The Masters: Jordan Spieth in search of elusive 2nd green jacket

• April 4, 2023

By DAVE SKRETTA AP Sports Writer

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Jordan Spieth was caught in such a whirlwind after winning the Masters eight years ago, whether it was winging his way to New York for television appearances or throwing out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers game, that he never bothered to find a tailor for his green jacket.

Leave it to Augusta National, where every piece of the property is finely tailored, to take care of such details.

“I just had it everywhere and I never got it fixed,” Spieth said Monday, “and I think they have done it since here, because the arms certainly fit a lot better. I left a little room just in case I put on a few pounds over the years.”

That’s some forward-thinking.

Of course, a better solution would be to keep winning new ones.

There was a time when that seemed inevitable. Spieth was just 21 back in 2015, when he became the first wire-to-wire Masters champion since Ray Floyd nearly four decades earlier, tying Tiger Woods’ then-record of 18 under along the way. He went on to win the U.S. Open that summer, and everything portended greatness for a kid who fell in love with the game watching the Masters on TV and then racing out to the chipping green at Brookhaven Country Club.

Spieth kept winning, of course. Prestigious monuments, too, like the Tour Championship that fall and the Tournament of Champions the following January. A year later, Spieth won his third major at the British Open at Royal Birkdale.

Yet winning a second green jacket has been an exercise not in futility so much as frustration.

In 2016, he led from the first round until the back nine on Sunday, when he blew a five-shot lead by losing six shots to par over the first three holes. The coup de grace came at No. 12, the picturesque par-3 over Rae’s Creek in the back corner of the property, where Spieth hit not just his approach into the water but his next shot as well.

It was perhaps the lowest Spieth has ever felt at Augusta National, on the lowest spot on the course. The quadruple bogey cleared the way for Danny Willett, whose bogey-free final round earned him a green jacket instead.

In 2018, Spieth again led after the first round before fading on Friday and Saturday, and only a blistering final-round 64 got him within two shots of winner Patrick Reed. He matched that third-place finish with another two years ago, when he hung around the first page of the leaderboard but never threatened winner Hideki Matsuyama.

“When I look back on the times where I’ve had real legitimate chances, I look at the middle two rounds of 2018 – I really could have, should have won it that year,” Spieth said. “Like, I’ve backdoored some of those top finishes, and I’d love to get in the mix because I feel like right now, I feel better about my game than I’ve felt since probably 2017.”

It hasn’t been easy to reach this point.

Spieth would go through periods when his swing was out of whack, and his solution was to grind harder, which often led to more problems. So he would back off, and that would lead if not to more problems then at least to different ones.

“I tried working really, really hard without really knowing what I was doing, and I think that put me more in a hole,” he said. “I got to the point where I was like, ‘OK, let’s figure this out. Stop trying the same thing and overworking it, thinking something is going to click and it’s all over.’ Instead, I started to really re-engineer backward what kind of made me so successful.”

It’s been a process, Spieth said, yet the progress was evident last year at Augusta. He was 1 under in his second round, and 1 over for the championship, before a triple bogey at No. 12 – he splashed another shot into Rae’s Creek – and a double bogey at the 18th caused him to miss the cut at the Masters for the first time.

The next week, Spieth won the RBC Heritage in a playoff with Patrick Cantlay.

The good results kept coming, if not the wins: second at the Byron Nelson, top 10 at the British Open at St. Andrews, sixth earlier this year at the Phoenix Open, fourth at Bay Hill and third at the Valspar Championship.

Those results are why oddsmakers put him behind only defending champion Scottie Scheffler, four-time major winner Rory McIlroy – still needing the Masters for his career slam – and major winner Jon Rahm heading into Thursday’s opening round.

And why Spieth would be wise to have a tailor on standby come Sunday.

“It’s exciting,” he said, “because when I go to the range, I’m confident by the end of the day I know what to improve. That seems like it would be standard every day for a golfer, but there were a lot of years in a row where I would go to the course and I would be uncertain if I would come out that day feeling better or worse. That’s tough to go into.”

“You know,” Spieth added, “I don’t feel I have all the weapons right now. But I have enough, and I’m continuing to work on the ones that I don’t have, and I get a little better each day with them.”

