College Sports
Wayne Rooney and the Rising Tide of Sports 'Content'
Publicly, Argyle have always denied that Rooney was hired to raise the club’s profile. But it undoubtedly had that effect—and the effect might be outlasting Rooney. Yesterday, my girlfriend noticed that a man on a train in London (far away from Plymouth) was watching the Muslic video on his phone, and struck up a conversation. […]


Publicly, Argyle have always denied that Rooney was hired to raise the club’s profile. But it undoubtedly had that effect—and the effect might be outlasting Rooney. Yesterday, my girlfriend noticed that a man on a train in London (far away from Plymouth) was watching the Muslic video on his phone, and struck up a conversation. He told her that he hadn’t really known anything about Argyle—until the club made Rooney its head coach.
Then, in November, supporters learned that the media circus around Rooney would be taken up a notch: it was announced that filming had begun on a behind-the-scenes documentary about his time at the club. The film would be made by Lorton Entertainment, a production company that had made two previous documentaries about Rooney and his family; the question of distribution remained up in the air, but Rooney said there were “big brands looking to take it” and The Guardian later reported that the club hoped to sell the rights to a major streaming platform, like Netflix or Amazon, in a bid to “raise their global profile and secure a windfall.” Supporters were once again divided on the prospect: some feared it would be a distraction from on-field matters; others welcomed the exposure. (Some saw both sides: “It’ll be cringe,” one fan wrote on a popular Argyle forum, “but if it can generate money for the club I’m not opposed.”) Rooney insisted that the project would only have access to Argyle’s players to the extent that they were comfortable with it. “I think for the football club financially, it will help, which is really important,” he said. “But also from a fan’s point of view—if I’m a fan of the football club I’d be really intrigued to watch.”
Lorton Entertainment’s first major project involving Rooney was a feature-length documentary—titled simply Rooney—that appeared on Amazon Prime in 2022 and traces the arc of his playing career through interviews with Rooney and those close to him, nodding both to its highs (his remarkable ascent to stardom at just sixteen; his move to the soccer giant Manchester United) and its lows (his controversial and occasionally troubling behavior off the field; his petulant, sometimes even violent conduct on it). In 2023, a second project followed, on Disney+. The central subject matter this time didn’t concern Rooney so much as his wife, Coleen, and her centrality to one of the more compelling and curious media stories to come out of the UK in recent times: a much-discussed saga in which she accused another player’s wife of leaking stories about her to Britain’s tabloids (following an elaborate social media sting operation aimed at finding the culprit); got sued for libel; then won the case. The Argyle documentary was to be Lorton’s third Rooney project. Per The Guardian, one of the company’s owners is a shareholder in an agency that has long managed Rooney.
Other notable stories:
If access-driven content can still raise a sports franchise’s profile, the saturated market for such content makes the extent of the profile-raising hard to predict; the collapse of the Rooney project, meanwhile, proved that access is no guarantee of content in the first place. And Argyle’s Rooney experiment—and its aftermath—also pointed to the importance of other forms of sports content in the modern media age. Rooney’s mere presence at Argyle arguably lifted these other boats already—regardless of the documentary falling through.
The commissioning of the documentary was big for Plymouth but not a novel development in general terms: in recent years, a range of English soccer teams have been the subject of fly-on-the-wall programs, from the all-conquering top-tier side Manchester City down to Wrexham, a club that has climbed from the fifth tier to the third since it was improbably acquired by the Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2020. (Wrexham is in Wales, but its soccer club plays in the English league.) Indeed, the Rooney documentary mirrored trends in sports media far beyond English soccer, in an era when athlete-centered narratives are ubiquitous and have a material impact on the success not only of different sports teams but whole sports. (My colleague Josh Hersh wrote about this trend last year; around the same time, I wrote about how the Formula 1 documentary Drive to Survive had hugely juiced interest in motor racing, not least in the US.) Not that the boom in this sort of content has been limited to sports: writing for CJR in 2020, Danny Funt noted that whereas “filmmakers used to avoid the label ‘documentary,’” since “audiences considered them about as exciting as homework,” streamers are now stuffed with them, racking up millions of views.
