Chicago Bears Board of Directors Votes to Move Ahead with Stadium Project to Move the Team to Hammond, Indiana The Chicago Bears have voted to move forward with a stadium development proposal in Northwestern Indiana. “Yesterday, the Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected,” Chicago Bears Chairman George H. McCaskey and President and CEO Kevin Warren said in a release Friday.
“We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses.” Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R), who said Tuesday that conversations with Bears leadership were “ongoing,” was quick to welcome the team to Indiana. “Hoosiers, help me welcome the Chicago Bears to our great state!” Braun said in a statement.
“We look forward to building a partnership as strong as the ’85 Bears defense, creating opportunities and economic growth that will benefit our state and the Bears organization for decades to come. An NFL franchise in Northwest Indiana will be an economic boost to the entire region like we haven’t seen before. Thank you to Speaker Huston, the legislature, and Mayor McDermott for their partnership. I also want to thank the entire Chicago Bears organization for their partnership and commitment in making this move a reality.”
In February, Braun signed Senate Bill 27 into law, officially creating the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority to build a $3 billion domed stadium in Hammond. Under the arrangement, Indiana would commit nearly $1 billion in public funds, with the state owning the facility and the Bears leasing it. The Bears pledged $2 billion of their own money to help finance the project. The Bears spent the last few months working with Illinois legislators on a deal that would have moved the team from its current home at Soldier Field to the north Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, but the Illinois General Assembly’s proposed counter to Indiana’s stadium financing offer fell apart at the last minute. The Illinois House adjourned without taking up the bill. The team previously ruled out remaining in the city of Chicago itself, where it has played since 1922, first at Wrigley Field and then, since 1971, at Soldier Field.
Fred Williams joins the Indiana University Women’s Basketball Staff Indiana women’s basketball head coach Teri Moren has announced the addition of Fred Williams to her staff as an assistant coach. An accomplished coach in college and professional women’s basketball, Williams has had a coaching career spanning more than four decades. “Fred joining our staff adds another veteran voice to our program, one that has experience across a variety of levels of women’s basketball,” Moren said. “He will be a valuable asset to our staff and players, and I am excited to what he brings to our team.”
Williams arrives in Bloomington after a year stint on staff with the University of Florida women’s basketball program for the 2025-26 season. Prior to his time at UF, he was the associate head coach at Auburn for three seasons (2022-25). He served as the Tigers’ defensive coordinator and coached point guards and helped themt o a pair of postseason appearances. He spent the 2022 WNBA season as assistant coach and interim head coach for the Los Angeles Sparks. He helped lead the team to playoff appearances in 2019 and 2020. With 10 years of head coaching experience in the WNBA and NCAA, including his time as head coach at the University of Southern California. Prior to his stint with the Sparks, he spent five seasons as head coach of the Tulsa Shock/Dallas Wings, leading the franchise to a pair of playoff appearances.
He was also head coach of the Atlanta Dream for the 2012 and 2013 seasons following three seasons with the team as an assistant coach. While in Atlanta, he was part of a staff that led the team to three WNBA Finals appearances in 2010, 2011 and 2013. Williams spent four seasons with the Utah Starzz, first as an assistant in 1998 and then as head coach from 1999-2001. He also spent two seasons as an assistant with the Charlotte Sting from 2003-04. In the WNBA, Williams was recognized for his ability to rebuild programs and develop talent, highlighted by helping teams reach multiple playoff appearances and establishing winning cultures.
Additionally, he was as an advance scout in the NBA and WNBA for the Utah Jazz, Seattle Supersonics, Sacramento Kings and Washington Mystics. Williams also served as a basketball analyst for ESPN+. Prior to his time in the professional ranks, Williams served as head coach at USC from 1995-97 and assistant coach from 1983-90. The team rose to national prominence as he coached legends in Cheryl Miller, Cynthia Cooper and Tina Thompson, who helped lead the Women of Troy to national titles in 1983 and 1984. A native of Inglewood, Calif., Williams earned his bachelor’s degree from Boise State University, where he was an All-Big Sky Conference player for the Broncos. He is married to Bo Talley-Williams, and the couple have five children and two grandchildren.
