Nfl

A former NFL player and his former girlfriend from Ladera Ranch can stand trial for the killing of a Newport Beach man nearly 15 years ago, Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Gannon ruled Monday. Nanette Packard, 44, and Eric Naposki, 42, are charged with killing Bill McLaughlin, a Newport Beach father and successful businessman, on Dec. 15, 1994. Prosecutors claim that Packard, who was financially supported by McLaughlin and was his longtime girlfriend, persuaded her secret lover, Naposki, to kill McLaughlin inside his home.

Jesse Mahelona, a former Orange Coast College standout who played in the NFL, has died after being involved in a car accident. According to the Associated Press, agent Chad Speck said Mahelona, who was 26, died Friday night after being involved in an accident about a mile from his home in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Speck said Saturday he didn’t know any more circumstances of the accident. After OCC, Mahelona played at the University of Tennessee. He was drafted in the fifth round of the 2006 NFL draft by the Titans, where he played in 10 games as a rookie.

For a football program coming off its worst season in five years, Sage Hill School has a sense of urgency. Players no longer walk off the field. They jog off it. The attitude is different compared to last year. Going 2-8 buried Sage Hill’s confidence. With a new coach in J.R. Tolver, the Lightning aren’t going to show any signs that they’re down. “I don’t care if we’re more tired than the people we’re playing. They will never know it by the way we carry ourselves,” said Tolver, a first-year coach, who replaced Derek McIntyre.

Four head coaches in four years have guided Sage Hill School’s football program. The fourth is J.R. Tolver. He’s trying to avoid what happened to the previous two coaches. Each lasted one season. One recorded a more successful record than the other. The Lightning are counting on Tolver’s playing experience in college and the pros to help them bounce back from a 2-8 season, the program’s worst since 2003. Sage Hill’s justification for winning one game back then was valid.

The claims of the lower animals to human compassion and consideration as living, sentient beings are writ large in Hebrew Biblical thought. The ancient rabbis tell how Moses, while a shepherd of Jethro’s flocks, seeks out a stray lamb and tenderly carries the tired creature in his arms back to the fold. God then announces to Moses, “You are worthy to be My people’s shepherd.” The Fourth Commandment stipulates the right of animals to rest on the Sabbath.

During Sunday night cross-country flights home, Laird Hayes watches NFL football on his laptop. That’s not so unusual. Lots of folks turn their attention to America’s favorite sport on transcontinental flights. But Hayes, a former catcher for Princeton University’s baseball team who has a doctorate in higher education from UCLA, sits in his first-class seat and breaks down a DVD replay of the game he officiated earlier that day. Laird, an Orange Coast College dean, professor and head soccer coach for the past 33 years, is an NFL side judge.

NEWPORT BEACH — Anthony Battista knew a perfect place for the football he had just gotten signed by a certain NFL Hall of Famer known for his bone-crushing hits. Even though Battista, an 11-year-old from Newport Beach, didn’t know who Ronnie Lott was he came to know the NFL great a bit at the grand opening of Dick’s Sporting Goods at Fashion Island Sunday. Battista, a running back for the Junior Pee Wee team of the Newport-Mesa Junior All-American program, is more of a Vikings fan whose favorite player is Adrian Peterson.

Dick?s Sporting Goods will celebrate its grand opening at Fashion Island this weekend with a personal appearance by NFL legend Ronnie Lott from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Sunday. The daylong celebration will begin at 9 a.m., when wristbands will be handed out to the first 250 people, one per person, to meet Lott at 1 p.m. Giveaways will begin at 9 a.m. while supplies last, and visitors can register to win a $1,000 shopping spree. There will also be grand opening specials throughout the store.

No one kicked kicker Ryan Succop out of Newport Beach. The most celebrated kicker probably since Lou “The Toe” Groza had to leave for the NFL Rookie Symposium in Florida. The four-day trip won’t be as fun as the four days spent under the nickname Mr. Irrelevant. Succop hasn’t come close to reaching the Hall of Fame status of Groza, a member of the NFL’s 1950s All-Decade Team. Somehow, Succop managed to have people throw him a legendary party for almost every day out of the week.

A Ladera Ranch woman accused of being the brains behind a plot to kill a wealthy Newport Beach business owner for his money in 1994 pleaded not guilty in court Tuesday. Nanette Packard McNeal, 43, pleaded not guilty to plotting the killing of Newport Beach business owner and single father Bill McLaughlin in 1994 for access to his beachfront home and wealth. Prosecutors said that nearly 20 years ago McNeal, known then as Nanette Ann Johnston, a single mother of two children, met McLaughlin after he responded to her singles advertisement for a companion who could “take care of her” financially.