The Argyle project sounded like it would be less similar to its Lorton predecessors than to the litany of other documentaries promising inside access to soccer clubs, a burgeoning genre that often trades in the same visual clichés—footage from the training pitch; footage from the locker room; footage from games, often in dizzying close-up—interspersed with interviews. Some of these shows have achieved iconic, or at least meme-worthy, status. A season of All or Nothing—an Amazon franchise whose other subjects have included the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs—about the top-tier English soccer club Arsenal helped make a star of its manager, Mikel Arteta, and his unorthodox motivational routines. (In one pre-match speech, he invoked Thomas Edison’s light bulb to stress the importance of connectivity, adding that “it would be fucking dark if this guy wouldn’t have the idea to do that.”) My and many other viewers’ favorite of the genre is Sunderland ’Til I Die, a Netflix show that follows the fortunes of a soccer club fallen on hard times and centers its long-suffering supporters. One memorable montage shows a local vicar praying for the club.
When I tell Americans that I come from Plymouth, I sometimes have to add, No, not the one with the Rock; yes, the one in England that the Rock is named after. Some reply that they know it, only to have actually been thinking of Portsmouth, a city that is similarly named but not especially nearby. Over the summer, though, Plymouth was put on the map worldwide, at least in a sporting sense, after the local soccer club, Plymouth Argyle, named Wayne Rooney, an icon of the global game and one of the finest players in English history, as its new head coach. The appointment immediately put the club at the center of a media storm. I contribute to Argyle Life, an independent fan-led platform with a podcast and YouTube show. Our livestream dissecting Rooney’s arrival was viewed by well over ten thousand people. (For context, the capacity of Argyle’s stadium is only around seventeen thousand.)
Often, “content” is the operative word here—rather than, say, “journalism.” I wrote last year that while Drive to Survive has reportorial moments, it is more a work of entertainment; Hersh noted how, if athlete-centered narratives are now ubiquitous, they are mostly being crafted by athletes themselves, via documentaries and podcasts that cut out the traditional journalistic middleman. Funt wrote in 2020 that filmmakers desperate for access to celebrities—who, in the modern attention economy, hardly need to cooperate—commonly offer them “incentives that would be scandalous in any other news medium: paying for access, clearing quotes and clips, giving a subject’s business partners a producing credit.”
Muslic was an obscure figure in England—but he has quickly become recognizable, thanks to social media. Yesterday, Argyle posted a video of Muslic introducing himself to the squad; normally, this would have been unremarkable—one more piece of content forced into the internet’s maw—but it soon went viral due to Muslic’s charismatic delivery and motivational message. Even rival supporters joked that they would “run through a brick wall” for Muslic; soon, news sites picked up the video and reaction to it. On X, the account “argyletweets” quipped that Argyle had hired Rooney for PR reasons “only to realise a random Bosnian fella would instantly give the club more interaction on socials because he speaks like Churchill.”
Argyle play in the second tier of English soccer, but are one of its smaller sides, at least based on budget and recent history; we were promoted to the level in 2023 after thirteen years away, and had only narrowly avoided relegation back to the third tier when Rooney arrived. (For the uninitiated: think of relegation as being like if a baseball team could be bumped to triple-A due to sheer haplessness, then to double-A if they couldn’t hack it there either, and so on; my editor for this newsletter has bewailed the likely state of the Baltimore Orioles were this the setup stateside.) For all his immense talent as a player, Rooney’s nascent managerial career had not so far been a resounding success: after spells at Derby County and then at DC United in the US (where he had also been a player), he was coming off a brief tenure at Birmingham City in the English second tier that was such a disaster the club was unexpectedly relegated at the end of the season (sparing Argyle that fate, as it happened). Some Argyle supporters were aghast when he was hired but others were excited, by Rooney’s profile if not his record. When the new season kicked off, in August, the team made an undistinguished start—but then things improved, with dramatic wins in three consecutive home matches firing up the fan base and generating further headlines.
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And the process of replacing Rooney also shined a light on one of the true, persistent joys of the modern soccer information bubble: not the polished documentary, but the chaotic spread of raw gossip on social media, a form downstream of access—or, at least, the illusion thereof—but far from dependent on it. After days of discussing rumors (and evaluating the historical reliability of whatever anonymous X account had shared them), many fans (myself included) convinced themselves on Friday that a beloved former manager was poised to return. But then journalism intervened again: Fabrizio Romano—a leading source of soccer-deals news who is a social media native but essentially an old-school reporter at heart (and who may even be the most famous journalist in the world, as Jem Bartholomew wrote in an illuminating profile for CJR in 2023)—broke the news that Rooney’s replacement would be Miron Muslic, a Bosnian-born Austrian coach who formerly led Cercle Brugge, in Belgium.
