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Tom Krasovic

San Diego Wave general manager Camille Ashton will see bright aspects of her soccer past and present on Saturday, when the Kansas City Current and Wave play in Mission Valley. Current forward Temwa Chawinga is a global star from Africa who, along with coach Vlatko Andonovski, joined the club when Ashton was Kansas City’s GM. […]

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4 weeks ago

April 12, 2025

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San Diego Wave general manager Camille Ashton will see bright aspects of her soccer past and present on Saturday, when the Kansas City Current and Wave play in Mission Valley.

Current forward Temwa Chawinga is a global star from Africa who, along with coach Vlatko Andonovski, joined the club when Ashton was Kansas City’s GM. Teams built partly by Ashton reached the National Women’s Soccer League final in 2022 and semifinals in 2024. Led by its top star and coach, K.C. now stands 3-0-0.

Ashton left K.C. last May, joining the Wave a month later.

Several players she’s brought to San Diego (1-1-1) have provided entertaining moments. One is African forward Chiamaka Okwuchukwu, 19.

In 2011, the future Wave GM was a versatile All-American on Stanford’s national championship team. She went on to play with three NWSL franchises and in three European leagues.

Embracing a learning adventure, Ashton then worked with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in talent development.

The mother of a young boy and expecting the birth of her second son this summer, the 34-year-old Ashton answered questions ahead of Saturday’s 7 p.m. match at Snapdragon Stadium.

What excites you about this Wave team?

A: There’s a lot that does. It’s obviously early. There was a lot of change to this team over the last couple of months. You can see the way we’re trying to play the game. It’s an exciting team to watch and a team that is fighting to win.

In what ways is coach Jonas Eidevall, formerly of England’s Arsenal, meeting the expectations you had when you hired him in January?

A: He’s done a really, really good job in a short amount of time. We had staff still joining throughout the preseason. So it wasn’t like there was a lot of time to put this new group together to build connections and set up processes to start the season. So, he’s really starting to build a foundation. He’s very clear in his expectations and standards.

Wave general manager Camille Ashton played at Stanford under her maiden name, Camille Levin. Levin (facing camera) hugs teammate Christen Press (23) after making a goal during the semifinals of the NCAA Women's College Cup soccer tournament against Boston College in Cary, N.C., Friday, Dec. 3, 2010. Stanford won 2-0 over Boston College. (AP Photo/Sara D. Davis) — Wave general manager Camille Ashton played at Stanford under her maiden name, Camille Levin. Levin (facing camera) hugs teammate Christen Press (23) after making a goal during the semifinals of the NCAA Women’s College Cup soccer tournament against Boston College in Cary, N.C., Friday, Dec. 3, 2010. Stanford won 2-0 over Boston College. (AP Photo/Sara D. Davis)

What’s your scouting report of yourself as a player?

A: I don’t know (laughs). I haven’t thought about me in a long time. It’s been a minute.

You played several positions, right?

A: That is true. I spent a lot of my career playing multiple positions. I was usually a right back. But I played left back, central-mid. I played like a wing position. So at Stanford, I played every single position except for goalkeeper at some point.

That seems conducive to becoming a GM. Broadened your soccer view?

A: Yes, you certainly learn a lot playing multiple positions throughout your career. So, I don’t think that hurt me, certainly.

How did you end up with WWE after your playing career ended?

A: So, I actually got my master’s in sports management when I was finishing my playing career. And when I started to think about what was next for me, I knew I wanted to stay in sports and be on the management side.

Quite honestly, at that time, in soccer, and certainly in this league, there really weren’t general managers. The route if I wanted to stay in the game was coaching, and that was never a passion of mine. There really wasn’t this general manager-type role yet that had evolved in the women’s game.

The most important thing for me was to be somewhere where I felt like I was going to learn a lot. And I had an opportunity through actually somebody I’d met through my Stanford alumni network that headed all the talent development at WWE.

It was a world I knew nothing about, in wrestling, but obviously a very established sports and entertainment entity that I learned so much from. Actually, even though it seems like it couldn’t be more different than soccer and this (NWSL) world — (there were) a lot of parallels in what I learned there in what I was doing. There was recruitment of talent there, and management of a development system, and over 100 athletes from all over the world trained in part of this development system there with 40-plus staff — coaches, medical, performance, nutrition.

What led to the acquisition of Chawinga, who’s from Malawi and played in China and Sweden?

A: I’m really proud of my time in Kansas City. Right now, Kansas City is certainly a team to beat in the league. Everybody knows who Chemwa is now, maybe not so much when she joined the league. I’m really happy for her.

