BuddyPress.org

I was able to fix the problem by just making some simple changes to the PHP in the header. I changed the following:

<li<?php if ( bp_is_page( sports_news ) ) {?> class="selected"<?php } ?>><a>/<?php echo sports_news ?>" title="<?php _e( 'Sports', 'buddypress' ) ?>"><?php _e( 'Sports', 'buddypress' ) ?></a>

To:

<li<?php if ( is_page('news') ) {?> class="selected"<?php } ?>><a>/news" title="News">News</a>

This fixes the entire problem, and now the respective button is highlighted. I am changing this topic to “resolved”.