After a hat trick in the girls hockey Class A state tournament semifinals, Warroad senior Taylor Reese declined to reveal who she would rather face in Saturday’s state title game, Breck or Blake.

She was less reserved two days earlier about the Warriors’ potential semifinal opponent. After Warroad opened the state tournament with a 5-1 win over Luverne, Reese made her preference clear.

“I want to play Dodge County. I think we owe it to them,” she said in the postgame press conference. “Make them feel how we felt last year.”

She was referring to Warroad’s overtime loss to the Wildcats in the 2025 state title game.

On Friday, the girls from Dodge County provided a reminder about being careful what you wish for. The Warriors prevailed in a 6-5 overtime win but not before a season’s worth of momentum changes and drama, as well as Reese’s immediate emergence as a villain for a significant number of Southern Minnesota hockey fans.

“WE WANT WARROAD,” was the chant the Dodge County student section offered as a serenade to Reese when she was on the ice early in the game.

“Um, I did not expect that to happen, but here we are,” Reese said, following the latest chapter in what has to be one of the more unlikely rivalries in Minnesota prep sports.

Google Maps notes that from The Gardens in Warroad, home of the Warriors, to Dodge County Ice Arena in Kasson, home of the Wildcats, it is 425 miles and will take you more than seven hours to drive. And that’s if you don’t hit traffic in the Twin Cities, or hit a deer coming across the Big Bog in a desolate stretch of rural Lake of the Woods County.

Rivalries, it is said, need two things to thrive: geography and history. You would be hard pressed to claim that Warroad and Dodge County are neighborhood rivals, unless that neighborhood stretches from down by Iowa to the shadow of the Canadian border. But in terms of history, it is recent and intense when the Warriors and Wildcats get together in downtown St. Paul.

Thursday’s game was won by Warroad after upset-minded Dodge County held 2-0 and 3-1 leads at various times, and rallied from a pair of goals down to force OT in the final two minutes. It marked the third consecutive year these far-flung frenemies have met in the state tournament. Although, by comparison to 2024 and 2025, this game was relatively low stakes.

Two years ago, Warroad won its third straight state title, beating Dodge County 5-2 in the finale. Last year, the Wildcats turned the tables, getting a textbook “greasy goal” in overtime to bring the program’s first state crown back home to this cooperative of Kasson, Mantorville and Byron.

“We’re meeting them in big games. That’s how rivalries start,” Warroad coach David Marvin said. “That’s a good thing.”

Wildcats coach Jeremy Gunderson is in his 19th season, while Marvin is concluding Season 20, and there have been a few times when one team or the other traversed roughly the entire state to play in the regular season, as well. The Warriors braved a snowstorm to get to Kasson in January 2020 for a game. Gunderson said there were great times on the ice, chasing pucks at the rink and chasing walleyes on Lake of the Woods, when the Wildcats would visit Warroad.

“We used to do their holiday tournaments, and we played for years,” Gunderson said. “(Marvin) used to have an ice fishing operation up there, so we’d take the kids to the holiday tournament and ice fish with the guys.”

With great respect between the two coaches, as far apart as they are on the map, for them to meet in the middle, a few blocks from the State Capitol, seems to make geographical sense.

“We want to beat the metro teams like he does and like anybody else does,” Gunderson said. “We take a lot of pride and want to be the best team down south. We always joke with each other that he wants to own the north. Let’s meet down here and kind of take it to the metro schools.”

In other words, we could surely see the Warriors and the Wildcats meet again, right here, next February.

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By MARK SCOLFORO and PATRICK WHITTLE, Associated Press

CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — A member of a group known to outsiders as Zizians that is linked to six deaths was bailed out of jail in Maryland on Friday.

Police in Maryland connected Jack “Ziz” LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank to homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow-covered dirt road last February, according to court documents and pretrial testimony.

Blank was bailed out Friday at about noon after posting $15,000. Blank’s attorney Rebecca Lechliter declined comment. Zajko and LaSota remain in custody and are being held without bail.

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Blank’s release includes conditions that he must live alone and submit to GPS tracking.

The deaths linked to the group reached six last year when a U.S. border agent was killed in Vermont. The three members were later arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.

Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025 arrests that all the “suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult.”

Called “Zizians” by outsiders, the young, highly intelligent computer scientists appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the border agent and another Zizian dead.

Jury selection was supposed to start recently in Cumberland, Maryland, where LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.