Indiana University Softball Named ATEC/NFCA 2026 Regional Coaching Staff of the Year The National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) announced their 10 Regional Coaching Staffs of the Year on Friday. Indiana’s staff was selected as the Coaching Staff of the Year for the Great Lakes Region. The Hoosiers are led by head coach Shonda Stanton, associate head coach Chanda Bell, assistant coach Kendra Kirkhoff and assistant coach/director of operations Cassie Hendrix. Regional (respective region only) and National Coaching Staffs of the Year are voted on by active member head coaches. These 10 programs along with the national champion Texas, are eligible for the NFCA’s Division I National Coaching Staff of the Year award, which will be announced on June 18.
Indiana’s staff led the team to a 43-16 season and a 17-7 mark in the Big Ten ahead of a fourth-straight NCAA Tournament appearance, earning a bid in the NCAA Knoxville Regional. It was the team’s third 40-plus win season in the last four years. The Hoosiers also were the No. 4 Seed in the Big Ten Tournament and reached the Big Ten Tournament’s Semifinal round for the third time in the last four seasons. Indiana had seven NFCA All-Region standouts in Ella Troutt (First Team), Aly VanBrandt (First Team), Josie Bird (Second Team), Alex Cooper (Second Team), Cassidy Kettleman (Third Team), Avery Parker (Third Team), and Madalyn Strader (Third Team). Cooper, Strader and VanBrandt all were named to All-Second Team Big Ten, as well. Indiana also set program records for runs scored (470), hits (523), home runs (87), walks (235) and RBI (429) this season.
Former Indiana University Men’s Basketball Player OG Anunoby and the New York Knicks take a 2-0 Series Lead in the NBA Finals Go crazy, New York. Or, perhaps more accurately, crazier. The red-hot Knicks are going home, two wins away from an NBA championship that the capital of the world has been waiting to see for generations. Jalen Brunson hit a go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds left after a turnover by Victor Wembanyama moments earlier, then Wembanyama missed a jumper at the end of New York’s 105-104 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night for a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals. “What a ballgame,” Knicks coach Mike Brown marveled.
Karl-Anthony Towns had 21 points and 13 rebounds, while Brunson and Mikal Bridges each scored 20 for the Knicks. They have won 13 straight, the second-longest streak by any team in NBA playoff history. Former Indiana University Star OG Anunoby scored 17 points, pulled down 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks in 37 minutes of action as a starter. “New York City showed up,” Towns said. “The fans showed up. The energy showed up. And we found a way to get it done.”
The Knicks are now just the third team to win the first two games of a finals on the road, joining Michael Jordan and the 1993 Chicago Bulls, and Hakeem Olajuwon and the 1995 Houston Rockets. Both of those teams won championships, the Bulls needing six games to oust the Phoenix Suns, the Rockets going home after winning those first two games in Orlando and sweeping the Magic. The Knicks, seeking their first championship since 1973, are in position to join them.
Wembanyama, after a very quiet first half, scored 29. De’Aaron Fox had 20 for San Antonio. “We can’t change the past,” Wembanyama said, “We’re already thinking about Game 3.” The series now shifts to New York. Game 3 is at Madison Square Garden on Monday night.President Donald Trump — a native New Yorker — plans on attending Monday. And ticket prices on the secondary market, for the worst seats at MSG, were approaching $9,000 apiece on Friday night, with Knicks fans evidently willing to pay tippy-top dollar just to be in the building as the team nears what would be its first championship in 53 years.
The Spurs were down 14 midway through the fourth and came all the way back — scoring the next 14 points to tie the game. Wembanyama’s three-point play with 57 seconds left gave the Spurs their first lead in nearly two full quarters, putting San Antonio up 104-102. “We showed tremendous desperation, urgency and competitive response,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “Hopefully we can try to bottle that up … and try to play to that same level.” But the Knicks got the last three, Brunson — the hero of Game 1 for the Knicks — getting them all. Brunson scored on the next possession, just his seventh basket in 24 shots on the night, and the game was tied. Wembanyama missed a long jumper, OG Anunoby got the rebound for New York with 30 seconds left, the Knicks called time and the stage was set.
