Alysa Liu comes out of retirement to win figure skating World Championships
Mar 28, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Alysa Liu (USA) wins gold in Womens Free Skating during the ISU World Figure Skating Championships at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images After competing in the 2022 Beijing Olympics and winning a bronze medal at the World Championships that winter, 16-year-old Alysa Liu retired from ice skating, worn out from the sport.
Turns out it was an extended break instead.
Now 19, Liu capped her return to skating at the World Championships in Boston, winning the women’s singles figure skating title late Friday. Her dazzling free-skate routine to Boston native Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” left a delighted crowd standing and cheering, and left Liu — appropriately wearing a shimmering gold dress — with expressions that ranged from joy to disbelief.
She became the first American woman to stand atop the podium at the event since Kimmie Meissner in 2006.
“I’m not going to lie, this is an insane story,” Liu said on NBC Sports. “I don’t know how I came back to be world champion.”
Liu cleanly landed seven triple jumps and received positive execution scores on all 12 of her technical elements. The eighth seed entering the competition, Liu’s free skate score of 148.39 crushed her season’s best mark by almost 17 points.
“This means so much to me,” said Liu, from Oakland, Calif. “Everything that I have been through — my time away and all that. This time around I’m so happy.”
She won the national championship at age 13 and was the next shining hope for U.S. women’s figure skating. Gone were the days of heaps of medals won by the likes of Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski, Michelle Kwan and Sarah Hughes, and when Liu retired from burnout, the hope dimmed.
Now, she could lead an American team into the Olympics next winter in Italy with a chance of the first gold medal by an American woman since Hughes achieved the feat in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Isabeau Levito, who skates out of New Jersey, and Amber Glenn of Dallas finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Levito won the silver medal at the 2024 worlds, and Glenn is the two-time reigning U.S. champion.
Finishing with the silver and bronze medals, respectively, were Kaori Sakamoto and Mone Chiba, both from Japan.
–Field Level Media
Sports
No. 16 Texas Tech hands No. 4 Iowa State first home loss
Feb 28, 2026; Ames, Iowa, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders forward Donovan Atwell (12) celebrates during the first half against the Iowa State Cyclones at James H. Hilton Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Reese Strickland-Imagn Images Every time Iowa State began to gain any semblance of second-half momentum Saturday, Texas Tech had an answer.
Whether it was a 3-pointer on one end, a block on the other or just stingy work on the defensive backboards, the Red Raiders simply refused to buckle to what has been dubbed Hilton Magic.
The result was another significant victory against a foe ranked No. 6 or higher this season, 82-73, which also marked the Cyclones’ first home loss of the season.
Donovan Atwell scored 18 points, hitting six 3-pointers, Luke Bamgboye delivered his best game since stepping in as a starter for the injured J.T. Toppin with 13 points and Christian Anderson navigated second-half foul trouble to score 12 points and dish out seven assists as No. 16 Texas Tech (22-7, 12-4 Big 12) moved into a tie for second place in the conference with Houston.
The Red Raiders are 3-0 since losing Toppin, the 2025 Big 12 Player of the Year, to a season-ending knee injury.
No. 4 Iowa State (24-5, 11-5) got 22 points from Joshua Jefferson and 20 from Milan Momcilovic, but couldn’t quite dig out of a hole that grew as deep as 45-25 late in the first half.
The Cyclones crept back within 65-59 with 7:08 to play on Tamin Lipsey’s dribble-drive bucket and the capacity home crowd was at a full-throat roar.
That rally came after Iowa State was unable to chip away at a 16-point deficit despite Anderson getting tagged with his fourth foul right before the first media timeout of the second half and heading to the bench for nearly 6 minutes.
Jaylen Petty and Tyeree Bryan stepped up with Anderson sidelined, sharing the lead guard responsibilities and scoring a combined 17 points in the second half.
More importantly, Petty helped Texas Tech regain its footing after the Cyclones made their run. He pulled up for a timely 3-pointer and moments later hit a mid-range jump shot late in the shot clock. Both buckets came after Bamgboye blocked shots at the rim.
