Minnesota Aurora’s first preseason training session last week kept the same high standard as their first two seasons.

The amateur women’s soccer club has a new head coach — Colette Montgomery — but roughly one-third of the roster is back for another season, and those players led the way from the first drill onward.

“The coaches were kind of like, ‘Yeah, you guys can like relax a little, you don’t have to run to every water break,’ ” said Mariah Nguyen, a midfielder from Andover. “That is the environment here. We want to be efficient.”

Aurora posted two undefeated regular seasons in 2022 and 2023 before losing in the championship game two years ago and earlier in the playoffs last year.

“You’re gonna see the Aurora Way — maybe just 3.0,” Montgomery said Monday about another, possibly improved version coming this spring.

Previous coach Nicole Lukic — who took a job as U.S. Soccer director of talent identification for the women’s youth national teams — had instilled a high-octane style of play that Montgomery vowed to continue.

“They’ve played really high press and entertaining soccer, they played a really attacking-minded, playing without fear, which is, for me, a big thing,” Montgomery said after practice at TCO Stadium in Eagan on Monday. “When players are in an environment where they feel safe to make good decisions, they’re going to excel. Then, obviously, really been well organized defensively, too.

“I think that goes into my style when I was recruited by coach Nicole,” added Montgomery, who joins from North Central University in Minneapolis. “And that’s why I came in, I knew what they did and how they did it. And I want to just expand on that and make it even better — if that’s possible. Hopefully, that’s true.”

Montgomery, who is also Aurora’s sporting director, said the club has added some “really top-caliber players” on top of the returners.

Nguyen said Montgomery has led practices with specific objectives and a focus on the fundamentals but also has seen it be open-ended and light-hearted under the new head coach.

“She’s really goofy, which I appreciate a lot,” Nguyen said of Montgomery. “She also tells us, if we’re not allowed to ask questions that we’ve created wrong environment, which is amazing, because some coaches really do not. They have it their way or no way. It’s just awesome to be able to have, like, this learning environment.”

Montgomery brought that same easy-going approach to her interview with local reporters, making a crack about her own short stature when she stepped behind the microphone stand.

“I like to keep it light-hearted,” Montgomery said. “I’m sure the players roll their eyes every now and again. I always say my jokes aren’t for everybody. It’s really for me. So, as long as I laugh, I think it’s funny.”

If Aurora keeps up their peerless standard on the field this regular season, opponents won’t be laughing. The season opener is May 23 against Chicago Ditch Lions. The home opener is May 30 versus RKC (Racine Kenosha County) Third Coast.

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Ryan Jeffers had a rare day off on Sunday, a chance to sit back while his teammates took care of business against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Twins'[ catcher is not used to playing this much – the Twins typically employ a 50-50 split behind the plate – but these days, he’s made it nearly impossible to take his bat out of the lineup. If he’s not catching, it’s likely he’s still in the lineup as the designated hitter. Of the Twins’ 40 games, Jeffers has appeared in 35 of them.

That’s what happens when you’re the league leader in OPS.

“You want to make it hard for the manager and you want to be in the lineup,” Jeffers said. “I still take so much pride in being a catcher, being a catcher first, but the offensive stats are such a good icing on the cake.”

Forget just among catchers – Jeffers flat out has been one of the best hitters in the majors this season, entering Monday hitting .292 with a .371 on-base and .617 slugging percentage.

His .988 OPS is third in the majors entering Monday and first in the American League. His slugging percentage is also third in the majors and first in the AL. Names like Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts are some of those near him in those categories.

His nine home runs and 30 RBIs pace the Twins and he’s well on track to smash his career highs of 14 and 43, respectively.

“He’s always had an ability with the bat, but he’s really taken it to the next level the last couple of seasons,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He’s got a good swing. He sees the ball pretty good, all these different things. But to have it all come together in this way is really impressive.”

It’s the product of a lot of hard work after a down 2022 season at the plate. Jeffers went to work that offseason, completely revamping his swing.

Halfway through the year, he still wasn’t totally comfortable with how everything felt mechanically, yet he still finished the season hitting .276 with a .858 OPS as he came into his own as a hitter.

And now?

“A lot of it is, now I’m very comfortable and really understand what I’m good at hitting,” Jeffers said. “I’ve got the no stride, I’ve got the toe tap. I’ve got different tools in the toolbox.”

Notably, Jeffers has cut down on his strikeout percentage this season, dropping it from 27.8% last year to 19.3% so far this season.

That, he said, is in part because he’s more comfortable and confident in his swing mechanics now.

“I don’t feel nervous to get to two strikes,” he said, “I feel like I can battle with the best of them with two strikes. … I think it’s just a confidence when I get to two strikes.”

Baldelli called him “one of the better adjustment-making hitters in the league,” praising both his approach and the way he’s able to get to different pitches.

“He’s got a plan for pretty much everything, and he can execute the plan. He just can do it,” Baldelli said. “It doesn’t work like that, even with a lot of good hitters. It doesn’t work like that. It’s come together reasonably quickly, and everyone watching – me, the staff and his teammates, too – people are, like, pretty impressed with what they’re seeing.”

And while those around him are plenty impressed, to Jeffers, this is a matter of him becoming the hitter he always knew he could be.

Now, it’s a matter of sustaining it.

“I don’t feel like it’s a fluke. I feel like this is who I am,” Jeffers said. “I’ve always stayed very committed to the fact that I believe in myself, I believe in the player that I can be but to have the results and the confidence coming now, it feels great.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI’s latest update to its artificial intelligence model can mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and can even try to detect people’s moods.

The effect conjures up images of the 2013 Spike Jonze move “Her,” where the (human) main character falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system, leading to some complications.

While few will find the new model seductive, OpenAI says it does works faster than previous versions and can reason across text, audio and video in real time.

GPT-4o, short for “omni,” will power OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot, and will be available to users, including those who use the free version, in the coming weeks, the company announced during a short live-streamed update. CEO Sam Altman, who was not one of the presenters at the event, simply posted the word “her” on the social media site X.

During a demonstration with Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and other executives, the AI bot chatted in real time, adding emotion — specifically “more drama” — to its voice as requested. It also helped walk through the steps needed to solve a simple math equation without first spitting out the answer, and assisted with a more complex software coding problem on a computer screen.

It also took a stab at extrapolating a person’s emotional state by looking at a selfie video of their face (deciding he was happy since he was smiling) and translated English and Italian to show how it could help people who speak different languages have a conversation.

Gartner analyst Chirag Dekate said the update, which lasted less than 30 minutes, gave the impression OpenAI is playing catch-up to larger rivals.

“Many of the demos and capabilities showcased by OpenAI seemed familiar because we had seen advanced versions of these demos showcased by Google in their Gemini 1.5 pro launch,” Dekate said. “While Open AI had a first-mover advantage last year with ChatGPT and GPT3, when compared to their peers, especially Google, we now are seeing capability gaps emerge.”

Google plans to hold its I/O developer conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, where it is expected to unveil updates to its own Gemini, its AI model.