The Spurs got a stop, but Wembanyama threw the ball away. Brunson got fouled, the Knicks had the lead back and before long Spurs fans were filing out of the arena — possibly for the final time this season. The Spurs called time with 7.5 seconds remaining. Fox took the inbound pass, then set up Wembanyama for a jumper that would have won it. The shot bounced off the rim, and it was over. “We had to get a stop. We hadn’t gotten a stop all quarter,” Towns said. They got their stop. Next stop: New York, where the hottest team in basketball knows an NBA title is just two wins away.
Indiana Fever beat the Atlanta Dream to win their first Commissioners Cup Game of the Season Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark dealt with an illness in Thursday’s matchup against the Atlanta Dream, but she didn’t let a sickness stop her from helping the Fever to an 83-71 win inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Clark didn’t shoot the ball particularly great in Thursday’s win, but she still ended with 17 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds. At halftime, Clark said she felt “a little sick” and puked into a trash can before the third quarter. Clark described how her body felt at halftime and how she tried to manage her sickness.“I tried to eat some applesauce, and then it just came up, and then everything else in my stomach also came up,” Clark said. “I thought it was going to stay down, and then I found a trash can, thank God.”
Despite puking up applesauce and everything else in her stomach, Clark had quite the second-half performance. Clark had 10 points, six rebounds, and three assists in the second half and shared that she felt “light” after the incident. “I haven’t puked that much in a really long time,” Clark said. “But then I felt fine. I felt light. So, I was running around and feeling good in the second half.” Outside of her sickness, Clark was happy with how she played in the Fever’s home win. “I thought I guarded very well, was aggressive on defense, got us in what we wanted to get into on offense,” Clark said. “Found my teammates in spots to make them successful. Overall, I honestly thought I played a really good game, and the way we played as a team was great as well.” The Fever improved to a 5-4 record after Thursday’s win and will look ahead to a road game against the New York Liberty tonight at 8 PM on CBS.
Taylor University’s Shayne Lim and Eleanor Schuitema Named NAIA Women’s Golf All-Americans Shayne Lim and Eleanor Schuitema capped their tremendous 2025-2026 seasons with the Trojans by being named Third-Team NAIA Women’s Golf All-Americans on Thursday afternoon. The awards mark the third NAIA All-American honor for Lim and the first for Schuitema, as Taylor collected multiple NAIA All-American nods in the same season for the third time since 2018. With the honors for Lim and Schuitema, Taylor women’s golf now boasts 11 NAIA All-American awards in its program history, with each of them coming since 2018. Five student-athletes have been named NAIA All-Americans, with Nicole Jung (4), Lim (3), Maddie Thomas (2), Schuitema and Taylor French accounting for the 11 honors.
Lim was also named a Third-Team All-American in 2023 and a First-Team standout in 2024 and added her third award this season, following her fourth-straight All-Crossroads League selection. The senior closed her career with the Trojans by finishing inside the top-10 in six-of-seven tournaments during her 2025-2026 campaign and posting a scoring average of 75.5. Schuitema earned her first NAIA All-American accolade on the heels of her outstanding sophomore season which also resulted in a second All-Crossroads League nod in as many seasons. Schuitema recently finished 45th at the NAIA National Championships and closed the season with a trio of individual wins and a 76.6 scoring average. Lim and Schuitema were joined by Brayden Manning and Jordan Malott of the TU baseball team in receiving NAIA All-American awards on Thursday, bumping TU’s number of NAIA All-American awards for the 2025-2026 year to 31.
