NACOGDOCHES — Six former female athletes are suing Stephen F. Austin State University for violating Title IX a little more than a month after the school announced it was cutting four sports.

The suit filed June 1 in federal court in Lufkin accuses the university of violating a section of law that promises equal protection and opportunity for men and women participating in collegiate sports.

SFA announced May 22 that it was cutting golf for men and women along with beach volleyball and bowling, which were women’s sports at the university.

University officials were served with the lawsuit Tuesday, said Damon C. Derrick, general counsel for the university.

“The university takes its Title IX obligations seriously and is prepared to respond through the legal process. As this is an ongoing legal matter, the university will not comment further at this time,” Derrick said in an email.

The suit was publicly announced by California-based attorney Arthur Bryant, who is representing the six former SFA athletes and “others similarly situated.”

“SFA’s elimination of the women’s beach volleyball, bowling, and golf teams is a blatant violation of Title IX,” Bryant said. “We reviewed the facts and the law with the school, asked it to reinstate the teams and agree to comply with Title IX, and it refused. So our clients are doing what SFA is requiring them to do — hold the school accountable in court.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs and the school met Friday, but SFA refused to bring back the three women’s teams, Bryant said.

The civil complaint tells only one side of the legal argument. SFA had not filed a response in court as of Tuesday.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Sophia Myers, Kara Kay, Ryann Allison, Elaina Amador, Berkelee Andrews and Meagan Ledbetter.

“It is truly sad and disappointing that we have to sue SFA to make it comply with Title IX, provide women with equal opportunities, and preserve our teams,” Myers said. “But we have to stand up for our rights and fight what is right, including the gender equity Title IX requires.”

Myers was a member of the beach volleyball program and has one year of eligibility remaining.

Kay is an incoming senior who was on the bowling team. The suit alleges that her credit hours at SFA would not transfer to other schools.

Allison is an incoming redshirt junior, who says in the suit that transferring would impede her academic progress and ambitions to attend medical school. She said she has chosen to give up beach volleyball if SFA does not restore the team.

Amador will be a senior this fall. She was a member of the beach volleyball program and said its elimination had caused her “considerable sadness, frustration and anxiety.”

Andrews will also be a senior this fall. Andrews was born without her left hand. When she joined SFA, she became the first ever Division I adaptive beach volleyball player and she has aspirations of playing beach volleyball at the Paralympics. Ledbetter is an incoming senior who said she’s been negatively impacted by the elimination of beach volleyball.

In the 2022–23 school year, SFA reported to the U.S. Department of Education that it had 7,832 undergraduate students — 4,961 were women and 2,871 were men, according to the suit. That means about 63.3% of undergrads were women. However, only 46.7% of the students on SFA’s sports teams were women — 212 women compared to 242 men, the suit says.

To follow Title IX rules, SFA needs to offer more sports opportunities for women, Bryant said. Eliminating the sports affected 40 women and 11 men, which makes the university even further away from meeting Title IX requirements.

Title IX requires that men and women have an equal opportunity to participate in college sports. Doing this would require SFA to add 218 spots for women in sports, Bryant said.

John Clune and Ashlyne Hare of Hutchinson Black and Cook in Boulder, CO, and James L. Sowder and Ellen Platt of Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons, LLP, in Dallas, are co-counsel for the women athletes.

(more…)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard University has earned eight Academic All-Ivy At-Large Selections, the Ivy League announced today.
 
Academic All-Ivy At-Large selections are open to one student-athlete from each institution’s non-Ivy League sponsored sports – women’s archery, women’s equestrian, sprint football, women’s gymnastics, women’s lightweight rowing, women’s rugby, coed sailing, women’s skiing, men’s skiing, men’s volleyball, women’s water polo, men’s water polo.

Harvard’s honorees include: Quincy Donley, Charlotte Paley, Carly Lehman and Heidi Heffelfinger on the women’s side, while Matt Ryan, Mitchell Callahan, Logan Shepherd, and Tyler Zarcu took home honors among the men’s teams. 

 

Criteria for the award includes that the student-athlete must be in good academic standing at the institution, the recipient must be a starter or key reserve on your roster, and the student-athlete cannot be a first-year student-athlete.

WOMEN’S

Quincy Donley | Senior | Women’s Nordic Skiing | Anchorage, Alaska

• 2025 NCAA Qualifier
• 2025 CSC Academic All-District
• Two-time Team Captain (2023-24, 2024-25)
• Two-time Team MVP (2023-24, 2024-25)
• Four-time USCSCA All-Academic Ski Team

Charlotte Paley | Junior | Women’s Lightweight Rowing | Miami Beach, Florida

• Member of the first varsity eight the past three seasons
• IRA silver medal in 2025
• IRA bronze medal in 2024
• Team CMO
• 2^nd overall at 2025 Eastern Sprints

Carly Lehman | Senior | Women’s Rugby |  Shaker Heights, Ohio

• Two-time national champion in NIRA 15s
• Key starting player the past two seasons
• Team captain 2024
• ROTC member

Heidi Heffelfinger | Junior | Women’s Water Polo |  Lafayette, Calif.

