(NEW YORK) — No woman has ever played in a Power 5 conference game. That all changed on Saturday, when Sarah Fuller took to the field as Vanderbilt plays Missouri.
Fuller kicked off for Vanderbilt to start the second half of the game.
The history-making move came on the heels of a Southeastern Conference championship-winning soccer season for the Vanderbilt senior, who sported her soccer jersey number — 32 — for Saturday’s game.
“Let’s make history,” Fuller wrote Friday on Twitter.
The athlete drew support from both Vanderbilt and Missouri spectators at Saturday’s game, with one self-proclaimed Mizzou fan sporting a sign cheering for Fuller.
The goalkeeper was recruited as a kicker after several of the football team’s specialists had to quarantine this week due to COVID-19 testing, according to ESPN.
Fuller told Vanderbilt University the opportunity to help the team out would be “an honor.”
“I think it’s amazing and incredible,” Fuller said in an article on the athletic program’s website. “But I’m also trying to separate that because I know this is a job I need to do, and I want to help the team out and I want to do the best that I can. Placing that historical aspect aside just helps me focus in on what I need to do. I don’t want to let them down in any way.”
Fuller also made history as the SEC’s first female football player, according to Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt’s head soccer coach, Darren Ambrose, said Fuller’s “the right person for the job.”
“So excited for you and for college football,” the coach said in a social media post.
Congratulations also poured in from the SEC, Tennessee Titans, Jen Welter, the first female coach in the NFL, tennis great Bille Jean King and Vanderbilt alums including Adena Friedman, the president and CEO of Nasdaq, who called Fuller a “tremendous athlete and role model.”
The Commodores, who are 0-7 for the season, play at Missouri.
For the game, Fuller wore “Play Like a Girl” on the back of her helmet, a nod to a nonprofit that encourages girls to become leaders in STEM by keeping them engaged in sports.
Fuller joins an elite company of female athletes who have competed in the Football Bowl Subdivision also as kickers: Katie Hnida for New Mexico in the early 2000s, and April Goss for Kent State in the mid-2010s.
Ashley Martin is believed to be the first female athlete to play and score in an NCAA Division I football game, for Jacksonville State in 2001.
(NEW YORK) — Heavy rain is ongoing along the northern Gulf Coast Saturday morning.
As of Friday evening, several counties reported over 2 inches of rainfall over a 24 hours period, including Polk County, Texas, that saw 3.18 inches and Wharton County, Texas, which saw 4.98 inches of rain.
The frontal boundary is expected to hover over the same area through Sunday, bringing more heavy rainfall in the already-saturated locations.
Localized flooding is expected, along with the potential for some local flash flooding as 3-6 more inches of rain is expected through the weekend in some Gulf Coast locations.
By Sunday afternoon, the system will develop a strong center of low pressure that will get picked up by a jet stream and start quickly moving to the Northeast.
The system hustles into the Northeast with a strong cold front by Monday.
Gusty winds, heavy rain and coastal inundation are expected in some areas of the Northeast and New England by Monday afternoon and evening.
Cold air will rush in on the system’s backside across the Great Lakes, bringing the threat for lake effect snow Monday into Tuesday.
The system will bring up to 2 inches of rain to the Northeast, with some very localized areas receiving more.
By early Tuesday, backside snow will drop 3-5 inches in the lake effect Snowbelt region of northwest Pennsylvania and extreme western New York state.
Wind chill values will be in the 30s for parts of the Gulf Coast and in the middle teens for parts of the Midwest Tuesday morning.
The colder air mass eventually reaches the Northeast by late Tuesday into Wednesday, but not before temperatures jump well above normal into the 60s on Monday and Tuesday from Washington D.C. to Boston.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, as people wake up Saturday morning, the area has several weather alerts, including red flag warnings, frost advisories and freeze warnings.
The fire risk will be critical early Saturday before being reduced to elevated later Saturday into Sunday.
Myriam Borzee/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, IVAN PEREIRA and MEREDITH DELISO, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 61 million people and killed over 1.4 million worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
Nov 27, 1:56 pm Brazil’s president says he won’t take a COVID-19 vaccine
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro insisted he will not take a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I’m telling you, I’m not going to take it. It’s my right,” Bolsonaro said Thursday in a live broadcast streamed on various social media platforms.
The right-wing leader also said that Brazil’s National Congress is unlikely to require citizens to get vaccinated for COVID-19, and he expressed skepticism over the effectiveness of face masks in curbing the spread of the virus.
Bolsonaro, an avid supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, has downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic despite getting infected himself over the summer.
Brazil has the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, behind only the United States, and the third-highest number of confirmed cases, after India and the United States, according to a real-time tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Nov 27, 1:38 pm COVID-19 patient with ‘irreversible lung damage’ recovers after transplant
A COVID-19 patient whose lungs had been severely damaged by the virus has made a miraculous recovery after undergoing a double lung transplant at a Texas hospital.
