Anna Bruno’s second novel, “Fine Young People” (Algonquin), is a whodunit: After one of their classmates dies by suicide, two senior girls at a Sewickley prep school work to unravel the mystery of an earlier, seemingly related death — that of another of the school’s student ice hockey stars two decades earlier.

But in addition to being a page-turner, “Fine Young People” is also a critique of the culture of money, ambition and, yes, even sports obsession that enfolds most everyone in the orbit of the fictional St. Ignatius high school.

‘Secular gods’

Bruno grew up in Upper St. Clair and got her own high school diploma from Shady Side Academy. She also grew up Catholic, and she said the social criticism in “Fine Young People” targets the way worldly idols have taken the place of spiritual values.

The nominally Catholic St. Ignatius, she said, “has come to worship secular gods like the endowment and the hockey team and Ivy League admissions.”

The book’s protagonist, Frankie Northrup, is a high achiever with a single mom who tackles the closed-case murder mystery as a class project with her best friend, Shivani. St. Ignatius hockey legend Woolf Whiting, it’s said, was bound for the NHL; his death, too, was ruled a suicide, but the girls don’t buy it, and their sleuthing touches on everything from schoolboy athletes on painkillers to family politics and shady business deals.

The book toggles between third-person accounts of past events and Frankie’s own soul-searching but witty present-day narration. The high school senior, specially tuned to differences in social class, characterizes her sort-of boyfriend thus: “Ingo squinted at me with the earnest cluelessness of a boy who’d never had to make his own sandwich.”

But it’s perhaps ice hockey, complete with hometown references to the Pittsburgh Penguins, that the story revolves around most. “Everyone in a way loses [themselves] in this sport, which they care so much about,” Bruno said. “The book is questioning, ‘Well, why do we care so much about it? Or why do we care so much about it that we’re willing to give up everything else for it?’”

‘A soulless place’

Bruno played soccer in high school (her brother was the hockey player), and her writing draws on her campus experiences. She set the novel in Sewickley rather than Fox Chapel — home to Shady Side — because it offers a business district in which characters can convene.

And like her young characters — one of whom is an 18-year-old who has apparently begun planning for retirement — Bruno was an ambitious kid. She graduated from Stanford University and worked in PR and marketing for tech and financial-services companies in Silicon Valley.

“So I was living in California for about 10 years and I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing, and I was supposed to be making money and being successful as sort of classically defined,” she said. She even earned an MBA from Cornell.

Not surprisingly, she enjoyed spending her 20s in San Francisco. But something, as they say, was missing. A lot, actually.

“I think Silicon Valley is a bit of a soulless place,” Bruno said. “That sounds harsh coming out of my mouth right now, but there is such a focus there on the tech industry and venture capital and just extreme wealth and a lot of the other stuff that makes a life, whether it’s the arts or other parts of the culture, … sort of get pushed to the side.”

“I realized that I wanted to be a writer,” she said. “That I was more interested in the spiritual — my inner life, I guess my ambitions were directed more towards that.”

Bruno has now spent 10 years in Iowa City, where she earned an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her husband and two sons and teaches at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Her choice seems to be paying off. Like her debut novel, 2020’s “Ordinary Hazards,” “Fine Young People” is drawing strong reviews.

“Bruno uses the framework of a whodunit to drive at deeper questions of faith and family,” wrote Publisher’s Weekly. “Bruno pulls it off, thanks to her keen sense of what’s at stake for her teenage characters and Frankie’s indelible voice. It’s a winner.”

The saga of ESPN’s expiring MLB rights package involves four contenders — and perhaps more — vying for different pieces of the pie.

MLB is in active negotiations with ESPN, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, Apple and Netflix on the expiring ESPN rights package, and it is possible that other platforms could enter the mix, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Thursday. Though Marchand did not state as much, the details of the report leave open the possibility that MLB could reach deals with all four companies.

The expiring $550 million/year package, which includes “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Wild Card round, Home Run Derby and a handful of weekday games (including Opening Day), has been on the market since ESPN opted out of the final three years of its deal in February. Any deals MLB eventually reaches will be for those remaining seasons only, bringing the expiration in line with those of the league’s deals with Fox and TNT Sports.

According to Marchand, Apple and NBCUniversal are believed to be “the final contenders” for “Sunday Night Baseball” and the Wild Card round. Netflix, as reported by Bloomberg last week, is eyeing the Home Run Derby. While the loss of those three properties would seem to leave incumbent ESPN with nothing, Marchand reported Thursday that ESPN is “after a new set of rights” that would include weekday and local games.

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro has repeatedly stated his network’s interest in local MLB rights, including in a podcast interview with Bryan Curtis of The Ringer three days ago. According to Marchand, ESPN is interested in MLB.tv, which the league was reported earlier this year to be willing to include in negotiations.

