Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, a move intended to “facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”

Picher is a testament to the myriad human and environmental casualties of rapid and expansive mineral extraction. The town sits on the land where the Quapaw tribe was relocated when they were forced from their Arkansas home. Mining companies paid tribe members to mine beneath their land, or they relied on the Bureau of Indian Affairs to deem the landowners incompetent and sign over the rights.

Today, not far beneath the parade route, not far beneath pretty much any block in Picher, are monstrous caverns. The dark, seemingly endless voids were left behind by room-and-pillar mining, a relatively inefficient form of mining used to remove countless tons of ore, creating rooms supported by large pillars of untouched material.

After undercutting the lead and zinc, miners began blasting and drilling away the valuable material. The metals were shipped off to become, among other things, more than seventy-five percent of the bullets used by the United States military in World War I.

The rooms left behind after the material was removed were vast. A photograph taken somewhere below the Oklahoma-Kansas border, likely in the 1950s, gives an idea.

A miner, dressed in heavy denim, looks up, the wheat lamp on top of his mining helmet pointed nearly vertically. He stands next to a heavy jumbo extension platform, its base sitting on a set of tracks that reach the miner’s waist.

Follow his gaze up ten feet or so. Then another ten. And another. Keep going. Seventy feet up, standing on small platform, is another miner, only his face and the light from his wheat lamp visible. He’s trimming the roof of the mine, extracting every last piece of usable material.

Behind the machinery, dimly lit, is a mountain of refuse, dwarfed by the size of the room’s walls.

In a perfect world, once the rooms were mined, those walls and pillars were left intact, with enough material to safely support the ground, and town, above. But Picher didn’t exist in a perfect world.

When profits began to plummet after World War II, the mining companies bolted, leaving the shafts open and taking with them the sump pumps that kept the mines free of runoff water.

Down came the rain and scavengers. The scavengers went to work on the pillars, chipping away any last dollar they could see and, along with it, the support that the town above relied upon. The rain water and runoff began to fill the open rooms, all 14,000 of them.

The water rolled through the caverns, around and over the seventy million tons of mine tailings and thirty-six million tons of mill sand and sludge. The oxidized minerals began to dissolve, mixing with the water to create an acidic solution that reacted with surrounding rock, further deteriorating the walls and pillars.

The concentrations of heavy metals, iron, lead, nickel, zinc, formed a soupy orange river that coursed through the mines.

In 1979, it reached daylight, seeping from the ground near Commerce. It started spilling from mine workings, abandoned mine shafts, and boreholes.

It came to surface around the chat piles, themselves already a major health concern.

It flowed into Tar Creek, killing most of the biota and staining the bottom of the creek red with ferric hydroxide deposits. The creek, described in 1903 by a Carmelite nun visiting the Quapaw reservation as “a spring of the finest and clearest water,” was now a stream of orange toxicity.

By 1994, an Indian Health Service test showed that thirty-five percent of native children living in the area had levels of lead in their blood that exceeded the CDC’s threshold for health concerns.