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The main reason that that show is so watchable, however, is that it is candid, car-crash television, showing disaster after disaster befalling the club, interspersed with toe-curling footage of top executives testing out stadium hype music (it needs to be “a bit Ibiza”) and panic-buying a player who would subsequently flop. (Even the stirring prayer scene is cut together with footage of an angry supporter screaming at a player to “fuck off.”) The project was not exactly independent: the producers are both fans of Sunderland; one later joined the club’s board. But club executives reportedly had no say over the final cut. And if the show isn’t quite a work of journalism, it is at least bursting with authenticity. It certainly made an unusually wide impression. Prince William reportedly watched it. So, too, did McElhenney, who has said that the show helped inspire him to purchase Wrexham with Reynolds.
As Timms noted, the Rooney Argyle documentary could have broken the mold by itself becoming car-crash TV as the team lapsed into a disgraceful run of heavy defeats. As an Argyle fan, I wouldn’t have enjoyed reliving those myself, but can see the appeal for others; I also view Rooney as a quietly compelling character, one who is far from traditionally charismatic (his voice is often a mumbling monotone) but nonetheless has a certain enigmatic aura around him. Now, of course, we’ll never know. Whispers that the project might never see the light of day circulated in early December, when a “TV insider” suggested to the Sun tabloid that “the whole point of the documentary was to celebrate his move from player to becoming a manager” and that Rooney would not want it to become a “horror show”; later, The Guardian reported that Lorton had been granted access to only two matches before being “told to take a break.” By year’s end, Rooney was gone. Simon Hallett, Argyle’s chairman, confirmed last week that while he had seen the documentary as “consistent with our desire to raise the club’s profile,” Rooney’s exit meant that it, too, would be terminated.
The Rooney Argyle documentary, to be fair, was never touted as a work of journalism. And it will now be impossible to evaluate it on those or any other terms: two weeks ago, after a disastrous downturn in form, Argyle parted ways with Rooney, and the documentary was scrapped. Trailing in its wake are broader lessons about the limits of such access-driven projects—and reminders that, despite their ubiquity, they are still only one part of a diverse sports-media ecosystem, one that is increasingly dominated by content, but also rises and falls on the age-old appeal of celebrity, the unpredictable currents of social media, and, at least sometimes, the persistent ability of old-school journalism to set the agenda.
Sunderland ’Til I Die is not the norm: indeed, The Athletic has noted that the show pitched itself as “the antithesis” of the largely “polished” All or Nothing franchise. Many fly-on-the-wall soccer documentaries have a samey vibe, trading access for blandness. Writing in The Guardian last week, Aaron Timms excoriated the genre as “viciously uninteresting” and an exercise in “corporate PR.” Timms suggested that players—who must watch what they say at all times as the cameras roll—and fans are growing tired of such projects, but that they keep getting made because the participants want money and streamers want content. The latter’s “sole goal is to stuff their platforms with as much content as possible,” he wrote, “turning them into the technological-cultural equivalent of ducks fattened by gavage.”
- CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan spoke with third-party fact-checking partners of Meta, who learned last week that the company intends to sever ties with them, then quickly had to get to work trying to slow misinformation about the Los Angeles fires as it went viral on Meta’s platforms. Meanwhile, former Meta staffers told The Guardian that the company’s simultaneous pledge to move its content-moderation operations to Texas—in a bid to alleviate “bias” concerns—is “nothing more than a blatant appeal to Donald Trump” since the company already conducts such work in Texas. And CJR’s Meghnad Bose checked in with his former colleagues at The Quint, a news site in India that is a Meta fact-checking partner; Meta’s recent announcements have centered on the US, but Bose found anxiety about it beyond national borders.
- For the New York Times, David Enrich and Katie Robertson report on steps that US newsrooms are taking to prepare for a feared onslaught once Trump takes office. Reporters and editors “are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas,” they write. Multiple newsrooms “are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits. And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.”
- The recent exodus from the Washington Post continued yesterday: Jennifer Rubin, a liberal opinion columnist, announced that she is leaving to cofound a publication on Substack and, on her way out, blasted the Post for perceived spinelessness in the face of Trump; meanwhile, Rosalind Helderman, a top investigative journalist, is reportedly joining the Times. Elsewhere, other outlets are shuffling their staffs as Trump 2.0 looms. MSNBC said that Rachel Maddow, currently only a Monday host, will be on air every night for Trump’s first hundred days. And Politico is importing Jack Blanchard from its UK edition to helm its influential DC Playbook newsletter.