My focus is obviously on San Diego. I’m really excited about this team, and everything we’ve started to build here. I’m excited for this game this weekend, too. …

When I came here, what we spoke about was wanting to build something that was truly sustainable. You can see in this league often a team has success one year and then it’s hard to sustain that.

And so, it was really about building something that’s sustainable where we’re competing for championships year after year. A nice bonus, too, I’m from this area originally (she attended high school in Irvine). This is also home for me, which is a nice cherry on top.

We have 15 new staff members. From the summer when I joined, we have 13 new players on this roster. It’s recruitment of players and staff and bringing these players to San Diego. Building connections with people, building a foundation.

Tongue slightly in cheek here, how long until the Wave win their first NWSL postseason championship?

A: (Laughs). That’s not a fair question to ask. Well, we’re going to do all we can to win one as soon as we can, I can tell you that much. It’s hard to put a timeline on those things. When you look at us this season, we have very clear goals to be playing in November and competing for a title.

Originally Published: April 11, 2025 at 3:04 PM PDT

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Prisoner's dilemma

Let us read it for you. Listen now. Your browser does not support the audio element. Gov. Sarah Sanders recently signed an amendment to the Arkansas Student-Athlete Publicity Rights Act into law. When she did so, Arkansas became the first state to exempt name, image, and likeness (NIL) earnings from state income tax liability. Many […]

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14 minutes ago

May 12, 2025

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Let us read it for you. Listen now.

Gov. Sarah Sanders recently signed an amendment to the Arkansas Student-Athlete Publicity Rights Act into law. When she did so, Arkansas became the first state to exempt name, image, and likeness (NIL) earnings from state income tax liability. Many other states appear to be following in Arkansas’ footsteps.

Because NIL allows student-athletes to use their personal brands to earn income, schools with more robust NIL opportunities have a recruiting edge. By exempting NIL earnings from income taxes, this new law aims to provide Arkansas’ college sports programs with an advantage over rivals.

Unfortunately, this new law means the state of Arkansas has walked right into a prisoner’s dilemma.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a particularly useful game-theory model for understanding strategic behavior. In the classic model, two criminals are suspected of committing a major crime. The police have evidence to convict each criminal of a minor crime, but do not have enough evidence to convict either one of a major crime. The police separate the two criminals where each criminal has a decision to make: Remain quiet or inform on the other.

The outcome for each criminal, though, depends on the actions of the other. Consider two criminals, Tom and Jerry. If both remain quiet, each will serve a one-year jail sentence for the minor crime. If one informs while one remains quiet, the informant will receive immunity while the other receives a five-year jail sentence. If both inform, each receives a four-year jail sentence.

To decide what he will do, Tom considers both his own self-interest and Jerry’s actions. Should Jerry remain quiet, Tom can avoid jail altogether by informing. Should Jerry inform, Tom can reduce his prison sentence from five to four years by also informing. No matter what Jerry does, Tom’s best option is to inform. We arrive at the same conclusion if we consider Jerry’s decision process.

Because each criminal has the incentive to inform on the other, both Tom and Jerry receive four-year prison sentences. But this is not the best outcome they could have achieved. Tom and Jerry would have been better off if they remained quiet and received only one-year prison sentences. That is, the competition between the individuals led to a worse outcome for the group than cooperation would have.

This prisoner’s dilemma model can be applied to the competition between states over NIL tax policy. Consider SEC football foes Arkansas and Georgia. Each state must decide whether to tax or exempt NIL earnings. If neither state exempts NIL earnings from taxation, each football program will attract its natural share of talent based on the caliber of the team, the playing time recruits can expect, coaching quality, and the proximity of the team to players’ families, among other factors. If one state taxes NIL earnings, the other state has an incentive to exempt them. The exempting state can increase its share of talent because recruits keep more of their NIL payments.

If instead, one state exempts NIL earnings, the other state still has an incentive to exempt NIL payments. To do otherwise would be to risk losing talented recruits to the program where players keep more of their NIL earnings. If both states exempt NIL earnings from taxation, both teams will earn their natural share of talent as before, but will do so at a fiscal cost. (In this case, both states give up tax revenue they previously collected.)

Just as in the classic prisoner’s dilemma, both the state of Arkansas and the state of Georgia have the incentive to exempt NIL earnings from state tax liability, regardless of what the other state does. The Arkansas and Georgia football teams will attract their natural share of talent, but the states will both forgo tax revenue.

The competition for the best recruits will lead Arkansas and Georgia to a worse outcome than they would have obtained by agreeing not to exempt NIL earnings from income-tax liability.

Solving the prisoner’s dilemma requires that the states cooperate with each other rather than compete. The dilemma, though, is that each state has a strong incentive to break any agreement to resist exempting NIL earnings from taxation.

