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Wichita native Tre’Zure Jobe was being pursued by teams in the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12 following a Div. II All-American career at Emporia State.

In the end, Jobe’s loyalty and desire to help elevate her hometown program trumped the allure of playing women’s college basketball at the power-conference level.

Jobe officially signed with the Wichita State women’s basketball team on Tuesday, choosing the Shockers over Maryland, Oregon, Missouri and Oklahoma State and giving first-year head coach Terry Nooner a monumental start to his own 2023 recruiting class.

“This is bigger than me,” Jobe told The Eagle. “It’s going to mean a lot to me and my family, but I also want to show that local kids can hopefully turn this program around. I really hope this makes a statement and we start showing love to the inner-city kids and change the whole dynamic of this program.”

WSU assistant coach Antwain Scales, a Wichita native himself who coached Jobe from grade school to high school, spearheaded the recruitment to convince Jobe to finish her collegiate career in Wichita. Jobe was a first team all-state player at Wichita South, where she also won a Kansas high school state championship in 2016 under Scales.

After averaging 22.3 points, 4.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 3.2 steals this past season to put the finishing touches on a career that saw her earn All-American recognition twice and score more than 2,000 career points, Jobe was heavily pursued once she entered the transfer portal. The combination of Nooner and Scales ultimately won the recruiting battle, as Jobe will be reunited with her former high school coach.

“Tre’Zure Jobe, one of the most highly coveted transfers in the country, is a coach’s dream and I am thrilled to add her as my first signee to our Wichita State program,” Nooner said in a statement. “Being a Wichita native and former state champion at Wichita South High School, we made her a top recruiting priority and wanted to bring her back home as we build something new.”

Jobe, a 5-foot-7 guard in her final year of eligibility, has the ability to play on or off the ball. At Emporia State, the ball was in her hands the majority of the time and she was given license to make decisions on whether to attack or create for others. With shooting percentages of 45.5% from the field, 36.9% on three-pointers and 76.9% on free throws, Jobe’s efficiency as a smaller guard was impressive at her volume of more than 18 shots per game.

Even though the American Athletic Conference will be a drastic increase in competition from the MIAA, Jobe believes she can replicate her standout scoring numbers as a Shocker.

“I’m planning on doing pretty much everything the same on the court as I did at Emporia State,” Jobe said. “Nothing is going to change. My game is going to stay the same. Hopefully with our player development, I can put up even better numbers than I did last year.”

The arrival of Jobe should give WSU one of the most talented backcourts in the conference, as she will join last year’s starting point guard D.J. McCarty, who averaged 10.5 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.9 steals last season, and incoming freshman Salese Blow, a 5-foot-11 scoring dynamo who averaged 32.8 points this past spring and scored 50 points twice in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

“Tre’Zure is a dynamic scorer and elite pick and roll player who can score in every area on the floor,” Nooner said in a statement. “She is a gym rat who is constantly putting in extra work on her own by studying film and putting in extra time in the gym to further develop her game. She is selfless and wants to do anything she can to help make the team great; she will make an immediate impact on the team and I know the fans are going to love her.”

While Jobe is the first player Nooner has signed in WSU’s 2023 recruiting class, the new staff already scored major recruiting wins in convincing McCarty, the lone starter back from last season, to remove her name from the transfer portal and retaining Blow, who signed with former head coach Keitha Adams.

Blow is the lone retention from WSU’s fall signing class, as international players Mariama Sow (Senegal), Luisa Vydrova (Czech Republic), Dunja Zecevic (Serbia) and Delma Zita (Mozambique) all followed Adams to UTEP.

Former WSU star forward Jane Asinde (13.1 points, 9.8 rebounds) also followed Adams to UTEP, while starting guard Shamaryah Duncan transferred to North Texas. Reserve point guard Nhug Bosch Duran, sophomore forward Carla Budane and sophomore guard Tanya Platonova remain uncommitted in the transfer portal.

WSU’s current roster features four returning seniors in McCarty, Aniyah Bell, Ambah Kowcun and Jeniah Thompson, a trio of juniors in Ella Anciaux, Raissa Nsabua and Ornella Niankan and sophomore Daniela Abies. Nooner has up to five scholarships remaining to fill out WSU’s roster for the 2023-24 season.

Blue Bell and Dr Pepper created a new ice cream flavor, Dr Pepper Float. (From Blue Bell Creameries)

New York (CNN) — Two iconic Texas brands have come together to create a Dr Pepper Float ice cream.

The soda company is partnering with Blue Bell Creameries to create the flavor, which mixes together vanilla ice cream and a Dr Pepper-flavored sherbet. It’s available beginning Thursday in pint and half-gallon sizes at stores where Blue Bell is sold, the company announced.

Here’s where you can find the new ice cream flavor

“The best ice cream floats are made with Dr Pepper poured over a few scoops of Blue Bell,” said Jimmy Lawhorn, Blue Bell vice president of sales and marketing, said in a release.

