Also to bring attention to the sport, the federation’s leagues play their seasons throughout the year and hold international tournaments, like the one in Cartago over the weekend. The major league season runs from February until May, and the minor league has two seasons in summer and winter.

This tournament was supposed to include other teams, including one from Nicaragua, but only El Salvador’s Caimenes, the Santo Domingo Saints and the hosts, the Cartago Dragons.

Jason Honey coaches the Dragons and has been a part of the team as a player and a coach for four years, ever since he heard an advertisement to play football on the radio one day while he was driving.

“I pulled the car over, I made the call, and I’ve been involved with federation ever since,” he said.

Although the Dragons are not the best team in the league, finishing in last place this season, Honey is confident that more experience will make his young, fast team a force to be reckoned with in the coming seasons. In addition he is building the program by getting younger people involved in the sport earlier.

“We have a lot of young players, very fast and very skilled,” he said. “We’re really working on the program for the youth.”

Costa Rica and El Salvador will meet each other again the last weekend of September in Managua, Nicaragua.

This leaves seven surfers eligible to win the title, all of whom are less than 500 points apart, according to a press release for the event.

“This is the first time that seven people have the same chances of winning the title,” said Brenes.


These seven surfers are: Anthony Fillingim, Noe Mar McGonagle, Gilbert Brown, Ramón Taliani, Jefferson Tascón, Diego Naranjo and Maykol Torres.

In all there will be seven divisions all with heats and championships over the course of the weekend from the 24th until the 26th. These include the five competitions for men including the open (with 48 competitors at least 18 years old), the longboard (eight competitors), the junior (32 men ages 15 to 17), the boys (24 boys ages 12 to 15) and the groms, which is slang for young surfer (12 boys younger than 12 years old). There will also be two competitions for women, which include the women's open division (12 women over 18) and the women's junior (12 women ages 15 to 17).

All competitions will take place at Playa Hermosa, near Jacó, and anyone can watch from the beach free of charge.

Although the final matches will be Sunday, the federation will hold an end of the season party  Saturday night at the Hotel Morgan's Cove in Jacó, starting at 8 p.m. This party will feature live music by Sonámbulo Psicotropical and Pierre Monney, and costs 5,000 colons to attend, about $10

In other surfing news, the International Surfing Association has selected Venezuela to host this year's World Bodyboarding Championships Nov. 24 to Dec. 2, the first international surfing competition held there since 2002. The event will be on Margarita Island at Playa Parguito. The last association event in Costa Rica was in 2009, when it held the World Surfing Games also at Playa Hermosa.

— Aug. 10, 2012

Placing in the top three in an individual heat guarantees that the runner will move on to the semifinals, but three runners with the next best times who did not automatically qualify can move on as well.

In the end, Brenes had the fourth best time of those who did not automatically qualify, and finishing .04 seconds slower than the last qualifier.

In her first Olympic appearance, Ms. Scott competed in the 400-meter hurdles competition, for which the elimination rules are largely the same as Brenes’ competition, except that the top four finishers move on along with the four next best times.

Ms. Scott came in sixth in her hear and missed qualifying for the semifinals through time by three places and little more than half of a second.

Although Ms. Traña took 91st place, 23 people behind where she finished in the Beijing Olympic Marathon, approximately 40 more women competed this year, and she actually ran her it 10 minutes faster than she did four years ago.

Four of Costa Rica’s 11 Olympians still have yet to compete before the games conclude next Sunday. Leonardo Chacón, 28, will compete in the triathlon on Tuesday at 4:30 a.m. Costa Rican time. Heiner Oviedo, 23, will compete in Taekwondo Wednesday at 2 a.m. César Lizano, 30, will run the men’s marathon at 4 a.m.  Sunday, and Paolo Montoya will ride in the mountain biking competition at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.

Especially to an international audience, the first game served more as a warm up, as both La Liga and Saprissa seemed to struggle man to man for the ball with little team coordination. 

Both teams were rarely able to organize group attacks on the goal or effectively keep control of the ball.

“There just aren’t any tactics or strategies,” observed one American spectator, named Jayden, who aspires to soon join a European league. “They’re just making decisions that I wouldn’t make,” she added, trying to make sense of some decisions made by players on the field.

Additionally, this game was a friendly, pre-season match between the two arch rivals. And, consequently, the game has no effect on either team’s regular season record.