- The New Yorker’s Ruth Margalit profiled Yinon Magal, a talk-show host on Israel’s Channel 14 who has aggressively defended Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s right-wing prime minister, while attacking his critics, including judges, journalists, academics, and political opponents. “Magal was once a prime-time newscaster,” but these days, “he is an unapologetic combatant, delivering his version of the news in a hunched-over-the-deck posture that has been described as ‘gorilla pose,’” Margalit writes. “If Channel 14 is Netanyahu’s Fox News, Magal is its Tucker Carlson.”
Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He writes CJR’s newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
College Sports
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College Sports
Judicial races could affect caregiving statewide
On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Democrats and Republicans will choose candidates for openings on two powerful appellate courts that shape caregiving statewide. These courts — Commonwealth and Superior — can affirm or reverse rulings from lower benches, and play critical roles in the state judicial system. Commonwealth Court handles cases brought against local and state governments, […]

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Democrats and Republicans will choose candidates for openings on two powerful appellate courts that shape caregiving statewide.
These courts — Commonwealth and Superior — can affirm or reverse rulings from lower benches, and play critical roles in the state judicial system.
Commonwealth Court handles cases brought against local and state governments, from regulatory agencies to school districts to the legislature. Superior Court hears civil and criminal appeals, ruling on child custody disputes, malpractice cases, and many other issues involving kids and caregivers.
For most cases, Commonwealth and Superior Courts are the end of the line, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court considers only a minority of appeals. In the past several years, cases heard by these intermediate courts have changed how public education is funded and created a new legal pathway to parenthood.
To help prepare you to vote on these key roles and show how rulings from these benches can affect you, Spotlight PA has chosen consequential caregiving-related cases that have moved through these courts. Learn more about them below:
Case: William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et al.
Issue: The right to education and school funding
The petitioners in this case — a coalition of school districts, parents, an education nonprofit, and the NAACP— sued the Pennsylvania education department and elected leaders over how the state funds public schools. They argued the state’s method for funding public K-12 education, which heavily depends on property taxes, discriminates against poor school districts.
A Commonwealth Court judge ruled in the petitioners’ favor, finding that education is a fundamental right and that the state’s funding scheme was unconstitutional.
Because of that decision, the legislature has had to take steps to close the gap between wealthy and poor schools. As part of last year’s budget, the state’s poorest schools received an additional $500 million, for instance.
Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia attorney who was part of the legal team that won the case, told Spotlight PA that the $500 million provided to poor schools is just a fraction of the $4.5 billion that the state legislature and governor determined is needed. But it’s a start, he added: “This is not like you snap your fingers, and this is done.”
The attorney said the petitioners will return to Commonwealth Court if the state fails to make meaningful progress, but argued that this ruling is particularly salient against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s stated goal of dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.
“No matter what happens around the country, every Pennsylvania child, no matter what you look like [or] where you were born, you have a fundamental right to a contemporary, effective public education,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said.
Case: Allegheny Reproductive Health Center et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services et al.
Issue: Equal protection against gender discrimination
A group of Pennsylvania reproductive health clinics is challenging the state’s prohibition on using taxpayer-funded Medicaid insurance to pay for an abortion, which only makes exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or a pregnant person’s life being endangered.
They argue the ban violates the state constitution, which forbids discrimination based on sex.
Commonwealth Court ruled in 2021 that the clinics didn’t have the right to sue because the ban affects their patients and not them as providers.
But the state Supreme Court took up the appeal, overturned the lower court’s ruling, and sent the matter back to Commonwealth Court.
Now, Pennsylvania’s attorney general must prove that the Medicaid ban, which remains in place, is the least restrictive way for the state to advance its “compelling government interest” of discouraging abortion.
This is a high bar, and the case will likely return to the state Supreme Court, said Seth Kreimer, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Whatever happens next will significantly affect parents and families; a 2022 survey by health policy research org KFF found that nearly six in 10 abortion patients have had at least one previous birth. Other studies show that finances and the need to focus on other children are common reasons people end pregnancies.
The state Supreme Court ruling could shape other health issues as well, said Sue Frietsche, executive director of the Pennsylvania-based Women’s Law Project.
