SIDELINES

ANDY HALL Sports Editor 312-5239

AHall@Palatkadailynews.com

SPORTSwww.palatkadailynews.com THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2020 PAGE 9A

RALPH D. RUSSO

TIDESPalatka City Dock

High LowToday 4:38A,4:56P ---------,12:04PApril 24 5:12A,5:31P 12:00A,12:37PApril 25 5:47A,6:08P 12:28A,1:09P

St. Augustine Beach High LowToday 9:09A,9:23P 3:11A,3:13PApril 24 9:46A,10:00P 3:47A,3:46PApril 25 10:24A,10:37P 4:23A,4:20P

Expect collegefootball to takelong road back

While professional sports leagues can ponder plans to isolate their athletes from the new coronavi-rus and have them play in

unusual, even secluded places, college sports have no such option.

Pro sports leagues can get creative with solutions to save their multibil-lion-dollar businesses. College sports will take a slower road back.

“The most at-risk sport of starting up again, in my opinion, is collegiate athlet-ics,” said A.J. Maestas, the CEO of Navigate Research, which consults with professional sports leagues and college conferences. “There is less of an incen-tive and less alignment with the ultimate mission of the entity they work at, live at. That fund them.”

The commissioners of the 10 Bowl Subdivision conferences made it clear to Vice President Mike Pence last week: There cannot be college sports played if campuses are not open. If university leaders do not deem it safe for students to return to classrooms, then dorms, locker rooms and practice fields will also remain closed.

“You think of all the stakeholders and constituents in the collegiate space and all the missions they’re meant to serve in. This sports thing is like 3% of their budget,” Maestas said.

Colleges and universities, for the most part, have been quicker than govern-ments in enacting measures to slow the spread of the virus. They sent students home, extended spring breaks and shift-ed to online classes weeks before wide-spread bans of large gatherings and stay-at-home orders by governors and may-ors.

Even before the NCAA canceled its basketball tournaments and spring sports March 12, schools were shutter-ing campuses.

Fast forward to the fall, when the hope is many businesses and routine parts of daily life will be operating again, even if not back to business as usual. That doesn’t mean colleges will be rush-ing to get students on campus. If they were first to shut down, they could also be among the last to reopen and it will be university presidents, not the NCAA, making those decisions.

Schools would take a significant financial hit by continuing to operate online only, but balance that against the legal and ethical liability they could face by being the catalyst for reigniting an outbreak.

“I think they do have to be conserva-tive in how they approach this,” said attorney Tim Nevius, a former college baseball player and NCAA investigator who now represents and advocates for college athletes.

If, come September, the students are physically going back to school, even then there will be hurdles to clear for football to start.

“Large gatherings of people are going to be the last thing we check off the box,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said last week when asked about Ohio State football games.

So play without fans?“It isn’t appropriate for us to play col-

lege football without fans. If that were the case, it would mean there would be major reservations about group gather-ings,” Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips said on the Paul Finebaum Show, echoing a sentiment that is also becoming popular among administra-tors.

Commissioners and athletic directors have stressed the importance of collabo-ration across conferences and starting any season at once. But the public health crisis is not playing out the same every-where. Within 24 hours this week the president of the University of Connecticut said he was personally pes-simistic about the return of fall sports while the University of Missouri System president Mun Choi said he expects in-person classes to resume this fall.

In professional sports, players are well-paid and unionized. Essentially, they are business partners with the leagues. Players have to sign off on any

Keeping A Watchful Eye

See RUSSO, Page 10A

A uniquely, different NFL Draft FIRST ROUND DRAFT ORDER1. Cincinnati2. Washington3. Detroit4. N.Y. Giants5. Miami6. L.A. Chargers7. Carolina8. Arizona9. Jacksonville10. Cleveland11. N.Y. Jets12. Las Vegas13. San Francisco (from Indianapolis)14. Tampa Bay15. Denver16. Atlanta17. Dallas18. Miami (from Pittsburgh)19. Las Vegas (from Chicago)20. Jacksonville (from L.A. Rams)21. Philadelphia22. Minnesota (from Buffalo)23. New England24. New Orleans25. Minnesota26. Miami (from Houston)27. Seattle28. Baltimore29. Tennessee30. Green Bay31. San Francisco32. Kansas City

COVID-19 pandemic has GMsmaking choices from living rooms

By Barry WilnerAssociated Press

From his home in the New York City suburbs, Roger Goodell will han-dle perhaps his most visible annual chore – announcing draft picks.

