Study Says Flaws Exist in Testing

Many campus screening programs aimed at detecting dangerous heart problems in college athletes are inadequate, a survey of more than 800 NCAA schools found.

The screenings are designed to disqualify athletes with such ailments and prevent sudden deaths. The study, however, found that many such screening programs use doctors without cardiac training and fail to ask key questions about family history.

The survey was done by researchers from UCLA and the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. The findings were published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn.

From 1995-97, 855 of 879 schools surveyed screened athletes with a physical exam and questions about family history before allowing them to play varsity sports. But only about a quarter of the screening forms were considered adequate by the heart association.

Soccer

A FIFA panel is recommending that the women’s soccer World Cup remain in odd years, instead of being moved forward to raise its profile.

The FIFA women’s committee decided in Zurich, Switzerland, against a proposal to move the next competition forward by a year to 2002, coinciding with the next men’s World Cup finals.

The committee “felt that the men’s World Cup was likely to overshadow all other competitions and that it would therefore be better to avoid such an accumulation of events,” FIFA said in a statement.

Valencia played to scoreless tie with defending champion Manchester United to join the English Club in the quarterfinals of the Champions Cup. The Italian team, Fiorentina, was ousted by Bordeaux, 5-3. Also advancing were Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and FC Porto.

Trinidad and Tobago beat the Netherlands Antilles, 6-0, in Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad, in their first qualifying match for the 2000 Olympics. . . . St. Kitts and Nevis beat the Turks and Caicos Islands, 6-0, in their second World Cup qualifying match in Basseterre, St. Kitts.

Miscellany

Two-time Olympic swimmer and University of Florida All-American Giovanni Linscheer, 27, was killed in a two-car crash on Interstate 95 near Boca Raton, Fla. Linscheer was driving in the wrong lane early Sunday when he crashed head-on into a van and both vehicles exploded into flames, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The highway patrol is awaiting the results of toxicology reports to determine if the crash was alcohol-related. The driver of the van was also killed.

Linscheer competed in the 110-meter butterfly and 100-meter freestyle for his native Suriname in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. He was a bronze medalist at the 1995 Pan American Games.

Diana Taurasi of Don Lugo High, a six-foot point guard, has been named the Naismith prep basketball girls’ player of the year by the Atlanta Tipoff Club. Gerald Wallace of Childersburg (Ala.) High was named the Naismith boys’ player of the year.

UC Irvine will add women’s golf and women’s indoor track and field to its intercollegiate athletics program, effective in the 2001-2002 school year. The additions will coincide with the reinstatement of baseball at the school in the same year. Women’s water polo has been added for the 2000-2001 school year.

The financially troubled Professional Bowlers Assn. will announce its sale to a group led by former Microsoft executive Chris Peters today. The PBA, which lost its TV contract with ABC in 1996 after 36 years on the network, is believed to be more than $3 million in debt.

University of San Francisco soccer Coach Stephen Negoesco, whose 536 wins are the most in NCAA Division I history, will step down after the 2000 season and be succeeded by associate coach Erik Visser.

A group of snowboarders face assault and disorderly conduct charges from a drunken brawl after the U.S. Snowboarding Open at Stratton Mountain, Vt.