PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — The 98th Stotesbury Cup Regatta is temporarily suspended on Friday due to a storm delay.

Officials sent out a message just before noon saying all further launching is suspended until further notice and to take cover.

The event draws thousands of youth rowers, who were set to compete on the Schuylkill River Friday and Saturday.

The two-day event is billed as the largest high school rowing competition in the world.

Thousands of young athletes from crews across the country will be competing against each other, moving their oars in unison to propel their boats through the waters of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River.

Organizers say 800 boats will hit the water at some point during this competition.

The regatta is organized by the Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia, which is the non-profit that governs Boathouse Row and will host several events through the summer.

The organization also focuses on a year-long effort of teaching student athletes river safety and rowing techniques to prepare them for competition on a global stage.

Friday’s competition was schedule to go from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and picks up again Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with finals competition beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Friday Night Nets, a basketball initiative aimed at keeping kids and young adults out of trouble, is returning to Newport News this summer.

The free event will be held at Denbigh Community Center and Achievable Dream Tennis Center every Friday night until Aug. 22.

Youth, 17 and under, are allowed to play from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. — anyone over 18 can play from 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Basketball is the main focus of the weekly event, but there are also plenty of other fun activities for attendees, such as free food, haircuts, eGaming, and many community resources.

This program was started by Mayor Phillip Jones last year with the intent to curb crime among the city’s youth.

Returning attendee Antonio Clements says this program helps keep him busy.

“I can get into a couple of situations that I know I shouldn’t be involving myself in, but on the court it’s just on the court,” Clements said.

Registration is open on the Newport News Parks and Recreation website.

MAYVILLE, N.Y. —The Chautauqua County Youth Bureau is looking to increase the positive impact that athletics have on young people in the county.  The Chautauqua County Department of Mental Hygiene and Social Services (DMHSS) is accepting applications for funding provided by the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) to support Youth Sports Programs for under-resourced youth under the age of 18. 

For the purposes of this funding opportunity, the following program/service areas have been identified as priorities:

Youth Sports Education Funding (YSEF) – Programs that enable youth to be active and encourage physical fitness. OCFS encourages a wide and flexible definition of sports that includes organized activities with movement, including physical fitness activities such as, but not limited to yoga, hiking, dance, and active outdoor pursuits.

Youth Team Sports (YTS) – Programs that support an organized physical activity. OCFS defines “team sport” as an organized physical activity in which groups of two or more individuals compete with two or more opposing individuals. Sporting activities where individuals engage in competition on behalf of an organized group including, but not limited to, team tennis, team golf, or racing sports such as swimming or skiing, are included in this definition. 

Eligible applicants should be from interested non-profit community-based organizations, cities, towns, and villages within Chautauqua County with a federal identification number and charity registration number that is able to meet the County’s insurance requirements. The grant program, created under the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), and will run during the program year October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. The grant may be used to fund programming that provides opportunities for youth in under-resourced communities to learn and participate in sports programming. 

Program costs can include the following:

• Coaches/instructors/direct service staff/mentors (including training/professional development)
• Referee fees
• Scholarships
• Purchase of equipment or uniforms
• Capital investment (e.g., swimming facilities, fields, fences, storage, lighting).
• Instruction or coaching necessary to support youth’s ability to participate in team sports.
• Facility/field space

The application period for the Youth Sports grant begins May 16^th and closes June 17^th   at 3:30 p.m. The Request for Proposal (RFP), which outlines all criterion, is available on the Chautauqua County Website (chqgov.com/YouthGrantFunds). Funding decisions and awards will be based upon New York State Office of Children and Family (OCFS) guidelines. 

For more information, contact the Chautauqua County Youth Bureau at kimballn@chqgov.com.

Trump’s DEI approach shows he likely didn’t coach youth sports

I don’t know this for a fact, but I would bet that Donald Trump never coached any of his kids’ soccer, baseball or basketball teams. I say this because I think Mr. Trump has a mistaken notion of what diversity, equity and inclusion really means. I coached both my kids in multiple sports over many years, and everything I know today about diversity, equity and inclusion I learned from coaching youth sports.

Let’s start with diversity. On my daughter’s soccer and basketball teams, every year we had girls with blond hair, girls with dark hair, and at least two girls with red hair. If I had coached a few more years, I suspect we’d have had girls with pink hair or lime green hair and artfully coifed hair of colors never seen in nature on the team, and they’d have been just as welcome as everyone else on the team.

Equity? All my soccer coaching was done at the parks and rec level where there were no tryouts and the coaches were volunteers (or in some cases, if you happened to miss a parents’ meeting, were volunteered). The only rules of soccer we needed to understand was that if it moves, kick it, and if it doesn’t move, kick it until it does. At that level of play, coaches needed only a whistle and a cursory understanding of the nuances of the rule of offsides. If you wanted to play on a parks and rec league team, you got on one. My little league and youth basketball coaching experience was more limited, but still no kid was turned away if they wanted to play on a team, even those who actually didn’t really want to play on a team, but whose parents outvoted them so they played.