Visible, but this time virtual.Not since the NFL draft became a

televised event in 1980 has it been stripped to the basics like this year’s proceedings will be.

Beginning tonight, as a safeguard against the coronavirus pandemic, adhering to medical and governmen-tal advice and restrictions, selectors will work from their homes. Prospects will be at their homes, too.

Goodell, who ordered all team facilities closed on March 26 and has extended that ban indefinitely, won’t be sharing hugs with Joe Burrow or Chase Young or any of the other 32 first-rounders. He will offer congrat-ulations remotely, but otherwise this will be the barest of drafts.

And certainly not the easiest.

“Everyone is really particular about how they go through the drafts, right?” Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff says. “They want to have the draft rooms. They want to have all the technology. It takes a lot of people taking a lot of deep breaths on it, as you can imagine.

“Again, I really believe most teams are quite set and I would say from our standpoint, though technology is going to have to switch and we’re going to be asked to work out of our own homes, I feel like we have such a

re a l l y s ou n d p e r s o n n e l department. ... We feel honest-ly i f this was moved up 10 days ahead and we had to draft out of the back of a shed we’d

be prepared to capitalize on it and do an adept job with it.”

Whoa! There were some teams that wanted the draft pushed back a few weeks. The main issue naturally, has been the collection of information.

With no in-person interviews out-

side of the brief ones at the scouting combine, few pro days and, perhaps most essentially, no in-depth physical exams conducted by team doctors, the deep data dives have turned into snorkeling exercises.

That didn’t hurt the likes of LSU quarterback Burrow, who barring a stunning move by the Bengals, will be the first name Goodell calls out tonight. Same for Young, Ohio State’s dominant defender and probably the best player in this crop.

But guys carrying question marks? Guys who had medical issues and didn’t get the usual re-check follow-ing the scouting combine? Or players who didn’t get invited to the com-bine? Or collegians with off-field issues?

“That’s what you miss out on,” Giants GM Dave Gettleman says of the lack of in-person encounters. “By not having pro days, you also miss that personal contact. Watching guys among their peers and how they operate, how they’re received. That tells a lot when you just watch a kid in those circumstances.

TONIGHTNFL Draft,Round 1,

8 p.m., ABC,ESPN, NFL

See DRAFT, Page 10A

MARK BLUMENTHAL / Palatka Daily NewsSt. Johns River State College volleyball coach Matt Cohen, seen during practice last season, has brought in 11 new recruits for next season, three of which he signed after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the school.

Hustling to Get New RecruitsSJR State volleyball coach brings in 11 new players, 3 he signed after pandemic shut down schoolBy Mark BluMenthal

Palatka Daily Newsmblumenthal@palatkadailynews.com

Some college programs got taken down completely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Games stopped. So did on-the-road, face-to-face recruiting.

Then again, there’s St. Johns River State College volleyball coach Matt Cohen.

“I’m always an optimistic person,” he

said Wednesday.Cohen had reason to be optimistic. While

the pandemic has shut down many a college athletic program, his work that started before the pandemic hit fully has come to fruition. He was able to sign two players, even though neither truly got to see the campus while it was open, and has a third player he said he is going to get a signature to come to the Division II junior college program shortly.

“I honestly didn’t know what to expect,” Cohen said when asked if he was stunned or

not by getting players after the campus shut down in mid-March. “With all college pro-grams in a quiet period, I wasn’t sure, but I was fortunate we were able to get the three players after getting shut down.”

The two young ladies he was able to get were Emily Evans, an outside hitter from Orlando Dr. Phillips High School, and Sammi Beas, another outside hitter from West Palm Beach Forest Hill High.

Sign-stealing scam costs Red Sox draft pick; Cora out for ’20NEW YORK – The Boston Red

Sox escaped major penalties in Major League Baseball’s cheating investiga-tion on Wednesday, with Com-missioner Rob Manfred concluding that the 2018 World Series champi-ons’ sign-stealing efforts were less egregious than the Astros’ when they won it all the previous season.

Ex-manager Alex Cora was for-mally suspended for the coronavi-rus-delayed 2020 season – but only for his role as a Houston bench coach; Manfred had held off a penalty for Cora despite fingering him as the ringleader of the Astros’ sign-stealing operation.

The Red Sox upgraded the status of

Ron Roenicke, who was named the Red Sox interim manager pending the outcome of the investigation.

“That interim tag is removed,” Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom said. “Ron is now our manager.”