LIV’S CAM SMITH HAPPY TO GET HUGS, HANDSHAKES

Cameron Smith returned to the Masters on Monday with a small measure of trepidation, an unusual feeling for someone who has contended two of the last three years and who refers to Augusta National as his “happy place.”

Smith is with LIV Golf, the last big name to defect to the Saudi-funded tour. And having heard so much noise and sensed so much acrimony, he didn’t know what kind of reception he would receive when he walked onto the range.

To his relief, it was the usual dose of hugs and handshakes.

“And it was nice,” Smith said to the largest gathering of the day in the interview room.

The British Open champion was the only LIV golfer on the interview schedule, a courtesy Augusta National affords all the reigning major champions regardless of where they play.

What was he expecting?

“I wasn’t really sure, to be honest,” Smith said. “I was just kind of letting it all happen naturally – went out to the range and did my stuff and yeah, it was just a really nice experience. … There’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment that doesn’t need to be going on, especially in the media. I think it’s definitely wound up a little bit too much.”

This Masters has a full plate of activity, and LIV Golf would appear to be the main course.

Smith has not competed against the best of the PGA Tour since the Tour Championship last August. For the likes of Dustin Johnson, it’s been a little longer.

It didn’t take long for the mix of players from two tours to cause a stir. The practice round tee sheet listed a most tantalizing foursome of Woods, Fred Couples, Tom Kim and Bryson DeChambeau, who complained only last week that Woods had cut him off ever since the former U.S. Open champion went to LIV.

Turns out it was a Masters mix-up. The fourth was Rory McIlroy, the loudest PGA Tour supporter over the last year.

Couples has made his thoughts clear, recently saying at a PGA Tour Champions breakfast in Newport Beach that Phil Mickelson was a “nut bag” and Sergio Garcia a “clown.”

Couples, the 1992 Masters champion and still immensely popular, says he has no personal beef with either and would have no trouble sitting with them at the Masters Club dinner on Tuesday night or playing in the same group.

“I have no problem with any of them,” Couples said. “Just please do not bash a tour that I have 43 years invested in. It bothers the hell out of me. They don’t bother me. They really don’t. They’re golfers. I’m a golfer. I respect them all.”

The Masters typically releases tee times on Tuesday afternoon, and that has become an event to see which LIV players – 18 of them are at the Masters – will be in the same group as PGA Tour loyalists.

Shane Lowry played with two LIV golfers – Mickelson and Louis Oosthuizen – at the U.S. Open last summer. Adam Scott played with Johnson and Marc Leishman at St. Andrews.

“Look, obviously there’s going to be some pairings that are going to be interesting this week,” Lowry said. “I always say this about professional golfers. We all work in the same office. If you work in the same office, you’re not going to like everyone in there. Same way as this. I met Dustin on the range – I always get on well with Dustin. It was good to see him.”

“There’s a lot to hype,” Lowry said. “But if you’re paired with whoever, you don’t really care about what they’re doing. You’re just trying to win the tournament.”

One question about LIV golfers is how much they’re playing, as the new circuit has had only three events in 2023. Smith played five times going into the Masters last year, and he briefly challenged Scheffler until the Texan pulled away to win his first major.

This year he has played four times – the only 72-hole event was the Saudi International on the Asian Tour, where he missed the cut. That was followed by three 54-hole LIV events, the last two finishing out of the top 20.

Smith is not in peak form, which he attributes to a long break at home in Australia during the offseason. But Augusta National tends to bring out the best in him, and he’s hoping the good vibes will lead to a great performance.

If not him, then Smith would love to see another LIV player with a shot at the green jacket.

“I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” Smith said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about these guys don’t play real golf, these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say, the fields aren’t as strong. I’m the first one to say that.

“But we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf, and we compete against each other hard week-in and week-out and we’re trying to do the same things that we did six months ago.”

Brooks Koepka is coming off a one-shot victory last week in LIV Golf-Orlando, where the greens were crusty and brown and fast. It was played on the Crooked Cat course at Orange County National, where the PGA Tour used to stage Q-school.

Johnson was asked about any similarities between Crooked Cat and Augusta National.

“I don’t think you could have those in the same sentence, other than I played there last week and I’m playing here this week,” Johnson said.

