Aaron's 715th HR honored on its 50th anniversary
The 50th anniversary of Hank Aaron's 715th home run was marked Monday with announcements of a new statue at Baseball's Hall of Fame and a new commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.
Meanwhile, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred helped honor Aaron in Atlanta by joining the Braves in announcing the $100,000 endowment of a scholarship at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Aaron's home state of Alabama.
Manfred noted the Henry Louis Aaron Fund, launched by the Braves following Aaron's death in 2021, and the Chasing the Dream Foundation, created by Aaron and wife Billye, were designed to clear paths for minorities in baseball and to encourage educational opportunities.
The exhibit will remain open through the 2025 AllStar Game in Atlanta.
Colleges
NAIA ALL BUT BANS TRANSGENDER ATHLETES FROM WOMEN'S SPORTS >> The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women's sports at its 241 mostly small colleges across the country.
The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote at its annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes competing in more than 25 sports, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women's sports.
SOUTH CAROLINA, IOWA, UCONN TOP FINAL AP TOP 25
POLL >> South Carolina can add another first to its perfect season: The national champion Gamecocks finished atop the first Associated Press Top 25 women's basketball poll to be released after the NCAA Tournament.
The Gamecocks, who won their second title in three years Sunday with an 87-75 victory over Iowa, received all 35 first-place votes from a national media panel Monday. South Carolina was No. 1 for every week this season except for the preseason poll, when the team was sixth, and at 38-0 became just the 10th team to finish a season undefeated.
It is the first time in the 47-year history of the women's Top 25 that the AP has released its final poll after the NCAA Tournament. Until this year, the final poll had been released after Selection Sunday, on the eve of the tournament.
Iowa was a unanimous choice at No. 2 and the other Final Four participants UConn and N.C. State were third and fourth, respectively. USC was fifth.
LSU, Texas and Oregon State — all reached the Elite Eight — and Stanford and UCLA rounded out the top 10.
Tennis DJOKOVIC ECLIPSES FEDERER'S RECORD FOR OLDEST
MAN RANKED NO. 1 >> Novak Djokovic has surpassed another tennis record once held by Roger Federer, becoming the oldest man to be ranked No. 1 in the ATP Tour's computerized rankings.
Djokovic is 36 — he turns 37 next month — and is now older than Federer was on his last day atop the rankings in June 2018. Monday gives Djokovic 420 total weeks at that spot, extending another mark Federer (who was there for 310 weeks) had at one time before Djokovic broke it.