In "Blood, Sweat & Cheers" (Award Productions / Amazon), cheerleading is shown to be part-sport, part-competition. At the elite level of Pop Warner, teams vie in regional competitions to qualify for nationals. Coaches spend hours breaking down tape so they can design and implement the most innovative and daring two-and-a-half-minute routines. The girls endure hours of grueling practices in order to master elements of gymnastics, intricate tumbling, syncopated athleticism and teamwork.
Cheerleading, the film shows, is not for the faint of heart, with the more dangerous maneuvers involving daredevil leaps, throws and flips. The film notes that a ninth-grader from a neighboring town died from injuries after falling while performing a stunt. Indeed, in a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, journalist Melissa Rohlin wrote that "cheerleading injuries resulting in emergency room visits have increased almost sixfold since 1980, to nearly 30,000 in 2008, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported."
SportsLetter recently spoke with Laura Molta, the president of Molta Media and the producer of "Blood, Sweat & Cheers."
--David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: What does it takes to be a cheerleading champion?" »
Reuben A. Buford May is a self-confessed basketball junkie. He played the sport as a young boy and, later, as a student-athlete at Aurora University. While working as a sociology professor at the University of Georgia, he spent years as an assistant coach with a high school basketball program located in a metro area outside of Atlanta. This experience led to his second book, "Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream" (New York University Press / Amazon).
In "Living Through the Hoop," May examines the appeal of basketball among youth at Northeast High School. (May has changed the actual name of the school, as well as the names of the students and other coaches in the book, for confidentiality purposes.) At the predominantly African-American school, May observes the players' lives, on and off the court, and chronicles their triumphs and failures. And, as documented in the film "Hoop Dreams," May notes that the promise of NBA riches and fame continues to exert a powerful and, at times, dangerous pull.
"Basketball offers young black men . . . a chance to hope for better in spite of their dismal starting point," May writes. "These young men should no more be derided than any of us who invest our lives in long-shot dreams. After all, such dreams are conceived in a society that says to all, 'you all can achieve whatever you want if you work for it.' The sad reality is that young black men continue to be disproportionately blocked from achieving alternatives to hoop dreams."
Part memoir, part ethnography, "Living Through the Hoop" was the co-winner of the Book of the Year award from the Association of Humanist Sociology.
May is a professor of sociology at Texas A&M University. Currently, he is a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
SportsLetter recently spoke with Professor May by phone.
--David Davis
"Friday Night Lights" was an instant bestseller and, twenty years after its initial publication, remains a cultural touchstone. In 2002, Sports Illustrated ranked it as the fourth best sports book of all time. In 2004, it was made into a successful film; currently, it serves as the basis for a television show that airs on NBC.
Bissinger won the Pulitzer Prize while he was a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer; he now contributes to Vanity Fair magazine. He has also written "Three Nights in August" (2005), a journey into baseball strategy as seen through the eyes of St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony LaRussa.
Most recently, Bissinger has co-written "Shooting Stars" (Penguin / Amazon) with Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James. The book chronicles James' successful and controversial high school basketball career in Akron, Ohio, and the enduring friendship he continues to share with four teammates-friends (collectively known as the "Fab Five").
SportsLetter spoke to Bissinger about LeBron James and "Shooting Stars" as well as the legacy of "Friday Night Lights."
--David Davis
Ayub was a college student at the time of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an event that caused her to reconsider her heritage as well as her connection to America. She was driven to act, she writes, because "like so many fellow citizens in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the need to do something."
In 2003, Ayub decided to establish the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange. The following year, she brought eight girls to the United States from Afghanistan for a soccer leadership camp. The eight had grown up as children of violence and turmoil: first, the civil war that engulfed Afghanistan after the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988-89; then, the oppressive reign of the Taliban following the civil war; most recently, the U.S.-backed military initiative that ousted the Taliban regime.
In the U.S., the eight girls trained for six weeks, competed in the Afghan-American Soccer Cup tournament and represented their country in the International Children's Games. Later, Ayub returned to her homeland to visit the girls and lead soccer clinics at Ghazi Stadium, in Kabul, where the Taliban had carried out executions and torture.
In "However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home" (Hyperion / Amazon), Ayub chronicles the story of her efforts to bring soccer to Afghan youth and to empower girls through sport. At once poignant and instructive, the memoir is a tale of redemption and triumph that shines a unique light on Afghan culture.
In May, Ayub earned her masters in public administration from the University of Delaware, with a concentration in international sports development. On Sept. 11, 2009, SportsLetter spoke with Ayub on the phone from her home on the East Coast.
-- David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: Awista Ayub brings soccer and strength to Afghan girls" »
Smith Center is a small town (population: 1,931) located about four hours west of Kansas City and just minutes from the geographical center of the continental United States. What initially drew New York Times reporter Joe Drape to Smith Center is the high school football team: the Redmen have won 67 consecutive games, currently the longest winning streak in the nation.
In "Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen" (Times Books/Henry Holt ; Amazon), Drape chronicles the season that he (and his wife and young son) spent in Smith Center during 2008. He writes about exchanging the fast-paced, urban stylings of New York City for life in a one-stoplight, Midwestern farming town. Wheat is the primary crop and the nearest McDonald's is 90 miles away.
Swapping Wall Street for Main Street, Drape found himself rejuvenated by the experience. Smith Center, Drape writes, is a town where youth sports have become an integral part of a tight-knit community that values dedicated effort and teamwork. Led by Coach Roger Barta, the football team has provided years-long inspiration to the community; in turn, the community bonds together to nurture the kids. One example Drape cites: the players on the football team appear on a set of trading cards that are distributed to the kids at the elementary school. They must also sign a contract pledging to remain alcohol-, drug- and tobacco-free. If they violate that contract, their cards are revoked and they must explain to the elementary school students why they were booted from the team.