CROWE TAKING FLIGHT

Harrison Crowe was having a couple of pints last summer at The Dunvegan, a pub just around the corner from the Old Course at St. Andrews when a golf podcaster challenged someone to hit a ball off the pavement and onto the 18th green.

That would be over the buildings, across the street and onto the 18th green.

Crowe doesn’t remember how many drinks he had in him. He does remember the shot. With his left foot on the corner of the sidewalk, his right on the street, Crowe took a mighty swing and sent the ball soaring over the buildings.

The video of the successful shot went viral, turning the amateur into something of a celebrity at his first Masters.

“I think hitting that shot just kind of shows the person that I am, that I’m not really afraid to give everything a shot,” Crowe said after a practice round on Monday. “And it kind of shows a little bit more of the Aussie culture a little bit, that we are pretty laid back and we are ready to do things.”

Crowe’s victory at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship last year put him in select Aussie company: Adam Scott is back on the 10th anniversary of his Masters triumph, British Open champ Cam Smith is among the favorites, Jason Day is rising through the world rankings now that he’s healthy, and Min Woo Lee is a trendy pick to do well.

“The course is definitely longer than I expected,” Crowe said, “but more so the aura around the players is so mesmerizing. You go down Magnolia Lane, it’s so special. Driving the car down there, it’s a life-changing experience. And then being here today, especially seeing how many people are out there, it’s nerve-wracking. But it’s more so exciting.”

DECHAMBEAU AND AUGUSTA

Bryson DeChambeau was a beefed-up, big-hitting U.S. Open champ when he came to the Masters in November 2020 and called Augusta National a par 67 because of his length. He only broke par two days, and only once did he break 70 – a 69.

“Because of that statement (some people) think I don’t have respect for the course,” DeChambeau said. “Are you kidding me? This is one of the greatest golf courses in the entire world, and if anybody thinks I don’t have respect for the course, they’d better go check out who I actually am because it’s not accurate one bit.”

DeChambeau said he regrets not clarifying that he needed to be at the peak of his game, and that wasn’t the case. And while he said a 67 every day is unlikely to happen, with the distance he was hitting the ball in 2020 it was possible.

“But that’s only with your ‘A’ game, and I should have rephrased that,” he said.

YOUNG SARGENT

Gordon Sargent received a special invitation to play the Masters as the NCAA champion. He’s a sophomore at Vanderbilt but looks even younger, and that made it difficult to get around the grounds when he arrived Sunday.

In fact, a few employees figured he was one of the kids in the Drive, Chip and Putt competition.

“I’m walking around and no one is with me. I don’t even know if I had my badge with me; I think I probably still had it in the car or something,” Sargent said. “I was like, ‘Can I have player dining?’ They’re like, ‘I don’t know. Player?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I know, I’m an amateur or whatever.’ Then thankfully a couple guys from when I came last month from inside remembered me, and they kind of guided me along. But yeah, it was pretty funny.”

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“They’re like, ‘Where are your parents? Like, did they send you by yourself?’” Sargent added with a smile. “I was like, ‘No, they’re coming in. I can travel by myself sometimes.’”

HOLE IN ONE

Sepp Straka already has a memorable Masters moment: He aced the par-3 12th during his practice round Monday.

The winner of the Honda Classic a year ago, Straka was playing with Abraham Ancer, J.T. Poston and Chris Kirk and had 155 yards to the hole when he hit an 8-iron over the bunker fronting the green and watched his ball disappear.

Straka won’t get one of the crystal bowls that Augusta National awards players who have a hole-in-one during the Masters; there hasn’t been one of those at No. 12 since Curtis Strange in 1988. But that didn’t seem to bother Straka one bit.

“Every time you come it’s a special event, and then obviously this year, the one thing that’s going to stand out – I don’t think you can top that hole-in-one,” Straka said. “That’ll be a memory I’ll keep forever.”

AP Golf Writer Doug Ferguson contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers’ Max Muncy is done taking chances with bouncing balls

• April 4, 2023

LOS ANGELES ― It’s been several years since Max Muncy wore a protective cup on the field before Monday, when he returned to the Dodgers’ lineup two days after a ground ball hit him in a sensitive area of a man’s body.

