After plenty of solid high school sports performers over the last week, here are the Journal Star Girls Athlete of the Week nominees for Aug. 24-29, presented by CEFCU.
Head to www.pjstar.com/sports to vote. The poll closes at noon Friday. Information about the nominees is below.
If you have a nominee for the honor, email us at sportspjstar.com or tag us on X pjstarsports. Last week, Ella Herchenroder of the Galesburg golf team was named JS Girls Athlete of the Week.
Williamson guided the Rockets to an undefeated march to the Macomb Tournament ******* le on Saturday, Aug. 29. In the ******* le match, Williamson went for 12 kills and three blocks in beating Eureka 25-16, 25-19. She record 40 kills, 49 ******* ists and eight blocks in the five matches. Williamson also earned all-tournament team honors with teammate Mia Lamberti.
Parsons helped the Turks win the Charles Scanavino Tournament at Warrensburg-Latham on Saturday, Aug. 29. She went for 10 kills, two blocks and an ace to beat the hosts 25-17, 25-17. The junior middle hitter chipped in six kills to beat Olympia 25-13, 25-18 in the semifinals. Parsons was named all-tournament and Most Outstanding Player.

#tournament #sports

ISTANBUL (AP) — Israel did not warn the United States before it struck an air base in northern Syria this week, despite fears of an escalation with the U.S. and NATO ally Turkey, the U.S. special envoy to Syria said.
Israel usually closely coordinates its military actions with the U.S., its key backer. Washington has tried to use this influence to moderate attacks as Israel carries out operations in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon.
Tom Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkey, said the attack on Tuesday on the Abu Duhur base could have been Israel "baiting the Turks … that was the serious and worrying part."
However, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz contradicted the U.S. envoy's remarks about there being no warning, saying in a statement that Israel decided to alert senior members of the Syrian government. "Simultaneously, we transferred the intelligence reports to the relevant authorities in the U.S.," Katz added.
In the wake of the strikes, which caused damage but no casualties, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the base was attacked because Syria was "on the verge of breaching" an agreement by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.

#syria

While the world learned of the death of actress Hayden Panettiere on Sunday, Aug. 16, the news hit harder for Chicago Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. She was his babysitter.
"Hayden Panettiere babysat me. I had the biggest crush on her," Crow-Armstrong said in 2022 interview with Gordon Wittenmyer of NBC Chicago.
A Southern California native, Crow-Armstrong is the son of actress Ashley Crow, Panettiere's co-star in the NBC series "Heroes." His father, Matthew John Armstrong, starred in American Dreams, Turks, and American Horror Story.
MORE: Ketel Marte's former teammate: 'something serious is going on' with Dbacks star
These days, Crow-Armstrong is familiar to baseball fans for the MVP-caliber season he is putting together for the Chicago Cubs. On Monday, Aug. 17, he started and ended the Cubs' win over the Chicago White Sox with a home run, becoming the first player since 1957 to homer on the first and last pitch of the same game.

#hayden

SEC Media Days usually center around topics involving improvement for programs and goals for the upcoming season. During Shane Beamer's session, his status as a quasi-streaming celebrity came up during his opening remarks.
Beamer spoke about an offseason trip he took with his family in Turks and Caicos, and how he was recognized in an unlikely location.
"My family and I were in Turks and Caicos back in February and was going through the TSA line down in Turks, and the guy that was doing everything in TSA looked at me and said, You look familiar. And then it hit him. He said, You're an SEC football coach. I watched that Netflix special "Fantasia," because he saw the episode where I sang "Fantasia" to my wife after the A&M game," Beamer shared during SEC Media Days.
The TSA agent might not have remembered the correct name of the show, but Beamer spoke to the impact Netflix's Any Given Saturday has had on the program from a branding standpoint. The Gamecocks have players from Ireland and Germany on their roster this season.
"One, kind of go back to what I said about the whole Netflix special. When we agreed to be one of the teams to participate on the Netflix "Any Given Saturday" documentary, that was one of the things that I thought about, was just the amount of people that would see that and they'd be exposed to SEC football and say, Man, South Carolina looks like a place that I would love to go to school," Beamer said.

