MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL – The Minnesota Lynx announced today it will celebrate Minnesota Lynx legend and four-time WNBA champion Seimone Augustus and her 2024 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and 2024 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductions with a special pregame ceremony and banner unveil on Saturday, June 14 vs. Los Angeles Sparks at 12:00 p.m. CT.

The on-court pregame program will be emceed by FanDuel Sports Network Lynx analyst Lea B. Olsen and will include remarks from fellow Naismith Hall of Famer (2018) and former Lynx player and Associate Head Coach Katie Smith. Augustus and Smith won gold together as members of the 2008 U.S. Women’s National Team in Beijing and share a connection through their legendary Lynx careers. Current Lynx players will wear an honorary Augustus warm-up shirt.

Fans are encouraged to be in their seats by 11:15 a.m. with the first 6,000 fans receiving a mini-replica Augustus Hall of Fame banner giveaway. The ceremony is set to start at approximately 11:30 a.m. Doors open an hour before tipoff at 11:00 a.m.

The celebratory weekend will also feature a special mentoring night with Augustus and Twin Cities Pride, including LGBTQ+ youth from QUEERSPACE collective and Transforming Families. Hosted at The Pride Cultural Arts Center, youth will have the opportunity to spend an evening in conversation with Augustus. In addition, Augustus will host a youth basketball clinic with Lynx alumni, including Smith, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Tamika Williams-Jeter and Devereaux Peters at the team’s practice facility, Mayo Clinic Square.

Augustus, a first-time nominee, became only the second Lynx player in franchise history to be elected to the Naismith Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, joining Lindsay Whalen who was selected in 2022. She is the fourth all-time Lynx to receive this prestigious honor alongside Whalen, Smith (2018) and Teresa Edwards (2011). Augustus’ WNBA career spanned 16 years, earning her four WNBA Championships with Minnesota (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017), six All-WNBA selections (2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014) and eight All-Star nods (2006, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).

In addition to her four WNBA Championships, which also includes 2011 WNBA Finals MVP honors, Augustus cemented her legacy with three Olympic gold medals (2008, 2012 and 2016) with Team USA and two FIBA World Championship medals (2006 and 2014).

Augustus currently serves on the USA Basketball 2025-2028 Quadrennium Board of Directors as an Athlete Director. She was a member of USA Basketball Women’s National Team Committee who selected the 2024 USA Basketball Women’s National Team, who won gold in last year’s Olympic Games in Paris.

Augustus’ coaching career includes time with the Los Angeles Sparks (2021-2022), and she currently serves as an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team at her alma mater, Louisiana State University (LSU). The Baton Rouge native, who became the first former female student-athlete at LSU to receive a statue in her honor in 2023, was also inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in June 2024.

Minnesota retired Augustus’ number 33 jersey on May 29, 2022 immortalizing her place in the Target Center rafters. Her legacy also lives on at LSU, where her number 33 hangs in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and her statue stands outside the arena.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday signed into law the Stand With Women Act, which forbids biological males from competing in women’s sports in K-12 schools as well as at colleges and universities.

“Because of the physical differences between males and females, having separate athletic teams based on the sex of the athlete reduces the chance of injury to female athletes, promotes equality between the sexes, provides opportunities for female athletes to compete against their female peers rather than against male athletes, and allows female athletes to compete on a fair playing field for scholarships and other athletic accomplishments,” the law states.

At a signing ceremony, Pillen praised the development, saying the act “is really a big deal, for our young people, for our kids, standing up for women, and it’s a big deal standing up for the values of Nebraska.”

Prior to its passage, the bill was hotly contested, and attempts to ban biological men from women’s bathrooms and locker rooms did not make the final cut.

“We were only able to get the athletic portion on, but I will be back next year bringing you the bathrooms and the locker rooms…the work is not done,” said state Sen. Kathleen Kauth during the signing ceremony.

KOLN reported that not everyone is pleased, such as OutNebraska Executive Director Abbi Swatsworth, who stated: “We are disappointed by the signing of LB 89, a transgender youth sports ban, into law today. Our hearts break for the young children and families who are celebrating Pride this month while also grappling with the reality of this harmful legislation.”

But conservatives praised the development.