Depending on the size of a potential weekday package, ESPN could for all intents and purposes exit the national MLB business. “Sunday Night Baseball” has for nearly 40 years been a cornerstone of the network’s lineup and this season is averaging its largest audience since 2017. A move to NBCU would create a year-round run of Sunday night programming with “Sunday Night Football” in the fall, “Sunday Night Basketball” in the spring and “Sunday Night Baseball” in the summer.

For Apple, the acquisition of “Sunday Night Baseball” would presumably give the streamer two weekend nights of exclusive game inventory to go along with the company’s Friday night games.

According to Marchand, it is possible that MLB could split Sunday Night Baseball and the Wild Card games. In that scenario, one imagines NBC would get the Sunday night games; it would defy logic for NBC to acquire the three-day Wild Card round with no other MLB inventory. An Apple package that includes Friday night games and the Wild Card round also seems more in line with the streamer’s strategy than one that includes three games and two nights a week all season long.

In the event that MLB sells Sunday Night Baseball to NBCU, the Wild Card playoffs to Apple, the Home Run Derby to Netflix, and a new package of weeknight and local games to ESPN, the league would seem to have at least some chance of cobbling together a combined rights fee that approaches what ESPN is currently paying.

It would also give the league a whopping seven national rights partners entering the expiration of its media rights deals in 2028.

Lindsey Phibbs was a once-in-a-generation equestrian talent whose poise, precision, and grace were instrumental in propelling the women’s riding team to national prominence.  

As captain in her sophomore year, she led her team to national team championships in both the Open Fences and Open Flat divisions. In the same season, she captured the coveted Cacchione Cup, the highest honor for extraordinary individual performance. The 1999 riding team was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008.  

Phibbs was celebrated not only for her results but also for her quiet determination and leadership. She was known for having a tremendous feel for the horse and a remarkable eye from the moment she stepped into the ring — instincts that elevated her to the top tier of collegiate riders. 

Phibbs was already a rising star in the equestrian world before she came to Skidmore College. In 1997, she was named National Junior Equestrian of the Year by the US Equestrian Federation. She was also the national junior jumper champion and winner of the Washington International Horse Show Equitation Finals. 

After Skidmore, Phibbs pursued a career in medicine, becoming a respected OB/GYN in Toledo, Ohio. She brought the same care, precision, and compassion to her patients that she had shown as a rider and teammate. 

Lindsey Phibbs passed away in 2015 after a courageous battle with cancer. She is remembered as an extraordinary athlete and dedicated physician who was deeply loved by her family, friends, and teammates. Her legacy endures in the many lives she touched and inspired. 

DURHAM, N.H. – University of New Hampshire head men’s hockey coach Mike Souza will represent UNH at the 97th Spengler Cup as an assistant coach of U.S. Collegiate Selects on Dec. 26-31 in Davos, Switzerland. The Selects will be the first team made up of collegiate athletes to compete in the world’s oldest invitational hockey tournament.
   
 
Guy Gadowsky (Penn State University) was selected as the inaugural head coach, while Jason Lammers (Niagara University) will join Souza as an assistant coach.
 
 
“I am very excited to be on a staff with coach Gadowsky and coach Lammers, and to represent UNH at the Spengler Cup, a tournament with so much tradition and prestige,” said Souza. “It is an honor to be a part of the first team made up of collegiate athletes to compete in the tournament. This will be a tremendous opportunity for the student-athletes who are selected, and I am looking forward to coaching in such a special environment.”
 
 
The U.S. Collegiate Selects will be made up of 25 student-athletes from across NCAA men’s ice hockey, with each conference being represented. The competition runs from December 26-31, with the six participating teams playing a minimum of two contests apiece. Along with the Selects, host HC Davos, Team Canada, HC Fribourg-Gotteron, Sparta Praha and IFK Helsinki will be taking part in the 2025 edition.
 
 
This will be only the second time an American-based select team has taken part in the Spengler Cup, following a U.S. squad that won the tournament in 1988, but this will be the first to be made up of collegiate athletes.
 
 
Souza is now in his eighth season as head coach at UNH, which included a 20-15-1 record in 2023-24 for the program’s best finish in 11 years.  
 

A native of Wakefield, Mass., Souza played at UNH from 1996-00 totaling 66 goals and 90 assists for 156 points, as the Wildcats reached the national championship game in 1999. He went on to play professionally in the AHL and ECHL, before heading overseas to play in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. His coaching career began as an assistant at Brown University (2011-13), before heading to the University of Connecticut (2013-15) and eventually his alma mater as an associate head coach (2015-18).

 

For more information on the Spengler Cup, visit www.spenglercup.ch/en.

 

 

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The Wildcats start the 2025-26 season at Michigan State on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 9-10, while the home season will begin versus LIU (Oct. 24) and Quinnipiac (Oct. 25).
 
 
Individual game tickets for the 2025-26 University of New Hampshire men’s hockey season are on sale now for all 17 home games by visiting UNHWildcats.com/BuyTickets or by calling (603) 862-4000.