BASEBALL
The Portland Sea Dogs have already qualified for the playoffs, but that’s not slowing them down.
Portland beat Somerset 5-2 in an Eastern League game on Thursday for its eighth straight win, tying a season-high streak, and its 16th win in 17 games.
Ceddanne Rafaela scored on Tyler Dearden’s sac fly in the fourth, and Hudson Potts followed with a two-run homer to spark Portland at Bridgewater Township, New Jersey.
FIGURE SKATING
QUAD AXEL: Ilia Malinin made history late Wednesday when the 17-year-old wunderkind, and the heir apparent to Olympic champion Nathan Chen among American figure skaters, successfully landed the first quad axel in competition.
Malinin pulled off the four-and-a-half revolution jump while winning the lower-level U.S. Classic in Lake Placid, New York, before a small crowd in a mostly empty arena. It nonetheless sent shockwaves through the sport as the final and most difficult of the quadruple jumps had finally been conquered.
“It felt really good. When I’m practicing it, it’s pretty easy for me to figure out how to get the right timing and everything to have it be a good attempt,” said Malinin.
Chen, who for now has stepped away from the sport following his triumph at the Beijing Olympics, has toyed with the jump in practice. And two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu was unsuccessful in trying to land it at the Winter Games.
COLLEGES
FIELD HOCKEY: Faith Jennings scored three goals, two in the first half, as Bowdoin rolled to a 6-1 win over Southern Maine in Gorham.
Maya Malenfant, Georgie Coetzer and Sophia Rutman added goals for the Polar Bears (2-1). Ginny Twitchell scored for USM.
Eleanor Folsom stopped 10 shots for the Huskies (2-3), while Delaney Bashaw had one save for the Polar Bears.
BASKETBALL: UConn announced Thursday it has agreed to pay former men’s basketball coach Kevin Ollie another $3.9 million to settle discrimination claims surrounding his 2018 firing.
The money is in addition to the more than $11.1 million in back salary Ollie has already been paid after an arbitrator ruled in January that he was improperly fired under the school’s agreement with its professor’s union.
Ollie, a former UConn point guard who guided the Huskies to a 127-79 record and the 2014 national championship in six seasons as head coach, was let go after two losing seasons. UConn also stopped paying him under his contract, citing numerous NCAA violations in terminating the deal.
FOOTBALL: Miami star receiver Xavier Restrepo has sustained a foot injury that will sideline him indefinitely, according to multiple sources.
HOCKEY
NHL: Nathan MacKinnon expects to sign contract extension with the Colorado Avalanche soon, and it could make him the highest-paid player in the NHL.
MacKinnon wants to get something done before the season starts next month, adding he’ll shelve talks if an agreement isn’t reached by Oct. 12 when the reigning champions raise their Stanley Cup banner and begin their title defense.
“We’re pretty close,” MacKinnon said Thursday. “I’d prefer it to be done. … It gets emotional. You feel like it’s personal sometimes. I’d like to get it done just so it’s not a distraction at all.”
When it’s finalized, the deal could surpass Connor McDavid’s $100 million over eight years as the richest signed since the salary cap era began in 2005.
TENNIS
DAVIS CUP: Tommy Paul and Taylor Fritz won their singles matches to help the United States beat Kazakhstan 2-1 in Glasgow, Scotland, to move atop its Davis Cup Finals group .
The Americans are almost assured of reaching the quarterfinals with two wins from two in Group D. They now wait to see if the Netherlands can follow suit with a win over the British team on Friday. Britain needs to win after losing to the U.S. on Wednesday. The U.S. will then play the Dutch on Saturday.
HALEP SURGERY: Two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep has undergone nose surgery to improve her breathing and will not play again until next year.
In a post on Twitter on Thursday, the ninth-ranked Romanian wrote that she felt “completely exhausted” after her first-round loss to qualifier Daria Snigur at the U.S. Open last month. She then decided to follow medical advice and have an operation to help her breathing issues that have affected her “for many years” and were getting worse.
Halep posted a picture in her tweet, showing her nose bandaged.
“I felt it’s the right time to do it and also to do something for myself as a person,” she wrote. “That is why I did also the (a)esthetic part.”
SOCCER
EUROPA LEAGUE: Cristiano Ronaldo scored the first Europa League goal of his career to help Manchester United rebound from an opening loss in the second-tier competition with a 2-0 victory over Sheriff Tiraspol on Thursday.
The Champions League record scorer converted from the spot after Jadon Sancho gave United a 1-0 lead in Moldova. It was the 37-year-old Ronaldo’s first goal of the season and 699th in club competition.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.