WNBA Star Sabrina Ionescu Shares the One Piece of Advice Every Young Athlete Should Hear

Sabrina Ionescu champions young athletes with words of wisdom and a new partnership

NEED TO KNOW

• Ionescu partnered with the Abbott Dream Team to give young soccer players a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

• The program provides 16 U.S. soccer players with elite nutrition education and soccer training from Real Madrid coaches in Spain

Sabrina Ionescuhas words of wisdom for the next generation of athletes.

The WNBA star, who became a household name playing for the University of Oregon's women's basketball team and is now a standout on the New York Liberty, shared the one piece of advice she'd give to any young athlete with PEOPLE.

"Believing in yourself and controlling what you can," Ionescu, 28, says. "Continuing to have that self-belief internally is really important and something that you can work on from a really young age."

Championing young athletes is a part of Ionescu's mission, which is why she has partnered with health care companyAbbottto promote its youth soccer program,Abbott Dream Team. It's a program, in partnership with Real Madrid, that gives 16 young American soccer players a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a week of elite soccer training in Madrid, Spain.

"I'm super excited to partner with Abbott and Real Madrid to continue to pour into the next generation of young soccer players and young athletes," the New York Liberty player said. "[Programs like this are] really important because you have to kind of get ahead of it, in terms of how you can better yourself as an individual, as an athlete, and understanding that it starts young. For a lot of these young girls and boys, it's gonna mean the world to them to be able to learn from great mentors and great coaches who are coaching the best players in the world."

Participation in the 2026 selection events is free and will take place from May 19 to June 9 in Miami, Washington D.C., Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Chicago. U.S. resident soccer players who are 18 or 19 are eligible to compete for the all-expenses-paid trip to train under Real Madrid's legendary coaching staff. Sixteen players will be chosen to join the Dream Team, getting the chance to travel abroad to train with Real Madrid coaches and receive performance nutrition education from Abbott — as well as getting a chance to explore the sites.

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Ionescu isn't just a casual soccer fan; she's aBay FC investorwho loves the sport and invested in it to bring a soccer club to her Bay Area hometown. It was a "no-brainer for her" because she had been "wanting to have a team in the Bay, knowing that there's so many soccer players and fans who are gonna be able to go watch a game, and dream of becoming a soccer player as well. It just felt like a super organic partnership and wanting to continue to move the game forward."

The Abbott Dream Team program appealed to her as well because it's a "one of one" opportunity for young athletes. "I learned as I was going through high school and college and continuing to just progress as an athlete, the importance of sports nutrition," the Olympian says. "And if I could have started at a younger age, it would have been that much better."

And it's not just youth sports Ionescu is passionate about — she's also a booster for women's sports in general, which have been in the spotlight thanks tothe gold-medal performance of many of the female U.S. winter Olympians,the growing PWHLand of course,the success of the WNBA in recent years.

"There are different sports being played, but I think just the umbrella that we're under is, you know, we're kind of all moving in the right direction and picking each other up and continuing to try and grow our sports individually, but also collectively," she tells PEOPLE. "And so it's been exciting to see how we've kind of paved our own way, but all while trying to continue to grow the fandom, grow the sport and kind of leave it better than we found it."

Read the original article onPeople

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WNBA Star Sabrina Ionescu Shares the One Piece of Advice Every Young Athlete Should Hear

Sabrina Ionescu champions young athletes with words of wisdom and a new partnership NEED TO KNOW Ionescu partn...

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Mark DeRosa derides 'false narratives' about misunderstanding WBC rules, then gets Team USA's record wrong

Team USA hasadvanced to the knockout rounds of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, and the two narratives they'll be carrying with them are a)how close they came to a mortifying elimination in pool playand b)their manager quite publicly flubbing on the rules of the tournament.

It was Tuesday whenTeam USA manager Mark DeRosa made his surprisingly fateful appearance on MLB Network's "Hot Stove."At the time, his team was preparing for a game against underdog Italy, but he insisted they were taking it seriously despite having already advanced:

"Ton of respect for Italy. It's weird. We want to win this game even though our ticket is punched to the quarterfinals because Mexico plays Italy actually tomorrow. So the way the schedule lines up, this is an important game."