The only member of the Red Sox organization who was penalized was replay system operator J.T. Watkins,

who was suspended without pay for a year for violating the prohibition on in-game use of video to identify pitch signals. Watkins, who denied the alle-gations, was also prohibited from serving as the replay room operator through 2021.

See SOX, Page 10A

See SJRSC, Page 10A

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10A PALATKA DAILY NEWS • THURSDAY, APRIL 23 , 2020

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return-to-play plan, and they might be motivated to take some risk to get paid.

In college sports, the relation-ship between the players and the schools, administrators and coaches is almost paternal.

“In framing it that way it restricts athletes’ rights,” Nevius said. “So it prevents them from being considered employees. It reduces their economic rights. It frames things so that the ath-letes also think that they are in this caretaker environment so they have to rely upon the coaches and the schools to advance their rights.”

“But that is not always the case with the big business of col-lege sports,” Nevius added.

Later this week, the NCAA is scheduled to reveal some details of a plan to begin allowing col-lege athletes to be compensated for use of their names, images and likenesses. The earliest it would go into effect is 2021-22.

Yes, college football players with professional aspirations have much to gain by playing. But not paychecks. And their scholarships are good whether they play or not.

“College sports are theoreti-cal ly intended to exist to enhance that academic experi-ence of its athletes,” Nevius said. “And the NCAA repeatedly says that publicly and in defense of lawsuits as well. We’ve seen over time decisions made that com-pletely contradict that. This is another test with respect to that philosophy.”

Ralph D. Russo is an Associated Press writer.

RussoCONTINUED FROM PAGE 9A

That added to the other nine players he recruited before the pandemic shut college institu-tions down, one of those recruits being Daily News two-time vol-leyball player of the year Kirby Mason from Interlachen, who will play an outside hitter spot.

Cohen did not believe he was going to have to recruit 13 players total (one scholarship spot is still available, he said), but that’s what it turned out to be when of the seven freshmen that were sup-posed to return from a 22-9 sea-son that saw the Vikings come within a Sun-Lakes Conference tournament championship win from the NJCAA Division II championship in West Virginia,

five of them transferred.That left just Dariana Luna, an

effective libero from Davie Western High and Ricki Sheets, a Lakeland Lake Gibson High grad, coming back as a defensive specialist.

“Every one of them had some reason to go somewhere else,” Cohen said. “Sometimes, you go out there to recruit two-year kids and you wind up keeping them for one. It happens.”

Unless the last player Cohen recruits is not from Florida, only one out-of-state player will be part of the team next year – Gwendolyn Souther from Conroe Oak Ridge High in Texas, an outside hitter.

Others already signed and ready to come aboard include a pair of Middleburg High players, Mone Gordon, a setter and Laney Miller, a defensive player, Creekside High’s Jadin Serrato, a middle blocker, Madison Hilde, a

Clermont East Ridge outside hit-ter/middle blocker, Kendall Hatchett of Blountstown, another outside hitter, and Cohen’s first “sister” player, Tara English, a defensive specialist from Winter Garden West Orange, whose older sibling, Tori, played for Cohen during his first run as head coach between 2013-15.

“With 11-12 freshmen coming in, it presents a challenge,” said Cohen, whose seven freshmen saw quite a bit of action a year ago. “But last year, we lost most of our passers and 80% of our offense and we made it to the (Sun-Lakes) championsip. This year, we’ve lost most of our pass-ers and about 80% of our offense, so who knows if we can do it again. With one and a half start-ers returning, we’ll no doubt be the youngest team in the confer-ence. But if we have a nice presea-son, we’ll have an idea of where

we are.”But, of course, a lot of that is

dependent on when the OK is given to come back and have a preseason ... or even a summer camp. Cohen once again was to run the Vikings Volleyball Camp for youngsters, but with the col-lege closed, that’s on hold.

“It’s tentatively set for July,” he said. “We’re just waiting on updates from Gov. DeSantis.”

For now, Cohen is at home with his wife and kids, fixing up a new house they just bought in St. Augustine.

“We just moved in here in February, so it couldn’t have been a more perfect time to work on projects around the house,” Cohen said. “Meanwhile, I’m being super aggressive talking with our players coming back and coming in, getting them ready for when we are able to start practicing.”

SJRSCCONTINUED FROM PAGE 9A

“Obviously, when we would go to workouts, a lot of times the night before, our coach and scout that would be at the pro day would take one, two or three of the players out to dinner and have some

conversation that way. We’re losing the personal touch points. We have the visual touch point, but we’re really miss-ing out on the personal touch point.”

Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury isn’t fretting the missing info. It’s 2020, after all.

“With technology these days it feels like it is in person,” he said of the sort-of meetings. “You have the FaceTime, you have the Zoom meetings. Honestly, a lot

of these kids are most comfortable doing that. They’re on FaceTime 12 hours a day with their friends and people, so you get the most comfortable version of them on that FaceTime, honestly.

“The in-person workouts, seeing them move around and do things like that, obviously you’d like to do that. But as far the sit-down component, being comfortable with the interview process, I feel like you get just as much through

this type of technology.”There is one added challenge, which

Eagles personnel boss Howie Roseman describes – tongue in cheek, we think.

“It’s funny,” Roseman says. “I got on a chat with a bunch of other GMs, because our kids get an opportunity to go to those league meetings, so they all hang out together and they have been fortunate to grow up together, which is really special. We are trying to figure out

stuff to keep them busy during the draft.“Normally, I’ll get text messages from

my boys about stuff that’s going on with the draft and I won’t pay attention to them. Now the knocking on the door, we’re going to have to make sure we give them some things to do here to keep them busy. I think it’s a different dynamic, but when we are in the draft room, we have some position coaches that are doing the same thing, so we’ll pull on that.”

DraftCONTINUED FROM PAGE 9A

Boston was also stripped of its second-round pick in this year’s amateur draft, No. 52 overall.

“To be clear we’re not taking any victory laps. A violation was uncovered and that was wrong and we’re being punished for it,” R e d S o x p r e s i d e n t S a m Kennedy said in a conference cal l with reporters, while acknowledging relief that the months-long investigation is over.

“We have to e ar n back trust, and we’re prepared to do that,” Kennedy said, add-ing that the team’s owners apologized to their counter-parts in a conference call that af ternoon. “We recognize

that as an organization.”Both Bloom and Kennedy

dismissed suggestions that Cora could be welcomed back – especially if the coronavirus pandemic wipes out the entire 2020 season. Roenicke, who was hired on the eve of spring training after a shotgun job search, is signed only for one year.

“Since we parted ways with Alex, we were clear that that was the result of his role with the Astros. That’s still the case,” Bloom said. “All the reasons that we parted ways with him then are still the case.”

Manfred said in his report that Boston’s misdeeds were limited to the regular season not as pervasive as the Astros’, who repeatedly used a video camera in the outfield to steal catchers’ signs during their run to the 2017 championship and again the following season.

SoxCONTINUED FROM PAGE 9A

S P O R T S B R I E F SLOCAL OUTDOORS

Fishing, hunting photos welcomeThe Daily News welcomes local fishers and hunters to submit

photos of recent accomplishments.Fishing and hunting photos with details may be dropped off

at the newspaper office, 1825 St. Johns Ave. in Palatka or emailed in jpeg form to ahall@palatkadailynews.com or to mblumen-thal@palatkadailynews.com.

For more information, call 312-5238.

GOLF

Tiger, Phil to do battle with Brady, ManningTiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are ready for a made-for-TV

rematch at a time when fans are craving live action.And this time, they’ll have company.Turner Sports says quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton

Manning will join them for a two-on-two match sometime in May. Missing from the announcement were such details as when and where the match would be played, except that tournament organiz-ers would work with government and health officials to meet safety and health standards.

Turner said all donations and fundraising from “The Match: Champions for Charity” would benefit relief efforts for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event will be televised on TNT, with social and digital con-tent leading up and during the event available through Bleacher Report and House of Highlights.

“It’s on now,” Mickelson tweeted Wednesday afternoon respond-ing to Bleacher Report.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Jeter foregoing salary during pandemicMIAMI – Miami Marlins CEO Derek Jeter told team employees

during a conference call Monday he is forgoing his salary during the coronavirus pandemic, a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press.

The person confirmed Jeter’s comments to the AP on condition of anonymity because the Marlins have not commented publicly on the call.

The person said other members of the Marlins’ executive team agreed to take pay cuts, while baseball operations personnel will continue to receive their full salaries through at least May 31. The person didn’t specify the figures of the pay cuts.

Major League Baseball spring training was suspended March 12 because of the pandemic. The start of the season, scheduled for March 26, has been indefinitely delayed.

