Marshawn Lynch adds football element to Hockey Diversity Alliance's SummerFest event in Toronto

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Marshawn Lynch adds football element to Hockey Diversity Alliance's SummerFest event in Toronto

2026-07-22 18:00 Last Updated At：22:40

The Hockey Diversity Alliance is adding a football element to its youth SummerFest in Toronto this weekend, with former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch serving as a special guest.

Aside from competing in a celebrity ball hockey game, Lynch will also host a football clinic at the HDA's fourth festival on Saturday. The former Seattle Seahawks player and 2014 Super Bowl champion is no stranger to the HDA. Lynch took the ice at the alliance’s WinterFest that coincided with Toronto hosting the NHL All-Star Game two years ago.

“I’m really excited about him and the football aspect of it,” HDA chairman Akim Aliu said. “Where we’re able to have success as an organization is tapping into the culture and personality aspects and using people’s audiences from different sports.”

The HDA was launched in 2020 by current and former NHL players of color to speak out against racism and intolerance, and with an objective of opening hockey to minorities and underserved youth by providing free hockey equipment, hosting clinics and renting ice time.

Aliu estimated the HDA has spent about $1.1 million annually in its grassroots mission, and has since expanded beyond the Toronto region. The alliance has launched programs in Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Nova Scotia, and is preparing to add Calgary, Alberta, to the mix next month, Aliu said.

SummerFest stands as the major event on the HDA calendar, and features performances, carnival attractions and rides, followed by a fundraising gala in the evening.

Among the notable athletes scheduled to attend are Canadian Olympic sprinter Andre De Grasse, tennis player Bianca Andreescu, former Seahawks tight end Luke Wilson and former Toronto Raptors player Serge Ibaka.

Aliu anticipates the daytime event attracting a capacity crowd of more than 4,000 participants.

Aliu is a former pro hockey player who was born in Nigeria, lived in Ukraine and picked up the sport when his family moved to Toronto when he was 7. In 2022, Scholastic and the publishing company of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick released a graphic novel highlighting Aliu’s life titled: “Akim Aliu Dreamer: Growing Up Black in the World of Hockey.”

“Why I’m so proud of our work is because it’s really for the most vulnerable that would never have access to the sport,” Aliu said. “Over 2,000 lives have been positively impacted by our work, and we’re just getting going.”

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June 1 trial date set for Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro in his US drug trafficking case

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife will go on trial on drug trafficking charges next June, a judge said Wednesday, as their lawyers continue to object to the U.S. military action that snatched them from power.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein set the June 1 trial date at the request of lawyers on both sides. Under the approved schedule, defense lawyers will begin filing requests in early September to challenge the indictment and the couple will return to the courtroom Nov. 17 for oral arguments on the motions.

Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail since U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to New York in early January.

Neither spoke during Wednesday’s 15-minute hearing as each sat separately at a defense table, surrounded by their lawyers. Both have pleaded not guilty. They face potential life prison sentences if a jury agrees that they were part of a conspiracy to send cocaine into the U.S.

As he was led into the courtroom, the bespectacled Maduro greeted the judge’s staff and shook hands with lawyers for him and his wife. Noticeably thinner in a tan jail suit and with his thick mustache, he seemed upbeat, smiling and chatting with his lawyer. He listened to a Spanish interpretation of the proceeding through headphones and clasped his hands in front of him in a prayerlike gesture. He had a black pen wedged in his right fingers and sporadically jotted notes on a white pad.

As deputy U.S. marshals led him out, he waved to someone in the gallery.

President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid to capture Maduro as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping.

U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to move thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by colluding with Venezuelan law enforcement to help drug kingpins.

“I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country,” he said in Spanish at his arraignment in January.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, has said he expects to contest the legality of Maduro’s “military abduction.”

During Wednesday's hearing, Pollack said he will first challenge the indictment on sovereign immunity grounds because if that is successful, Maduro won't have to continue litigating the case.

The lawyers have said there are complex legal defenses that the court must address before a trial can begin.

Maduro and Flores have not asked to be released on bail.