Just as there was a strong impetus for Muncy to wear a cup upon his return, there was a specific reason he stopped wearing one midway through his career.

“Back when I played first base, I felt like I got too comfortable wearing (ground balls) off the chest and tossing (the ball) to the pitcher at first base,” he said. “When I started playing other positions, I started doing the same thing and I wasn’t very good. So I talked to someone and they said, ‘you have to trust your hands more.’

“I said, ‘how do you do that,’ and they said, ‘stop wearing a cup.’ The second I did that, I immediately started getting a lot better in the field.”

The lack of a defensive position was an issue for Muncy as an amateur. Steve Smith, who coached Muncy at Baylor, once recalled, “I remember one scout was asked where Max would play and he said, ‘As far away from the ball as possible.’”

Muncy played five different positions, as well as designated hitter, during his two partial seasons (2015-16) with the Oakland A’s to begin his major league career.

With the Dodgers, Muncy grew comfortable moving from first base to second base to third, sometimes alternating positions within the same game. With more regular playing time, his bat took off. He made the National League All-Star teams in 2019 and 2021, and became a fixture in the middle of the Dodgers’ lineup.

“It became a thing where (not wearing a cup) forced me to trust my hands, let my hands work in a natural way,” Muncy said. “It just got to a point where over time I was feeling better on defense without it, so I never went back to wearing one.”

Until now.

Muncy is optimistic that the muscle memory he developed without the cup is retained, and that he still trusts his hands – not his chest – to make the play at third base. But he won’t take a chance playing baseball unprotected, even though the injury caused him to miss only one game.

“You see the guys who wear elbow guards that never wore them before– all it takes is one time and then you start wearing it,” he said.

GONSOLIN UPDATE

Speaking to reporters for the first time since he sprained his ankle in spring training, pitcher Tony Gonsolin said he will need only a few minor league rehab starts before returning to the Dodgers’ starting rotation.

“I feel fortunate enough that last year’s spring was a little bit shortened, so I know that I don’t need so many (starts) to feel comfortable going into the season,” he said. “Maybe no more than four at the most. Whatever gets me built up to the five innings, 60, 75 pitches, whatever it is.”

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Gonsolin will head to the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility in Glendale, Arizona to pitch to teammates Wednesday. He will remain in extended spring training until the Dodgers are comfortable enough with his per-inning pitch count to assign him to a minor league affiliate.

The right-hander didn’t expect the injury to cost him more than a week or two at first. Now, nearly three weeks later, he has enough perspective to crack a joke about the injury, which he suffered during a fielding drill.

“It was a freak thing. I was trying to throw a ball across my body, like, be a little athletic,” Gonsolin said, “and my body was done being athletic for the day.”

UP NEXT

Dodgers (LHP Julio Urías, 1-0, 3.00 ERA) vs. Colorado Rockies (RHP German Marquez, 1-0, 3.00 ERA), Tuesday, 7 p.m., SportsNet LA, MLB Network (out of market only), 570 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County softball stat leaders through April 1

• April 4, 2023

Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

Orange County softball stats leaders through April 1.

To be included, teams must have their stats up to date on the MaxPreps.com leaderboards.

