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Utah Celtic boys wrap up unprecedented run of 4 straight national tournament titles at MLS NEXT Cup – KSL Sports

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Utah Celtic boys wrap up unprecedented run of 4 straight national tournament titles at MLS NEXT Cup – KSL Sports


HERRIMAN — Patrick Stevenson remains uncommitted for his college soccer career, but he may want to consider signing with Real Monarchs after his latest performance at Zions Bank Stadium.

Stevenson notched a brace as Celtic scored five second-half goals in a 5-0 win over St. Louis Developmental Academy in the championship match of the MLS NEXT Cup U19 boys’ academy division on home soil.

So about that Monarchs plan?

“If that ever happened, of course I would. That’s the dream,” said a sheepish Stevenson, who will leave for missionary service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Argentina this summer.”

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A backup plan of Division I college soccer for the former Utah Valley commit isn’t bad, either.

Neither is a national title

Stevenson is a newcomer to a group of 18-year-old Celtic players based in Orem who have played together since they were preteens. The club won the U.S. Youth Soccer Under-15 national championship in 2023, then added two more including U17 title last year in Orlando, Florida to cap what U.S. Youth Soccer said was the first time a team went back-to-back-to-back in the competition.
This year, Celtic joined MLS NEXT’s academy division, a newly branded national organization for youth soccer under Major League Soccer’s youth development system. After earning an invitation to the MLS NEXT Cup, Celtic took advantage of the 7,500-player tournament held on home soil for the first time.

“It’s so surreal,” said Brooks Barker, the Georgetown commitment who was named tournament MVP. “Being able to play with these boys year after year is special. We’ve really built a family here, and accomplishing anything your family is amazing. You’ll remember it forever — but national championships were last a lifetime.”

After a scoreless first half, Celtic started to roll. Air Force commit Ben Bradley opened the scoring off the club’s sixth corner kick of the match, and Brooks Barker doubled the advantage moments later.

The Salem Hills graduate who will leave for a church mission in Spain this summer finished off a sensational bicycle kick in the 63rd minute that gave Celtic a cushion it would never give up.

“That’s up there with one of my favorite goals of my career,” Barker said. “Everyone dreams of scoring a bicycle kick. It wasn’t perfectly clean, but for my last club goal ever — I’m going to remember it for a long time.” 

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But the green-and-white stripes weren’t done.

Corbin Gardner added a third off the boot of the Salt Lake Community College commit in the 73rd minute, and Stevenson found the back of the net less than six minutes later before finishing off his brace in stoppage time.

“All the boys are amazing,” said Stevenson, who joined Celtic a year ago after playing up a division with LaRoca FC most of his life. “We all play as a family, leave no regrets, and everybody just plays together.

“Right when I came in, they were so welcoming,” he added. “From the very first training, I felt part of the team.”

It’s about more than soccer, too, Barker added.

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“It’s less of a team, and more of a family,” he said. “We’re all there for each other in all of our moments: mission calls, celebrating each other, college commitments. We all play as a family, and it’s easier to play with guys who feel like brothers than just teammates.”

He also credited Celtic 07-08 coach Matt Bradley, who led the club the whole way.

“To be able to play with guys that you love with a great coach,” Barker said, “it makes all the difference.”



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Why is Bill Simmons so sure the Utah Jazz will draft Cameron Boozer?

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Why is Bill Simmons so sure the Utah Jazz will draft Cameron Boozer?


For most people familiar with the Utah Jazz, the answer to who the Jazz will select with the No. 2 overall pick comes down to whoever the Washington Wizards don’t select: AJ Dybantsa or Darryn Peterson.

But one prominent NBA media figure seems dead set in his stance that the Jazz will select Duke big man Cameron Boozer. For Bill Simmons, it’s not if the Jazz take Boozer, it’s when.

“I would bet anything AJ (Dybantsa) is the first pick… and I think Boozer goes two,” Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” on Saturday night.

This wasn’t the first time that Simmons expressed his confidence in the Jazz selecting Boozer. On a June 8 episode of his podcast, Simmons expressed his hunch that Boozer would end up in Utah.

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“I think Danny (Ainge) is such a wildcard at second,” Simmons said. “He did it with (Jayson) Tatum, he did it with (Jaylen) Brown, he did it when he was going to take Durant, he over and over again looks at the high end talent guys and is able to project them. You would think it’s going to happen with Peterson, but I think there’s too many red flags. I think he’s going to stay away from Peterson. I could see him taking Boozer at two. That would be my minus-130 bet right now. I might be wrong, but I really think they’re gonna take Boozer, I do. I can’t explain it.”

Later on, Simmons explained that the Jazz’s front office knows the families of Dybantsa and Boozer incredibly well, know that the two like playing in Utah — something that should never be taken for granted — and that Peterson is too much of a wildcard to take a swing on.

J. Kyle Mann, an NBA draft analyst for The Ringer who was Simmons’ guest on the June 8 episode did not echo this sentiment.

“I think the Jazz will take Peterson. I’ve heard they like Peterson, I’ve heard Danny likes Peterson,” Mann said.

Boozer was the national player of the year in his lone collegiate season at Duke, averaging an insane freshman stat line of 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. Boozer’s high IQ and rebounding are two of his biggest strengths, while his defense and perceived lower athletic ability leave some teams hesitant on drafting the former Blue Devil.

