Arizona GymCats welcome new faces, new experiences as they host UCLA in home opener
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Courtesy of Arizona Athletics
Maybe Arizona GymCats freshman
Jessica Castles should have known her experience in NCAA gymnastics was not going to be a typical one. When she took her unofficial visit to Arizona, it wasn’t at all what gymnastics head coach
John Court had described.
“The first time I came here, John promised me warm weather,” Castles said. “And it snowed that day.”
Just a few years later, she was sitting in McKale Center as a University of Arizona student-athlete answering questions about another snowy day in the Old Pueblo. Not to mention those questions about life as a student-athlete over 5,000 miles from home during a pandemic.
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By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism. BELTON: Georgia had a good year despite horrific pandemic State Rep. Dave Belton
For the past few years, I’ve had the luxury of starting the new year with a happy pronouncement about how great things are.
Obviously, I won’t be doing that this year.
To be fair, Georgia has had an incredible decade-long run of historic successes. Per capita state taxes in Georgia are next to the lowest in the nation. We have the second-best Bond Rating. Our public schools have never had better SAT, ACT, and K12 scores…or a better graduation rate. Our university system is one of the best in the nation; as UGA and Georgia Tech are ranked among the top-20 in public, and Emory is among the best private universities. Before COVID, we had the lowest unemployment rates in history. Even during the pandemic,
While Gov. Phil Murphy is touting his rollout of the vaccine for COVID-19 as a huge success, a few weeks in only around 200,000 New Jerseyans got a jab. Of those, only about 50,000 got the second shot. This is out of a state population of 9 million people. Yet, even the governor s own fake metric of infection rate shows a decline.
Most people who test positive never even have symptoms let alone get sick enough for care. People who do die from COVID are overwhelmingly over the age of 70 with compromised health and co-morbidities like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Numbers of deaths have been inflated since the outset of the pandemic by state counts including ours. Even numbers of positive tests conflict with each other when comparing counties to the state.
Two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald, 2017 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Todd Gurley II and two-time Pro Bowl quarterback Jared Goff are among notable selections Holmes helped oversee.
Recently, as the Rams have gone four years without a first-round pick, Holmes has helped identify mid-to-late-round selections that have played prominent roles, including safety John Johnson III, tight end Tyler Higbee and safety Jordan Fuller.
Holmes, who turned 41 in July, has the support of many within the Rams organization, where he has made an impact beyond roster construction. He s become a valued voice in our organization as part of our leadership team on social justice and diversity issues, helping us lead a diverse group of people, Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said. Brad is one of the more valued voices we have in our building.