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The NFL has created a position to address the lack of women in coaching and scouting roles at the team level and named former womens football pro tackle player Sam Rapoport as director of football development.Rapoports role will be to identify women who are knowledgeable about the game and train them, and to create a space for those women in the social networks that often lead to jobs in football.My role is to create programming to show them that the pipeline is open to them, Rapoport said Tuesday, and create that pipeline for females to enter into positions that were traditionally held by men.Opportunities for women and minorities have been a focus for the NFL in the past year. The leagues insularity was exposed during the crisis surrounding Ray Rices domestic violence suspension. Last winter, women in the front office planned a womens summit that was held during the Super Bowl. There, commissioner Roger Goodell announced the NFL front office was creating a Rooney Rule for women in front-office jobs, meaning that for every managerial position and higher, a woman would be interviewed before a hire is made.With 52.6 million women viewing the Super Bowl this past February, according to the NFL, the league wants to expand opportunities for women in, for example, officiating and as athletic trainers.In such a strategic hire as this, we needed to have an individual that is passionate and knowledgeable in this space, NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent said. Sam is an excellent fit.Currently, 30 percent of the NFLs front-office employees are women. Football operations jobs are a different story. Sarah Thomas became the first woman hired as a full-time referee last year, and Kathryn Smith is a full-time quality-control coach for the Bills.Rapoport, as a former player, is plugged into a network of women who have played the game known as professional womens football even though players generally dont get paid to play. Jen Welter, the first woman to coach in the NFL through a coaching internship with the Arizona Cardinals, had a background in womens tackle and later played and coached men. Similarly, the NFL wants to mine that talent and train women for possible jobs in coaching and scouting.Playing tackle football obviously is not a prerequisite to being an excellent coach, Rapoport said. Adam Gase coaches the Dolphins and never played (in college or the NFL), and there are others. Its not a prerequisite, but in order to be a good coach, you have to have a general knowledge of football and you have to be able to relay that info in a coherent way to players. And, to me, that translates to male or female. Do you know your stuff, and are you able to relay that in a coherent way?Connecting qualified women with NFL teams may be a bigger challenge. Rapoport has been calling general managers and owners to set up a committee on gender inclusion. With just two months on the job, she is in the early stages, but the goal is to create connections that can lead to jobs in a field where many hires are based on previous relationships in mens football.Thats how any job -- not just football, but any job thats a prestigious job -- is acquired, Rapoport said. Thats our biggest barrier. We didnt grow up in the male tackle football world, so we dont have a friend who is a coach, or, I played for him, so hell recommend me for a job.Thats a reason this position exists, and thats a big-time focus for me, just connecting owners and general managers to women who are very qualified and very passionate and ready to go.Rapoport played flag and touch football growing up in Canada and was a member of the Canadian national flag team. She has worked in football since 2003, first with a marketing internship with the NFL and later developing a national flag football program for girls during her six years with USA Football.In 2003, as a quarterback for the Montreal Blitz, Rapoport applied for her NFL internship by sending her résumé along with photo of herself in pads and a football. She wrote on the football with a Sharpie, What other quarterback could accurately deliver a football 386 miles?She got the internship.I was told it stood out among the other applicants, Rapoport said.Authentic Custom Royals Jersey . The 31-year-old Spain midfielder hasnt played since Madrid lost in the Copa del Rey final to Atletico Madrid in May due to back and foot injuries. Cheap Royals Jerseys . -- Nathan Pancel scored twice as the Sudbury Wolves defeated the North Bay Battalion 4-2 on Saturday in Ontario Hockey League action. http://www.customroyalsjersey.com/custom-george-brett-jersey-large-77h.html . Louis Blues teammates who would also be participating in the Olympics, Alex Pietrangelo felt right at home, no different in some ways to the travel experience of any old road