WINTHROP, Mass. – The Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) has announced its 2025 Women’s Outdoor Track & Field All-Conference teams this past Wednesday, with the Saint Joseph’s College of Maine women’s team earning numerous conference honors for their outstanding performances at the GNAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

ALL-CONFERENCE TEAMS (Top-Three Finishers in Each Event at Championships)

The GNAC All-Conference honors are awarded to the top-three finishers in each event at the championships.

Leading the way for the Monks were Audrey Bilodeau, Ava Smart, and Ellie Leech, who each earned multiple All-Conference honors.

• Audrey Bilodeau displayed her versatility by claiming first place in the 400m hurdles and second place in both the 100m hurdles and 400 meters.

• Ava Smart demonstrated her speed and endurance by winning the 400 meters and anchoring the first-place 4×400 relay team.

• Ellie Leech excelled in the field events, capturing first place in the javelin throw and earning third in the shot put.

The following Monks secured All-Conference recognition:

400 meters: 

Ava Smart – 1st

Audrey Bilodeau – 2nd 

800 meters:

Cheri Willems – 2nd

100m hurdles: 

Audrey Bilodeau – 2nd

400m hurdles: 

Audrey Bilodeau – 1st

4×100 Relay: 

Saint Joseph’s (Maine) – 3rd

Alexis Cowan

Zoe Indenga

Jemima Kabangu

Madalyn Guindon

4×400 Relay: 

Saint Joseph’s (Maine) – 1st 

Ava Smart

Bella Koepsell

Alexia Young

Cheri Willems

4×800 Relay: 

Saint Joseph’s (Maine) – 2nd

Alexia Young 

Audrey Bilodeau

Bella Koepsell

Cheri Willems

Long Jump:

 Ella Labrie – 2nd

Triple Jump: 

Ella Labrie – 2nd

Zoe Indenga – 3rd

Shot Put: 

Ellie Leech – 3rd

Discus: 

Abby O’Brien – 2nd

Javelin Throw: 

Ellie Leech – 1st

ALL-SPORTSMANSHIP TEAM

During Tuesday’s Disney Upfront, ESPN and Disney+ announced the new all-female-led sports-focused studio show Vibe Check, which will premiere exclusively on Disney+ in June.

This will be ESPN’s second exclusive content offering on Disney+. SC+, a daily edition of SportsCenter hosted by Gary Striewski and Randy Scott, debuted in March.

Elle Duncan, Andraya Carter, and Chiney Ogwumike announced the news Tuesday during Upfronts and will presumably all be involved in the program.

“ESPN is true to women’s sports, not new to women’s sports,” Duncan said. “And our commitment is fueling the growth of ESPN. Last year, fans spent 54% more time watching — that includes the WNBA, college basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, and tennis.”

According to a release, new episodes of Vibe Check will stream three times per week and cover every sport.

“We are incredibly excited to launch this new show, which will provide a powerful platform for the brilliant women at ESPN,” said Burke Magnus, President of Content, ESPN. “The voices that will be leading this program have long been shaping the sports landscape, and now they’ll have this additional platform to bring their unique insights to the forefront in an even more impactful way for Disney+ subscribers.”

While ESPN prepares to launch its standalone subscription service, shows like Vibe Check and SC+ are synergistic opportunities to test the water and determine the demand for unique programming beyond what appears on their networks.

Even still, Smith said Brown-Miller was humble. When it came time to reveal the final roster, Brown-Miller assumed she had not made it and was packing up her belongings, prepared to return to Michigan from Lake Placid, New York, that very night. The idea was laughable to Smith when he heard about it afterwards.

“If Brownie is not on this team there’s almost no reason to have a team because she’s the epitome of a team player.” Smith said. “She wasn’t a flashy player or a superstar-type, but she was an ingredient we had to have.”

Smith said that Brown-Miller’s commitment and tenacity while also looking to put a spotlight on the team instead of herself made her somebody the players could rely on. On a team of players still in their collegiate years, Brown-Miller also fulfilled the role of an additional coach, Smith said.

In the high-pressure environment leading up to everyone’s first Olympic experience, Smith said he and his staff asked a lot of players both physically and mentally. By virtue of her work ethic, drive and will to win, Brown-Miller set a standard for the team that drove them to be better. 

“She never wavered. She knew exactly the price that had to be paid and paid it, and her teammates rallied behind that and followed her,” Smith said. “And if the others didn’t meet her there, they wouldn’t have been able to look her in the eye.”

Bailey said that the team naturally looked up to Brown-Miller by virtue of her age — at 31, she was the oldest player on the roster — and her national team experience. Fiery and fierce on the ice, Brown-Miller was the kind of player that led by example and pushed her peers to be better, said U.S. teammate Cammi Granato. No one wanted to disappoint Brown-Miller, she said. Brown-Miller’s will to win drove the team.

“Lisa set the tone in terms of what level we were going to compete or participate,” Bailey said. “If she was sick or injured or not with us for a practice or gym session, we noticed. She was the fabric of that group. That was a team filled with a lot of high-performing people cut from a similar cloth and she still stood out and was a role model. She always brought the team up a notch.”

