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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2017
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Gary Henley | Sports Reporter
ghenley@dailyastorian.com
AP Photo/George Frey
Oregon wide receiver Darren
Carrington II (7) celebrates a
win over Utah last November.
Former Duck
Carrington
cleared to
play for Utah
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY —
Receiver Darren Carrington has
officially been cleared to play
for Utah after transferring from
Oregon shortly before fall camp
began.
The Pac-12 Faculty Ath-
letic Representatives’ Committee
waived the intra-conference trans-
fer penalty that can force play-
ers to sit out a year. The senior
has been practicing with the team
throughout camp.
Carrington was dismissed
from the Ducks soon after he was
arrested on a misdemeanor charge
of driving under the influence.
Eugene police have said Car-
rington was arrested after hitting
a pole at a McDonald’s restau-
rant early on July 1. In addition
to DUI, Carrington was cited for
careless driving and making an
improper turn.
The 6-foot-2, 205-pound San
Diego native joins the Utes as the
most experienced and successful
receiver on the roster. Carrington
had 43 catches for 606 yards and
five touchdowns last season as a
junior with the Ducks. He has 112
career receptions for 1,919 yards
and 15 touchdowns.
The Utes are plenty familiar
with Carrington after he caught
a game-winning, 17-yard touch-
down pass with two seconds left
last season for a 30-28 Oregon
victory.
Carrington has been a
much-welcome addition to Utah’s
new fast-paced, pass-first system
under new offensive coordinator
Troy Taylor.
The Utes begin the season by
hosting North Dakota on Aug. 31.
MMA rival:
‘No way’
Conor wins
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Conor
McGregor became known as a
fighter with a mystical ability to
defy the odds because of his stun-
ning upset victory over Jose Aldo,
the former UFC featherweight
champion.
Aldo says there’s zero chance
McGregor can beat the daunt-
ing odds he faces when he steps
into a boxing ring with Floyd
Mayweather.
“There is no way McGregor
can defeat Mayweather,” Aldo
said. “Mayweather has done this
his entire life, and it’s a different
sport.”
The way Aldo sees it, McGre-
gor has obvious motivations for
the spectacle that will occur Aug.
26 in Las Vegas — and those moti-
vations don’t include boxing glory.
“After the Mayweather fight,
he’ll get lots of millions of dol-
lars,” Aldo said. “Probably he’ll
never fight again.”
Aldo was the most dominant
champion in mixed martial arts
until McGregor stunned the UFC
with a 13-second knockout of the
feared 145-pound star with one
punch.
MAYWEATHER
VS. McGREGOR
• August 26, 6 pm (main card)
• Floyd Mayweather (boxing)
vs. Conor McGregor (MMA)
• Showtime pay-per-view
Submitted Photos
It was a full house last weekend at the Astoria Aquatic Center, which hosted the annual “Beat the Summer Heat” meet.
Swimmers beat heat
at Aquatic Center
The Daily Astorian
T
Swimmers confer with a coach during last weekend’s meet.
he North Coast Swim Club hosted its
annual “Beat the Summer Heat” swim
meet at the Astoria Aquatic Center last
weekend.
Over 170 swimmers participated in the
event, with swim teams from Oregon and
Washington state and one swimmer from
California.
The swim club hosts two swim meets a
year, including “Beat the Summer Heat” in
August and “Fall Chinook” in November.
Based in Astoria for over 40 years, NCSC
is a year-round competitive swim club, which
provides education in the sport of swimming
to athletes ranging in age from 6 to 18 years
old.
The club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organi-
zation, and employs one head coach (Kath-
ryn Zacher) and one assistant coach (Mike
Gwaltney).
Parent volunteers run the rest of the orga-
nization. The majority of the club funding
comes from swimmer membership dues,
local corporate sponsorships and club activ-
ities like the annual Dolphin Splash.
For athletes looking to get involved in
swimming, the NCSC offers a trial member-
ship to the team. For more information, see
the club’s website, www.swimnorthcoast.org.
Casinos embrace esports even
as they work to understand it
Strategy to woo
millennials
By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Casi-
nos are slowly embracing compet-
itive video game tournaments as a
way to help their bottom lines, but the
money is coming from renting hotel
rooms to the young players and sell-
ing them food and drinks, not from
turning them into gamblers.
Like most other ways gambling
halls have tried to attract millenni-
als and their disposable income, it
hasn’t been easy. Atlantic City was
first city in the nation to adopt skill-
based slot machines to woo mil-
lennials but bailed on them after a
few months when the response was
underwhelming.
Competitive video game tourna-
ments, known as esports, are a grow-
ing industry around the world. The
fast-paced action, vivid graphics and
often violent on-screen action is cat-
nip to millennials, the audience casi-
nos are targeting as their core slot
players grow old and die.
But it’s been difficult to move
them from the video console to the
craps table.
AP Photo/Wayne Parry
Video game players compete against one another in an esports tour-
nament at Caesars casino in Atlantic City, N.J., in March.
“Everybody’s still trying to figure
out, how do you make this appealing
for the consumer and make sense for
the business? How do we all profit
from this?” said Kevin Ortzman,
Atlantic City regional president for
Caesars Entertainment, which owns
three casinos in the city.
The company in March hosted
an esports tournament at Caesars
that drew about 900 competitors and
spectators.
The bottom line result was encour-
aging, if not dynamite.
“We certainly experienced a
spike in our hospitality offerings —
the hotel, food and beverage side of
things,” Ortzman said. “We didn’t see
as much on the gambling side, which
we weren’t terribly surprised by.”
But he said coming up with ways
to attract millennials is a necessity for
the casino industry as a whole, add-
ing that esports players could be cul-
tivated to embrace casinos for video
game competitions the way their par-
ents and grandparents went there to
play slot machines.
Gambling requires discretion-
ary income and free time, things that
people starting their careers or fami-
lies may not have in abundance, said
David Schwartz, director of the Cen-
ter for Gaming Research at the Uni-
versity of Nevada-Las Vegas.
“The big question is whether peo-
ple who are 40 or 20 now will begin to
play casino games as they get older,”
Schwartz said. “This isn’t a given.”
Schwartz agreed the real money
for casinos in esports tournaments
comes from ancillary spending on
food, drinks and hotel rooms.
The Caesars video tournament
offered $200,000 in prize money,
including a $70,000 top prize, that
lured players like Jose Mavo, of
Charlotte, North Carolina, who has
been playing competitively for a
decade and has become a casino cus-
tomer as a result of being in tourna-
ments hosted by gambling halls.
“We had a tournament in Vegas,
and that was the first time I went to a
casino, so ever since then, I’ve been
gambling quite a bit,” he said, listing
blackjack and roulette as favorites.