BATTING AVERAGE

Name, school
Avg.
Hits
AB

Isabella Gonzalez, Costa Mesa
.763
29
38

Tea Gutierrez, Huntington Beach
.645
20
31

Kayden Connaty, Garden Grove
.622
23
37

Aleena Garcia, Whittier Christian
.613
38
62

Jocelyn Aguilar, Westminster
.608
31
51

Mickayla Galaviz, Anaheim
.594
19
32

Navaeh Gomez, La Quinta
.593
16
27

Michelle Delgado, Segerstrom
.562
18
32

RUNS BATTED IN

Name, school
RBI
PA
GP

Riley Laygo, Whittier Christian
36
67
18

Makenzie Butt, Fountain Valley
29
55
17

Jailyn Paderez, Whittier Christian
23
63
18

Jocelyn Aguilar, Westminster
23
60
16

ChaCha Miranda, Westminster
21
59
16

Kori Villenueve, Newport Harbor
21
54
16

Isabella Gonzalez, Costa Mesa
19
45
9

Kayden Connaty, Garden Grove
19
40
11

Ariyah Hill, Wesminster
18
57
16

Anaya Togia, Marina
18
57
16

Veronica Moore, Fountain Valley
18
57
17

Ariana Magallanes, Westminster
18
56
16

SLUGGING PERCENTAGE

Name, school
Slugging %
AB
TB

Zoe Prystajko, Huntington Beach
1.241
29
36

Tea Gutierrez, Huntington Beach
1.161
31
38

Makenzie Butt, Fountain Valley
1.130
46
52

Isabella Gonzalez, Costa Mesa
1.105
38
42

Kayden Connaty, Garden Grove
1.081
37
40

Navaeh Gomez, La Quinta
1.037
27
28

Aleena Garcia, Whittier Christian
.968
62
60

Jocelyn Garcia, Westminster
.941
51
48

EARNED-RUN AVERAGE

Name, school
ERA
IP
ER

Zoe Prystajko, Huntington Beach
0.18
38.0
1

Brianne Weiss, Orange Lutheran
0.69
60.2
6

Mia Valbuena, Marina
0.97
79.0
11

Kayden Connaty, Garden Grove
1.24
39.2
7

Navaeh Gomez, La Quinta
1.30
32.1
6

Brynne Nally, Pacifica
1.35
46.2
9

Mckenzie Wanner, Kennedy
1.54
36.1
8

Peyton May, Orange Lutheran
1.57
35.2
8

Lexany Alcantar, Anaheim
1.68
25.0
6

Bayle Hunnicutt, Sonora
1.98
67.1
19

Mia Gonzalez, Buena Park
2.11
56.1
17

Eva Hurtado, JSerra
2.13
95.1
29

Cameron Burroughs, JSerra
2.13
26.1
8

Riley Laygo, Whittier Christian
2.19
99.0
31

Kaitlyn Knobbe, Ocean View
2.25
28.0
9

Sophia Kissling, La Habra
2.31
39.1
13

STRIKEOUTS

Name, school
K
BF
IP

Brianne Weiss, Orange Lutheran
118
245
60.2

Mia Valbuena, Marina
100
325
79.0

Katia Wiklem, Laguna Hills
90
358
69.1

Bayle Hunnicutt, Sonora
73
292
67.1

Eva Hurtado, JSerra
71
411
95.1

Kayden Connaty, Garden Grove
70
168
39.2

Zoe Prystajko, Huntington Beach
67
145
38.0

Brynne Nally, Pacifica
64
180
46.2

Loula McNamara, Tesoro
60
359
86.1

Kylie Loertscher, El Toro
56
243
53.2

Lauren Mendez, Foothill
55
414
93.1

Peyton May, Orange Lutheran
52
143
35.2

Sophie Hunter, Edison
52
228
45.2

Riley Laygo, Whittier Christian
50
433
99.0

Nevaeh Gomez, La Quinta
48
134
32.1

Ava Nolan, Newport Harbor
43
290
57.1

​ Orange County Register 

After Dodger Stadium tackle cuts marriage proposal short, couple is all smiles

• April 4, 2023

Ricardo Juarez and Stephani Ramona Gutierrez decided to tag along with friends to the Dodgers’ Opening Day game Thursday, March 30.

But Juarez, who lives in Riverside, didn’t just take his Mookie Betts jersey and Dodgers cap.

RELATED: Tackle ends Dodger Stadium marriage proposal

The 35-year-old sushi chef at Oishii Sushi & Teriyaki in Moreno Valley also took an engagement ring. He planned to propose to then-girlfriend Gutierrez, 33, who uses the name Ramona Saavedra on social media.

But what Juarez thought would be a proposal shown on the jumbotron ended with him being tackled by security guards on the field — and with him as the star of a viral video.

“I wanted it to be special,” Juarez said Monday, April 3. “I didn’t want to be simple.”

During the seventh-inning stretch of the Dodgers game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Juarez decided to run onto the field from their seats in the left-field pavilion, fall to one knee and propose to Gutierrez, who was in the stands. But a Dodger Stadium security guard sped toward him, tackled him to the ground and handcuffed him. Juarez was escorted off the field as the crowd cheered him on.