“Letting men intrude on women and girls’ sports teams is an invasion of privacy, a threat to their safety, and a denial of the real biological differences between the sexes,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Erica O’Connell in a statement, adding Kauth and the Nebraska Family Alliance played a large role in its passage.

“Nebraska is right to ensure that female athletes of all ages have a fair and level playing field and protect the safety and dignity of women and girls.”

MORE: HS girls softball team wins championship behind arm of male pitcher

IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: A group of female athletes smile and hug each other / People Images (Shutterstock)

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TROY, Ala. – T-Roy’s Kids Club is back for the 2025-26 athletic season. Kids 12 and under can join the fun with ‘Early Bird Pricing’ for $30 per membership until July 30. Following July 30, membership will cost $35 per child. All T-Roy’s Kids Club members will receive a complimentary t-shirt, T-Roy activity book and access to exclusive events throughout the year.
 
Trojan fans 12 and younger who join will be part of the unique opportunity that pairs them with the Trojan Warrior Club, which allows the youth to become valued members of Troy Athletics.
 
Kids Club members will receive an email newsletter, a birthday card from T-Roy and a membership credential that they can use for exclusive access during Troy home events. In-game opportunities for members may include National Anthem Buddies, T-Roy’s Kids Club Member of the Game, game ball delivery, high five tunnels and much more.
 
Registering for T-Roy’s Kids Club is as simple as visiting TroyTrojans.com/KidsClub or calling our ticket office at (334) 670-3681.
 
If you have any questions about the T-Roy’s Kids Club, contact Macy Wiederin at mwiederin@troy.edu.

 

Douglas County leads statewide increase

Juvenile facilities began reporting quarterly room confinement data to the Nebraska Legislature after senators passed Legislative Bill 894 in 2016. Since then, the Office of Inspector General of Nebraska Child Welfare has compiled data in an annual report, which is provided to the Legislature. That four-person office investigates incidents and misconduct in the entire state’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems. 

The 2023-24 facility data revealed “concerning trends” in room confinement use, according to the report. Compared to the previous year, there was a 110% increase in total confinement hours and a 48% increase in total confinement incidents.

“Based on the data alone, it appears that these increases are contrary to Nebraska law,” the report said. 

Seven of the eight juvenile facilities in Nebraska reported increases in confinement hours, including the Douglas County Youth Center. It alone was responsible for 57% of the total 119,300 confinement hours, according to the report, meaning youth at the Omaha facility spent a combined total of nearly 8 years in confinement.

Douglas County is Nebraska’s largest county by population.

The center also holds youth in confinement for the longest of any Nebraska facilities, the 2023-24 report shows. 

Douglas County Youth Center’s average incident time was 145 hours and 42 minutes, or roughly six days, which is the longest average in Douglas County’s history, dating back to 2016 when record keeping began. 

‘Making it all worse’

The increases in confinement use raise alarm bells for youth advocates like Anahí Salazar, policy coordinator at the nonprofit Voices for Children. Salazar said the data leads her to believe that facilities aren’t following current law.

“If you’re using it as a timeout, then a young person doesn’t need to be in there for six hours,” Salazar said.

Facilities are also required to report the reason a youth is in confinement. In 2023-24, Douglas County reported that 221 room confinement incidents were used to address fighting; another 189 addressed assault or attempted assault.

Salazar said she hopes facilities are working to calm youth before putting them directly in confinement after engaging in aggressive behaviors.

Failing to speak with youth about their behavior while keeping them confined only increases the likelihood they’ll repeat the behavior, she said. 

“If you’re not providing that for these young people…within, you know, an hour, two hours, three,” Salazar continued, “then I just think it’s making it all worse.”

The 17-year-old central Omahan, who said he was confined six times, said there aren’t many opportunities for youth to speak with staff about coming out of lockdown.

“We don’t really have much of a voice in it,” he said. “Whatever they say happens. There isn’t really nothing that we can say that’s going to change it.”

Woodard said that while his staff tries alternative methods to resolve issues with youth, confinement is sometimes necessary for safety – especially when violence stems from gang-related issues and conflicts that started outside of the facility.  

“A lot of the violence that takes place in the Omaha community is generational,” Woodard said. “It comes from things that have happened years ago.”

If teens get into a conflict over a basketball game, staff can usually help them work it out through conversation, he said. 

