Sports
Prep talk: Defending champion Cleveland is team to beat in City Section girls' soccer
Cleveland’s girls’ soccer team has been to four consecutive City Section championship games, winning last season in overtime over El Camino Real.
Now the Cavaliers (6-1-3) look like the team to beat again, along with Granada Hills, Palisades and El Camino Real.
West Valley League play begins this week.
Cleveland returns the City Section player of the year, Alexa Monge, and the player who delivered the overtime goal to beat El Camino Real, Yesenia Gomez. …
The first Southern Section girls’ soccer rankings are out. Redondo Union, Santa Margarita and Oaks Christian are unbeaten and lead the rankings. Here’s the link. …
Unbeaten Mater Dei tops the first Southern Section boys’ soccer rankings. Here’s the link. …
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
Sports
Ana Bărbosu, Romanian gymnast involved in Olympic bronze medal controversy, commits to Stanford
Romanian gymnast Ana Bărbosu, who won a bronze on floor exercise at the 2024 Olympic Games after a controversial ruling that stripped the medal from American Jordan Chiles, will join Stanford’s gymnastics team in the fall. She announced her commitment via Instagram on Wednesday.
“Can’t wait to join this amazing family! Go Card,” she wrote.
Bărbosu, 18, was awarded the bronze medal six days after the floor exercise final after her team appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). During the Aug. 5 event, Chiles made the podium after her coach, Cecile Landi, successfully inquired to have Chiles’ score raised by 0.1, bumping her from fifth to third place. The court ruled that the judges presiding over the final should not have accepted the inquiry because Landi’s request came four seconds after the one-minute deadline to submit it. The International Olympic Committee reallocated Chiles’ bronze medal to Bărbosu, who received it at a ceremony in Bucharest, Romania’s capital.
Bărbosu’s elation and devastation was in the spotlight on the day of the floor exercise final. When Chiles, the last competitor in the event, initially scored a 13.666, Bărbosu — who scored 13.700 — began celebrating what she thought was a third-place finish. After Landi’s inquiry led to Chiles’ score change, Bărbosu’s dropped her Romanian flag out of shock and left the floor in tears.
Though Bărbosu is currently the official owner of the bronze, the medal is still tied up in appeals. Chiles’ attorneys filed a formal appeal with the Swiss Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s Supreme Court, to overturn the CAS ruling on Sept. 16 and added a second appeal brief on Sept. 24. USA Gymnastics also filed a separate appeal in conjunction with Chiles’ application. Chiles’ attorneys are arguing that CAS did not consider video evidence that “showed her inquiry was submitted on time.”
GO DEEPER
IOC’s handling of the Jordan Chiles ruling is disturbing and shameful
While Bărbosu’s participation in the Paris Games has largely been clouded by the floor final controversy, she helped Romania to a seventh-place finish in the team final and earned a spot in the individual all-around final. In the 2026 NCAA gymnastics season, she’ll join a Stanford squad that went on a Cinderella run from a No. 52 ranking in Week 1 to the 2024 NCAA championship semifinal. It’s likely Bărbosu and Chiles will face off at the collegiate level next season, as Chiles will be completing her senior season with UCLA gymnastics and Bărbosu will make her NCAA debut. Former Pac-12 foes Stanford and UCLA are in different conferences now (the ACC and Big Ten, respectively), but the schools have a dual meet slated for March 9, indicating they will likely continue scheduling meets together in the future.
Another gymnast who competed for Romania at the 2024 Olympics will also enter the NCAA ranks soon, as Lilia Cosman committed to Michigan State.
Required reading
(Photo: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP via Getty Images)
Sports
Notre Dame football team members dealing with flu ahead of semifinal vs Penn State: report
Some members of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish may have to do their best Michael Jordan impression on Thursday.
The flu is reportedly going around the team, just hours before their College Football Playoff semifinal against Penn State.