Taylor Women’s Golf NAIA All-Americans
2026 – Shayne Lim (Third-Team)
2026 – Eleanor Schuitema (Third-Team)
2024 – Shayne Lim (First-Team)
2023 – Shayne Lim (Third-Team)
2022 – Nicole Jung (First-Team)
2021 – Nicole Jung (First-Team)
2021 – Taylor French (Second-Team)
2021 – Maddie Thomas (Second-Team)
2019 – Nicole Jung (First-Team)
2018 – Nicole Jung (Third-Team)
2018 – Maddie Thomas (Third-Team)
Taylor University’s Brayden Manning and Jordan Malott Receive NAIA All-American Honors Brayden Manning and Jordan Malott anchored the most dangerous lineup in the country all spring. On Wednesday, the two Taylor seniors were each named First-Team NAIA All-Americans by the NAIA Baseball Coaches Association All-America Committee. It’s the first time in program history that two Trojans have earned First-Team honors in the same season, and a fitting end to the record-breaking 2026 campaign for the TU baseball program. Manning and Malott become the 17th and 18th All-Americans of the Gould era, and their dual First-Team selection makes 2026 the fifth season in which TU has placed multiple players on the NAIA All-America baseball teams, joining 2025, 2022, 2017 and 2012. The honors punctuate a campaign in which the Trojans set a program record with 56 wins, spent two months as the nation’s No. 1-ranked team, and reached the national championship game for the first time in school history.
Manning spent the spring rewriting the top of TU’s single-season record book. The senior outfielder led all of NAIA with 93 runs scored and ranked fourth nationally with 103 hits — both program single-season records — while his .427 average placed ninth in the country. He closed his career on a 22-game hitting streak and reached base safely in 41 consecutive games, and within Taylor’s own annals his senior season checks in fourth in batting average, fifth in slugging, sixth in on-base percentage and first in total bases, to go with top-10 single-season marks in doubles, home runs and RBIs. The All-American selection followed his third straight First-Team All-Crossroads League campaign. Manning leaves Upland as one of the most productive hitters in program history. He ranks second all-time in hits (313), RBIs (245), runs (227) and slugging percentage (.607), sits tied for second in doubles (64) and tied for third in home runs (41), and owns the seventh-best career batting average in school history at .367 — a number lifted by a .402 clip across his final two seasons.
Malott, by contrast, needed only one season in a TU uniform to leave a permanent mark. In his lone year with the Trojans, the senior led the entire NAIA with 98 RBIs — a single-season TU record — and tied for 12th nationally with 19 home runs, the third-highest single-season total in school history. His .759 slugging percentage is the second-best mark in a TU season and his .519 on-base percentage the fifth-best, numbers supported by 84 hits, 51 walks and a share of the program’s top-10 single-season lists in doubles and sacrifice flies. Malott also received his third career first-team all-conference selection. Spending all season as the clean-up hitter, Malott piled up 23 multi-hit games, including a four-hit, seven-RBI showing in TU’s second victory in the NAIA Opening Round. He finished with 53 home runs, 266 RBIs and 65 doubles across a standout collegiate career.
Both Manning and Malott saved their best for the brightest stage during postseason play. Over the final month of the season, Manning hit .459 (28-for-61) with 16 RBIs, six doubles, four home runs and nine multi-hit games, while Malott hit .410 (25-for-61) with 26 RBIs, five home runs, six doubles and a 14-game hitting streak. Their production fueled an 11-3 postseason run that delivered a Crossroads League Tournament championship and an NAIA Opening Round title — a three-game sweep that returned TU to the World Series for the second time in four years — before the top-seeded Trojans closed the year as national runners-up. The dual First-Team honors push Taylor athletics’ NAIA All-American total across all sports to 29 for the 2025-26 academic year.
Taylor Baseball NAIA All-Americans During Kyle Gould Era 2026 – Brayden Manning (First-Team) 2026 – Jordan Malott (First-Team) 2025 – Kaleb Kolpien (Second-Team) 2025 – Gabel Pentecost (Third-Team) 2024 – Mason David (Third-Team) 2023 – Jack Ross (Second-Team) 2022 – TJ Bass (First-Team) 2022 – Luke Shively (Honorable Mention) 2021 – Joe Moran (Honorable Mention) 2018 – Matt Patton (Second-Team) 2017 – Nathan Targgart (Honorable Mention) 2017 – Jared Adkins (Honorable Mention) 2016 – Lincoln Reed (Honorable Mention) 2012 – Rhett Goodmiller (Honorable Mention) 2012 – Ryne Otis (Honorable Mention) 2011 – Ryne Otis (Honorable Mention) 2010 – Michael Kraynak (Honorable Mention) 2009 – Michael Kraynak (Honorable Mention)