As many pointed out, that statement was factually incorrect. Team USA had not clinched a spot in the quarterfinals and in fact faced elimination after losing 8-6 to Italy later that day. DeRosa admitted after the loss that he "misspoke" and "completely misread the calculations," whileMLB quietly scrubbed all footage of his error from its official channels.

The heavy tournament favoritebeing bounced in pool play after that kind of mistake would've been a tough look, but the Americans earned a reprieve when Italy defeated Mexico on Wednesday to win Pool B.

One day later,DeRosa spoke to reporters and again addressed his flub, categorizing it as him being overconfident:

"It's just an overly confident statement on 'Hot Stove.' Period. The end. It's my fault. Felt good about where we were after Mexico."

He then provided more detail on his team's mindset going into the Italy game, complaining about false narratives that his team wasn't taking the game seriously. Unfortunately, he then recalled that both teams entered the game 2-0.

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Team USA was in fact 3-0 entering the Italy game after wins over Brazil, Great Britain and Mexico.

"They played a hell of a game. They smacked us in the mouth early. They got up big. We went into that game prepared to win it. I think there's a couple false narratives out there but, no, I was well aware that we had to win that game based on all the scenarios that could take place. They went in 2-0. We went in 2-0. We knew they were playing Mexico the next day. We knew there was tiebreaker rules involved."

There is admittedly an element of "gotcha" here. People can make those kinds of errors easily while speaking extemporaneously, and few would care about this under normal circumstances. However, this "2-0" mistake clearly happened at a time when DeRosa shouldn't be giving his critics more to work with.

Also Thursday, he went on to address questions about his lineups and pitching decisions. In that case, he noted that many decisions aren't just up to him when he's managing a team full of MLB players with their own throwing schedules or who need playing time:

"I can understand the questions about lineups and pitching situations we were up against. A lot of guardrails with regards to teams. The deployment of certain relievers, how many pitches they can use, whether they can go back out, whether they can clean up innings. You're just trying to piece things together in real time."

Team USA will resume playon Friday against Canada in the quarterfinals(8 p.m. ET, Fox).

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Mark DeRosa derides 'false narratives' about misunderstanding WBC rules, then gets Team USA's record wrong

Team USA hasadvanced to the knockout rounds of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, and the two narratives they'll be car...

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Journalist loses nearly $10,000 in year-long NFL gambling experiment

A prominent journalist lost nearly $10,000 gifted from his employer as an experiment to cover gambling in America and the pitfalls of the growingsports betting industry.

The Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins penned alengthy feature, "Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler," in which the suburban dad and practicing Mormon "prohibited from indulging in games of chance" was given $10,000 by the publication to wager during the 2025 NFL season.

Since the cash belonged to The Atlantic, it did not interfere with his religious constraints, and the magazine planned to cover his losses and split any winnings with him to ensure his "emotional investment."

Coppins, who consulted his bishop to make sure the arrangement wasn't frowned upon, had heard plenty of stories about American men who let an "initially modest gambling habit" upend their lives and families. In his feature, he laid out how gambling became a near obsession for him.

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"With the door locked behind me, I pulled out my phone and downloaded the DraftKings betting app," he wrote of his first bet. "I felt a certain thrill as I typed in my debit-card information and deposited $500. The first game of theNFL seasonwas a few minutes away. Anything seemed possible."

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Coppins previously thought gambling was a "waste of time" but was well aware that made him an outlier.

"Since 2018, Americans have wagered more than half a trillion dollars on sports, and roughly half of men ages 18 to 49 have an active account with an online sportsbook," Coppins wrote.

His first time wagering was during a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys, an experience he called "strangely mesmerizing."

"For 200 bucks, I had purchased an artificial rooting interest in a game I had no reason to care about. I kept watching even after a weather delay pushed it late into the night, scrolling frenetically next to my sleeping wife in search of angles to exploit with late-game bets," Coppins wrote.

