Names in the News - Dec. 15, 1994

U.S. World Cup player Marcelo Balboa was named the U.S. soccer player of the year in a vote of sports journalists. . . . Alexi Lalas, the first American to play in the Italian soccer league, will sit out a game after being suspended for the first time this season.

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The Wayne Gretzky and Friends Tour wound up its European trip tih an 8-5 victory over a German all-star team at Frieburg, Germany. . . . The 1994 champion of bass angling’s top event was among the passengers presumed killed when an American Eagle commuter plane crashed in North Carolina. Bryan Kerchal, 23, of Newtown, Conn., won the BASS Masters Classic at High Rock Lake, N.C., in July.

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British 800-meter runner Diane Modahl, banned for four years for failing a drug test, will appeal. . . .Former UCLA guard Shon Tarver signed with the Quad City Thunder of the CBA.