Proposal gone wrong at Dodger Stadium pic.twitter.com/qankLwE5sW

— maze (@Mazeaveli) March 31, 2023

Juarez bought the ring two weeks ago and planned something special to show his love for Gutierrez.

“I just wanted to go the baseball game and come out on screen,” he said. “I never imagined it being this big.”

Gutierrez, who lives in Beaumont, said Juarez was extremely excited but he “jumped the gun” with his spur-of-the-moment decision to propose from the field instead of in the stands.

“I was coming back from the bathroom,” Gutierrez said. “I almost missed the whole thing.”

Though Gutierrez, a respiratory student at American Career College in Ontario, said yes to Juarez, there were consequences to his bravery.

“They gave him a citation, they gave him the ring back and they banned him for a year,” she said.

After the tackle, Juarez went to Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley and got a shot for his pain, Gutierrez said.

Juarez said his spine and neck hurt after the tackle, which sent his Dodgers cap and the ring flying. Doctors told Juarez it was normal to feel pain after the impact of such a hit.

A Los Angeles Dodgers spokesperson declined to comment on the incident Friday, March 31.

The couple met when a mutual friend introduced them at Lake Perris about three years ago. They started going on hikes at Mount Rubidoux in Riverside and hit if off, Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez and Juarez have a child, 1, together and Gutierrez has three from two previous relationships.

Planning for the wedding wasn’t the first thing on Gutierrez’s mind when he proposed.

“I was so shocked,” Gutierrez said. “And I was scared. I thought he was gonna go to jail and I thought I wasn’t going to see him anymore.”

While being interviewed on a Spanish-language radio show, “El Show de Piolín” on 107.1 FM, hosted by Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo, pushed the couple to set a wedding date and created a GoFundMe page to help pay for the nuptials. As of Monday evening, $583 of the $20,000 goal had been raised.

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Though the couple was apprehensive about a fundraiser, Gutierrez said, “let’s just do it and see what happens.”

As for the wedding, “we’re shooting for Aug. 5,” she said.

So what happened after Juarez was released?

Juarez was dropped off by security on Sunset Boulevard, near a stadium entrance. Still, he had one more trick up his sleeve.

“He gets on one knee and he proposes again, as soon as I see him,” she said.

​ Orange County Register 

While California lifts mask, vaccine mandates, some restrictions will endure in LA County

• April 4, 2023

As the state officially eased many COVID-era masking rules on Monday, April 3, Los Angeles County will retain its vaccine requirement and mask mandate for all health workers when they are around patients. Visitors and patients, however, will no longer be required to wear a mask.

The county’s rules are more restrictive than other parts of the state. The California Department of Public Health ended the statewide mask requirements in healthcare and other indoor high-risk settings — including correctional facilities and emergency and homeless shelters.

It’s unclear how long the tougher guidelines will be in place locally, but county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has said they will be reassessed in September, if not sooner.

Many other restrictions have gone away in the county, however. Local leaders have already aligned with the state’s five-day isolation and quarantine recommendations. And workers in correctional roles, detention facilities and adult day care centers are no longer be required to be vaccinated.

“Our communities did a lot of the hard work by getting vaccinated and boosted, staying home and testing when sick, requesting treatments when positive, and masking to slow the spread,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón. “With these critical actions, and a lot of patience and persistence, we have now reached a point where we can update some of the COVID-19 guidance to continue to balance prevention and adapting to living with COVID-19.”

As rules ease, monitoring of the virus will continue. County officials will continue to require schools, employers and hospitals and clinics to record COVID numbers and report  outbreaks.

“This is when we take the training wheels off, ” said Dr. Kimberly A. Shriner, infectious disease expert at Huntington Hospital, Pasadena. “We have to learn to live with COVID19 … There are things that we’ve sort of trained the public to do now, hopefully, that ingrained in them to do the right thing when they sense that there’s a risk.”

That said, Shriner added that the timing of the mandate release is not ideal. Masking is a vital first defense from infection, especially in healthcare settings. Because the vaccine does not completely prevent infection, and the possibility of new variants are ever present, them the outcome — if people choose not to wear a mask — is the higher possibility of an uptick in infection rates.