Frietsche represents the clinics that brought the suit, which she said provides a possible blueprint for challenges to other abortion restrictions and could be used to expand access to medical care for transgender Pennsylvanians.
“Both those areas are about both gender and health. So you have two very important connections,” said David Harris, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Such cases face a more difficult path in federal courts, in part because the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly forbid sex discrimination.
Case: Glover v. Junior
Issue: Rights of non-biological parents
The case involves a divorced lesbian couple who separated before the birth of their son and before the non-biological mother could obtain a second-parent adoption. Many non-biological parents seek these adoptions to ensure they have the same legal rights as their partners.
The women initially pursued parenthood as a couple, according to court documents. They selected a sperm donor, signed contracts with a sperm bank and fertility clinic, shared the costs of in vitro fertilization, planned a baby shower, and agreed on their child’s name, legal filings say.
But after their son was born, the biological mother argued that her ex was not the boy’s legal parent, kicking off a three-year custody battle that moved from a court of Common Pleas to Superior Court, and finally to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling.
The high court ruled in March that the non-biological mother is legally the boy’s parent, adopting what the majority opinion called “the doctrine of intent-based parentage.”
This created an entirely new legal path to establish parental rights in Pennsylvania. Now, when determining a parent’s legal status, courts must consider evidence showing individuals intentionally pursued parenthood.
A coalition of LGBTQ legal organizations praised the landmark decision, saying it protects the children of these families, and affirms the dignity and rights of Pennsylvanians who become parents with the aid of reproductive technology.
“This is a clear and easy to apply rule, and it means that children won’t be stripped of a parent just because the adult relationship breaks down,” said Patience Crozier, director of family advocacy for GLAD Law. The organization was among the legal groups that filed an amicus brief for the case.
Case: Commonwealth v. King
Issue: Cruel punishments in juvenile sentencing
This case centers on whether a de facto life sentence for a juvenile offender is unconstitutionally cruel because it denies him the opportunity to reenter society as a matured and rehabilitated adult.
Petitioner Ivory King, who was sentenced to four consecutive 20-year sentences for killing four people when he was 17, is suing the commonwealth.
King’s argument pulls in part from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found juvenile offenders are constitutionally different from adults due to their immaturity, a general inability to remove themselves from bad situations, and a greater capacity to change.
The state Supreme Court recently agreed to hear King’s appeal from Superior Court.
The appeal also challenges his sentence based on the Pennsylvania Constitution’s prohibition against “cruel punishments.” The phrasing differs from the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bans punishments if they are both cruel and unusual.
This makes cruel punishments unconstitutional in Pennsylvania, even if those punishments are common, said Marsha Levick, chief legal officer at the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.
Levick submitted an amicus brief on behalf of King, who will be 97 when he’s eligible for release and therefore likely to die in prison.
In addition to possibly changing juvenile sentencing, the case could lead to a prohibition on subjecting Pennsylvania kids to strip searches or putting them in solitary confinement, Levick said.
“It’s hard to imagine something that could be more cruel, more traumatic than that,” she said of the latter, “and yet we allow it.”
Melissa Chapaska, a Harrisburg-based attorney for HMS Legal who writes for the blog Pennsylvania Appellate Advocate, told Spotlight PA that she thinks Levick’s theory has potential. Like other institutions, the courts are becoming more aware of how mental health and trauma shape child development, she said.
“That’s the beauty of the thing,” she said of the law. “It is evolving … While we do have to follow legal precedent, that doesn’t mean that we’re stuck. And that’s why these judicial electrons matter.”
BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
College Sports
Pimlico Cake, Ravens Meet ‘Severance,’ Hockey, more
Last week, we shared the history behind Baltimore’s Pimlico Cake; the Baltimore Ravens’ “Severance”-themed schedule release video; and a profile on the founder of a Baltimore hockey league. Revisit the stories here: A frosting black-eyed Susan adorns the top of a Pimlico Cake from Atwater’s. Photo courtesy of Atwater’s. “Pimlico Cake: A beloved Preakness tradition […]

Last week, we shared the history behind Baltimore’s Pimlico Cake; the Baltimore Ravens’ “Severance”-themed schedule release video; and a profile on the founder of a Baltimore hockey league.