Never the loudest person in the room, Brown-Miller most often led by example, said Smith. When she did speak, the team really listened, said Granato. 

“She talked when she had something to say, and it was always meaningful,” Granato said. “Everyone respected her with the way she conducted herself and the way she worked and her personality.”

The word former teammates and coaches used most often to describe Brown-Miller was “gritty.”

She was a battler and tough as nails. She outworked and outskated the best players in the world. She hated to lose, even during drills in practice.

Granato remembers endless circles of skating drills from blue line to blue line where no matter how hard everyone else on the team skated and focused on it, they couldn’t catch or outskate Brown-Miller. 

“She made all of us better. She was the ultimate teammate,” said U.S. and Providence teammate Cindy Curley. “I don’t think anyone who ever played with her could honestly say that they didn’t hustle a little more and try a little harder in the corners because of Lisa. She was all about the grit and the determination. It made you a better player, practicing against her every day. An opponent is going to fight every step of the way for the puck and that’s how Lisa was. She never gave up. She just knew where to be. She had great hockey sense. She was just a once-in-a-lifetime, smart hockey player.”

If only for her perseverance, skill and success, Brown-Miller would be remembered as a legend of American women’s hockey. But to only look at how she performed on the ice and in the weight room only paints part of the picture of what made her such a special member of Team USA. 

Brown-Miller was just as fierce off the ice in her support and care for her friends and teammates, said Curley. When it came to anything other than hockey, Brown-Miller was the kindest and softest person Curley knew. 

“Off the ice, she would give anything to anyone,” Curley said. “She was an outstanding person. She was kind and caring and giving. But on the ice, she wasn’t giving anyone anything.”

That dichotomy — the ability to go full steam on the ice and be a caretaker for the other players off it — is what Curley said makes Brown-Miller such a role model. 

Brown-Miller was decades ahead of her time in that way. 

“In those days, leadership tended to be autocratic. We didn’t necessarily see empathy or self-awareness as primary goals of leadership,” Bailey said. “Today there’s a much more holistic, high empathy and emotional intelligence approach. The things we look for in leaders of business or sports today, Lisa was already doing almost 30 years ago. She was a high-performance athlete that set a tone of humility, empathy and self-awareness.”

Granato remembers Brown-Miller’s humor, saying that she can still close her eyes and hear Brown-Miller’s unique and infectious laugh.

“She had a great laugh and a great smile,” Granato said. “When she laughed it would make everyone else laugh. She had a sly smile and then she’d giggle, and it just spread through the room.”

She was also an attentive listener who was fully engaged with the people she spoke to, said Bailey. If Brown-Miller asked about a teammate’s mood or well-being, she really meant it and genuinely wanted to know the answer.

“What I want people to know and remember about Lisa is that yes, her work ethic was unmatched, and she set the tone, but just as importantly, she was selfless in the most competitive environment you could ever find yourself in,” said Bailey. 

Brown-Miller was unselfish without sacrificing her competitiveness. She had the ability to turn the aggression on when it came to competition but then channel that passion differently when it came to interpersonal relationships off the ice, said Curley. She showed her teammates how to be the best player and the best human being — to be difficult and pesky and unbeatable on the ice, but funny and warm off it. 

Brown-Miller didn’t just set the tone for the 1998 gold-medal winning Olympic team, but she set a template for the work ethic required for U.S. women’s hockey players to have success. Her influence will continue to echo throughout the game thanks to the impact she had on everyone around her. 

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.

Charles Barkley might not like seeing college athletes get paid as much as they are, but he used to be the one giving them money.

Barkley attended the Regions Pro-Am in Birmingham, Alabama Wednesday, and prior to the golf tournament, he joined Greg McElroy and Cole Cubelic on their Jox 94.5 morning show. During the interview, Barkley spoke about college sports and NIL donations, where he admitted to giving his alma mater, Auburn University a lot of money for their athletic programs. But NIL seems to have caused Barkley to reach his limit.

“I’ve given more money to Auburn, legal or illegal, than any athlete in the history of the school,” Barkley told McElroy and Cubelic. “There’s not a single person in the world who’s given more money to Auburn, legal or illegal, than me, but the notion that I’m going to come up with a couple million dollars every year so that we can be good at basketball and football, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

It’s not surprising to hear Charles Barkley has given money to Auburn illegally, he all but admitted to it more than a decade ago. In 2014, Seth Davis posed a hypothetical situation to Barkley, asking if he would go against NCAA rules by giving Auburn $100,000 to land a top recruit. Barkley’s answer was simple, “Sure, I would do it.” And he defended his answer by saying NCAA rules are “so unfair.”


Barkley has been one of the biggest critics of NIL in recent years, regularly claiming it’s not a sustainable model, while calling on college athletes to put more money on the value of a free education. NIL is not perfect and it’s not for the better of college sports, but it is for the better of the college athlete. Athletes who, for decades, were taken advantage of by the NCAA, particularly in college basketball and football.

Charles Barkley shouldn’t have to spend more money on Auburn athletics now that it’s legal to do so. But his criticisms of NIL do sound a little hypocritical when he admits to bankrolling Auburn’s rosters in the past.