Sports briefs for March 8, 2005

Tuesday, March 8, 2005 | 9:35 a.m.

Nation's best teams come to Las Vegas

The UNLV men's golf team will host the 2005 Southern Highlands Collegiate Championship this weekend, March 11-13, which features the nation's best collegiate golf teams.

Eleven of the 15 teams competing in the tournament, which will be played at Southern Highlands Golf Club (par 72, 7,510 yards), are in the top 15 of the Golfweek men's collegiate ratings. Additionally, all 15 teams are ranked in the top 24 and the tournament will include eight of the top-10 ranked individuals.

The tournament will be 54 holes of stroke play with 18 holes each day and the low four scores from each team each day will count for the team total. Team and individual ties will be broken by sudden death playoff.

The 54-hole tournament gets under way today with 36 holes being played on the par-72, 5,826 yard course at Corral De Tierra Country Club in Salinas, Calif.

UNLV head coach Missy Ringler's lineup will be made up of Hwanhee Lee, Elena Kurokawa, Seema Sadekar, Young Pak and Christine Hentzner.

The Rebels will be one of 15 teams in the field at the Spartan Invitational that also includes No. 5 Washington and No. 6 UCLA and Mountain West Conference members BYU and Colorado State. The Bruins won the tournament last year with a three-round score of 858 and last year's medalist, Charlotte Mayorkas, also of UCLA, will be defending her title.

Educator wants to red-card pottymouths

A British educator wants cursing by soccer players banned from daytime television, a suggestion derided by the BBC.

Manchester United star Wayne Rooney was recorded using 10 obscenities in a minute during an exchange with a referee last month. TV broadcasters estimated the 19-year-old player may have used as many as 100 swear words during the Feb. 1 game in which Man United beat Arsenal 4-2.

Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, called the behavior of Rooney and many English soccer players "very childish."

"Such incidents should not be shown until after the 9 p.m. watershed, and preferably not at all," Ward said Sunday in a speech in Brighton, England.

"It's making it more difficult to help our young children grow up," he added. He said it made teaching "infinitely more difficult" with students wanting to copy the behavior of famous players.

A BBC television official called the ban a "ridiculous idea."