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The NBA Draft will be held on June 23 at 8 ET in Brooklyn, N.Y.



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Scientists Detected Strange Rumbling Beneath Utah Almost 50 Years Ago. They Just Figured Out What It Was

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Scientists Detected Strange Rumbling Beneath Utah Almost 50 Years Ago. They Just Figured Out What It Was


A mysterious earthquake deep below northern Utah had scientists scratching their heads back in 1979. The rumble seemingly occurred far lower beneath the Earth’s crust than scientists had believed was possible.

The tremor may not have been particularly strong, at a magnitude of 3.8, but the recorded seismic data threw experts for a loop nonetheless. The data suggested the rumbling had occurred over 55 miles below sea level, a depth that made no sense in conventional geology.

“I did some other analysis that convinced me of the reality of the deep depth but it was hard to convince others of the highly anomalous mantle earthquake occurring in a region where none should exist,” said George Zandt, who was a University of Utah seismology researcher at the time and helped record the unusual quake, in a new statement.

Now, as detailed in a study published earlier this year in the journal The Seismic Record, University of Utah geology professor Keith Koper and Zandt — who came out of retirement for the new investigation — analyzed eight subsequent “deep earthquakes” in the region, confirming they occurred in the Earth’s upper mantle, dozens of miles below the boundary of the crust.

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Koper and his colleagues say they’ve determined that the quakes are an “archetypal continental mantle event,” meaning they’re related to movements in the Earth’s mantle that take place over extremely long time scales.

The research highlights how much there’s still to learn about these forceful tectonic dynamics deep inside the planet, and how surprisingly different they are from more shallow, crust-based seismic events.

“It’s sort of a mystery in terms of fundamental physics,” Koper said in a statement. “How in the world can these things happen?”

“Another reason why it’s a big deal is that we have no idea how big they can be,” he added. “With crustal earthquakes, we can measure what we think their maximum size is going to be. We measure the faults that we can map out near the surface.”

Unlike earthquakes that occur in the Earth’s curst, deep earthquakes don’t announce themselves through foreshocks and aftershocks. The team determined they occur at the western edge of the Wyoming Craton — a leftover block of our planet’s lithosphere, the rigid outermost shell of the Earth, which stretches across northern Utah and southwest Wyoming — where temperatures can exceed 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

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The team suspects these new “deep quakes” could be caused by the mantle slowly squeezing by the Wyoming Craton.

“On the scale of millions of years, the mantle is hitting the craton and then flowing around it,” Koper explained. “It’s that interaction where that mantle flow is being diverted around this hard cratonic root that’s causing the increased strain rate, the increased deformation and it’s also creating extra stresses.”

“We think it’s that interaction between the keel of the iceberg and the medium around it that’s leading to these earthquakes,” he added.

More on earthquakes: California Primed for Apocalyptic Earthquake, Geological Research Finds

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Life jackets can make difference between life and death, officials say

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Life jackets can make difference between life and death, officials say


HURRICANE, Utah (ABC4) — With Summer in full swing, more people are heading to Utah’s lakes and reservoirs to cool off. However, with more water-related deaths across the state this year, officials are reminding people that using a life jacket often makes the difference.

As temperatures climb, Sand Hollow State Park is filled with boaters, paddleboarders and swimmers looking to cool off. With more people hitting the water, natural resource officers are reminding visitors to know the rules and make safety a priority.

“This year is looking like one of the deadliest,” resource officer Chris Nelson told ABC4.com. “If you look back far enough, not so far ago, having five fatalities was a whole summer’s worth across multiple different fields of recreation, from hiking and search and rescue operations to OHV and boating, and we’re looking at that now just from boating, and it’s the beginning of June. Not a great start.”

“Every kid 12 and under does have to be wearing a life jacket at all times,” natural resource officer Chad Tarr added. “There needs to be a life jacket for everyone accounted on board of a paddle craft or a vessel at all times as well.”

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For Rex Johnson, a local in Southern Utah, life jackets aren’t just for people. He and his wife visit Sand Hollow several times a week and ensure their two dogs wear jackets every time they hit the water, too.

“We were out here one day, and there were a lot of waves, and so she went after a Frisbee but couldn’t see it, and she just kept circling and circling, and it made me nervous. I didn’t know how long she could just circle, so we decided at that point to get them life jackets,” he recounted.

Johnson added that he wishes more people had the same approach. “What I noticed is the people that are out here on the stand up paddleboard, they rarely wear a life jacket. So that kind of makes me nervous,” he said.

Shelly Mackun teaches diving classes at Sand Hollow and said even the most experienced swimmers can find themselves in trouble in the water.

“You get out, and it’s a hundred degrees outside, and you jump in the water, and the water right now is about 74-ish. That’s considered cold water, and especially when your body is overheated, and you jump in, you’re likely to gasp, and as you do that, you’re going to swallow some water,” Mackun said.

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She added, “I always have some flotation on because it’s not always just about you that other things can happen. You can get knocked in the head. You can buy a paddle from somebody paddleboarding. You can slip off your paddleboard and fall in the water, and again, that hot air temperature with the cold water temperature can be a deadly mix.”

State officials said that most of this year’s drowning victims were not wearing life jackets and hope more people will make them a normal part of their time on the water this Summer.



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