“It’s very hard to measure what’s happening out in the community until you start seeing sick people and, by that time, the horses out of the barn,” Shriner said. “That’s what they’re gonna do — they’re using hospitals, hospital admissions, hospital evaluations as sort of the canaries in the coal mine.”

By default, this all means that as mandates lift and masking becomes a thing of the past, immunocompromised and disabled populations are left to further isolate and ramp up their personal protections.

Along with the mandate lifts, the state will “wind down” other COVID initiatives such as state-funded testing and test-to-treat sites, vaccine staff, outbreak response teams, mobile vaccine units and pop-up vaccination events.

Other impacts to public health programs and initiatives include:

Reduced state support for local contact tracing efforts.
Fewer staffing flexibilities for hospitals and nursing homes.
End of reduced training and certification requirements for certified nursing assistants and home health aides.
Ending the expedited license processing for facilities performing COVID-19 tests.

In a late 2021 report, the National Council of Disabilities People said that disabilities and chronic conditions who were at particularly high risk of infection with, or severe consequences from the virus, were not recognized as a priority population by many states when vaccines received emergency use authorization. It found that roughly one-third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths were at facilities that house seniors with disabilities and people with disabilities aged 31-64.

“While the struggles faced by people with disabilities have been widespread and urgent during the pandemic, advocates have had less opportunity to bring attention to them due to sheltering in place, social distancing, and the general movement to online communications during the pandemic,” wrote Nikki Zeichner in Disability in the Time of Covid-19: a publication of stories and policy recommendations for American Association of People with Disabilities.

There are still risks for “healthy” populations.

At least 65 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, a multisystemic chronic health condition experienced people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2. The condition is disabling, can last for years and has no known cure or treatment. Repeat infections put people at increased risk of Long COVID. The condition can lead to concurrent diagnoses like myalgic encephalomyelitis, dysautonomia, cardiovascular disease along with many others.

Marginalized people living with “Long COVID” and its concurrent diagnoses face heightened medical bias and financial hardships.

Shriner, who is also director of Huntington Hospital’s Long COVID Recovery Clinic, said that the risk of getting Long COVID if the patient stays up-to-date on vaccinations. Through it’s research, the clinic identified markers in patients blood that confirmed their claims of Long COVID symptomology. The finds were surprising for Shriner, who shared that upon early opening of the clinic she was unsure how many patients would truly have Long COVID.

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“I thought we may have a lot of folks that sort of think they have it and they don’t really have it. They’ve all had it. They have the symptoms … their stuff is abnormal. So I think that it’s real, and it’s important and debilitating disease,” she said.

Because the disease is only newly researched, experts are still working to find treatments that will relieve patients suffering and allow them to return to normality.

Shriner added that to avoid infection, people must consider masking if they are high risk or are entering a high risk scenario and to maintain regular COVID vaccinations.

“We need to be very careful,” Shriner said. “The  next six to eight weeks will be critical as people really start not using their masks, and there’s less testing. If a new variant emerges, you want to try to catch it before everybody’s coming into the emergency room with it.”

To read the CDPH update, visit www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR23-014.aspx. For Los Angeles COVID resources, visit www.publichealth.lacounty.gov.

​ Orange County Register 

CIF-SS girls lacrosse polls, April 3

• April 4, 2023

CIF-SS GIRLS LACROSSE POLL

(Selected by the Girls Lacrosse Committee)

DIVISION 1/2

1. Foothill

2. Marlborough

3. Mira Costa

4. Redondo Union

5. Edison

6. St. Margaret’s

7. San Clemente

8. Oak Park

9. Murrieta Mesa

10. Palos Verdes

Others: Newport Harbor, Newbury Park, Santiago/C, Mater Dei, San Juan Hills

DIVISION 3

1. Huntington Beach

2. Chaparral

3. Simi Valley

4. Portola

5. Northwood

6. Santa Monica

7. Orange Lutheran

8. San Marcos

9. El Toro

10. Murrieta Valley

Others: Rosary, Notre Dame/SO, ML King, Temecula Valley, Downey

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​ Orange County Register 

Check out our OC photographers’ favorite images from March 2023

• April 4, 2023

We asked our photographers to pick their favorite moments from March 2023, and here are some they selected.

