I've long wanted to write about Justina Cassavell. My sister has been the cross-country coach at Voorhees High School in New Jersey since the mid 1990s. She is also the head track coach (boys and girls). She announced her resignation yesterday - within minutes it seemed, the story was posted on NJ.com.
The (not-homophobic side of the) sports world has invested a lot of magic in the currently-professional-and-playing-out-gay-male-athlete. It's no wonder, given how elusive that athlete has been.
Jason Collins comes out decades after Stonewall, he comes out long after Ellen DeGeneres came out while professionally-active-and-on-television and then recovered that career with her talk show, months after Frank Ocean came out about his love for a man.
NBA center Jason Collins came out in this week's issue of Sports Illustrated. People are celebrating him as the first man in a "major sport" to come out as gay. That is true only if we limit our examples to the US.
Justin Fashanu was the first athlete to come out as gay while still playing as a pro.
The bombing at the Boston Marathon - what is there to say about such a thing? Already, barely a day into the story the story is on repeat. Terror, heroism, terror, heroism. How many are dead? Wounds and more wounds. Women & children. Look out for a dark skinned man in a hoodie. It's an awful mix.
It's not every day that I think, of a player like Kobe Bryant, "I know how he feels." A few days ago Bryant ruptured his Achilles tendon. He was remarkably composed in the interview he gave right after the game. This injury is one of the worst. Few come back from it. He might very well have just played his last game as a professional athlete.
From Jo Strømgren Kompani - on stage in Toronto this week. I must see this.
Rutgers's biggest problem is actually not Mike Rice. It's politicians digging into the university's infrastructure - taking the ongoing dismantling of affordable public education to the next level (first attack affordability, then attack the scene of education by taking away its working infrastructure, access to institutional memory, sense of community).
In a recent polemic Dave Zirin asks if "jock culture" is to be blamed for the Steubenville case.
Responding to evidence that adults around these football players conspired to cover up the shame and the crime of it all, Zirin tackles the social structure framing the story. "Steubenville," The Nation's headline announced, "shows the bonds between jock culture and rape culture.
I wrote about Sam Gordon the other week for Salon. Love. Her.
Painted in mud, the best high school cross-country runners stumbled across the line. The exhausted pack ran their worst times all season. The painfulness of this fact was thrown into stark relief by the boorish slogan suspended across the course finish: "Run hungry. Taste victory."
Nike Cross Nationals is run every year in Oregon at the Portland Meadows Race Track.
| Alexi Lalas, showing his love for the 2011 USWNT |
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A day exploring creative conversations with football culture. This event is open to fans, players, students, artists, historians, referees, writers.
Kelly Smith celebrates a goal, her magic foot and the shoe it was in.When you teach you learn
pretty quickly that the very smartest and most interesting students are often quiet. Some are
painfully shy and intense listeners. Some only talk when they think they have something valuable to
contribute and have a very the bar high when it comes to their sense of value.
Solo: A Memoir of Hope is the story of a deeply charismatic outsider. She is a lone wolf,
but she was also a prom queen. That's the paradox of Solo's persona: she's the outcast in the
middle of every drama, the anti-social social phenomenon. Solo might be an independent spirt, but
this book is centered on her relationships with other people.
Can Nike come up with an Olympic motto worse than "Greatness has been found?"
YES! Of course, this shirt is only sold in women's sizes.
Nike explains itself:
"Nike has consistently supported female athletes and the
position they enjoy as positive role models.
