By the end of the weekend, the 2025 Women’s College World Series field will be trimmed in half. What began as an eight-team event on Thursday will be down to four national championship aspirants after a pair of elimination games Sunday pitting No. 7 Tennessee against No. 9 UCLA and No. 16 Oregon against No. […]
By the end of the weekend, the 2025 Women’s College World Series field will be trimmed in half.
What began as an eight-team event on Thursday will be down to four national championship aspirants after a pair of elimination games Sunday pitting No. 7 Tennessee against No. 9 UCLA and No. 16 Oregon against No. 2 Oklahoma.
The most surprising inclusion of the bunch is undoubtedly the Sooners, the four-time reigning NCAA champions. Coach Patty Gasso’s team followed up a walk-off victory Thursday against Tennessee with a 4-2 loss to archrival No. 6 Texas on Saturday in a rematch of last year’s WCWS championship series.
The winner of the game between the Lady Vols and Bruins will advance to the national semifinals to take on Texas while the winner between the Sooners and Ducks will earn a date with Texas Tech in the semifinals. Both of those games are scheduled for Monday.
Here’s a look at the schedule for Day 4 of the WCWS on June 1, including matchups, start times, TV channels and more:
Women’s College World Series games today
The fourth day of the 2025 Women’s College World Series will take place Sunday with a pair of elimination games.
In the first matchup, No. 7 Tennessee will take on No. 9 UCLA, with the winner advancing to play Monday against Texas. The second game will pit No. 16 Oregon against No. 2 Oklahoma, with the winner of the game moving on to face Texas Tech Monday.
Here’s a look at Sunday’s full WCWS schedule:
All times Eastern
Who is in the Women’s College World Series?
The WCWS began Thursday with eight teams vying for a national championship, a field that has been narrowed down to four.
Here’s who remains, with the names of eliminated teams crossed out:
No. 2 Oklahoma (51-8)
No. 3 Florida (48-16)
No. 6 Texas (53-11)
No. 7 Tennessee (45-16)
No. 9 UCLA (55-12)
No. 12 Texas Tech (52-12)
No. 16 Oregon (53-9)
Ole Miss (42-19)
Women’s College World Series bracket
Click here to see the official bracket for the 2025 Women’s College World Series.
When is the Women’s College World Series?
The 2025 WCWS began May 29 and will wrap up on either June 5 or June 6, depending on whether the best-of-three championship series goes two or the full three games.
The fourth day of WCWS action will be split across two channels. The Tennessee-UCLA game will air on ABC, with Beth Mowins (play-by-play), Jessica Mendoza (analyst) and Michele Smith (analyst) on the call, and Holly Rowe serving as the sideline reporter. Oregon-Oklahoma will air on ESPN2, with Kevin Brown (play-by-play) and Amanda Scarborough (analyst) on the call, and Taylor McGregor serving as the sideline reporter.
Streaming options for all four games include the ESPN app, which requires a valid cable login to access, and ESPN+, ESPN’s subscription streaming service.
Here are all the winners from the 2025 HBCU Sports Awards
Saturday marked another moment of recognition and pride across Black College athletics with the 2025 HBCU Sports Awards presentation. Hosted by HBCU Sports Founding Publisher and Editor Kenn Rashad alongside Jarrett Hoffman and Chris Stevens, the annual virtual event spotlighted the very best in HBCU sports. It honored athletes in 23 categories, coaches in 12, […]
Saturday marked another moment of recognition and pride across Black College athletics with the 2025 HBCU Sports Awards presentation.
Hosted by HBCU Sports Founding Publisher and Editor Kenn Rashad alongside Jarrett Hoffman and Chris Stevens, the annual virtual event spotlighted the very best in HBCU sports. It honored athletes in 23 categories, coaches in 12, and administrators in 10 from institutions across the Division I, Division II, and NAIA landscape.
In addition to celebrating competitive excellence, the show also recognized extraordinary service by presenting this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awards to two iconic contributors, Patricia Cage-Bibbs and Rob Brodway.