• Helped lead the Crimson to its first-ever CWPA Championship and trip to the NCAA Tournament 
•  Finished with 57 goals and 26 assists in a career-best year.
• Second on the team in shooting percentage

MEN’S 

Matt Ryan | Senior | Men’s Alpine Skiing | Duxbury, Mass.

• 2022 NCAA Qualifier
• 2025 CSC Academic All-District
• 2024-25 Team Captain
• 2024-25 Coaches Award Winner
• 2023-24 Team MVP
• Four-time USCSCA All-Academic Ski Team

Mitchell Callahan | Junior | Sailing | Miami, Fla.

• Named 2025 ICSA All-America Open Skipper
• Helped team win 2025 ICSA Open Team Race National Championship
• Guided team to fifth-place finish at 2025 ICSA Open Fleet Race Championship

Logan Shepherd | Senior |  Men’s Volleyball | Cave Springs. Ark. 

•  Two-time team captain (2024, 2025)
• Second Team All-EIVA
• Led the team in kills with 169 total (2.28/set)
• Led the team in aces with 26 total
• Led the team in digs with 122 total (1.65/set)
• Finished career ninth in career digs with 450 total

Tyler Zarcu | Senior | Men’s Water Polo | Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.

• Senior captain
• Helped lead the Crimson to its 10^th consecutive season with 20+ wins. 
• Netted 12 goals and added 22 assists in 2024. 

Much about the Good Luck Fund—a private foundation with lofty public goals—remains uncertain. How will it select businesses for the properties it buys? Can those enterprises succeed in a market in which labor is scarce and housing expensive? Will residents open their wallets to support the fund, which could quickly burn through founder Chris Hulls’s initial $15 million donation?

For all the questions surrounding the enterprise, one thing is crystal clear: Point Reyes Station residents want it to succeed. 

Last Wednesday, about 250 of them packed into the former Station House Café building and cheered on Mr. Hulls as he sketched out his vision for the fund, whose mission is to preserve historic downtown properties, attract and retain key businesses and sustain the community’s 20th-century ranch-town vibe.

People spilled out of the building’s dimly lit interior and into the courtyard, where the garden was abloom. Mr. Hulls, a 41-year-old tech entrepreneur whose style is straightforward and self-deprecating, was startled by the size of the crowd.

“We were expecting maybe a couple dozen people,” he said. “I just started preparing for this about five minutes ago, so I’m kind of winging it. The idea was just to get people together and get feedback.”

A procession of people came forward to ask questions and share their ideas for transforming two of the fund’s recent purchases—11180 Highway 1, the former home of the Station House Café, which moved across the street—and the Inverness property that housed Vladimir’s Czech Restaurant, which closed two years ago. 

Attendees’ ideas ran the gamut, from restaurants to a community theater to a plant nursery.

“I have some personal ideas about what to do with Vladimir’s, but not everybody agrees with them,” said Tom Pillsbury, an Inverness resident. “Some of my friends would like it to be a breakfast spot, but I think it would be a perfect Mexican restaurant. That’s my two cents.”

Rich Clarke of Point Reyes Station proposed a community swimming pool, a place that could unite West Marin’s burgeoning elderly population with younger community members. 

“The kids could learn to swim and play water polo, and the adults could do water aerobics,” he said. “The health of our community, at this point in our lives, is dependent upon how active we stay and how much we put into taking care of ourselves.”

Mr. Clarke’s suggestion was greeted with boisterous applause. 

Other people proposed installing a mix of businesses at the former Station House, which sits on a large lot. Lynette Le Mere, who owns a Santa Barbara catering business and recently moved full time to Inverness Park, said the space was big enough to accommodate a variety of food-oriented enterprises.

“For this place, and Vladimir’s, a lot of people with good ideas for food and cooking could come together and participate in community,” she said. “We have lots of delicious ideas.”

Amid all the brainstorming, people also raised questions and concerns.

Michel Venghiattis, a professional food consultant from Nicasio, stressed that small, start-up enterprises might need some sort of economic boost to succeed.

“I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life,” he said. “I went bankrupt once, so I know how tough business can be. I think what you’re doing is wonderful, but I think it’s important to remember that this is a small town, and the amount of income that can be generated from any business is very limited. Somehow, a structure needs to be built so that rents are reasonable so that folks with local businesses can make it.”

Mr. Hulls said the fund would take a businesslike approach to selecting prospective tenants, examining business plans to ascertain their strength and sustainability. While the fund would seek enterprises that could support themselves over the long haul, it might subsidize rents up front. 

Cas Adler-Ivanbrook, an Inverness Park resident, inquired about the structure of the fund and the procedures it would follow moving forward.

“You’ve told us that you’re going to seek out proposals, get feedback and make decisions,” he said. “What is the decision-making process? Who gets a say in what the decision process is going to be? Do you have a structure in mind for that? Would it be just one person or a group of people?”