Despite the lackluster performances by both teams, the half-empty stadium and the low stakes of the match, fans of both sides came with more energy than is usually seen at any kind of sports game in the United States.

While the more relaxed fans gathered along the eastern side of the field where they could watch in the shade, the more loyal fans gathered behind opposite goals where there was no protection from beating sun.

On the north end of the stadium gathered the most boisterous La Liga fans who carried banners and came close to filling up their entire section of the stadium; on the south side were the Saprissa fans, notably smaller in number but making up for it by occasionally unraveling a giant Saprissa jersey.

Even though La Liga led most of the second half, neither team was able to take a comfortable position over the other.

“They’re okay… but if these teams played a professional team in Europe like Manchester…” said Ms. Jayden, trailing off. “Just wait until after,” added another nearby tourist on what good soccer-playing looks like.

However, the ineffective ball handling by both sides kept the fans watching until the end despite missing at least the first-half of the Euro-cup, in which every Spanish goal in the second half became a nail in Italy’s coffin.

Despite the bitter local rivalry, both sides quickly filed out of the stadium to watch the Euro Cup final, which was already well underway, and overall, fans of both local teams united to celebrate Spain’s decisive, 4-0 shutout over Italy.

—posted July 3, 2012

 and from all over the world will be competing in the stadium, but for this test event there were only British university athletes.  

Still, some hope to make the Olympic team, including runner David Bishop. "That was the whole reason why I came.  I just wanted to get a feel of what it was like to run in here (to) give me the help and motivation for a couple more months to push on so I can get my time down and nail this trial," Bishop said.

For the London Organizing Committee Chairman and four-time British Olympic medalist Sebastian Coe, the test events were a chance to mingle with young athletes and to show off the fruits of seven years of work.

“We’re making sure that no stone is left unturned.  And that testing is across everything from security, through to our venues, tickets, spectator flows, mobility, our ability to test some of our park-wide operations, workforce, logistics, pretty important.  So a big moment for us,” Coe said.

Saturday’s friendly competition and celebrations were marred somewhat on Sunday, when a tabloid newspaper revealed it had helped a construction worker smuggle a fake bomb into the Olympic Park.  That provided evidence there is still work to be done, as officials hope to keep the focus during the games on images like a military wives choir, which helped get the stadium’s opening ceremony going.

points, ahead of second place El Salvador which had just over 8,000 points. The following standings, in order, were teams from Guatemala, Panamá and Nicaragua.

Apart from medals and the prestige of representing their own countries, winners from the different categories of competition received $5,000 in prize money (2.5 million colons). José Ureña, presIdent of the Federación de Surf de Costa Rica, said that aN olympic-style event usually doesn't give monetary prizes to the surfers, only medals and trophies, but that it adds an individual incentive for the surfers.

The annual competition began in Costa Rica in 2006. Next year for the first time it will be held in Guatemala.

open ocean habitat,” said Jason Schratwieser, Game fish Association research director, adding:

“We also envision giving open access to the tagging data so that it can be utilized by scientists around the world.”

Tags record information about depth, temperature and light levels, which can be used to study fish migrations and behaviors over the course of several months after they have been tagged.  These data, in turn, will help scientists to identify key habitat areas where large numbers of fish spend significant portions of time as well as the migratory corridors they use when they travel from place to place. Data from the tags will be processed and disseminated via Barbara Block’s lab at Stanford University in California.

Ms. Block pioneered the use of electronic tags on open ocean fishes in the early 1990’s. She was also one of the founders of the initial Great Marlin Race program, which was launched in 2009 in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament in Kona, Hawaii .
“We are really excited about this new partnership between our organization and Stanford University,” explains Paxson Offield, chairman of the IGFA and long-term supporter of the Great Marlin Race. “By pairing top-notch science with tournament angling, we hope not only to learn more about the biology of the animals, but also to engage our constituents – billfish anglers around the world – in helping to conserve them for future generations.”

existing events on the sports program" and they "bring added appeal and increase the number of women participating at the games.''

Proposals for inclusion of slopestyle events in snowboard and freestyle skiing and a team Alpine skiing event were put on hold for further review.

In the new event of ski halfpipe, skiers score points for performing tricks and jumps on the same course used for the snowboard halfpipe.

The only remaining Winter Olympics event that does not have both male and female representation is Nordic combined, which features ski jumping followed by a cross country ski race.