Revisit the stories here:


“Pimlico Cake: A beloved Preakness tradition endures decades after restaurant closure“: The Pimlico Hotel closed in 1991 but its iconic dessert, the Pimlico Cake, lives on as a Preakness classic and timeless Baltimore favorite.


“Dan Rodricks: Van Hollen and the daily defense of democracy“: Dan Rodricks writes about Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s advocacy for Marylanders and all Americans throughout the Trump administration’s attacks on democracy, due process, public health and safety, and more.


“How did your Outie feel about the Baltimore Ravens’ ‘Severance’-themed schedule release?“: With a “Severance”-themed schedule release video, the Baltimore Ravens are this year’s undisputed social media winners.


“Hot House: Former Happy Hills hospital feels both secluded and within reach of amenities“: Living at the former Happy Hills hospital, you’ll feel like you’re away from it all while actually being close to everything you need.


“Still chasing the puck: Steve Wirth’s unbreakable bond with hockey — and the Baltimore league that keeps his love for the sport alive“: Baltimore native Steve Wirth, 71, runs a hockey league with participants ranging from college students to retired professional players. But his hockey journey was anything but typical.
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College Sports
Clark Joins Soccer Staff
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt soccer head coach Darren Ambrose announced Monday the hiring of Jennie Clark as assistant coach to fill out the rest of his staff ahead of the 2025 campaign. “We were very intentional in searching for who we wanted in this role and Jennie was a great fit,” said Ambrose. “She has […]


NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt soccer head coach Darren Ambrose announced Monday the hiring of Jennie Clark as assistant coach to fill out the rest of his staff ahead of the 2025 campaign.
“We were very intentional in searching for who we wanted in this role and Jennie was a great fit,” said Ambrose. “She has an experienced background, playing both collegiately and professionally. She has filled various coaching roles at both levels and is committed to not only developing individual players but also exceptional young women. Her beliefs and values are a perfect complement to our program and I am very excited that she will be a part of this amazing staff.”
Clark, who spent the last two seasons as an assistant at Northwestern, has earned a B license and a scouting license through the US Soccer Federation.
“I could not be more excited about joining the Vanderbilt women’s soccer program,” said Clark. “The team has an impressive history, incredible potential for future success and I am honored for the opportunity to contribute. I look forward to working alongside an experienced coaching staff and a competitive group of players to reach the program’s goals and elevate Vanderbilt’s standards.”
Prior to her time with the Wildcats, Clark served as the first assistant coach for Minnesota Aurora FC, helping lead the squad to a perfect regular season and berth in the quarterfinals of the USL W League playoffs. Before joining the pros, Clark was an assistant at Utah Tech for two seasons, helping the program transition from Division II to Division I while coaching seven All-Western Athletic Conference honorees during her stint.
The Norwalk, Iowa, native played professionally for five years, starting her career as a free agent with Sky Blue FC, currently known as Gotham FC. Following her rookie season with Sky Blue, Clark moved to Germany, where she played for 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig, SC Freiburg, and 1. FFC Frankfurt in the Frauen-Bundesliga.
A four-year starter at Minnesota, the two-time first-team All-Big Ten honoree was a mainstay on the Golden Gophers’ back line and helped the team’s defense set school records during a 2008 season that saw Minnesota reach the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time in program history. Minnesota’s defense produced 17 shutouts and allowed just 12 goals during that season while Clark earned SoccerBuzz fourth-team All-American honors and the first of two all-district awards.
A Hermann Trophy candidate as a senior, Clark started 66 straight games for Minnesota before suffering an injury early in the 2010 season. Clark returned to the pitch less than six weeks later and helped the Golden Gophers reach the Sweet 16 for the second time in her career. In her four years with the program, the Minnesota defense posted 41 shutouts and allowed less than 20 goals in three of her four seasons.
College Sports
Rebels Clinch Mountain West Tournament Berth With Dominant Win Over Air Force
The UNLV Hustlin’ Rebels baseball team earned a huge victory on Friday night. While knocking off the Air Force Falcons 10 – 4 in a route, the Rebels secured their spot in the 2025 Credit Union 1 Mountain West Baseball Tournament. They locked up their spot in the tournament on their home field of Earl […]

The UNLV Hustlin’ Rebels baseball team earned a huge victory on Friday night. While knocking off the Air Force Falcons 10 – 4 in a route, the Rebels secured their spot in the 2025 Credit Union 1 Mountain West Baseball Tournament. They locked up their spot in the tournament on their home field of Earl E. Wilson Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. It came down to the final series of the regular season, but the Rebels will now be making their first Mountain West Conference Tournament since 2022. Their 30-22 overall record and 15-14 conference record was enough to get the job done and punch their ticket.
