Tag: Culture
A Hall of Fame coach’s son got his fairy tale ending. Now he wants to know how the story began
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Steven Izzo sat in his locker, aw-shucksing the high point of his adult life, playing a familiar part.
The first basket of his five-year career on his father’s Michigan State basketball team was an act of comedic defiance. The gall of this move. Against a Rutgers defender with 6 inches and 50 pounds on him, Steven Izzo took two dribbles to his left, stopped, reversed direction, flicked the ball between his legs, took two more dribbles
College athletes are getting closer to becoming employees. What would happen next?
The NCAA inches closer every day to a tipping point of dramatic overhaul. Years of tectonic shifts around college sports could soon usher in an era its leaders and administrators have long tried to avoid: the treatment of college athletes as employees.
The next milestone could come Tuesday, when the Dartmouth men’s basketball team will vote on whether to form a union. The university is countering by fighting a National Labor Relations Board regional director’s finding that the basketball players
UNESCO’s Quest to Save the World’s Intangible Heritage
On December 7th, at a safari resort in Kasane, Botswana, Ukraine briefed the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on an endangered national treasure. It wasn’t a monastery menaced by air strikes. Nor was it any of the paintings, rare books, or other antiquities seized by Russian troops. It was borscht, a beet soup popular for centuries across Eastern Europe. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, in February, 2022—as fields burned, restaurants shuttered, and expert cooks fled
The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more
TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving home from a recent PWHL Toronto practice when she got a bit of sage advice.
It wasn’t from a podcast or a friend on the phone. The advice came courtesy of a billboard on the side of the road in Canada’s most populous city, featuring her own face with the Adidas slogan “You got this.”
“I was like, yeah, I do,” Nurse said with a laugh.
The billboard she drove past is one
Man on a mission: NFL great Alan Page’s quest for justice in football and beyond
MINNEAPOLIS — A few times each month, Alan Page visits Justice Page Middle School, one of two schools named in his honor.
As the first African American to become a Minnesota Supreme Court justice and the first African American elected to a statewide office, Page goes to inspire students. In their upturned faces and wide eyes, he sees opportunity. He is there to show them possibilities that might have never occurred to them and to encourage hopes and dreams.
He
The wacky true story of the hockey team that inspired ‘Slap Shot’
Once upon a time, there was a screenplay for a hockey movie that was so absurd, so over the top, that even the studio executives who wanted to make it wondered if it was too unrealistic.
Almost every page of the script featured profanity. There were wild brawls on the ice, fights with fans in the stands and a trio of bespectacled brothers who raced toy cars at home and pummeled opponents at night. It was so outrageous that one
Marvin Gaye’s iconic NBA All-Star Game national anthem: ‘He turned that thing into his own’
Editor’s Note: This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2023. View the full list.
For one afternoon, America’s anointed theme song had a suede soul, velvety enough to be simultaneously sexy and spiritual.
For one afternoon, patriotism masqueraded as a Motown kind of cool. The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., was graced by a superstar’s serenade, stirring together hope and love, resilience and confidence, into a concoction delightful enough to be served on the rocks.
For one afternoon, the
The men who practice against Caitlin Clark can’t stop her either
It’s a little after 11 a.m. on an unnervingly cold December day, and Isaac Prewitt exhales. Hands on hips, cheeks puffed out, the whole deal. His morning had been relatively easy for a while: Play dummy defense against pick-and-rolls; needle his friend about an incoming shipment of Gatorade Fit drinks; run some zone offense. A graduate student, whiling away winter break in a gym, doing a job that’s never work.
For the last few minutes, though, his job stinks.
Because
How the PWHL’s youngest player is adjusting to a new league — and a new language
OTTAWA — Nearly 6,000 miles away from her hometown in Hokkaido, Japan, Akane Shiga was being asked about the weather.
Mike Hirshfeld, general manager of Ottawa’s PWHL team, was sitting with Shiga and coach Carla MacLeod in the team office at TD Place Arena, speaking to the 22-year-old forward and Japanese national team member through her interpreter.
“She’s looking at me like, ‘What is he talking about?’” Hirshfeld said about the playful preamble to an important bit of news ahead
Language barriers, culture shock and isolation: How the NHL’s loneliest players cope
Alexandre Carrier looked over at the stone-faced new guy to his left on the Gatineau Olympiques bench and noticed that he had another teammate’s stick in his hands. Ever the helpful sort, Carrier politely pointed out Yakov Trenin’s mistake. Trenin turned his head, stared at Carrier for a moment, and responded.
“Yes.”
Confused but also curious, Carrier then asked Trenin another question, one in which “no” was the only possible answer. Trenin again eyed him, expressionless.
“Yes.”
“I’m like, OK,