Below is the complete list of winners from the 2025 HBCU Sports Awards:
2025 HBCU Sports Awards Winners
Women’s Track & Field Athlete of the Year Spirit Morgan, North Carolina A&T
Men’s Track & Field Athlete of the Year Joseph Briscoe, Virginia State
Women’s Track & Field Runner of the Year Shaneal Clarke-Giddings, Lincoln (Mo.)
Men’s Track & Field Runner of the Year Brian Kemei, Morehouse
Women’s Track & Field Sprinter of the Year Kevell Byrd, Dillard
Men’s Track & Field Sprinter of the Year Jamarion Stubbs, Alabama State
Women’s Volleyball Player of the Year Kiersten Eggleton, West Virginia State
Women’s Tennis Player of the Year Sofya Chursina, South Carolina State
Men’s Tennis Player of the Year David Jeanne-Grandinot, Alabama State
Softball Player of the Year Taylor Ames-Alexander, South Carolina St.
Baseball Player of the Year Cardell Thibodeaux, Southern
Women’s Golfer of the Year Paris Fieldings, Howard
Men’s Golfer of the Year Jose Berenguel, Arkansas-Pine Bluff
Bowler of the Year Maya Avilez, North Carolina A&T
Women’s Soccer Player of the Year Olivia Ankrom, Shaw
Women’s Cross Country Runner of the Year Shamia Jones, Alabama State
Men’s Cross Country Runner of the Year Brian Kemei, Morehouse
Women’s Basketball Player of the Year Diamond Johnson, Norfolk State
Men’s Basketball Player of the Year Blake Harper, Howard
Defensive Football Player of the Year Elijah Williams, Morgan State
Offensive Football Player of the Year Jada Byers, Virginia Union
Mapping myths: Researchers create first milky sea database
For centuries, sailors have returned from voyages with tales of eerie, steady-glowing oceans. These episodes would sometimes last for months, atop water capable of glowing in a bucket, deep beneath a ship’s keel. While the earliest accounts were written off as tall tales, the stories are true. Named “milky seas” by the explorers who first […]
For centuries, sailors have returned from voyages with tales of eerie, steady-glowing oceans. These episodes would sometimes last for months, atop water capable of glowing in a bucket, deep beneath a ship’s keel. While the earliest accounts were written off as tall tales, the stories are true.
Named “milky seas” by the explorers who first documented it, the phenomenon is a rare event of marine bioluminescence. A new database created in collaboration between Colorado State University’s department of atmospheric science and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere has brought together historical eyewitness accounts for the first time.
“Milky seas describe very large regions of ocean that produce a sustained and widespread glow, often appearing to extend to the horizon on dark, moon-free nights,” CIRA Director and atmospheric science Professor Steven Miller wrote in an email-based interview.
The journal Advancing Earth and Space Sciences recently published an article recounting the database’s development, which drew from 415 individual observations of milky seas over the past 400 years.
“The oldest one that I was able to find goes back to 1615, and it was one of the first-ever voyages of the British East India Company,” said Justin Hudson, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of atmospheric science and the paper’s first author. “So there’s a good chance it’s actually the earliest account ever in English.”
While sorting through the historical accounts, Hudson had to differentiate the individual sightings to make sure each milky sea event was unique, rather than two separate people noting the same event. In the end, the database’s construction was guided by a defined methodology that outlined specific characteristics of a milky sea event.
Every event had to feature “a steady, nonflashing gray/white/green-blue/turquoise glow coming from the nighttime ocean surface,” the paper reads. The event also has to be widespread across the ocean’s horizon and occur within nondisturbed water. A shape line of demarcation must also occur between the glowing and nonglowing water, fade in and out of brightness and have a calm ocean surface. Lastly, the sea must return to normal, dark water once the sun or moon rises.
After categorizing the observations by the database’s criteria, Miller and Hudson were able to estimate both the rate of milky sea occurrences and the general geographic region they occur within.
“Milky seas may occur one to two times per year globally, but they are by no means a regular occurrence and there may be many years between events,” Miller wrote. “Based on historical sightings and, more recently, satellite observations, we know that they tend to form more often in the northwest Indian Ocean and Indonesia.”