Rebels head coach Stan Stolte is very happy his team made the tournament, however, following Friday’s game he made it very clear what his goals are for the team, so there won’t be any celebrating just yet.
“Glad that we are going to continue to play next week in the conference tournament, but by no means are we going to celebrate it,” Stolte said. “We are very happy that we took a 5-10 conference record at the halfway point and turned that around by winning 10 out of our last 14 conference games. Assistant coaches, players, support staff, everyone involved were all in as one and got after it.
Friday’s game was blown open in the bottom of the third inning in which outfielder Dean Toigo extended his hitting streak to 19 games with a massive home run with infield Cooper Sheff adding a home run of his own in the blowout win. UNLV also had a much less significant game on Saturday in the series finale. The Rebels knocked off the Falcons in that game by a final score of 9 – 8. While a win is a win, the much more important news is that UNLV is headed for the postseason.
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College Sports
MacDonald adds size to the CBJ prospect pool
When the college hockey season came to a close, the Blue Jackets wasted no time to make a splash in the undrafted free agent market as they signed North Dakota defenseman Caleb MacDonald to fill a hole in their prospect pool. The Cambridge, Ontario, native is a 22-year-old, 6-4, 224-pound left-shot defenseman. MacDonald’s size is […]

When the college hockey season came to a close, the Blue Jackets wasted no time to make a splash in the undrafted free agent market as they signed North Dakota defenseman Caleb MacDonald to fill a hole in their prospect pool.
The Cambridge, Ontario, native is a 22-year-old, 6-4, 224-pound left-shot defenseman. MacDonald’s size is what caught CBJ director of hockey operations Rick Nash’s eye when they met during UND’s visit to take on Miami University early in the college season.
“What we liked about him was just his size,” Nash said. “We felt like there was a little bit of a hole in our prospect pool of big, left-shot D, and we thought that he would be a nice guy to acquire a big, steady defenseman that has some skill too.”
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With undrafted free agents, it is a two-way street, however. The Blue Jackets liked the defenseman, but to make the two-year deal happen, MacDonald had to want to start his professional career in Columbus.
“I got to meet Nash and a couple of other people in the organization, and they really sold me on the organization and the city of Columbus,” MacDonald told BlueJackets.com. “Ultimately it is the best place for me.”
After three years in the Alberta Junior Hockey League, where he was named the league’s top defenseman in 2022-23, MacDonald spent the past two seasons playing college hockey. His first was at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where he had a line of 4-10-14 in 31 games played.
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This past season he hit the transfer portal, as many have done, and landed in North Dakota to play for a program that has won eight NCAA championships. MacDonald recorded three goals and seven assists for 10 points with 42 penalty minutes, 68 blocked shots and a plus-7 rating in 35 games with the Fighting Hawks.
The focus of Nash and Waddell has been on diversifying the Jackets’ prospect pool, and adding the big defenseman helped do just that.
“Going through our prospect pool and seeing the guys we have, whether it’s (Denton) Mateychuk, Gavin Brindley, you start going through the list and just trying to look for any holes,” Nash said. “We thought that was kind of a hole. We got a big, right-shot D with (2024 second-round pick) Charlie Elick, we just thought (MacDonald) was a nice player that we would love to have under our umbrella.”
His contract starts in the 2025-26 season, but MacDonald stopped in Columbus shortly after signing in March to meet some of his future teammates and other players within the Blue Jackets prospect pool.
“They showed me around the room, their facilities. I got to skate a little bit, which was awesome,” he said. “I also got to grab lunch with (fellow college signee Jack) Williams and Cayden Lindstrom, which was awesome. Those guys have been there for a bit now so I got to get a feel of what it’s like there, and then to watch one of the games. It was a great experience.”
His attention has now turned to next season and making sure he is as ready as he can be when it comes to preseason camp. MacDonald’s strength is on the defensive side of the puck, and he knows that he must lean on that to make it to the NHL.
“I’m looking to get bigger, faster and stronger. It’s a big jump up to professional, and I want to be as ready as possible,” MacDonald said. “My defensive game and shot blocking has to be great.”
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