When a gang-affiliated teen in the facility sees someone they consider an enemy, Woodard said the teen is more determined to cause harm. In these cases, he said, talking things through or using positive rewards often isn’t enough to keep everyone safe.

“If a kid is really angry, they really don’t care about it,” Woodard said. “We can only give them so many bags of chips and positive reinforcement.”

‘Really big trigger’ for youth with mental health issues

Over 70% of youth in the U.S. juvenile justice system have mental health conditions, with 30% of those youth having severe conditions, according to The Council of State Governments Justice Center. 

Monica Miles-Steffens, compliance coordinator at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Juvenile Justice Institute, said it’s important that facilities recognize the psychological impact of confinement. 

“Putting a kid in isolation can be really harmful,” Miles-Steffens said. “Especially young people who have mental health concerns.”

In 2024, the American Psychological Association formally opposed the use of “harmful individual isolation” in juvenile facilities and adopted 10 recommendations, several of which Nebraska has already incorporated into state law, such as documenting its use and using it in a time-limited manner. 

Miles-Steffens said facility staff also need to recognize past experiences of youth, such as trauma during childhood. 

“Some of these kids with crossover issues in child welfare, they were removed from their families because of very traumatic neglect and abuse situations where they might have been placed in isolation for extended periods of time,” Miles-Steffens said. “It can be a really big trigger for those kids in that trauma.”

System crossover is common. A 2021 study led by criminologist Denise Herz found that two-thirds of youth involved in Los Angeles County’s justice system had previously interacted with the child welfare system. 

Tarika Daftary-Kapur, a researcher at Montclair State University in New Jersey, has focused her work on juvenile justice and adolescent decision making. 

Research shows that confinement can have lasting mental harm on young people, she said. 

“Solitary or room confinement for children, and even adults, for long, sustained periods of time can lead to depression, it can lead to anxiety,” Daftary-Kapur said. “Because they have higher levels of developmental vulnerability…they are at an even heightened risk of having these sorts of adverse reactions.”

Educational access limited

Nebraska law requires juveniles in confinement to have the same access to education as the general population. 

Douglas County Youth Center’s daily schedule includes classes in the morning and afternoon, during which teachers instruct youth in person and through learning packets. 

The central Omaha teen said teachers were his favorite staff. 

“They’ll sit there and talk to you about anything,” he said. 

During a 30-day period he spent on lockdown, he said he didn’t interact with teachers or fill out the daily packets, because he wasn’t allowed a pencil in his cell.

Christine Henningsen, associate director of Nebraska’s Center on Children, Families and the Law, previously worked as a public defender in Douglas County. She said staff at the Douglas County Youth Center have told her that youth in confinement aren’t allowed to leave their rooms for classes. 

“If you’re in room confinement, what I was told is you’re not let out, but you can listen (to teachers) at the window,” Henningsen said. “And you could knock on the window and hold up a worksheet and try and get feedback from the teacher from the other side of your door.”

Douglas County Youth Center provides additional reading materials to youth through its library services, but the Bennington teen said the library is unavailable to youth while in lockdown.

“You got to just hope somebody will go get a book for you,” he said. “And then hope it can fit under the door.”

Each situation is handled individually, Woodard said. Teens who write on the walls or make weapons with pencils may get items taken away, he said. 

“There’s way more factors than this just being simple,” Woodard said.

Family visits

The law also states that youth in confinement must have the same access to visits with legal guardians. 

However, the Douglas County Youth Center’s website specifies that youth in “restrictive housing” are only allowed to have visits in the facility’s admissions area, and these visits may be restricted from an hour to 30 minutes due to “space availability.” Youth who are not in confinement receive two one-hour visits each week, according to the facility’s website. 

The main visitation area, the North Omaha teen said, has multiple tables and vending machines, and multiple youth are able to have visits at a time. He said the admissions visit area is only large enough for one youth and two visitors at a time.

“In the other room, it’s like the cell,” the 16-year-old said.

Youth in confinement are strip-searched before a family visit, which the central Omaha teen said doesn’t occur with general population visits.

“A lot of kids would miss out on their visit, because they know they’re going to get strip-searched,” he said. 

The Benson teen said strip searches are typically only used when youth first arrive at the facility. During his time in confinement, he said he passed up multiple visits with family to avoid going through the experience. 

