Sports in Brief: USOC loses another big sponsor
Alvaro Saborio scored 79 seconds into the game and Costa Rica defeated the United States, 3-1, last night in a World Cup qualifier in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Alvaro Saborio
scored 79 seconds into the game and Costa Rica defeated the United States, 3-1, last night in a World Cup qualifier in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Celso Borges added a goal in the 13th minute, and Pablo Herrera sealed the victory for 41st-ranked Costa Rica when he made it 3-0 in the 69th.
Landon Donovan scored the U.S. goal when he converted a penalty kick in the second minute of second-half stoppage time.
The game was the beginning of a difficult stretch for the 14th-ranked Americans, who are 0-7-1 in qualifying games in Costa Rica. The Americans will host Honduras, the last team to beat them in a qualifier on U.S. soil, on Saturday night in Chicago.
Olympics
The U.S. Olympic Committee recently lost another high-profile corporate partner, with Bank of America's departure leaving holes in three major sponsorship categories eight months before the 2010 Vancouver Games.
A USOC sponsor for 16 years, Bank of America followed the lead of General Motors and the Home Depot, not renewing a four-year agreement, worth $12 million to $15 million, that ended after the 2008 Beijing Games.
Kellogg's also dumped the USOC following Beijing, and Johnson & Johnson terminated an International Olympic Committee sponsorship that would have paid as much as $100 million the next four years. J&J could become a USOC sponsor.
Elsewhere: Two-time Olympic medal-winning figure skater Michelle Kwan will receive a degree at the University of Denver's undergraduate commencement Saturday.
Golf
Four-time runner-up
Mike Deo
of High Bridge Hills shot a second-round 72 and shared the lead with
Anthony Campanile
of Blue Heron Pines at the halfway point of the 108th New Jersey State Golf Association Amateur Championship. Deo and Campanile had 36-hole totals of 1-under 143 at the Fairmount Country Club in Chatham heading into a 36-hole finale today.
Noteworthy
Chris Walker
, a former all-Big Five point guard at Villanova, was named an assistant coach at his alma mater.
He fills the spot on coach Jay Wright's staff left vacant when Pat Chambers was named head coach at Boston University.
The Minnesota Lynx promoted Jennifer Gillom to head coach after Don Zierden resigned to join Flip Saunders' staff with the NBA's Washington Wizards.
Free-agent minor-league pitcher Justin Mallett was suspended for 100 games for testing positive for a banned substance, his second violation of baseball's drug policy.
Mallett was suspended for 50 games on April 11, 2006, also following a positive drug test. The 27-year-old righthander had pitched in the Cincinnati Reds' system. He was released last Friday.
Britain's David Haye (22-1) pulled out of his scheduled IBF and WBO heavyweight title fight against Wladimir Klitschko (52-3) because of an unspecified injury suffered in training.
The fight, before an anticipated 60,000 in a football stadium in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, was set for June 20.
Justice Louis York of the New York State Supreme Court rejected Victor Conte's request for summary judgement of boxer "Sugar" Shane Mosley's defamation lawsuit.
A summary judgment would have ended the suit in Conte's favor before the case went to trial.
Mosley accuses Conte of lying when he repeatedly said the former three-division world champion knowingly took illegal performance-enhancing drugs produced at Conte's Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.