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He lost a few bets but hit a prop parlay and finished the night up a whopping $20.

He explained that the opening-night profit resulted in daydreaming inside the Coppins household and tried not to dwell on the bishop cautioning him to "be careful." He studied up on the history of gambling in society, sought advice from famed data analyst Nate Silver and kept at it.

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"One rainy evening, I found myself parked outside a big-box store in Northern Virginia where my wife had sent me on an errand, obsessively scavenging for lines on my phone and jotting down favorites in my Notes app. When I looked up, 45 minutes had passed. I would be late for dinner," Coppins wrote.

"Doing all of this homework heightened my investment in the games," he added. "But it also conjured something disconcerting and primal in me."

He explained that a tough loss, or "bad beat," caused him to despise the player responsible, and he became "unnerved" by the intensity it caused him to feel.

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"I was surprised at how quickly and extensively the experiment was bleeding into the rest of my life," Coppins wrote, explaining that his family quickly accused him of being addicted.

It irritated his wife because watching sports late into the night became a habit, and even his own boss wondered if it was affecting his mental health.

"Four months of burying myself in gambling apps had apparently made me twitchy in ways that were perceptible to my colleagues," he wrote.

Throughout the feature, he weaved in stories of gambling addicts, professional bettors and the rapid rise of the practice in America, from $4.9 billion in legal gambling in 2017 to at least $160 billion last year.

By the time Coppins bet on the losing New England Patriots inthis year's Super Bowl, he'd lost $9,891 of the original 10 grand.

At that point, he sought to prevent himself from legal wagering in his home state of Virginia by filling out a "self-exclusion" form, a way of preventing online sportsbooks from taking his bets for a specific period.

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"When I'd started this project, I had presented it to my bishop as journalism; at some point, it had veered into obsession," he wrote.

Original article source:Journalist loses nearly $10,000 in year-long NFL gambling experiment

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Journalist loses nearly $10,000 in year-long NFL gambling experiment

A prominent journalist lost nearly $10,000 gifted from his employer as an experiment to cover gambling in America and the...

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Sphere reveals Pi Day art winners celebrating 'apple pie' and patterns

LAS VEGAS − EightLas Vegas-area students are having their art displayed on the world's largest LED screen.

Sphereannounced the winners of its annualXO Student Design Challengeand will display the winning artwork on the exterior of the landmark venue just off the Las Vegas Strip.

The artwork celebrates Pi Day, held on March 14 in honor of 3.14 (π) — the measurement calculating the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The winning artwork, which debuted on March 11, will appear on the Exosphere through the spring, according to Sphere.

Las Vegas students have Pi artwork displayed on the Sphere

"The Exosphere continues to be a powerful canvas for student creativity, and this year's Student Design Challenge showed just how imaginative and talented these young artists are," Rich Constable, executive vice president of Global Head of Government Affairs & Social Impact at Sphere, said in the statement. "Celebrating Pi Day through their work reminds us how art, science and imagination go hand-in-hand."

The winners came from Clark County School District schools and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A panel of judges selected four winners, while the others won by public vote.

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Inspiration for the artwork ranged from "the idea that the same patterns exist at every scale of life" to the "love of apple pie," according to Sphere.

The winning high school and UNLV students received a $10,000 scholarship from Sphere, while the winning elementary and middle school students had a $10,000 donation made to their school's art program.

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Sphere XO Student Design Challenge winners

Here are the winners of the Sphere XO Student Design Challenge:

• Elementary School

  • Marciella Casis − Gordon McCaw Elementary School

  • Kananee Chiu − Billy & Rosemary Vassiliadis Elementary School

• Middle School

  • Jacob Liang − Hyde Park Middle School

  • Maddison Cochran − Jack & Terry Mannion Middle School

• High School

  • Cailyn Ozawa − Liberty High School

  • Lauren Langdon − Foothill High School

• UNLV

  • Alexis Winn

  • Mariana Infante

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Sphere Pi Day student art winners announced. See the amazing artwork

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Sphere reveals Pi Day art winners celebrating 'apple pie' and patterns

LAS VEGAS − EightLas Vegas-area students are having their art displayed on the world's largest LED screen. ...