A Kansas native, Drape has worked at The Dallas Morning News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Currently, he is a staff writer at the New York Times. He is the author of "Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend" (Morrow/HarperCollins), a biography of African-American jockey Jimmy Winkfield and the winner of the Castleton Lyons-Thoroughbred Times Book Award, and "The Race for the Triple Crown: Horses, High Stakes and Eternal Hope" (Grove Press). He is also the editor of a collection entitled "To the Swift: Classic Triple Crown Horses and Their Race for Glory" (St. Martin's).
SportsLetter spoke with Drape by phone from his home.
--David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: Author Joe Drape finds perfection in Smith Center, Kansas" »
When Michelle Wie burst onto the golf scene, at the ripe old age of 10, she was considered a once-in-a-generation prodigy. Her picture-perfect swing was balanced and powerful; her 300-foot drives were awesome to behold. She seemed poised to challenge the best golfers on the women's tour, not to mention fulfilling her stated goals of challenging on the PGA Tour and playing in The Masters.
In 2003, Wie won the Publinx tourney at age 13, becoming the youngest person (male or female) to win a United States Golf Association-sanctioned event. By the time she was 16, she had turned professional and recorded several Top 10 finishes on the LPGA Tour, played in tournaments against male golfers on the PGA Tour and in Asia and Europe, and signed multi-million dollar endorsement deals with (among others) Nike and Sony. Her future seemed as glorious as a Hawaiian sunset.
Her precocious start notwithstanding, Wie has not met those lofty expectations. Injuries have taken a toll – specifically, a broken wrist that she tried to play through – and she has not managed to win a tournament since the Publinx. Now 19, she is both a college student (at Stanford University) and a rookie member on the LPGA Tour. Her plans to challenge male golfers are on hold.
In "The Sure Thing: The Making and Unmaking of Golf Phenom Michelle Wie" (Ballantine Books/ESPN Books ; Amazon), author Eric Adelson examines Wie's unique and historic career. As a reporter who first wrote about Wie when she was 10, Adelson views her life both as success story and cautionary tale, one in which greed and impatience have, to date, trumped Wie's sublime talent. He also believes that Wie has ample time to, as he writes, "seize control of her golf and her life."
A longtime staff writer at ESPN The Magazine, Adelson is now a freelance journalist who contributes to Newsweek, Details and ESPN. SportsLetter spoke with Adelson by phone from his home in Florida.
-David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: Eric Adelson examines the Michelle Wie phenomenon" »
The city of Clarkston is located about ten miles northeast of Atlanta, Ga. In 1980, the town's population was 90 percent white, but that soon changed – and fast. An abundance of inexpensive housing and Clarkston's proximity to Atlanta were two key factors why the town became, in the late 1980s, a resettlement hub for refugees from the world's most troubled corners: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan.
"From 1996 to 2001, more than 19,000 refugees from around the world resettled in Georgia," according to Warren St. John, author of "Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Team" (Spiegel & Grau / Amazon). "Some have endured unimaginable hardship to get here: squalor in refugee camps, separation from siblings and parents. One saw his father killed in their home."
A reporter with The New York Times, St. John was intrigued by the inherent tension between the newly arriving refugees and the residents of Clarkston. He chose to tell this modern-day American immigration story through three boys’ youth soccer teams formed from the teenage talent of the refugee families. They decided to name themselves The Fugees.
A good chunk of St. John's book focuses on the extraordinary efforts of coach Luma Mufleh, herself an immigrant from Jordan, to keep the youth soccer program afloat. She faces unique challenges, including language, cultural, and religious differences among her own charges. And, in the course of the book, St John recounts how she faces her own demons.
This is St. John's second book. His previous work, "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania," was his personal account of following the die-hard, tailgating corps of University of Alabama football fans.
SportsLetter interviewed St. John by phone from his home in New York City.
–David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: Warren St. John on refugees, soccer, and starting over in America" »
As a journalist, coach and sports parent, Mark Hyman has been immersed in the culture of youth sports. His new book, entitled "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids" (Beacon Press / Amazon), is an indictment of what he sees as the myriad problems that have beset kids' sports.
In researching and writing the book, Hyman interviewed coaches, parents, children, psychologists, sports medicine experts and Olympic athletes. What he discovered disturbed him. "Across the country, young players are all too frequent victims of a sports culture that seemingly is turning its back on them," he writes in the introduction. "Injuries are just one troubling manifestation. With each passing season youth sports seems to stray further and further from its core mission of providing healthy, safe and character-building recreation for children."
Hyman assigns much of the blame on parents, who have usurped control of youth sports. "It's not the presence of adults that is distorting youth sports," he writes. "Rather, the issue is our well-documented impulse to turn sports for children into a de facto professional league." According to Hyman, "Only the kids are losers here. Their voices are rarely heard, and then only to justify the questionable judgment of adults."
In the book, Hyman does not shy away from what he describes as his own "unflattering" behavior. He writes about having his son, Ben, pitch in a baseball game despite being injured. Writes Hyman: "I watched with regret and, in short order, remorse, as an injured boy attempting to please his dad lamely lobbed balls at home plate. . . Only one of us had anything to be disappointed about that evening. It surely wasn't Ben."
From 1986-1997, Hyman was a reporter with the Baltimore Sun. Today, the Baltimore-based writer is a contributing editor at Business Week. This is his second book; previously, he authored "Confessions of a Baseball Purist" with broadcaster Jon Miller.
As Hyman geared up for book promotion duties, SportsLetter spoke to him via phone.
– David Davis
Continue reading "SL Interview: Author Mark Hyman on America's youth sports obsession" »
