Like many sports that rely on brute force, taekwondo sometimes requires athletes to cut weight. We just call it cutting, which to outsiders might evoke associations with another kind of unhealthy behavior. My 5’2” frame is small enough that many are surprised I need to cut at all, but not quite small enough to fit into weight classes created for tiny-boned Korean women.
For those of you unfamiliar with football and the Champions League, here is how it works. The top three or four teams from every league in Europe compete to win the biggest prize in club football. It starts with group … Read More
It’s the opening game of the 2014 NFL season and I’m at Buffalo Wild Wings with friends. As always for such events, the restaurant is packed. It’s a good mix of Seahawks and Packers jerseys and the pregame atmosphere is already buzzing.
Lionel Messi, the star of FC Barcelona and the man widely considered to be the best soccer player in the world, is stepping up to the penalty spot. He stares down the goalkeeper for a moment, takes a few steps back and then slams his left foot into the ball, sending it predictably perfectly into the corner of the goal. 1-0.
Gregg Popovich doesn’t care what you think about him. The head coach of the San Antonio Spurs is famous for his stony demeanor, relentlessly curt interviews, and impeccable coaching record.
It is 6 p.m. and I’m sitting with hundreds of fellow equine fanatics in a stadium flanked for miles on either side by farmhouses, wooden fence lines and flat, sandy fields speckled with horses. Many around me wear baseball caps to keep the sinking Florida sun out of their faces; a few had the foresight to bring a blanket for the inevitable temperature drop later tonight, when the stadium will be lit by giant electric flood lights.
When the Body Combat instructor pushed to the front of the crowd and introduced herself, I could not help but be reminded of a bygone era. Her thick pink headband, stretch pants, and neon athletic top made her seem as if she had just arrived in a time machine from an 80s aerobics class. Of course, I have never experienced the 80s for myself, so I cannot be sure that all aerobics instructors wore such tight, shiny fabric, but the movies of the time seem to indicate they did.
“She never seemed a hundred percent after that,” Isabella Bersani, a sophomore teammate and friend of Caroline Feeley, says while recalling a match in December of 2012. Certainly, Caroline was less than 100%. On that day during the annual mixed doubles Christmas tournament, Caroline had hurt her MCL in nothing more than a game held for fun between the men and women of Princeton squash.