The solution, then, is to turn to federal legislation to set a national standard for NIL policy that is enforceable. This is why we have seen the likes of SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and former Alabama football coach Nick Saban head to Washington.

Jacob Bundrick is a lecturer of economics at the University of Central Arkansas. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of UCA.

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Luke Fickell addresses potential roster limits, impact on players

Last week, the attorneys representing the NCAA and power conferences agreed to a revised plan to phase in roster limits as part of a revised House v. NCAA settlement before Judge Claudia Wilken in the U.S. Northern Districk Court of California. The proposal, which would effectively grandfather all current student-athletes and any that were preemptively […]

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3 hours ago

May 12, 2025

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Last week, the attorneys representing the NCAA and power conferences agreed to a revised plan to phase in roster limits as part of a revised House v. NCAA settlement before Judge Claudia Wilken in the U.S. Northern Districk Court of California. The proposal, which would effectively grandfather all current student-athletes and any that were preemptively cut before the settlement was finalized, would appear to satisfy Wilken’s request last month.

And while Wilken is currently considering the revised proposal, if approved, the House v. NCAA settlement would pave the way for revenue-sharing between NCAA schools and student-athletes, with some programs able to share between $20-22 million annually, or 22-percent of the average Power Five school’s annual revenue, along with approximately $2.75 billion in back damages to former college athletes over a 10-year span. It would also mean strict roster limits in football (105), men’s and women’s basketball (15), baseball (34), softball (25), men’s and women’s soccer (28) and volleyball (18).

But, at least for any coaches concerned about having to cut players three months before the start of the 2025-26 academic school year, the amended settlement would seem to be a welcomed relief. Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell, for one, explained the complicated balancing act football coaches have faced in recent months amid the ongoing uncertainty about the true impact of the settlement.

“I think the hardest thing about that is (that there are) some of the guys within your program that even in the winter we had some conversations with to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know what this thing is going to go to. If it goes to 105, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.’ So there are some guys I think that could be looming in their head,” Fickell said last month during Spring practice. “If they do make this decision and it does come down and it is across the board, meaning everybody is going to have to conform to it, and there’s going to be obviously somebody paying attention and making sure everybody is on the same page. Then we’ll address that.

“(But) no, we can’t go about doing the things and building the things expecting to have to cut down, but I know that could be difficult on some guys that are curious what’s going to happen, and what their opportunities are going to be.”

Fickell admitted many of those conversations have already taken place at Wisconsin, though no definitive decisions will be made until the settlement has been approved and guidance is provided to programs.

“We have. And just trying to be forthright, … we care about all these kids, especially the guys that have been here for a while. If and when they do go to that, there’s going to have to be some tough decisions made. And it’s not going to be easy,” Fickell continued. “We don’t know the parameters to it all, we don’t know what that entails. Can guys be in waiting, can they still be apart of some things? We have no idea. So for us to jump too far ahead other than just being really honest and open with guys, and making sure they know what we feel and where we are with things, but not making any decisions.”

The devil is in the details, and until Wilken officially approves all parts of the revised House v. NCAA settlement, college football coaches like Fickell remain in wait-and-see mode.

— On3’s Pete Nakos and Nick Schultz contributed to this report.

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ESPN botches live shot during NCAA Softball Tournament bracket reveal, leading to mass confusion

In an otherwise smooth production by ESPN for the reveal of the 2025 NCAA Softball Tournament bracket, one hiccup left one team very confused. And it was all caught on camera. As the final stages of the bracket reveal took place live on ESPN2, the Worldwide Leader was providing live look-ins to various teams selected […]

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3 hours ago

May 12, 2025

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In an otherwise smooth production by ESPN for the reveal of the 2025 NCAA Softball Tournament bracket, one hiccup left one team very confused. And it was all caught on camera.

As the final stages of the bracket reveal took place live on ESPN2, the Worldwide Leader was providing live look-ins to various teams selected for the field. With only two regional sites remaining, things were getting tense for a few teams waiting to hear their destination.

One of them included Binghamton. The Bearcats knew they were in the field, courtesy of winning the America East.

But they didn’t know where they’d be playing. Or who they’d be playing against.

So you can imagine their confusion when they suddenly appeared live on ESPN2’s camera feed prior to their selection in this year’s softball bracket being announced. Instead, ESPN2’s production crew inadvertently paired a shot of Binghamton with the announcement for Jackson State.

That left a very bewildered Binghamton squad gesturing wildly at the TVs. It was as if players were saying, ‘Wait, what is this?’

You can check out one such reaction below. An unfortunate goof for ESPN.

