Jennie Finch, a College World Series champion, two-time Olympic medalist and National Softball Hall of Fame inductee, is one of the greatest softball players of all time. But when she attends local events and meets young women in the game, she often finds herself feeling inspired by them.

“I’m the one supposed to be coming to inspire and encourage, and I always leave so inspired and in awe of just everything that they are,” Finch said on the most recent episode of The Players’ Pod with host Kelley O’Hara.

“It’s really cool just to be able to meet these young stars and see what they’ve been able to overcome and what they’re hopeful for for the future.”

Since retiring from her playing career in 2010, Finch has dedicated much of her life to building up the next generation of softball stars.

This year, the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award presented by ARM & HAMMER will return to honor four young softball athletes who best exemplify characteristics such as leadership, motivation, commitment, dedication, humility and integrity. Major League Baseball® and Church & Dwight Co., Inc, the makers of ARM & HAMMER, will announce the first recipient on Thursday, the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

Winners of the award each receive a $10,000 scholarship, courtesy of ARM & HAMMER, in recognition of the athletes’ excellence on and off the field. Honorees and their families are also awarded a trip to the World Series, where they are honored alongside Finch prior to a game.

An MLB® Youth Softball Ambassador, Finch will headline an MLB® blue-ribbon panel charged with selecting the student-athletes. Speaking with O’Hara, Finch said her goal is to make the honorees feel supported at a pivotal moment in their development as softball players and people.

“It’s been really neat to see Major League Baseball® dive into the grassroots level and care about women in sports, girls baseball, girls softball,” she said. “To be able to team up with ARM & HAMMER and shine a light on these young ladies who are so remarkable.”

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The award is a part of the MLB® and ARM & HAMMER’s broader commitment to the national growth of softball and aims to recognize athletes who are exceptionally motivated and are making a positive impact on their communities. In addition to Finch, Olympic gold Medalist Natasha Watley and NCAA Women’s College World Series champion Lauren Chamberlain have been appointed MLB® Youth Softball Ambassadors. In that role, they will join forces with USA Softball to put on annual amateur developmental softball events.

“We look forward to recognizing the teamwork, strength, resilience and confidence of young softball athletes across the country, providing them the opportunity to get together at our events and to receive the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award,” said David James, MLB® Vice President of Baseball & Softball Development. “Jennie Finch and Church & Dwight have been great partners in this effort that both builds confidence and assists with college costs.”

Since 2019, ARM & HAMMER has donated $100,000 to date in association with the program to MLB® Youth Foundation and the recipients of the Jennie Finch Empowerment Award.

Major League Baseball® trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball®. Visit MLB.com.

25-year-old American pro golfer Nelly Korda secured her spot in LPGA history on Sunday, notching her fifth-straight title at this weekend's Chevron Championship in The Woodlands, Texas.

Ranked No. 1 in the world by Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, Korda joins Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sörenstam (2005) as just the third LPGA player to rack up five consecutive tour wins. She is also the third No. 1-ranked player to capture The Chevron Championship victory since the rankings debuted in 2006, accompanied by Lorena Ochoa and Lydia Ko.

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The Florida native shot three-under 69 in Sunday's final, besting Sweden's Maja Stark despite Stark's valiant come-from-behind attempt in the 18th. Korda finished with a four-day total of 13-under 275, celebrating her two-stroke win by cannonballing into Poppie's Pond, much to the crowd's delight. She left The Club at Carlton Woods with $1.2 million from an overall purse of $7.9 million.

It wasn't long ago that the two-time major champion's current winning streak seemed unimaginable. After maintaining her No. 1 position for 29 weeks, Korda underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from her left arm in 2022. She returned to the course not long after, but failed to win a single tournament in 2023 before seeing a surge in form during the first four months of 2024. As of today, she hasn't lost a tournament since January.

Korda will attempt a record sixth-straight win at next week's JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, where she'll vie for a cut of the $3.75 million purse.

USWNT regulars Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson furthered their cases for Olympic inclusion with their respective club victories on Saturday and Sunday.

After a roller coaster of a week that saw former Thorns head coach Mike Norris reassigned and a flurry of last-minute roster reshufflings as Friday's trade window closure loomed, the NWSL sprung to life over the weekend with standout performances from ninth-place Portland and third-place Chicago, among others.

