Kansas State baseball’s NCAA Tournament opener against Louisiana Tech, which already was delayed an hour at the start because of weather, stalled a second time after five innings and finally was suspended Fjust before midnight Friday in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It will resume at 11 a.m. Saturday.

The second delay came a little after 10 p.m. after Louisiana Tech scored three runs in the bottom of the fifth inning to cut K-State’s lead to 9-4 at Baum-Walker Stadium. A rain deluge made it impossible for the teams to continue the game Friday night.

Kansas State took advantage of the first delay by scoring seven runs over the first two innings, getting two runs in the first and adding five, all with two out, in the second.

Lightning was followed by a heavy rainfall that flooded the Louisiana Tech dugout.

The winner between No. 3 seed K-State and No. 2 Louisiana Tech is scheduled to play No. 1 seed Arkansas at 8 p.m. Saturday, while the loser takes on Southeast Missouri State at 2 p.m., or roughly 45 minutes after the completion of Friday night’s contest. Arkansas held off SEMO, 17-9, in the early Friday game.

Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on Twitter at @arnegreen.

We’re getting close enough to the start of the college football season that teams and leagues are beginning to unveil details around their first games. For the Kansas Jayhawks, we now know the times and broadcasts for the first three games of the year. 

The first quarter of the schedule looks like this:

Game One: Thursday, August 29 | 7 p.m. vs Lindenwood – ESPN+

Game Two: Saturday, September 7 | 6 p.m. at Illinois – FS1

Game Three: Friday, September 13 | 6 p.m. vs UNLV –  ESPN

This announcement has come with a bit of mixed reaction online, and it’s understandable. Let’s look at both sides. 

Outside of the Lindenwood game against a team new to D-I football, Kansas is starting to get some respect from the national broadcasts for the non-conference slate. The game at Illinois is in a prime time and channel to draw some eyeballs on the Jayhawks early. And anytime you can get on the mothership of ESPN, you take it. 

This will be good for awareness of the program (especially if KU can win decisively) both now and moving forward. Recruits still want to know that they’re going to be seen – both by college football lovers at large and their families if they’re not from the area – and being able to sell a program that is playing on ESPN and FS1 for its non-conference isn’t nothing.  

For those actually hoping to attend the games live, these aren’t the best in terms of convenience. Season-ticket holders or just fans hoping to take their families to early games are going to have to make bigger arrangements to travel up to Kansas City in time for a 6 p.m. kick on a Friday and then justify the school night for the opener on Thursday the 29th. Fans are already making some sacrifices to watch with KU not playing in Lawrence this year. This just adds to it.

Now, I’m not standing up talking about the horror of the scheduling. It’s not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. First-world problems, if you will. But this is an important season in many ways, both on the field and in the stands. 

It’s been talked about at length how Kansas’ embracing of football from the fans has to continue along with the financial and business moves of the university. Whether it’s for Lance Leipold or revenue for the university or the ongoing back and forth of conference realignment rumors, this is a big year to show that Kansas football is back. 

What an environment it will look like if Jayhawks pack Children’s Mercy Park and Arrowhead, taking over KC with a team on the rise. It could be a great look. It could also be an embarrassing one playing in front of a half-empty stadium. And it just seems like the timing of these initial games do much to help ensure it’s the former and not the latter. 

You take TV visibility whenever you can get it. Now Kansas just needs to make sure it gets students and fans to work around their schedules and make it as easy as possible to pack Children’s Mercy Park. 

TOPEKA — A regional abortion provider is rolling out vasectomy services in Kansas as part of a toolkit to keep reproductive choices secure at the family level.

The move comes after increased demand as multiple states attempt to chip away at reproductive rights.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains is hosting a low-cost two-day vasectomy clinic at its Kansas City, Kansas, health center May 30-31 to kick off the service, which will continue to be offered at the center.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains president and CEO Emily Wales said the decision came after increased demand following the 2022 federal overturn of abortion protections.

“We don’t see hesitation,” Wales said. “We see folks who are really appreciative, excited. It is a pretty cool thing I think, to have patients here who are saying openly, ‘This moment is a terrible one for sexual and reproductive health care. And this is a thing I can do to help take care of my family and my loved ones. And I’m going to do it for all of us.’ ”

While Kansas is one of the few states in the region left that protects abortion — legal up to 22 weeks of gestation — the state has been flooded with out-of-state travelers needing abortion services. Kansas has six centers that provide abortions, but one has shut down services with no set deadline to reopen after staff changes. 

Planned Parenthood Great Plains has added a handful of appointments to mitigate the effect of the shutdown, but the organization is already dealing with a heavy workload. The organization will be expanding access this fall, opening a center in southeast Kansas to keep up with demand. 

Wales estimated the boom in demand began in 2021, when the Texas Legislature initiated a six-week abortion ban, prompting a wave of Texans traveling to Kansas for abortion care. The 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade increased need, especially after Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana banned abortion.

In-state abortion providers have also had to contend with a web of abortion restrictions passed by a Republican-dominated Legislature. While Kansas voters in August of 2022 overwhelmingly defeated a constitutional amendment meant to take away the right to terminate a pregnancy, lawmakers have continuously tried to restrict the procedure, adding more regulations to the Women’s Right to Know Act, a patchwork legislation governing the state’s abortion protocols.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains and other abortion providers in-state have ongoing litigation against several provisions in the act, most recently challenging an “abortion survey” law passed in 2024.

“We’re not strangers to having to adapt our processes, make changes, go through hurdles and hoops,” Wales said. “But in a state like Kansas, where you have a constitutional protection to access this care, we shouldn’t be going through any of those hurdles and hoops.”

To combat state restrictions, the organization launched vasectomy services last year starting with a Tulsa, Oklahoma, center and expanding through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. The organization has completed 189 vasectomy procedures to date. 

“Providing accessible reproductive and sexual health care is at the core of our mission to empower individuals to lead healthy, autonomous lives,” said Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Great Plains. 

The overall rate of U.S. vasectomy procedures has increased since the end of Roe, becoming a more popular birth control option as states imposed partial or total abortion bans. The procedure is permanent, can be accomplished in one appointment and is relatively cheap compared to other methods of birth control such as IUDS. Planned Parenthood Great Plains estimates a cost of $250 to $750 for a vasectomy during the two-day clinic. 

“We saw a bump in patients requesting IUD implants and I think vasectomy is kind of the same reaction where folks were caught off guard, shocked by what the Supreme Court did, shocked by the idea that the government could control such personal decisions,” Wales said. “And so vasectomy feels like a way to take back some of that control over your own body and your own future.”