For now, Mr. Hulls said, the fund is operating as a private foundation in which one person can make quick decisions, but its procedures could evolve moving forward. In addition to soliciting community business proposals, it plans to appoint citizen committees to review ideas that come in, drawing on local expertise to assess them. The details will be ironed out as events unfold.

“My model is, you jump of a cliff, and you build the plane on the way down,” said Mr. Hulls, who grew up in Point Reyes Station and is the founder and C.E.O. of the location-sharing app Life360. “We really don’t have too much of a plan. We’re figuring it out as we go. It’s going to be a little chaotic and messy, but we’re just going for it.”

Other audience members pointed out that the lack of affordable housing has made it difficult for existing businesses to staff their operations, with many employees driving from Petaluma or Santa Rosa. 

Buddy Faure, 23, who grew up in Inverness and would like to spend his life here, asked whether Mr. Hulls had considered building affordable housing.

“It’s important is to recognize how many people end up growing up here and then end up leaving and never coming back,” he said. “It upsets me, you know. I want to stay here my whole life, but it’s very hard to see a way forward.”

Mr. Hulls suggested that housing could possibly be built in conjunction with an enterprise at the former Station House site, which has ample septic capacity and a substantial parking lot out back. But he said that the local community land trust is better equipped to take on housing challenges while the foundation focuses on attracting suitable businesses.

Mr. Hulls said the fund has no fixed notions about what those businesses should be, but he did offer ideas about general characteristics they might have. He pointed to the Old Western Saloon, another fund acquisition and a classic dive bar that caters to ranchers, construction workers and landscapers as wells as the tourists who pass through town.

“To be honest, a little rough and tumble and weird is something I want to preserve,” he said to applause. “It seems like there’s been a lot of support for that. The eccentrics and weirdos make this town.”

Some of the ideas put forward at the meeting would duplicate or compete with existing businesses in town, including new restaurants, a gallery, a nursery and a performance space. Giving the newcomers subsidies could put longtime establishments at a disadvantage, Ken Taymor, an Inverness Park resident, pointed out. “How are you going to make sure you don’t cannibalize existing businesses?” he asked.  

Mr. Hulls said he had conferred with local business owners, some of whom were nervous about the prospect of new competition, but he found that most of them welcomed the fund’s efforts. “The general theme I’ve heard is that vibrancy builds vibrancy, and having half a downtown dead is bad for everybody,” he said.

For more information or to submit ideas, go to https://goodluckfund.org

YORKTON – It was been a great season to-date for Kain Salmond in terms of chuckwagon racing.

Heading into a huge week where he is scheduled to run three days at the Yorkton, then heading down the road to race Saturday and Sunday in Sheho, Salmond was leading the season results in the Eastern Professional Chariot & Chuckwagon Association.

“Last year I was running pretty tough,” he told Yorkton This Week before the first heats in the city Wednesday. “I was sixth overall last year.”

This season Salmond, who hails from the Bertwell area in Saskatchewan, made a change to the team he runs on the wagon.

“I changed one horse. That really set me up,” he said.

Salmond, 22, explained that the new horse is his right lead horse, which of course is a key member of a team, in part because of its ‘smarts’.

“You can get by with a dumb one on the pole. . . A lead horse has got to be a little smarter,” he explained.

The new horse is the final cog in the engine one might say.

That said Salmond noted the other three horses he runs were with him last year, and that means they have experience, and that plays into a solid running team.

“Three of the four are the same . . . they know each other better,” he said.

Familiarity means cohesion in the traces.

Of course once on top the goal is staying there, which Salmond said will not be easy.

“Anyone can beat anyone,” he said.

For Salmond the top spot in the standing is another step in a driving career that was near destiny given his family lineage. His dad Clint has been driving chuckwagons since he turned 16 – the minimum age to drive.

“Grandpa Wayne was driving horses back in the bush logging when he was 11 or 12,” said Kain, adding he has raced for years.

The family experience is something he draws on too, adding he and his Dad often discuss “who we’re hooked up against, or what the track conditions are like.”

A couple of his horses come from Grandpa too.

Salmond said he certainly wouldn’t be at the level he is today without the help and support of what is a very extensive racing family – he expected 10 would race in Yorkton.

It’s the same with sponsors, another key partner in success, said Salmond.

“We wouldn’t make it down the road without them,” he said.

So Kain grew up around race tracks and horses.

“Every summer I travelled with Dad and Mom,” he said, adding he developed an interest at a young age “and here we are I guess.”

Kain started out driving chariots – as most drivers do – and still runs those too. In fact he often runs two teams, using the spare horses he carries on a second hitch as a way to keep them in shape should they be needed on his main chariot or the wagon.

Interestingly his first wagon run came in Yorkton back in 2021.

“Obviously there were more nerves,” he said, adding he just wanted to “get around the track.”

After the race the excitement manifested.

“I’d been waiting a long time to get in the wagon box,” said Salmond.