After her blocked attempt at goal set up a volleying sixth-minute opener from veteran Christine Sinclair — now the only player in history to record a goal in all 11 NWSL seasons — Smith swiftly netted her own in the 27th minute off a breakaway run that eluded Houston's backline. The goal represented Smith's third of the season as well as her 35th for the Thorns, ultimately leading to the home side's first win of the season in a 4-1 routing of the Dash.

But that wasn't Smith's only stat of the evening. The star forward also lapped former Chicago Red Star Sam Kerr to become the youngest player to reach 50 NWSL goal contributions across all games, chalking up 40 goals and 10 assists at the age of 23 years and 254 days.

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"Obviously it feels good to get a win," said Smith in a post-match press conference. "But this is the standard the Thorns have always had. So a win is great, but a win is the expectation — we're hungrier than ever after the way we started."

170 miles up the road, Lumen Field similarly showcased some promising Olympic prospect footwork on Sunday. In Chicago's 2-1 victory over the lagging 13th-place Seattle Reign, striker Mallory Swanson racked up an impressive counterattack assist on fellow forward Ally Schlegel's fourth-minute goal. Swanson went on to find the back of the net herself before halftime, lacing an explosive ball into the top corner in the 31st minute, her second of the season after returning from a lengthy sidelining injury.

Speaking of injuries, fellow USWNT favorites Alex Morgan and Tierna Davidson were not as fortunate as their national squad teammates this weekend. Each exited their club matches early, Morgan with an ankle knock in San Diego's loss to Orlando and Davidson with an apparent hamstring incident early on in Washington's win over Gotham.

LSU came out on top at the 2024 NCAA women's gymnastics championship in Fort Worth on Saturday, besting Cal, Utah, and Florida to capture their first-ever title.

The Tigers' win was far from a landslide. LSU took the first rotation handily thanks to 2024 All-Around winner Haleigh Bryant's team-leading 9.9375 backed by four additional 9.9+ scores from her teammates. But Utah then responded with three strong beam performances of their own, causing the Red Rocks to slide confidently into second place by the end of the second rotation.

By the halfway point, all four teams fell within .288 points of one another before Utah overtook the pack with a dominant floor showing after three rotations. LSU then went on to ace the beam event with Konnor McClain's meet-leading 9.9625 score, coming away with the highest collective score ever awarded to the event in NCAA championship history. The achievement propelled the Tigers to victory, ensuring them the title after the final rotation.

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"This team is full of individuals that have incredible character and integrity and love for each other and all the things you hear from coaches when they sit at a podium like this in a moment of victory, but I promise you it's a real thing," said LSU coach Jay Clark in a post-meet press conference. "I'm just so happy for them."

Contributing to Saturday's atmosphere of excitement was the absence of last year's champion and this year's heavily favored Oklahoma Sooners. Hot off earning the highest team score in NCAA history just last month, the top-ranked Norman squad suffered a shocking loss in the semifinals, where five major mistakes contributed to a third-place finish and a season-low team score of 196.6625.

With Oklahoma out, it was truly anyone's game.

"Every team was out there fighting for their lives — all four teams, it could have gone any of four ways out there," Clark told reporters. "As much as I feel for what happened to Oklahoma in the semifinals, I think it made for a championship that became so packed with emotion because every team out there believed they could do it. It was just tremendous."

LSU is now the eighth program in the sport's history to earn an NCAA women's gymnastic championship.
They share the honor with Georgia, Utah, UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, and Michigan.

Cameron Brink already has her rookie of the year pick for the upcoming WNBA season, and it’s Indiana-bound star Caitlin Clark. 

In the latest edition of Kelley on the Street, host Kelley O'Hara caught up with Brink in New York hours before the Stanford phenom went No. 2 overall to the Los Angeles Sparks at the 2024 WNBA Draft. When O’Hara asked who would win the WNBA's rookie of the year, she answered without pause.

"Caitlin Clark," she said, while a fan commented that she thought Brink would take home the award. Brink later added that the extra foul granted to WNBA players will be "good for me."

"I hope it’s me," Charisma Osborne, who was later drafted by the Phoenix Mercury, said when asked her ROY prediction. "But, I don’t know — we’ll see."

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