Sixth Person Pleads Guilty in Northwestern Gambling

Michael Stemberk, 24, of North Riverside, Ill., admitted Thursday he participated in a gambling ring at Northwestern between 1992 and 1995 and tried to “scare” a Wildcat basketball player into paying off his gambling debt.

Stemberk pleaded guilty to perjury for lying to a grand jury about his involvement in the ring. He is the sixth defendant to plead guilty as a result of a federal probe into gambling at Northwestern, an investigation that uncovered evidence of fixed basketball games and now involves the 1994 Wildcat football team.

Stemberk was not a student at Northwestern, but he was a high school friend of Brian Ballarini, a Northwestern quarterback who admitted last week he ran a gambling ring helping individuals--including Northwestern athletes--place bets on college and professional games and shared inside information on the team.

Stemberk also said he lied about an incident in which he phoned Wildcat basketball player Dion Lee to “scare” him into paying his debt of about $2,000.

Tennis

Teenager Mirjana Lucic, ranked 50th in the world, has fled her native Croatia after accusing her father of being abusive. She is in Florida, with her mother and four siblings, with the help of a U.S. senator she did not identify.

“Beatings . . . there have been more of them than anyone can imagine,” Lucic, 16, told a Zagreb, Croatia, newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija. “Sometimes it was because of the lost game, in other cases for the lost set or badly played trainings. I don’t want to even say what happened after the matches I lost.”

Marinko Lucic, who also was his daughter’s coach and advisor, denied the accusations that he mistreated her because of tennis.

Australia’s Patrick Rafter, preparing for his U.S. Open title defense, defeated the Czech Republic’s Martin Damm, 6-4, 6-3, to advance to the quarterfinals of the Hamlet Cup at Commack, N.Y.

Rafter will face France’s Nicolas Escude, a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 winner over Morocco’s Hicham Arazi--Rafter’s first-round opponent in the U.S. Open.

“I was very relaxed, and that’s the key,” Rafter said. “As long as I’m hitting the ball well, I know I can more than hold my own. I don’t need to be in the final here to repeat in the U.S. Open.”

Third-seeded Cedric Pioline of France outclassed Andrew Ilie of Australia, 6-4, 6-3, and fifth-seeded Thomas Muster of Austria beat Nicolas Lapentti of Ecuador, 6-2, 6-4, to advance to the quarterfinals in the MFS Pro Tennis Championships at Brookline, Mass.

“I still can play with guys 10 and 12 years younger than me,” said Muster, 30. “I just have to practice more than I did 10 years ago. If you don’t move forward, then you move backward. I feel happy with what I’m doing.”

Fourth-seeded Michael Chang got past Kenneth Carlsen of Denmark, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, in 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Wimbledon champion Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic defeated Amelie Mauresmo, 6-1, 7-6 (7-4), to reach the semifinals of the Pilot Pen International at New Haven, Conn.

Steffi Graf of Germany also won, 6-3, 6-0, over Amanda Coetzer of South Africa, and will face top-seeded defending champion Lindsay Davenport, who defeated Anke Huber of Germany, 6-3, 6-3.

Paul Goldstein of Stanford and Michelle Magid of Boston University were Division I winners of the Arthur Ashe Award by Tennis Magazine.

Hockey

A Moscow newspaper stood by its report that Hall of Famer Bobby Hull voiced pro-Nazi sentiments, but a translator who heard the interview, Svetlana Murashkina, said he might have been misunderstood or quoted out of context.

The Mighty Ducks have signed goaltender Patrick Lalime to a one-year contract worth $425,500. He will be paid less if he plays in the minor leagues. . . . The Ducks also said that home preseason individual game tickets will go on sale Saturday at the Pond, beginning at 10 a.m.

New York Islander all-star Zigmund Palffy, who had 45 goals and 42 assists last season while earning $1.8 million, is prepared to sit out the season unless he’s paid comparably to the NHL’s top right wings, his agent said. . . . Randy Cunneyworth, 37, who spent the last four seasons with the Ottawa Senators, signed a multiyear contract with the Buffalo Sabres. . . . The San Jose Sharks re-signed center Jarrod Skalde.

Miscellany

Three Russian swimmers who claimed they had been tricked into eating a cake spiked with drugs had their doping appeals thrown out by the Court of Arbitration for Sport at Lausanne, Switzerland.

Husband and wife Vladimir Pychnenko and Natalia Mechtcheriakova, and Olga Kochetkova were banned for two years by FINA, swimming’s governing body, in December 1997 after testing positive for the steroid metandieone.

Michigan State guard Mateen Cleaves, the Big Ten Conference player of the year, sustained a slight shoulder separation in a fall at an apartment complex in East Lansing, Mich.

Daniel Bell, 13, of Silver Spring, Md., an incoming freshman at St. John’s College High in Washington died, eight days after suffering a seizure after a hot afternoon football practice.

Led by Arnaud Tourant, who won the men’s kilometer race, France won its third gold medal in three events at the World Cycling Championships in Bordeaux, France.

The U.S. Open Cup soccer championship game between the Chicago Fire and Columbus Crew at Virginia Beach, Va., was postponed because of Hurricane Bonnie. No new date was set.

Craig Buck, a two-time All-American at Pepperdine and a member of two U.S. teams that won gold medals in the Olympics, has been inducted to the Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke, Mass.