I learned very early in my youth soccer coaching days that most of the girls on the team just wanted to play a little soccer and have a little of fun, particularly if that fun included laughing at their coach whenever he tried to demonstrate a sophisticated soccer move, such as kicking a ball or dodging a kicked ball or hunting for his missing whistle. Winning was less important than having a good time with their friends. I therefore made sure that every girl on the team got an equal amount of playing time in every game so they all felt equally included as members of the team, even those girls who were only playing because their parents wanted them to play. I figured even if the girls didn’t really want to play, their parents deserved the chance to see their daughters on the field for as much time as every other parent saw their daughters on the field.

I suspect Mr. Trump would have seen youth sports as a zero-sum game where, for some kids to be declared winners, an equal number of kids needed to be seen as losers. But there’s much more than keeping track of winners and losers going on in youth sports. There’s exercise and fresh air and tasty treats after a game or match. There’s learning new skills and making new friends and spending time with old friends. There’s traveling to exotic new places like the Tri-Cities, Spokane and Bellingham to play soccer with other kids with different accents and different color hair and skin and jerseys. There’s that special feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself, of giving every ounce of yourself for your teammates, of being part of something special and lasting. There’s also lots of laughter and muddy cleats and icy fields and long rides home in cars full of sprawling girls and the unforgettable aroma of dirty socks.

Trying to stay on top of the latest dumb thing our President has done has diverted many of us from noticing some of the more interesting things happening in 2025. For example, I bet you didn’t realize that 2025 is the first year that’s a square number since 1936. The square root of 2025 is 45 and the square root of 1936 is 44. The next year that’s a square number will be 2116 (46 x 46). See? Isn’t that more interesting than nonsense about reopening Alcatraz as a prison or invading Greenland?

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.

Jess Cadwallender makes his rounds delivering the last afternoon edition of The Free Lance-Star Friday, June 12, 1998, in Fredericksburg, Va.
(William Helton Jr. — The Free Lance-Star via AP)

ALBANY — For decades, a carveout in New York’s child labor laws allowed kids as young as 11 to legally partake in the time-honored tradition of a paper route.

Flipping papers into suburban hedges, bicycling through snow squalls, dodging dogs and getting stiffed for tips became a rite of passage for generations of youths.

But a change to the law quietly made via the state budget this month makes clear the job is now not allowed for anyone under 14 years old. The move was first reported by Politico.

The change comes even though paper boys and girls have mostly gone the way of phone booths, mimeograph machines and their urban “newsie” forebears who shouted “Extra! Extra!” on street corners.

While many teens used to take on paper routes as after-school jobs, that became rarer decades ago as more daily newspapers switched to early morning deliveries. Newspapers are now increasingly online and tend to rely on adults with cars to make home deliveries, according to industry watchers.

“The need for a workforce of kids to go throwing newspapers on stoops is just a thing of the past,” said attorney Allan Bloom, an employment law expert with the Proskauer firm.

Lawmakers made the change as part of a broader update of child labor laws. Bloom likened it to a “cleanup” as lawmakers streamlined the process for employing minors and increased penalties for violating child labor laws.

Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association, said she was not aware of any newspapers in New York using youth carriers.

Christopher Page recalled buying his first guitar on earnings from a paper route started in the late ’70s in suburban Clifton Park, north of Albany.

“I just had a 10-speed that I destroyed. It was truly rain or shine. I’m out there riding the bike or even in the winter,” said Page.

When dogs chased him on his bike, Page would ward them off with his shoulder bag full of newspapers.

At age 13, Jon Sorensen delivered the Syracuse Herald-American on Sunday with his 11-year old brother in the Finger Lakes town of Owasco from the back of their mother’s Chevy station wagon.

“That was back when papers were papers — a lot of sections and a lot of weight,” recalled Sorensen, now 68 and Kennedy’s partner. “I can remember trudging through the snow. … I don’t think I ever dropped one, because if you did you had to be heading back to the car and pick up another copy.”

Sorensen stayed in the newspaper business as an adult, covering state government and politics for papers including New York Daily News and The Buffalo News.

“The hardest part of the job wasn’t delivering the paper, it was collecting,” Sorensen recalled. “It wasn’t always easy to get people to pay up.”

The Bluffton Lady Pirate Youth Basketball Camp will be held on June 24 and 26 from 5:00-7:00 p.m.

This camp is open to all girls entering grades 3-6 and will be held in the Bluffton High School gym.

Staff will be Bluffton High School Girls Basketball coaching staff as well as current Lady Pirate basketball players.

Participants will need t-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and a water bottle. The cost is $30 per camper.

Please send in registration by June 9 to be guaranteed a T-shirt and basketball.