“Some people might not be comfortable with it,” he said. “There may be trauma behind it.”

The North Omaha teen said certain staff members made him feel especially uncomfortable during those searches.

“I don’t know if a strip search is supposed to go like that, but they just get to looking all at you and stuff,” he said. 

Woodard said youth in confinement are strip-searched after visits because these visits happen in a room that is not supervised by staff, nor is the room monitored with a camera. Strip searches are necessary to prevent contraband from entering the facility, he said. 

“We already have parents who are in regular visitation who are bringing in contraband,” Woodard said.

The Nebraska Crime Commission, a state government agency, defines a strip search as “an examination of a resident’s naked body for weapons, contraband, injuries or vermin infestations,” and the commission’s juvenile standards say all searches shall be the least intrusive type necessary for a facility’s safety. A pat search, with clothes on, should be the initial way to search youth, according to the juvenile standards.

Advocates: More oversight needed

Reflecting on her previous work as a public defender, Henningsen said she wasn’t fully aware of the prevalence of room confinement before the annual reports started in 2016. 

“Looking back, I wish it was something I would have been regularly asking my clients about, but it was not anything that anyone even talked about,” Henningsen said. 

Mandating the annual reports was a step in the right direction in holding facilities accountable to the law, she said.

“That, in and of itself, I think dramatically reduced the amount it was used, because they’re like, ‘Oh, somebody’s looking at it,’” Henningsen said.

While the inspector general for Nebraska’s adult prisons conducts regular in-person facility visits, the child welfare inspector general relies on self-reported facility data when creating the juvenile room confinement report.

“We don’t have the authority right now to go in and say, ‘When there was this confinement, what really happened?’ and make sure it was a safety and security reason,” said Jennifer Carter, the state’s inspector general for child welfare. “We’re just looking at what the facilities are self-reporting.”

Editorial of June 5, 2025

The Paul Bunyans are Coming Back

Next weekend, June 13-15, in Cherry Valley, the Cherry Valley Outdoor Games returns for its eighth season of mind-boggling lumberjack and lumberjill competitions, festive music, tempting gastronomical delicacies, non-timber sports battles and some added Father’s Day entertainment as well. This packed three-day event has become, in less than a decade, a go-to festival for our entire upstate community, something on a par with the traditional state fair.

The Cherry Valley Outdoor Games features one of America’s best timber sports competitions, drawing top-ranked athletes from many states across the country, as well as from nearby Canada and far-away Australia, to test their mighty skills and, if all goes well, rake in a national title.

The Cherry Valley games are recognized nationally, right up there with industry leader STIHL’s Lumberjack World Championship in Wisconsin, with attendance here reaching a record 8,000+ in 2019, just before the rise of the pandemic. The village ran out of parking spaces. The event has been the largest held in northern Otsego County and one of the largest in the county, drawing attendees primarily from the tri-county area, but also attracting a significant number of people from other areas and states. In those early years, CVOG ran on a budget of $10,000.00; now that budget is $45,000, enough to meet the fast-rising popularity of timber games.

The mission and focus of these games is to bring people and attention to Cherry Valley and the bucolic area of northern Otsego County that surrounds the village; to promote and support youth sports in a place that has limited organized sports programs; to provide the juniors and seniors of the Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School as well as other worthy local organizations with on-site fundraising opportunities, with banners, banter and displays; and to bring the community together to voluntarily plan and voluntarily produce a top-notch event that maintains a free admission for all.

The first day of the games is for the local schoolchildren, who are introduced to the extreme timber sports that will take place on the other two days, with an afternoon of demonstrations, discussions and activities.

On Saturday (Flag Day) and Sunday (Father’s Day) the real battles take place, with prize money and national titles on the line. There are competitions in Hot Saw, Speed Carving, Axe Throwing, Speed Climbing, Single Buck, Logrolling, Underhand Chop, Springboard Chop, and an Obstacle Pole Relay Race. Further, as in past years, the Outdoor Games will continue to feature a two-day cornhole tournament, a bandstand that will host a multitude of musicians, a car show, an archery shoot and, on Sunday, the Diamond Dash “Run to the Bases,” a 5K jaunt that supports the Cherry Valley Youth Baseball/T-Ball program.

There’s a lot going on. Let’s go to Cherry Valley. Maybe Babe will be there, too.