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David protein bar founder pushes back after lawsuit alleges company undercounted calories

A growing controversy surrounding David protein bars — a viral favorite among wellness influencers — is drawing comparisons to the movie "Mean Girls."

A class action lawsuit filed in January alleges that the popular bars have more than 400% more fat and 80% more calories than advertised. It has prompted a flurry of recentsocial media postsreferring to the film's queen-bee character Regina George, who finds out that the "healthy" diet bars she was given are actually making her gain weight, not lose it. Others likened the situation to the "Seinfeld" episode in which the "nonfat" yogurt that everyone's obsessed with is — spoiler alert — full of fat.

On Wednesday, the company's founder, Peter Rahal, responded in astatement on X: "No one is getting Regina Georged."

In an interview, Rahal said the issue comes down to the way calories are calculated.

"It's a frivolous case where they're using the wrong measurement and method to measure calories," he said.

The labels on David protein bars — which come in flavors like fudge brownie, blueberry pie and cake batter — list 150 calories and 2 grams of fat. But the lawsuit describes independent tests that found the bars to have 268 to 275 calories per serving and 11 to 13.5 grams of fat.

The plaintiffs say the discrepancy violates Food and Drug Administration standards, which mandate that the nutrient content of a food item not exceed the declared value by more than 20%.

But Rahal said the plaintiffs' testing was flawed. The discrepancy, he said, has to do with an ingredient in David protein bars called esterified propoxylated glycerol, or EPG, a modified plant-based fat substitute that moves through the body without getting digested.

"This is what makes David have 150 calories," Rahal said. "It's really a special ingredient that allows the food to taste like fat but doesn't have the caloric impact."

The laboratory cited in the lawsuit, Rahal said, used a device called a bomb calorimeter to calculate the calories in David bars. That method includes the calories in nondigestible ingredients — including EPG — in its count, he added.

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"The science is unequivocal. You don't use a bomb calorimeter to measure nonnutritive things. It's very, very basic," Rahal said.

The calorie count listed on David protein bars, Rahal added, is based on a calculation of just the calories the body absorbs. The company complied with FDA regulations when it developed its bars, he said.

The lawsuit does not specify the method used to measure the calories. Anresco Laboratories, which did the testing, said it could not comment because of confidentiality agreements.

Amy Goodson, a registered dietitian, said EPG has been around as an ingredient since the 1980s and has gone mainstream in recent years.

"This ingredient allows you to actually put less fat grams on the food label itself, because it yields 92% less calories than a typical gram of fat would," she said. "It's resistant to digestive enzymes, so it's going through your system, but it's not actually digesting."

That's a confusing concept for the everyday consumer, Goodson added.

"We look at a nutrition facts label and assume that what's on the label is what's in the product," she said.

David Protein, founded in 2024, quickly rose to prominence, with top names in the wellness and longevity space signing on as investors, including Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and podcaster, and Peter Attia, a celebrity doctor and author. Last month, Attia stepped down as chief science officer at David Proteinamid backlash over his emails with Jeffrey Epstein.

The hype around David bars has come amid a national obsession with protein. Thenew U.S. dietary guidelines, unveiled in January, place aheavy emphasis on protein, recommending it at every meal. Brands have capitalized on the craze: "Doritos Protein" chips hit store shelves this month, Starbucks is selling protein matcha, and the company Protein Pints even advertises high-protein ice cream.

Rahal said David Protein plans to fight the lawsuit.

"Any time you're on the forefront of innovation, there's confusion," he said. "We stand by our product fully."

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David protein bar founder pushes back after lawsuit alleges company undercounted calories

A growing controversy surrounding David protein bars — a viral favorite among wellness influencers — is drawing compariso...

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