Atwell sank his final 3 with 4:47 remaining, and Bryan finished a 10-0 run with a driving layup to push the lead to 75-59, leaving Iowa State unable to recover.
Atwell’s big day from beyond the arc helped the Red Raiders finish 14 of 29 from deep against one of the Big 12’s best defenses.
Conversely, the Cyclones struggled to make shots from anywhere most of the game and finished at 39% overall (23 of 59), including 8 of 24 from 3-point territory. Jefferson and Momcilovic combined to connect on 13 of 28 field-goal attempts.
Iowa State clawed back into the game by cranking up its defense, especially on Anderson, in the second half. The Cyclones forced 10 turnovers in the second half, which led to 12 points the other way. Iowa State scored 17 points off turnovers in all.
Sparked by Atwell’s 15 points, Texas Tech held a comfortable 45-29 lead at halftime. The Red Raiders made five of their final eight 3-pointers after a 3 of 10 start and knocked down 10 of 11 shots from inside the arc with 11 assists on 18 made field goals.
Jefferson and Momcilovic each notched 13 points to help the Cyclones outscore Texas Tech 44-37 in the second half, but the Red Raiders had enough in the tank to hold on for another huge NCAA Tournament resume-boosting triumph.
–Field Level Media
Sports
Sharks beat Oilers to halt five-game slide
Feb 28, 2026; San Jose, California, USA; Edmonton Oilers left wing Zach Hyman (18) scores a goal against San Jose Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov (30) during the first period at SAP Center at San Jose. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images Shakir Mukhamadullin scored the game-winner on a slap shot midway through the third period as the San Jose Sharks defeated the visiting Edmonton Oilers 5-4 on Saturday.
Michael Misa had a goal and an assist, and 12 different players recorded points for the Sharks, who ended a five-game losing streak, their second longest of the season.
Connor McDavid, the NHL’s leading scorer, led Edmonton with three assists, while Evan Bouchard had a goal and two assists.
Macklin Celebrini opened the scoring 8:34 into the first period for San Jose. Oilers goaltender Connor Ingam, who made 28 saves, lost his stick on the previous sequence. He thought the puck had been cleared far enough away from his zone to retrieve it, but the Sharks’ Will Smith retrieved it and sent it over to Celebrini for his team-leading 29th of the season.
Misa and Barclay Goodrow also scored in the first period as the Sharks recorded three goals in the opening 20 minutes for the second straight time against Edmonton this season.
Last time, on Jan. 29th, the Oilers would score four unanswered goals, including an equalizer with 59 seconds left by Bouchard and the winner with 1:06 remaining in overtime by Zach Hyman.
Leon Draisaitl scored off an assist from McDavid on the Oilers’ league-leading power play in the first as Edmonton trailed by two goals heading into the second period.
Bouchard tallied his 17th goal of the season to get Edmonton within one in the second period, scoring off assists from McDavid and Mattias Ekholm.
The goal gave Bouchard 20 points in his last 10 games. The last defenseman to do that for the Oilers was legendary Paul Coffey in 1986.
Trent Frederic evened the game at 3 at 2:54 into the third on a wrister from Matt Savoie, who drove the puck all the way up the ice past Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov before feeding the former Boston Bruin for the easy finish.
Askarov made 20 saves for San Jose.
The teams then traded goals, with San Jose first retaking the lead as Alexander Wennberg scored on a wrister less than three minutes after Frederic’s equalizer, with Jake Walman evening the game again for the Oilers less than two minutes after that.
The scoring frenzy concluded with Mukhamadullin’s winner at the 9:27 mark of the third period, after William Eklund found him at the point for the powerful slap shot.
The Oilers have scored 17 goals in three games since coming back from the Olympics but have now lost two of those contests.
–Field Level Media
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
Mashable Trend Report
Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
No. 16 Texas Tech hands No. 4 Iowa State first home loss
Sharks beat Oilers to halt five-game slide