Paul Rodriguez, 52, of San Antonio, had no pre-existing conditions when he contracted the novel coronavirus and fell ill with pneumonia in July. Rodriguez was hospitalized at an area hospital in his hometown and required intubation as well as the use of a ventilator. Then in mid-September, Rodriguez was transferred to Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston for evaluation, “as it became clear that a lung transplant was his only chance of survival,” according to a press release from the hospital, which said the patient had “irreversible lung damage.”
Rodriguez was approved for a transplant and, within a week of listing, he received a brand-new set of lungs on Oct. 15. After being successfully weaned off the ventilator and oxygen support, Rodriguez underwent rehabilitation at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center and was discharged on Nov. 24. He is expected to continue the rehabilitation program as part of his recovery, according to the press release.
“Rodriguez is the first double lung transplant the hospital has performed on a coronavirus patient since the pandemic began,” Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center said in a statement. “To date, only a handful of transplant centers in the U.S. have performed lung transplants on patients due to irreversible lung damage caused by the virus.”
Nov 27, 11:49 am COVID-19 cases in US may be about 8 times higher than reported
The actual number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in the United States reached nearly 53 million at the end of September, according to a model developed by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The scientists estimated the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in the U.S. population by taking the laboratory-confirmed case counts that were reported nationally and adjusting them for sources of under-detection based on testing practices in inpatient and outpatient settings. Preliminary estimates using the model found that 2.4 million hospitalizations, 44.8 million symptomatic illnesses and 52.9 million total infections may have occurred through Sept. 30.
“This indicates that approximately 84% of the U.S. population has not yet been infected and thus most of the country remains at risk, despite already high rates of hospitalization,” the scientists wrote in a report published in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
There were 6.9 million laboratory-confirmed cases of of domestically-acquired infections that were detected and reported nationally through Sept. 30. Since then, the CDC’s tally has increased to nearly 12.5 million. Based on the model’s ratio, the true estimated total would now be more than 95 million.
Nov 27, 8:46 am UK government asks regulator to assess AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine
U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Friday that he has formally asked the country’s medicines regulator to assess whether a COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford “meets rigorous safety standards.”
The move comes amid questions about preliminary results from late-stage trials of the vaccine candidate, called AZD1222, after the England-based pharmaceutical giant and the university acknowledged that the most positive findings actually stemmed from a dosing error.
On Monday, researchers announced the interim analysis of Phase 3 trials in the United Kingdom and Brazil, which looked at two different dosing regimens. One regimen showed vaccine efficacy of 90% when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart. A second regimen showed 62% efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart. The combined analysis from both dosing regimens showed an average efficacy of 70%.
The COVID-19 vaccine candidate is the second to reach the formal assessment stage in the United Kingdom, following one developed by New York City-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Nov 27, 7:56 am Moscow sees 311% spike in COVID-19 deaths
Moscow saw a 311% month-to-month increase in COVID-19 deaths for October, health authorities said.
According to the Moscow Healthcare Department, the Russian capital reported 543 COVID-19 deaths in September followed by 2,235 deaths in October — an increase of more than 311% — as a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic swept the country.
Meanwhile, Russia reported a sharp increase in COVID-19 infections on Friday, with the country’s coronavirus response headquarters confirming a record 27,543 new cases in the last 24 hours. An additional 496 new deaths from the disease were also registered nationwide in the past day. The country’s cumulative total now stands at 2,215,533 confirmed cases, including 38,558 deaths.
Moscow continues to be the epicenter of Russia’s COVID-19 outbreak and recent surge. The city accounted for nearly 29% of the newly reported cases and more than 15% of the newly registered deaths, according to the country’s coronavirus response headquarters.
The Eastern European nation of 145 million people has the fifth-highest tally of COVID-19 cases in the world, behind only the United States, India, Brazil and France, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Nov 27, 6:50 am US reports over 110,000 new cases on Thanksgiving
There were 110,611 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Thursday, the day of Thanksgiving, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
It’s the 24th straight day that the country has reported over 100,000 newly diagnosed infections. Thursday’s count is down from a peak of 196,004 new cases on Nov. 20.
An additional 1,232 fatalities from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide on Thursday, less than the all-time high of 2,609 new deaths on April 15.
COVID-19 data may be skewed this week and next due to possible lags in reporting over Thanksgiving followed by a potentially very large backlog from the holiday.
A total of 12,885,299 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 263,462 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4.
(DENVER) — More positive COVID-19 tests forced the Denver Broncos to cancel Friday’s practice. This is the third time the Broncos have cancelled practice because of the coronavirus.
NFL medical staff initially cleared the team to practice on Thanksgiving after moving quarterback Jeff Driskel to the reserve/COVID-19 list the same day, ESPN reports. It was unclear whether Driskel had tested positive for coronavirus or was listed as a close contact of another positive tester.
On Friday, one player and two Broncos staffers tested positive, prompting the team to cancel practice and close its training facility. The team said the coaching staff will meet virtually with players.
Despite the cancelled practice time, the Broncos plan to play Sunday’s scheduled game at Empower Field at Mile High against the New Orleans Saints.
fstop123/iStockBY: MEREDITH DELISO, ABC NEWS