In any case, Binghamton would later hear its name called in the final regional pairing for the postseason softball event. And this time players would celebrate wildly upon hearing the selection.

Binghamton will take on Stanford in the opening game of the Eugene Regional out west. Jackson State, meanwhile, will take on host Alabama in the Tuscaloosa Regional.

You can view both softball regional pairings below. We’ve also included start times and TV networks for all games.

Tuscaloosa Regional

(15) Alabama
Jackson State
Friday 6 p.m. ET – ESPN+
Belmont
Virginia Tech
Friday 3:30 p.m. ET – ESPN+

Eugene Regional

(16) Oregon
Weber State
Friday 7:30 p.m. ET – ESPN+
Binghamton
Stanford
Friday 5 p.m. ET – ESPN+

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TABLE

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May 12, 2025

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May 12 (Reuters)- Nippon Koshuha Steel Co Ltd PARENT-ONLY FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (in billions of yen unless specified) Year ended Year ended Year to NEXT Mar 31, 2025 Mar 31, 2024 Mar 31, 2026 YEAR LATEST YEAR-AGO COMPANY COMPANY RESULTS RESULTS FORECAST H1 FORECAST Sales 25.67 25.22 (+1.8 pct) (-16.0 pct) Operating loss 727 mln loss 1.05 Recurring loss 601 mln 4.55 (+396.0 pct) Net loss 7.19 5.26 (+559.0 pct) EPS loss 490.98 yen 358.90 yen Ann Div NIL 50.00 yen -Q2 Div NIL NIL -Q4 Div NIL 50.00 yen NOTE – Nippon Koshuha Steel Co Ltd. To see Company Overview page, click reuters://REALTIME/verb=CompanyData/ric=5476.T

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UConn Selected to Baton Rouge Regional in 2025 NCAA Tournament

Story Links STORRS, Conn. – The UConn softball team will begin their quest to Oklahoma City on Friday, May 16 as the Huskies head to the Baton Rouge regional as the No. 3 seed. UConn will match up with the No. 2 seed Nebraska Huskers in their opening round game at 3:00pm […]

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4 hours ago

May 12, 2025

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STORRS, Conn. – The UConn softball team will begin their quest to Oklahoma City on Friday, May 16 as the Huskies head to the Baton Rouge regional as the No. 3 seed.

UConn will match up with the No. 2 seed Nebraska Huskers in their opening round game at 3:00pm on Friday afternoon at Tiger Park.

Follow our social media pages for updates.

Twitter – UConnSoftball

Instagram – UConnSoftball

Facebook – UConn Softball

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Committee Chair explains choice between No. 1 Texas A&M, No. 2 Oklahoma for 2025 NCAA Softball Tournament

The 2025 NCAA Softball Tournament will include a record number of teams from one conference with the SEC having 14 seeds. Nine of those were in top sixteen hosting regionals and seven of the top eight could be hosting super regionals, including the top two overall seeds in the field in No. 1 Texas A&M […]

Published

4 hours ago

May 12, 2025

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Kurt McGuffin, the selection committee chair, made an appearance on the special and, with that, would explain their reasoning that the Aggies (45-9) would be the top overall seed in the bracket as compared to the Sooners (45-7), who are the four-time defending champions. They went with A&M there over OU as they felt that the Aggies had a resumé with better results against their strength of schedule.

“Well, two quality opponents in Texas A&M and Oklahoma,” said McGuffin. “And I think what set apart Texas A&M was they have 19 Top-25 wins, which is number one in the country in wins in the Top-25. They also have had two quality non-conference wins versus Florida State and Texas Tech.”

“I think those were the two pieces that set them to the No. 1 seed,” McGuffin said.

These two teams could have settled this on the field this weekend in Athens during the championship match in the SEC Tournament. However, rain forced the game to be cancelled by the league with Texas A&M and Oklahoma being declared as co-champions.

Texas A&M went 29-2 in the non-conference this season before posting a record of 16-7 in the SEC. That record featured wins over tournament teams like UCF, Oklahoma State, and Virginia in the Clearwater Invitational, Florida State twice and Southeastern Louisiana in the Graf Classic, and Texas Tech twice in the Texas A&M Invitational during the non-conference and then series wins over Alabama (3-0), Auburn (2-1), Georgia (2-0), LSU (3-0), and Tennessee (2-1) in conference play. They then defeated South Carolina and Texas in the SEC Tournament before their matchup with OU rained out. Nine of those wins came against teams hosting in this tournament, including five against those hosting in Super Regionals.

Oklahoma has been as consistent as any program in making the Women’s College World Series since 2011. However, for the first time ever, it will be Texas A&M who will be the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Softball Tournament.

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