On3 Sports reported that “those who have it have it bad, but it sounds like that’s mostly backups and special teams players.”
Other reports since indicate that the illness has subsided in recent days, but players are not out of the woods yet.
The Fighting Irish are riding high headed into Thursday’s Orange Bowl after taking down the second-ranked Georgia Bulldogs in the quarterfinal last week.
Notre Dame earned the seventh seed in the bracket, which got them to host a home game against No. 10 Indiana. That was a rather easy victory, but Thursday may just be their toughest test yet.
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Penn State held Boise State star running back Ashton Jeanty to just 104 rushing yards last week, his lowest of the season. That is not necessarily great news for the Irish, considering Riley Leonard had just 90 yards passing against the Bulldogs.
The Nittany Lions are the sixth seed in the bracket.
The Fighting Irish’s season seemed to be dead in the water after losing at home to Northern Illinois in the second week of the season, but they have since rattled off a dozen consecutive wins to find themselves just one victory away from their second national title game in the last 15 years.
However, if they can get by what seemed to be a program-altering loss at the time, a bug seems to be just a minor speed bump.
This is the third time the Fighting Irish are in the playoffs, having lost in the semifinals in both 2018 and 2020.
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Sports
Why the Dodgers finally traded once-coveted prospect Diego Cartaya
Two years ago, Diego Cartaya was the crown jewel of the Dodgers’ highly touted farm system.
On Thursday, he quietly departed the organization without ever coming close to reaching the majors.
A week after being designated for assignment by the club to clear a roster spot for the signing of South Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim, Cartaya was traded to the Minnesota Twins for minor league pitcher Jose Vazquez, the team announced.
Vasquez, a 20-year-old right-hander, has a career 8.05 ERA in two seasons in the Dominican Summer League, coming to the Dodgers as little more than a long-shot flier.
Cartaya, once considered one of the best young talents in the sport after signing with the Dodgers out of Venezuela, was supposed to be destined for so much more.
A 6-foot-3 catcher with a powerful right-handed swing, Cartaya was ranked as the Dodgers’ best prospect by MLB Pipeline in both 2022 and 2023. At one point, he was tabbed as a consensus top-20 prospect in baseball by MLB Pipeline, Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.
Though Cartaya was annually a subject of trade rumors, the Dodgers never involved him in a blockbuster deal, maintaining hope in his potential as a key part of their long-term future.
Alas, injuries and poor performance derailed the 23-year-old’s rise through the minors, stalling his career as other young catchers like Dalton Rushing and Hunter Feducia passed him in the Dodgers’ organizational depth chart.
Cartaya’s best seasons in the club’s system came in 2021, when he batted .298 with 10 home runs and a 1.023 OPS in 31 games in single A, and 2022, when he hit .254 with 22 home runs and a .892 OPS in single A and high A, and appeared in the MLB Futures Game at Dodger Stadium.
Entering 2023, Cartaya didn’t seem far away from making Chavez Ravine his permanent home. Though he had battled back and hamstring injuries already, his power at the plate and big arm behind the dish made him look like a rising star. He opened that season in double A, and seemed primed to quickly climb the final rungs of the minor league ladder.
But that year, Cartaya hit only .189 while splitting time between catcher and designated hitter. He hit 19 home runs, but also struck out 117 times.
Early last year, Cartaya’s numbers rebounded slightly, earning him a promotion to triple-A Oklahoma City. Once there, however, he batted just .208 with a .643 OPS in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.
When the Dodgers needed a reserve catcher late in the season, they summoned Feducia — a lower-ranked prospect and former 12th-round pick — to their big league roster instead.
Between that and the emergence of Rushing, the club’s top draft pick in 2022 and current No. 1 rated prospect, Cartaya’s tenuous place within the organization was clear. And when the team needed to clear a roster spot last week, Cartaya became the easiest name for the team to move on from, his once tantalizing potential having never come to fruition.
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