#turks #days #fantasia #saturday

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's president on Tuesday dismissed an Israeli proposal to designate violence against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide, and turned the accusation back at Israel by pointing at the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was responding to a measure approved Sunday by Israel's Cabinet. The proposal still requires parliamentary approval and comes amid deteriorating ties between Israel and Turkey.
Turkey has fiercely lobbied to prevent countries from officially recognizing the mass deaths of Armenians around 1915 as genocide, even as Armenians have pushed for it.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
"We pay absolutely no attention to the slanders against our country by this criminal network, which has the blood of 73,000 innocent people of Gaza, mostly children and women, on its hands," Erdogan said in a televised address following a Cabinet meeting.

Tyler Herro dating Kyle Kuzma's ex sparks buzz as they are now teammates originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Milwaukee Bucks locker might be a little awkward, as Tyler Herro just got traded to the team where Kyle Kuzma has been for about a year and a half. Herro was part of the trade that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat. While Herro and Kuzma have no beef with one another, fans immediately noticed their shared dating history.
Herro has been dating Instagram model Katya Elise Henry for several years, and the pair shares two children, but prior to their relationship beginning, she briefly dated Kuzma. As the trade news became official, the storyline made it back to the internet.
Henry and Kuzma only dated from late 2018 to late 2019. The Instagram model then started dating Herro the following year during the COVID-19 pandemic. She went viral when she posted a YouTube video in 2020 about Kuzma " not being able to handle her," which brought more attention to the former relationship.
While Henry has moved on, so has Kuzma. He has been in a relationship with model Winnie Harlow for several years and proposed to her last year. He chartered a private plane to Turks and Caicos for he and Harlow which he decorated with roses and champagne.

Expect to see plenty of changes in U.S. men's soccer team's starting lineup for Thursday's World Cup Group D finale against Turkey.
The U.S. has already won the group and the Turks have already been eliminated ahead of Thursday's game at SoFi Stadium. Despite the inconsequential nature of the result itself, there are some things at risk as the Americans prepare for the knockout stage.
At the World Cup, if a player receives two yellow cards during the group stage, he is suspended for the following game, even if it's in the knockout stage.
World Cup bracket: Projected Round of 32 knockout matchups
Yellow cards, however, do reset after the group stage. The U.S. have a number of important players on yellows, who may be rested against Turkey considering the risks and Group D already in hand.

Every morning, OneFootball will bring you a full recap of the night at the World Cup. And as you’ll see, it was a busy night!
This is obviously one of the main stories of the night: Turkey and Haiti are the first two teams officially eliminated from this World Cup. For the Turks, this failure feels like a fiasco after two completely missed matches!
As for the bad news, Brazil lost one of its stars during its win over Haiti. Raphinha was forced off just before halftime due to another thigh injury.
And while Carlo Ancelotti has announced Neymar’s return for the decisive match against Scotland, Brazil is still worried about the Barça star.
Finally, Miguel Almiron made history by becoming the first player to receive a red card under the new “Prestianni” rule.

It's the fiasco of the year!
A thunderbolt has struck the World Cup: Turkey has been eliminated from the tournament after a dismal defeat to Paraguay (0-1).
Stunned by a goal from Matias Galarza after just 64 seconds, the Turks put in a complete non-performance throughout the first 45 minutes.
But the match had seemed to be revived after Miguel Almiron's sending-off just before halftime with the first application of the "Prestianni" rule.
However, despite having the numerical advantage for the entire second half, Turkey went on to squander chance after chance in front of goal, even wasting several huge opportunities.

A man vacationing in the Turks and Caicos Islands recently stumbled upon what he says are fragments from **** eX's Starship 7, the massive rocket that exploded during testing earlier this month.

The photos, posted on the r/interestingasf*** subreddit, show scorched, lightweight panels that appear to have washed ashore, their honeycomb interiors resembling foam packaging material.
The post quickly took off, racking up hundreds of upvotes and sparking debate about the environmental toll of large-scale **** e launches.

In one of the images, a burned, hexagonal heat-shield tile appears to h