Month: November 2017

Melia named MLS Goalkeeper of Year

Tim Melia

Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Tim Melia has been voted the 2017 Allstate MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, Major League Soccer announced on Thursday.

“Winning an award like this is one of the best compliments you can get as a goalkeeper,” Melia said. “It’s a huge individual accolade, and it’s one that is only possible because of the efforts of my teammates and my coaches. To gain this recognition is an incredible honor.”

“Over the course of the season, Tim was extremely consistent and came up with some really big saves,” Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes said. “There is no doubt that his excellent play was one of the reasons we won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and reached the MLS Cup Playoffs for a seventh straight year.

“Tim had a major role in our success as a team, and we are happy he got rewarded. I also give a lot of credit to our goalkeeper coach Alec Dufty, who has done a great job helping our goalkeepers improve.”

In a phenomenal third season with Sporting KC, Melia posted MLS career-highs in wins (12), shutouts (10), saves (91), starts (31) and minutes (2,759). Among goalkeepers with at least 15 regular-season appearances in 2017, he led MLS with a 0.78 goals against average, 78.4 save percentage and 69.2-percent passing accuracy. The eighth-year professional also ranked second in shutouts.

Melia helped lead the best defense in Major League Soccer, as Sporting KC’s 29 goals allowed during the regular season were eight fewer than any other team.

The 31-year-old saved three penalty kicks, one shy of the single-season league record, and his stunning finger-tip stop to deny Darlington Nagbe in a 1-0 win over the Portland Timbers on April 15 was nominated for MLS Save of the Year.

Melia was equally superb in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, where he started all five matches and posted three shutouts en route to his second career Open Cup title.

He made two saves in a penalty shootout victory over the San Jose Earthquakes in the tournament semifinals on Aug. 9, paving the way for Sporting KC’s championship win against the New York Red Bulls on Sept. 20. Melia finished the year with a 16-7-12 record as a starter in all competitions, recording a 0.72 goals against average and 13 clean sheets.

A native of Great River, New York, Melia becomes Sporting KC’s third MLS Goalkeeper of the Year recipient.

He joins the ranks of Sporting Legend Tony Meola (2002) and former captain Jimmy Nielsen (2012), making Sporting KC the first club to have three different MLS Goalkeeper of the Year winners.

Melia garnered more than half of the votes for Goalkeeper of the Year, which consisted of ballots from active players, club technical staffs and media members who covered the league in 2017.

– Story from Sporting KC

Georgia man sentenced for cyber crime that cost Sedgwick County over a half-million

A Georgia man was sentenced Wednesday to two years and three months in federal prison for his part in an email spoofing scheme that cost Sedgwick County more than $566,000, U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said.

George S. James, 49, Brookhaven, Ga., pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.

In his plea, James admitted that on Oct. 7, 2016, Sedgwick County sent approximately $566,088 to his bank account at a Wells Fargo bank in Georgia.

James transferred part of the money he received from Sedgwick County to a bank account in Shanghai, China, and part of the money to an account at Deutsche Bank in Bremen, Germany. James also spent some of the money.

In his plea, James denied that the fraud scheme was his idea. He said that on Sept. 23, 2016, he was contacted by a person identified in court records as A.H., who asked to deposit some money into James’ account at Wells Fargo. James said he knew A.H. was engaged in fraud, but James denied knowing that Sedgwick County was the victim.

In his plea, James said it was A.H. – or someone working with A.H. – who sent an email to Sedgwick County on Sept. 23, 2016, purporting to be from Cornejo and Sons LLC, and requesting the county send future payments to a new account number at Wells Fargo. On Oct. 7, 2016, the county sent $566,088 to James’ account at Wells Fargo. The county learned later that Cornejo did not request the change of account and did not receive the payment.

Beall commended the FBI, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, the Wichita Police Department and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Metzger for their work on the case.

KCK Chamber of Commerce focuses on immigration issue

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Opinion column

by Murrel Bland

Monsignor Stuart Swetland was a Rhodes Scholar who studied economics at Oxford University in England during the 1980s. However, when commenting about immigration reform at a recent Legislative Committee meeting at the Kansas City, Kansas, Area Chamber of Commerce, he said he depends on his compassionate views as a Roman Catholic clergyman rather than a student of economics. Monsignor Swetland is the president of Donnelly College.

His comments came after a very spirited discussion among members of the Legislative Committee. Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a conservative member of the Kansas Senate, reminded committee members that there are laws on the books that are being violated by immigrants who have entered the United States illegally or those who are here with expired visas.

Another matter to the immigration issue concerns children who came here at a very young age with their undocumented parents and have been here for several years. Many of these persons are grown and are productive members of society.

Although I admire the comments from Monsignor Swetland in his plea for compassion, the cold, hard facts dictate that many industries would be hard-pressed to operate if all of the undocumented immigrants were forced to leave this country. So it does come down to a matter of economics. Those industries that are most vulnerable include restaurants, hotels, landscaping and construction, particularly homebuilding.

I recently had a conversation with a dry wall contractor who does extensive work in the single-family housing trade. He said most of his workers are first-generation Mexican immigrants; they are very good workers, he said.

In past years, the Kansas City, Kansas, Area Chamber of Commerce has made it quite clear that immigration is a federal problem. That is consistent with the Chamber’s Legislative Committee’s present proposed position on the immigration issue:

“Encourage federal resolution to immigration reform. Said federal resolution should compassionately address situations of individuals currently in the country. Oppose state legislation increasing penalties or threatening the business licenses of employers who have unintentionally hired illegal workers.”

The Chamber’s Board of Directors will consider this issue when it meets later this month.

Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is the executive director of Business West.