The trial was delayed until June, however, after Zajko, who also is charged with resisting arrest, fired her attorney, briefly represented herself and hired a new lawyer.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — By the time Pablo López received a second opinion on his elbow from Dr. Keith Meister, he was already fairly certain he knew what the surgeon would say. In his head, he knew there was only “a tiny, tiny percentage,” chance that he would hear anything other a recommendation that he undergo Tommy John surgery.

The unlikely occurrence didn’t happen.

The Twins’ ace is headed for the season-ending elbow surgery on Wednesday with Meister in Texas to repair a tear in his ulnar collateral ligament.

“We knew what we were looking at,” López said. “I think I’m a pretty realistic person. I know what’s in front of me for the most part, so having made a decision, it’s ironic in a way — it feels good because I know in the long run, it’s going to be the best.”

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

López said the reality of the situation still hasn’t quite hit him yet. He’s still walking into a clubhouse environment he described as “contagious.” But next week, he will have surgery, and in the months that follow, he will be rehabbing while his teammates play an entire season without him.

He still needs to map out with team physical therapists and trainers where he will be this season — in the past, he noted some rehabbing players split time between Minneapolis and Fort Myers — but being around the team would provide both value for the team and the pitcher.

For López, still being around his teammates, he believes, will help him push through a grueling rehab process that will consume the next year of his life. For his teammates, there’s a lot to be gained from having such a knowledgeable, diligent veteran still around in the clubhouse, even if he can’t be contributing on the field.

“He’s the first one here every morning, and (teammates) can go over and sit and talk to him and lean on him. That’s important,” manager Derek Shelton said. “There’s no better guy in that clubhouse. So, to have a person of that quality in there, not just the pitcher but the human being, I think it’s important for our group.”

While López still hopes to impact this year’s Twins’ team in any way he can, he said he plans to use this year to grow mentally. López had Tommy John surgery in 2013 as a teenager while he was still in the minor leagues and he still thinks of his season rehabbing — 2014 — as one of the most influential of his career.

“I’m going to try to evolve in many, many areas,” he said. “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging. Getting the game taken away from you, it’s the least fun thing as an athlete, as a baseball player. But there’s going to be opportunities for growth and I’m going to be looking to take advantage of that.”

Briefly

Joe Ryan will take the mound when the Twins begin Grapefruit League play on Saturday. The game against the Boston Red Sox, which starts at 12:05 p.m. CT, will be broadcast on Twins.TV. The game will also be available on MLB Network. … Most of the Twins’ starters are expected to play, including Byron Buxton. Buxton is likely to play a little bit more early on in camp than usual as he prepares to participate in the World Baseball Classic. Shelton said the duo sat down early in camp to outline what his schedule should look like. Shelton also leaned on Justin Morneau, who played in four different WBCs for Canada, for advice.

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By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has informed Congress that it intends to proceed with planning for a potential reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, which was shuttered in 2012 during the country’s civil war.

A notice to congressional committees earlier this month, which was obtained by The Associated Press, informed lawmakers of the State Department’s “intent to implement a phased approach to potentially resume embassy operations in Syria.”

The Feb. 10 notification said that spending on the plans would begin in 15 days, or next week, although there was no timeline offered for when they would be complete or when U.S. personnel might return to Damascus on a full-time basis.

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The administration has been considering reopening the embassy since last year, shortly after longtime strongman Bashar Assad was ousted in December 2024, and it has been a priority for President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack.

Barrack has pushed for a deep rapprochement with Syria and its new leadership under former rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa and has successfully advocated for the lifting of U.S. sanctions and a reintegration of Syria into the regional and international communities. Last May, Barrack visited Damascus and raised the U.S. flag at the embassy compound, although the embassy was not yet reopened.

The same day the congressional notification was sent, Barrack lauded Syria’s decision to participate in the coalition that is combating the Islamic State militant group, even as the U.S. military has withdrawn from a small, but important, base in the southeast and there remain significant issues between the government and the Kurdish minority.

“Regional solutions, shared responsibility. Syria’s participation in the D-ISIS Coalition meeting in Riyadh marks a new chapter in collective security,” Barrack said.

The embassy reopening plans are classified and the State Department declined to comment on details beyond confirming that the congressional notification was sent.

However, the department has taken a similar “phased” approach in its plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, following the U.S. military operation that ousted former President Nicolás Maduro in January, with the deployment of temporary staffers who would live in and work out of interim facilities.