COLLEGES
NCAA upholds ban on text messages Division I coaches were barred from text messaging recruits Saturday at the NCAA convention in Nashville.
An attempt to override a ban failed 240-65 in a vote of delegates, with one abstention. The ban took effect Aug. 1 and was on the agenda after 30 schools asked for the override vote.
Kerry Kenny, who played basketball at Lafayette College and is the incoming chairman of the NCAA student-athlete advisory committee, asked delegates to uphold the ban. He called text messaging intrusive, putting an undue burden on recruits and parents.
• The University of North Carolina said it would stand behind the college achievements of Marion Jones, the former Olympic athlete who was sentenced to federal prison time for lying to the federal investigators about her steroid use. "We focused on the time she was with us and how she had represented the university in such a positive way and made significant contributions," said Dick Baddour, North Carolina athletics director. "We felt like she was deserving of the recognition she achieved here."
BASEBALL
Clemens talks, but not about steroids In a session before about 1,000 Texas high school baseball coaches in Waco, seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens stuck to baseball and cracked jokes, making no mention of allegations against him in the Mitchell Report.
"He talked like nothing ever happened. It was a nonissue in there," Waco Midway High assistant coach Coby Meinzer said.
Clemens spoke for just more than an hour at the closing session of the Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association, the nation's largest such group.
WINTER SPORTS
Frenchman wins; Ligety, Miller in top 5 Jean-Baptiste Grange confirmed his status as a rising star, winning the slalom and matching Jean-Claude Killy as the only skiers to win two different races on the Lauberhorn course in Wengen, Switzerland, in the same year. American Ted Ligety was third and countryman Bode Miller fifth.
Grange won the super-combi Friday, matching Killy's 1967 victories in the Lauberhorn downhill and slalom.
• Austria's Elisabeth Goergl, after waiting eight years and 146 World Cup events for her first victory, won the giant slalom Saturday in Maribor, Slovenia. Former Burnsville skier Lindsey (Kildow) Vonn was 13th. "I had a really good second run, just a pity that the gap to the others was too big after the first leg," Vonn said.
TENNIS
Roddick wins final tuneup American Andy Roddick won his third consecutive Kooyong Classic title in Melbourne and said he'd happily exchange them all for one at the Australian Open. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Dmitry Tursunov beat Chris Guccione of Australia 7-6 (3), 7-6 (4) for the Sydney International men's title.
AROUND THE HORN
Surfing: Greg Long, a 24-year-old Californian, topped a daredevil contest that had competitors riding waves more than four stories tall at the Mavericks Surf Contest in Half Moon Bay, about 20 miles south of San Francisco.
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