Both Dr Pepper and Blue Bell have Texas roots.

Founded in 1885 in Waco, Texas, Dr Pepper was the first in a wave of 19th-century upstart soda companies. (It dropped the period after Dr. in the 1950s for design reasons.) The little brand rose to prominence in the latter half of the 20th century and helped shape the soda industry, all while cultivating its reputation as an outsider.

Over the years Dr Pepper has found success as a quirky alternative to Coke and Pepsi. It’s the hero brand in Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) which, along with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, make up the three largest soda companies in the $37 billion US market, as measured by NIQ in retail and convenience stores.

Recently, Dr Pepper has been gaining ground on its competitors, even as the overall soda market goes flat.

Dr Pepper soda grew its dollar share by 9% from 2003 to 2021, compared to a 26% drop in the carbonated soft drinks category overall, according to Keurig Dr Pepper, citing IRI and the Beverage Digest factbook. Today, Dr Pepper is the fourth most popular soda in the country after Coke, Pepsi and Mountain Dew.

Meanwhile, Blue Bell was started in 1807 in Brenham by a group of business men making butter from excess cream from area farms. Originally called Brenham Creamery Company, the company changed its name to Blue Bell in 1930, and in 1958 expanded its product line with ice cream.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The singles mixer that is the Sedgwick County Zoo’s elephant herd is about to get even more interesting.

And the zoo’s chances of getting its first ever baby elephant are about to swell.

On Thursday, the zoo announced that a new bachelor will soon be moving in, and he’s got a reputation. Callee, a bull elephant who’s been living in Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, has in recent years impregnated five of Omaha’s female elephants. He’ll arrive in the next few weeks.

His assignment: get done in Wichita what he got done in Omaha. And if he gets it done quickly, the zoo could have a baby elephant in about two years, said Jennica King, the zoo’s director of marketing and communications.

“Our chances are very good,” she said.

The zoo now has eight African elephants, and when Callee arrives, it will have nine. Six of them — Stephanie, Simunye, Arusi, Xolani, Talia and Zuberi — are females, and all are of breeding age except for Stephanie, one of the zoo’s original residents, who turns 52 this year.

The females have been mixing since 2018 with Ajani, 22, who was also moved to Wichita in 2018 to breed with the female population.

“But Ajani hasn’t been able to get the job done,” King said.

The other male, Titan, has only recently grown to reproductive age, and he has been “practicing,” King said.

Soon, all eyes will be on Callee, who has three babies in Omaha with another two on the way.

The zoo is absolutely cheering him on, King said.

“We’ve never had a baby elephant in the zoo — ever,” she said.

Callee’s move was recommended by the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s African Elephant Species Survival Plan. The move closely mirrors the natural behavior of elephants in the wild, King said. Adult males always live together in small “bachelor” herds, which go in search of females living in multi-general family groups. The males breed then move along.

The African elephant population is threatened because of poaching and the illegal ivory trade, said a release from the zoo. A potential breeding program in Wichita would help to protect the population of African elephants in the United States.

This story was originally published May 18, 2023, 2:52 PM.

(CNN) — More than half of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs have lost significant amounts of water over the last three decades, according to a new study, which pins the blame largely on climate change and excessive water use.

Roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake, according to the study by a team of international scientists, published Thursday in the journal Science.

While lakes cover only around 3% of the planet, they hold nearly 90% of its liquid surface freshwater and are essential sources of drinking water, irrigation and power, and they provide vital habitats for animals and plants.

But they’re in trouble.

Lake water levels fluctuate in response to natural climate variations in rain and snowfall, but they are increasingly affected by human actions.

Across the world, the most significant lakes are seeing sharp declines. The Colorado River’s Lake Mead in Southwest US has receded dramatically amid a megadrought and decades of overuse. The Caspian Sea, between Asia and Europe – the world’s largest inland body of water – has long been declining due to climate change and water use.

The shrinking of many lakes has been well documented, but the extent of change – and the reasons behind it – have been less thoroughly examined, said Fangfang Yao, the study’s lead author and a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The researchers used satellite measurements of nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs, which together represent 95% of Earth’s total lake water storage.

Examining more than 250,000 satellite images spanning from 1992 to 2020, along with climate models, they were able to reconstruct the history of the lakes going back decades.

The results were “staggering,” the report authors said.

They found that 53% of the lakes and reservoirs had lost significant amounts of water, with a net decline of around 22 billion metric tons a year – an amount the report authors compared to the volume of 17 Lake Meads.

More than half of the net loss of water volume in natural lakes can be attributed to human activities and climate change, the report found.

The report found losses in lake water storage everywhere, including in the humid tropics and the cold Arctic. This suggests “drying trends worldwide are more extensive than previously thought,” Yao said.

Different lakes were affected by different drivers.