Courtesy of Justin Hudson and Steven D. Miller, Earth and Space Science, 2025
While the exact cause of the bioluminescent event is unknown, bacteria is theorized to play a major role in its development.
“Based off of the fact that it’s a consistent, nonflashing light … and it covers such a large area and sort of other various qualities, we think it’s caused by bacteria,” Hudson said. “For the largest event we know of, basically, if it was only a centimeter thick, it would have one mole of bacteria involved. And if you work out how much it could weigh, you get over a million kilograms of bacteria.”
The geographical regions where the events occur most frequently experience weather patterns that result in an environment bacteria thrives in. In the Indian Ocean, the Indian Ocean Dipole causes a fluctuation in sea surface temperatures across the western and eastern sides of the sea, which are categorized by positive, negative and neutral phases.
“It is a sea surface temperature pattern that happens in the Indian Ocean where one side will have cooler sea surface temperatures than normal, and one side will have warmer than normal, and whichever side has warmer temperatures, that’s really good at making (sure) there’s more evaporation, (as) hotter air wants to rise,” Hudson said.
Bacteria thrives in warmer ocean temperatures, which Hudson theorized causes milky seas to occur more frequently in the region the Dipole is most present.
“We think that this phase, the positive phase, in the Indian Ocean Dipole (is) associated with that cool, nutrient-rich water from down below coming up in that region, and it causes milky seas to happen at a much higher rate than you would expect if it didn’t have an impact,” Hudson said.
Miller’s interest in the fabled phenomenon began in 2005 when he published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discussing the first detection of a milky sea event through satellite imaging technology.
“It was pretty amazing to think that we could do this from space, and especially for a form of bioluminescence that had been more a part of the maritime folklore than of scientific knowledge,” Miller wrote. “Since then, I’ve been hooked on the topic and was excited to work with a new generation of satellite technology that might be even more capable of detecting and measuring milky seas.”
Combined with the newfound knowledge from the database, this satellite technology has allowed the team to chart milky sea occurrences from 2017 that were previously undocumented.
“As part of my work, I do what’s called a Hindcasting model — (a) forecast model, just going backwards,” Hudson said. “I actually was able to predict a previously unknown milky sea event.”
The ultimate goal of the researchers is to predict an event before it occurs with enough time to chart a scientific expedition in the predicted region, with the hopes of observing a milky sea in person, firsthand.
“(We want to) kind of work (with) other scientists internationally, to form a team who would be able to go out there, … get on a boat and sort of combine all their expertise to be able to, like, sample the water, study it and figure out what’s going on (and) how does this fit into everything else?” Hudson said.
Understanding this phenomenon more closely will provide not only more information about the suspected bacteria itself, but also hold broader implications for understanding the ocean’s ecosystem in its entirety.
“(We’re) learning more about how such a dramatic population explosion of nature’s tiniest, simplest and oldest organisms could conspire to form a signal (one) large and strong enough to be (seen) from outer space, and what that is telling us about how major components of the Earth’s system ‘talk to each other’ and interact may hold very important insights to the future of our planet,” Miller wrote.
Reach Katie Fisher at science@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.
UC San Diego men’s water polo team has revealed their 2025 schedule, entering their third year in the Big West conference. The season kicks off with the Triton Invitational from August 29-31, featuring top-ranked teams. Home games include notable matchups against Stanford and LMU, along with six tournaments and four away games. The Big West […]
UC San Diego men’s water polo team has revealed their 2025 schedule, entering their third year in the Big West conference. The season kicks off with the Triton Invitational from August 29-31, featuring top-ranked teams. Home games include notable matchups against Stanford and LMU, along with six tournaments and four away games. The Big West Championship will take place from November 21-23, offering a chance for the Tritons to qualify for the NCAA National Collegiate Championship in December.
By the Numbers
2024 record: 17 wins, 12 losses
Big West conference victories: 3 against UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal State Fullerton
State of Play
Home games will be played at Canyonview Aquatic Center, drawing large crowds, especially during student return week.
The Tritons are the defending champions of the Battle of the Kings against LMU.
