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Special to the Daily News RED BLUFF » The Tehama Family Fitness Center on Friday hosted the fifth annual Dave Mobilio Me- morial Raw Bench Press Cham- pionships. The event drew 16 competi- tive men and women to honor Red Bluff police officer Dave Mo- bilio, who was killed while on duty in 2002. "This is definitely one of our members', as well as the com - munity's, favorite events," said Troy Lalaguna, general man- ager at the Tehama Family Fit- ness Center. "The weight room fills up with spectators with tremendous sup- port and energy." The most competitive weight class was the men's lightweight class, 200 pounds and under. The class saw the heaviest lifts to date. Defending lightweight cham - pion Kyle Dudley put up an im- pressive lift of 360 pounds, but that was only good enough for third place. Lightweight Ryan Morris took second in the class with a lift of 375 pounds, and also won the max body weight for reps division with a set of 36 reps at 195 pounds. Men's lightweight champion went to Chuck Vereschagin with a lift of 420 pounds. C.J. Demspey defended the middleweight division with a lift of 430 pounds. The men's heavyweight title went to 54-year-old Dan Peters, who lifted 425 pounds. Peters and Vereschagin also took the partner total division with a combined total of 845 pounds. In the women's division, Rae - Ann Dubay repeated as the light- weight champion at 120 pounds after prevailing over Katie Hall in a tie-breaker event. Laticia Ramos defended her title with a lift of 140 pounds. Dubay and Ramos also defended their top team total title. The annual event was made possible by a generous donation by Dudley's Excavating. Volu nt e er s , comp et it or s , fans and DJ Jambo Slice also helped. FitnEss Weightlifters honor fallen police officer Tehama Family Fitness Center holds Mobilio Memorial Raw Bench Press Championships COURTESY C.J. Dempsey, who defended his middleweight title, lis at the fih annual Dave Mobilio Memorial Raw Bench Press Championships on Friday at the Tehama Family Fitness Center. By Ronald Blum The Associated Press nEW YORK » After deciding close calls on the field since 1876, baseball opens a high- tech control room this week - end where the fates of batters, pitchers, runners and fielders will be decided by umpires up to 2,600 miles away in the build - ing where the Oreo cookie was invented. Starting with the Los Ange- les Dodgers' game at the San Diego Padres on Sunday night, the U.S. opener of the 2014 sea- son, players, managers and fans will turn their attention to the ROC — the Replay Operations Center. In a dimly lit room of just under 1,000 square feet in the Chelsea Market in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, umpires and technicians will make the decisions that could decide games and championships. More than $10 million has been spent wiring the 30 big league ballparks with Fiberlink cable that will transmit the im - ages from at least 12 cameras at every site, and Major League Baseball says it will take just 400 milliseconds for each im - age to arrive at the command center. All in an effort to prevent the type of botched calls that cost Detroit's Armando Galarraga a perfect game in 2010. "I'm happy for the manag - ers," said Joe Torre, an MLB ex- ecutive vice president oversee- ing the new system. "Maybe it will keep them from having one or two more sleepless nights if they are able to grab one and overturn it." Inside the sliding glass doors at the offices of Major League Baseball Advance Media, the room has its own power supply in case of a blackout — with bat - teries as a second auxiliary — and a stand-alone heating, ven- tilation and air conditioning system that keeps the temper- ature at 72 degrees. majOR LEagUE BasEBaLL High-tech replay room opens Sunday Umps in New York to decide close calls by TV reviews, new rules first time since 1876 RiChaRD DREw — ThE aSSOCiaTED PRESS a technician works in front of a bank of television screens during a preview wednesday of Major League Baseball's Replay Operations Center in New York. By michael tarm The Associated Press mtarm on Twitter CHiCagO » In a stunning ruling that could revolutionize college sports, a federal agency said Wednesday that football players at Northwest - ern University can create the na- tion's first union of college athletes. The decision by a regional direc- tor of the National Labor Relations Board answered the question at the very heart of the debate of the unionization bid: The football play - ers who receive full scholarships to the Big Ten school, the agency found, do qualify as employees un- der federal law and therefore can legally unionize. "Based on the entire record in this case, I find that the Employer's football players who receive schol - arships fall squarely within (the) broad definition of 'employee,'" Pe- ter Sung Ohr, the NLRB regional director, said in his 24-page deci- sion. An employee is regarded by law as someone who, among other things, receives compensation for a service and is under the strict, direct control of managers. In the case of the Northwestern players, coaches are the managers and scholarships are a form of com - pensation, Ohr concluded. The Evanston, Ill.-based univer- sity argued that college athletes, as students, don't fit in the same cat- egory as factory workers, truck drivers and other unionized work- ers. Immediately after the rul- ing, the school announced it plans to appeal to labor authorities in Washington, D.C. Those advocating for letting the players unionize argued the uni - versity ultimately treats football as more important than academics for its scholarship players. Despite Northwestern's denials, Ohr sided with the players on that issue. "The record makes clear that the employer's scholarship play - ers are identified and recruited in the first instance because of their football prowess and not because of their academic achievement in high school," Ohr wrote. He also noted that among the evidence presented by Northwestern, "no examples were provided of schol - arship players being permitted to miss entire practices and/or games to attend their studies." The ruling also described how the life of a football player at North - western is far more regimented than that of a typical student, down to requirements about what they can and can't eat to whether they can live off campus or purchase a car. At times during the year, play - ers put in 50 or 60 hours a week into football, he added. Alan Cubbage, Northwestern's vice president for university rela - tions, said in a statement that while the school respects "the NLRB process and the regional direc- tor's opinion, we disagree with it." The next step in the process of unionization would be for schol- arship players to hold a vote on whether or not to formally autho- rize the College Athletes Players Association, or CAPA, to represent nCaa spORts Athletes can form union, says agency NLRB rules that players qualify as employees PaUL BEaTY — ThE aSSOCiaTED PRESS FiLE in a Jan. 28 photo, Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter (right) speaks at a news conference on college athletics in Chicago. Family members of the miss- ing are beginning to confront a grim reality: Their loved ones might never be found, remain- ing entombed forever inside a mountain of mud in the state of washington. stiLL missing Some slide victims may not be found FULL STORY ON PAGE b4 For complete coverage of the Chico State men's basketball team's NCaa Division ii Elite Eight game against South Carolina-aiken on wednesday, visit the Red Bluff Daily News website. nCaa BasKEtBaLL Chico State men compete in Elite Eight www.REdbLUFFdAiLYNEwS.cOm Red Bluff and Corning high's boys golf teams are sched- uled to play at noon today at Tucker Oaks Golf Course in anderson. it's the second Sac River League match on the season for the Spartans. spRing spORts Red Bluff, Corning boys golf teams tee off a French satellite scanning the indian Ocean for rem- nants of a missing jetliner found a possible plane debris field containing 122 objects, a top Malaysian official said wednesday. FLigHt 370 Satellite spots 122 objects in jet search FULL STORY ON PAGE b5 UniOn » pagE 2 SPORTS » redbluffdailynews.com thursday, march 27, 2014 » MORE aT FAcEbOOK.cOm/RbdAiLYNEwS aND TwiTTER.cOm/REdbLUFFNEwS B1