Unsustainable water consumption is the predominant reason behind the shriveling of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and California’s Salton Sea, while changes in rainfall and runoff have driven the decline of the Great Salt Lake, the report found.

In the Arctic, lakes have been shrinking due to a combination of changes in temperature, precipitation, evaporation and runoff.

“Many of the human and climate change footprints on lake water losses were previously unknown,” Yao said, “such as the desiccations of Lake Good-e-Zareh in Afghanistan and Lake Mar Chiquita in Argentina.”

Climate change can have an array of impacts on lakes. The most obvious, Yao said, is to increase evaporation.

As lakes shrink, this can also contribute to an “aridification” of the surrounding watershed, the study found, which in turn increases evaporation and accelerates their decline.

For lakes in colder parts of the world, winter evaporation is an increasing problem as warmer temperatures melt the ice that usually covers them, leaving the water exposed to the atmosphere.

These changes can have cascading effects, including a decrease in water quality, an increase in toxic algal blooms and a loss of aquatic life.

“An important aspect that is not often recognized is the degradation in water quality of the lakes from a warmer climate, which puts stress on water supply for communities that rely on them,” Yao said.

For reservoirs, the report found that the biggest factor in their decline is sedimentation, where sediment flows into the water, clogging it up and reducing space. It’s a “creeping disaster,” Yao said, happening over the course of years and decades.

Lake Powell, for instance – the second-largest human-made reservoir in the US – has lost nearly 7% of its storage capacity due to sediment build-up.

Sedimentation can be affected by climate change, he added. Wildfires, for example, which are becoming more intense as the world warms, burn through forests and destabilize the soil, helping to increase the flow of sediment into lakes and reservoirs.

“The result of sedimentation will be that reservoirs will be able to store less water, thereby becoming less reliable for freshwater and hydroelectric energy supply, particularly for us here in the US, given that our nation’s reservoirs are pretty old,” Yao said.

Not all lakes are declining; around a third of lake declines were offset by increases elsewhere, the report found.

Some lakes have been growing, with 24% seeing significant increases in water storage. These tended to be lakes in less populated regions, the report found, including areas in the Northern Great Plains of North America and the inner Tibetan Plateau.

The fingerprints of climate change are on some of these gains, as melting glaciers fill lakes, posing potential risks to people living downstream from them.

In terms of reservoirs, while nearly two thirds experienced significant water loss, overall there was a net increase due to more than 180 newly filled reservoirs, the report found.

Catherine O’Reilly, professor of geology at Illinois State University, who was not involved with the study, said this new research provides a useful long term data set that helps untangle the relative importance of the factors driving the decline of lakes.

“This study really highlights the impact of climate in ways that bring it close to home – how much water do we have access to, and what are the options to increase water storage?” she told CNN.

“It’s a little scary to see how many freshwater systems are unable to store as much water as they used to,” she added.

As many parts of the world become hotter and drier, lakes must be managed properly. Otherwise climate change and human activities “can lead to drying sooner than we think,” Yao said.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) – Public state universities in Kansas are seeking a tuition percentage increase.

From KU to K-State to Emporia State and more, six public universities in Kansas are looking to increase tuition rates to help battle inflation.

The last time this happened was in 2019. Not including the University of Kansas, those increases ranged anywhere from 1.2% to 3.8%.

Now, with all six universities on board, KU, K-State, Emporia State and Pitt State are requesting a 5% tuition increase, while Fort Hays State is requesting a 7% increase. Wichita State is in the middle at 5.9%.

Assuming the Kansas Board of Regents goes forward with this increase, per semester, undergrad students at KU would be looking at a $252 increase. That would make their tuition $5,298 a semester. As for K-State, they’re looking at a $237 increase, making tuition $4,981 a semester. Emporia State would be looking at a $131 increase. That would put undergrad students at $2,770 a semester.

A decision on the 2023-24 proposals will take place in June.

Wichita State released this statement to KSN News about the increase:

Raising tuition is never a request we take lightly, and each year we have to consider the various costs of doing business in order to provide the best quality education and support Kansas families, businesses and the economy. We’ve been able to avoid raising tuition three out of the past four years. If this request is approved, that would average a 1.7% increase over five years — keeping us as one of the most competitively priced universities in our state.

Rising costs due to inflation, though, have made it harder for all Regents universities to maintain current tuition.

If approved, the requested increase to tuition would go toward employee salaries and benefits, funding for graduate teaching assistants, scholarships, facility operation, capital assessment and student success and recruitment support.

Meanwhile, it’s important to note Wichita State’s consistent efforts to grow need-based aid and scholarships for students. In fact, WSU was recently allocated $4.2 million in additional funds to provide need-based aid for those who struggle most to pay for college. We’re incredibly proud of Wichita State’s work to provide an accessible and affordable education and will continue to work hard to help all students succeed at Wichita State.

Wichita State University