trip – save for the length of the journey, that is. Custom Royals T-shirts .C. - The Carolina Hurricanes have placed backup goalie Anton Khudobin on injured reserve with an unspecified lower-body injury. Cheap Custom Royals Jersey . Mats Zuccarello and Derek Stepan scored shootout goals, and backup goalie Cam Talbot earned his second win in two nights as the Rangers shook off a late tying tally and beat the Maple Leafs 2-1 Monday night.WASHINGTON -- Max Scherzer remembers being urged to try to slow everything down for his postseason debut five years ago.Take an extra breath, they said. Be calm as can be, they said. Dial down the intensity, they said.Not exactly what he needed to hear, Scherzer quickly discovered.Scherzer, who starts Game 1 of the NL Division Series for the Washington Nationals against Clayton Kershaw and the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday, was fed those frequently heard words of wisdom way back when.Pitching for the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, he walked two batters in the first inning. Thats when he cursed at himself and realized he never should have listened to others -- and wound up taking a no-hitter into the sixth that day.Scherzer is as intense as they come when hes pitching, and he needed to maintain that in the postseason.Whatever you do to have success in the regular season, do the exact same thing. Yes, the lights are brighter. Yes, the seats are all full. Yes, the start times are weird. Theres tons of media. You have a lot of distractions; youve got family and friends all wanting tickets. The outside things are a little bit different, but mentally, you have to still be the same, Scherzer explained.I know theres this notion of, `Hey, just go out there and relax. Try to slow the game down. That can be the worst advice anybodys ever given, he continued. No, you hit the ground running and do exactly what you do. If you go out there with aggression in the regular season, you do the same thing.So expect to see Scherzer stomping and stalking around the Nationals Park mound on Friday, while facing the likes of Corey Seager, Adrian Gonzalez, Justin Turner and Chase Utley.And they know what theyre in for, even if the Dodgers didnt face Scherzer in 2016, when he went 20-7 with a 2.96 ERA and a majors-leading 284 strikeouts, including a record-tying 20 in one game.Obviously, hes a really good pitcher. Lively fastball. Strikes out a lot of guys, and has won a lot of games for them this year, said Turner, who has never batted against Scherzer. Were going to go study up on him and watch the films and put together a game plan.Thats the same sort of thing the Nationals might be expected to say about Kershaw, a three-time NL Cy Younng Award winner who went 12-4 with a 1.dddddddddddd69 ERA in only 21 starts this season, missing more than two months with a back injury. Since returning in September, he was 1-2 with a 0.96 ERA in five starts.Scherzer became a leading candidate for this years NL Cy Young Award -- he won the AL honor for Detroit in 2013 -- by becoming, to use his words, better as a pitcher.I continued to evolve, he said, pointing specifically to a cut slider that he throws to left-handed batters.The hitters I face are great. Theres a reason theyre driving nice cars on the other side, Scherzer said. So I had to find more swing-and-miss pitches for lefties, and still find ways to pitch effectively against right-handed hitters.It took Scherzer a while to get going this season: During April and May, he was a combined 5-4 with a 4.05 ERA.He started slow this year, Nationals shortstop Danny Espinosa said. But I dont think we expected that to continue.Of course not. From June 1 on, Scherzer was 15-3 with a 2.44 ERA.When its time to shut the game down, to let the other team know that the games over and theyre not getting any runs, its obvious. When he says, `Game over, its game over. You can see it, Espinosa said. You have to have those pitchers who, when you get `em a lead, they keep that lead, and throw a shutdown inning. He does that.Game notesThe Dodgers landed in Washington on Wednesday and went to Nationals Park for a workout that started at about 9 p.m. ... Nationals manager Dusty Baker will not commit to a rotation beyond Game 1, although RHP Tanner Roark is expected to start Game 2, and he was the first pitcher on the mound for live batting practice at the start of Wednesdays workout. I dont think theyre trying to play coy just because, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said about the Nationals being tight-lipped about their pitching plans, but I dont think it affects us. ... Washington 2B Daniel Murphy still wouldnt say whether he expects to play in Game 1; he hasnt started a game since Sept. 17 because of a strained buttocks muscle.---Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich ' ' '