– Staff, wire report

SIDELINES

ANDY HALL Sports Editor 312-5239

AHall@Palatkadailynews.com

SPORTSwww.palatkadailynews.com THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2020 PAGE 9A

RALPH D. RUSSO

TIDESPalatka City Dock

High LowToday 4:38A,4:56P ---------,12:04PApril 24 5:12A,5:31P 12:00A,12:37PApril 25 5:47A,6:08P 12:28A,1:09P

St. Augustine Beach High LowToday 9:09A,9:23P 3:11A,3:13PApril 24 9:46A,10:00P 3:47A,3:46PApril 25 10:24A,10:37P 4:23A,4:20P

Expect collegefootball to takelong road back

While professional sports leagues can ponder plans to isolate their athletes from the new coronavi-rus and have them play in

unusual, even secluded places, college sports have no such option.

Pro sports leagues can get creative with solutions to save their multibil-lion-dollar businesses. College sports will take a slower road back.

“The most at-risk sport of starting up again, in my opinion, is collegiate athlet-ics,” said A.J. Maestas, the CEO of Navigate Research, which consults with professional sports leagues and college conferences. “There is less of an incen-tive and less alignment with the ultimate mission of the entity they work at, live at. That fund them.”

The commissioners of the 10 Bowl Subdivision conferences made it clear to Vice President Mike Pence last week: There cannot be college sports played if campuses are not open. If university leaders do not deem it safe for students to return to classrooms, then dorms, locker rooms and practice fields will also remain closed.

“You think of all the stakeholders and constituents in the collegiate space and all the missions they’re meant to serve in. This sports thing is like 3% of their budget,” Maestas said.

Colleges and universities, for the most part, have been quicker than govern-ments in enacting measures to slow the spread of the virus. They sent students home, extended spring breaks and shift-ed to online classes weeks before wide-spread bans of large gatherings and stay-at-home orders by governors and may-ors.

Even before the NCAA canceled its basketball tournaments and spring sports March 12, schools were shutter-ing campuses.

Fast forward to the fall, when the hope is many businesses and routine parts of daily life will be operating again, even if not back to business as usual. That doesn’t mean colleges will be rush-ing to get students on campus. If they were first to shut down, they could also be among the last to reopen and it will be university presidents, not the NCAA, making those decisions.

Schools would take a significant financial hit by continuing to operate online only, but balance that against the legal and ethical liability they could face by being the catalyst for reigniting an outbreak.

“I think they do have to be conserva-tive in how they approach this,” said attorney Tim Nevius, a former college baseball player and NCAA investigator who now represents and advocates for college athletes.

If, come September, the students are physically going back to school, even then there will be hurdles to clear for football to start.

“Large gatherings of people are going to be the last thing we check off the box,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said last week when asked about Ohio State football games.

So play without fans?“It isn’t appropriate for us to play col-

lege football without fans. If that were the case, it would mean there would be major reservations about group gather-ings,” Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips said on the Paul Finebaum Show, echoing a sentiment that is also becoming popular among administra-tors.

Commissioners and athletic directors have stressed the importance of collabo-ration across conferences and starting any season at once. But the public health crisis is not playing out the same every-where. Within 24 hours this week the president of the University of Connecticut said he was personally pes-simistic about the return of fall sports while the University of Missouri System president Mun Choi said he expects in-person classes to resume this fall.

In professional sports, players are well-paid and unionized. Essentially, they are business partners with the leagues. Players have to sign off on any

Keeping A Watchful Eye

See RUSSO, Page 10A

A uniquely, different NFL Draft FIRST ROUND DRAFT ORDER1. Cincinnati2. Washington3. Detroit4. N.Y. Giants5. Miami6. L.A. Chargers7. Carolina8. Arizona9. Jacksonville10. Cleveland11. N.Y. Jets12. Las Vegas13. San Francisco (from Indianapolis)14. Tampa Bay15. Denver16. Atlanta17. Dallas18. Miami (from Pittsburgh)19. Las Vegas (from Chicago)20. Jacksonville (from L.A. Rams)21. Philadelphia22. Minnesota (from Buffalo)23. New England24. New Orleans25. Minnesota26. Miami (from Houston)27. Seattle28. Baltimore29. Tennessee30. Green Bay31. San Francisco32. Kansas City

COVID-19 pandemic has GMsmaking choices from living rooms

By Barry WilnerAssociated Press

From his home in the New York City suburbs, Roger Goodell will han-dle perhaps his most visible annual chore – announcing draft picks.

Visible, but this time virtual.Not since the NFL draft became a

televised event in 1980 has it been stripped to the basics like this year’s proceedings will be.

Beginning tonight, as a safeguard against the coronavirus pandemic, adhering to medical and governmen-tal advice and restrictions, selectors will work from their homes. Prospects will be at their homes, too.