The rain continued to make Orange County soggy throughout most of March.

The water-logged hills slide out from under buildings in San Clemente which prompted the evacuation of apartments on the bluff due to the danger of the structures tumbling down the hillside.

The atmospheric rivers that gave us all the rain also provided a beautiful backdrop of snow-capped mountains, but, up at the high elevations all that snow caused Crestline to lose its only grocery store and people to be trapped in their homes for days.

Along with the water falling from the sky, more than 60 Orange County schools came together to learn about water issues and conservation during the Children’s Water Education Festival at UC Irvine. The Angels kicked off their season against the Dodgers and took two of three games from the cross-town rivals.

Over in Costa Mesa, the American Ballet Theatre’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” based on the best selling novel and film, thrilled audiences at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Along the county’s beaches, Laylan Connelly, the Register’s long-time beach reporter got the news she will be inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame later this year.

In Anaheim, it was all fun and games as Disney opened a “reimagined” Toontown and costumed cosplayers streamed into WonderCon.

Stay dry and stay healthy, and check out the photos and follow The Orange County Register on Facebook and Instagram. Here are our staff photographers’ individual pages: Paul Bersebach, Jeff Gritchen, Leonard Ortiz, Mark Rightmire, and Mindy Schauer.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

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​ Orange County Register 

Veto stands: Transgender pronouns OK in N. Dakota schools

• April 4, 2023

By Trisha Ahmed | Associated Press/Report for America

Teachers in North Dakota can still refer to transgender students by the personal pronouns they use, after lawmakers on Monday failed to override the governor’s veto of a controversial bill to place restrictions on educators.

House lawmakers fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to block the veto, days after Republican Gov. Doug Burgum’s office announced the veto and the Senate overrode it.

The bill would have prohibited public school teachers and employees from acknowledging the personal pronouns a transgender student uses, unless they received permission from the student’s parents as well as a school administrator. It would have also prohibited government agencies from requiring employees to acknowledge the pronouns a transgender colleagues uses.

Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have drafted hundreds of laws this year to push back on LGBTQ+ freedoms, particularly seeking to regulate aspects of transgender people’s lives including gender-affirming health care, bathroom use, athletics and drag performances.

“Ask yourself, does Senate Bill 2231 treat others the way you would want to be treated?” Democratic Rep. Emily O’Brien of Grand Forks said on the House floor, adding that overriding the veto would perpetuate “discrimination, hatred or prejudice.”

Republican Rep. SuAnn Olson of Baldwin said the bill protects freedom of speech for teachers and keeps “inappropriate” topics out of the classroom.

North Dakota will consider other bills this session about transgender students, she said.

Olson said that if lawmakers “are firm on this bill, on girls’ athletics, on separate bathrooms, we will strengthen public schools.” But allowing what she called an “emphasis on sexuality” in schools would cause students and teachers to abandon the public education system.

State representatives voted 56-36 to override the governor’s veto, but 63 votes were required.

All 12 Democrats in the House voted against the bill, as did 24 Republicans. One was Rep. Eric Murphy, of Grand Forks, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota.

“I’m tired of these bills. I’m tired of both sides,” Murphy said on the House floor. “If a student wants to be called a different pronoun, does that really matter? Is this earth-shattering?”

In a letter to state lawmakers announcing his veto, the governor said, “The teaching profession is challenging enough without the heavy hand of state government forcing teachers to take on the role of pronoun police.” The First Amendment already protects teachers from speaking contrary to their beliefs, and existing law protects the free speech rights of state employees, Burgum added.

Lawmakers who supported the bill have said in debates that it would free teachers from worrying about how to address each student and create a better learning environment.

Opponents said the bill targets transgender students who already have disproportionately high risks of suicide.

In 2021, Burgum vetoed a bill that would have barred transgender girls from playing on girls’ teams in public schools. Lawmakers didn’t override that veto, but they’re considering new legislation this session to replicate and expand that bill — including at the college level.

Last week, President Joe Biden denounced what he called hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families.

“The bullying, discrimination, and political attacks that trans kids face have exacerbated our national mental health crisis,” Biden said. “These attacks are un-American and must end.”

Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Trisha Ahmed on Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

​ Orange County Register