What’s Next
As anticipation builds for the season opener and home matches, the Tritons aim to improve upon last year’s performance. The team is also positioned to compete strongly in the Big West Championship and potentially earn an NCAA bid.
Bottom Line
The 2025 season presents a significant opportunity for UC San Diego’s men’s water polo team to build on previous successes and deepen their competitive edge in the Big West, ultimately striving for a berth in the NCAA Championship.
New York Yankees Top Prospect Reportedly Drawing Serious Trade Interest
If the New York Yankees are looking to add in the coming days, they may have to part ways with some of the young talent rising through the ranks of their farm system. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported Thursday afternoon that catcher Rafael Flores was one Yankees prospect who has been coveted by […]
If the New York Yankees are looking to add in the coming days, they may have to part ways with some of the young talent rising through the ranks of their farm system.
The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported Thursday afternoon that catcher Rafael Flores was one Yankees prospect who has been coveted by trade partners. Flores was promoted from Double-A Somerset to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre last Saturday.
Flores hit .287 with 15 home runs, 23 doubles, 48 runs, 56 RBIs, six stolen bases and an .841 OPS across 87 games in Double-A. Through six Triple-A contests, the 24-year-old catcher is batting .208 with one home runs, three runs, three RBIs and a .720 OPS.
MLB Pipeline has Flores ranked as the Yankees’ No. 8 prospect, making him the only catcher in the organization’s top 25.
One Yankee prospect coveted by trade partners: Catcher Rafael Flores, who was just called up to Triple-A
Those two moves could change New York’s plans for the coming days, including their willingness to move Flores. The future of second-year first baseman Ben Rice, who has spent roughly one-seventh of his time at catcher this season, could also play a part in determining Flores’ availability.
The trade deadline is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET on Thursday.
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Venezuelan baseball team denied visas into US, Little League International says – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports
(AP) — A Venezuelan baseball team was denied visas into the United States and will miss this year’s Senior Baseball World Series, Little League International confirmed Friday. The Cacique Mara team, from Maracaibo, Venezuela, was scheduled to participate in the tournament after winning the Latin American championship in Mexico. “The Cacique Mara Little League team […]
(AP) — A Venezuelan baseball team was denied visas into the United States and will miss this year’s Senior Baseball World Series, Little League International confirmed Friday.
The Cacique Mara team, from Maracaibo, Venezuela, was scheduled to participate in the tournament after winning the Latin American championship in Mexico.
“The Cacique Mara Little League team from Venezuela was unfortunately unable to obtain the appropriate visas to travel to the Senior League Baseball World Series,” Little League International said in a statement, adding that it is “extremely disappointing, especially to these young athletes.”
The Venezuelan team traveled to Colombia two weeks ago to apply for their visas at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá.
The embassy did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
“It is a mockery on the part of Little League to keep us here in Bogotá with the hope that our children can fulfill their dreams of participating in a world championship,” the team said in a statement. “What do we do with so much injustice, what do we do with the pain that was caused to our children?”
Venezuela is among a list of countries with restrictions for entering the U.S. or its territories. President Donald Trump has banned travel to the U.S. from 12 other countries, citing national security concerns.
Earlier in the month, the Cuban women’s volleyball team was denied visas to participate in a tournament in Puerto Rico.
“They told us that Venezuela is on a list because Trump says Venezuelans are a threat to the security of his state, of his country,” said Kendrick Gutiérrez, the league’s president in Venezuela. “It hasn’t been easy the situation; we earned the right to represent Latin America in the World Championship.”
The Senior League Baseball World Series, a tournament for players aged 13-16, is played each year in Easley, South Carolina. It begins Saturday.
The tournament organizers replaced the Venezuelans with the Santa Maria de Aguayo team from Tamaulipas, Mexico, the team that was a runner-up in the Latin American championship.
“I think this is the first time this has happened, but it shouldn’t end this way. They’re going to replace us with another team because relations have been severed; it’s not fair,” Gutiérrez added. “I don’t understand why they put Mexico in at the last minute and left Venezuela out.”
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By the end of the weekend, the 2025 Women’s College World Series field will be trimmed in half.