Goodell, who ordered all team facilities closed on March 26 and has extended that ban indefinitely, won’t be sharing hugs with Joe Burrow or Chase Young or any of the other 32 first-rounders. He will offer congrat-ulations remotely, but otherwise this will be the barest of drafts.

And certainly not the easiest.

“Everyone is really particular about how they go through the drafts, right?” Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff says. “They want to have the draft rooms. They want to have all the technology. It takes a lot of people taking a lot of deep breaths on it, as you can imagine.

“Again, I really believe most teams are quite set and I would say from our standpoint, though technology is going to have to switch and we’re going to be asked to work out of our own homes, I feel like we have such a

re a l l y s ou n d p e r s o n n e l department. ... We feel honest-ly i f this was moved up 10 days ahead and we had to draft out of the back of a shed we’d

be prepared to capitalize on it and do an adept job with it.”

Whoa! There were some teams that wanted the draft pushed back a few weeks. The main issue naturally, has been the collection of information.

With no in-person interviews out-

side of the brief ones at the scouting combine, few pro days and, perhaps most essentially, no in-depth physical exams conducted by team doctors, the deep data dives have turned into snorkeling exercises.

That didn’t hurt the likes of LSU quarterback Burrow, who barring a stunning move by the Bengals, will be the first name Goodell calls out tonight. Same for Young, Ohio State’s dominant defender and probably the best player in this crop.

But guys carrying question marks? Guys who had medical issues and didn’t get the usual re-check follow-ing the scouting combine? Or players who didn’t get invited to the com-bine? Or collegians with off-field issues?

“That’s what you miss out on,” Giants GM Dave Gettleman says of the lack of in-person encounters. “By not having pro days, you also miss that personal contact. Watching guys among their peers and how they operate, how they’re received. That tells a lot when you just watch a kid in those circumstances.

TONIGHTNFL Draft,Round 1,

8 p.m., ABC,ESPN, NFL

See DRAFT, Page 10A

MARK BLUMENTHAL / Palatka Daily NewsSt. Johns River State College volleyball coach Matt Cohen, seen during practice last season, has brought in 11 new recruits for next season, three of which he signed after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the school.

Hustling to Get New RecruitsSJR State volleyball coach brings in 11 new players, 3 he signed after pandemic shut down schoolBy Mark BluMenthal

Palatka Daily Newsmblumenthal@palatkadailynews.com

Some college programs got taken down completely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Games stopped. So did on-the-road, face-to-face recruiting.

Then again, there’s St. Johns River State College volleyball coach Matt Cohen.

“I’m always an optimistic person,” he

said Wednesday.Cohen had reason to be optimistic. While

the pandemic has shut down many a college athletic program, his work that started before the pandemic hit fully has come to fruition. He was able to sign two players, even though neither truly got to see the campus while it was open, and has a third player he said he is going to get a signature to come to the Division II junior college program shortly.

“I honestly didn’t know what to expect,” Cohen said when asked if he was stunned or

not by getting players after the campus shut down in mid-March. “With all college pro-grams in a quiet period, I wasn’t sure, but I was fortunate we were able to get the three players after getting shut down.”

The two young ladies he was able to get were Emily Evans, an outside hitter from Orlando Dr. Phillips High School, and Sammi Beas, another outside hitter from West Palm Beach Forest Hill High.

Sign-stealing scam costs Red Sox draft pick; Cora out for ’20NEW YORK – The Boston Red

Sox escaped major penalties in Major League Baseball’s cheating investiga-tion on Wednesday, with Com-missioner Rob Manfred concluding that the 2018 World Series champi-ons’ sign-stealing efforts were less egregious than the Astros’ when they won it all the previous season.

Ex-manager Alex Cora was for-mally suspended for the coronavi-rus-delayed 2020 season – but only for his role as a Houston bench coach; Manfred had held off a penalty for Cora despite fingering him as the ringleader of the Astros’ sign-stealing operation.

The Red Sox upgraded the status of

Ron Roenicke, who was named the Red Sox interim manager pending the outcome of the investigation.

“That interim tag is removed,” Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom said. “Ron is now our manager.”

The only member of the Red Sox organization who was penalized was replay system operator J.T. Watkins,

who was suspended without pay for a year for violating the prohibition on in-game use of video to identify pitch signals. Watkins, who denied the alle-gations, was also prohibited from serving as the replay room operator through 2021.

See SOX, Page 10A

See SJRSC, Page 10A

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