U.S. Women’s National Team forward Christen Press plays with passion. A two goals and an assist in her first-ever USWNT game, three goals in her first two international contests (a USWNT record) kind of passion. But in her younger days, Press’ ardor for the game was even more evident than it is now that she’s a member of Jill Ellis’ forward group, now that she’s prepping for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio. In those days, Press’ passion took the oftentimes-volatile form of on- and off-field blow-ups she now lovingly dubs, “rage fits.”
Author: Calvin Setar
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Team Eazy: The Championship Group Text You Never Knew Existed (Feature)
We all know how it goes – your phone lights up, a hazy glow spreading across the ceiling as the march of one text after another buzzes its way into your sleep-heavy brain. You click it quiet and roll back to your rapidly cooling place amongst the pillows and blankets when the light and the buzzing return, again and again. Or maybe you check your phone after a workout, backhanding away the beads of sweat on the screen as you scroll through text after text, trying in vain to remember where you dropped the thread of the conversation.
And while most group texts are little more than a means of making plans or needling friends, maybe for keeping in touch over long distances or safely separating one friend group from another, for some, it serves another purpose entirely.
For Team Eazy, a group of guys who grew up together – literally and figuratively – in and around Michigan, many of whom attended Detroit Country Day School, it’s about motivation. It’s about keeping one another focused and on the right track, day in and day out, buoying spirits and ensuring, as best it can be ensured, that success is never far off.
And if recent history is any indication, the Team Eazy group text is working like a charm. They’ve now got three titles, three big rings, between them – two Super Bowls and an NBA Championship – in the last two years alone.
And there very well may be a fourth on the way…
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Soren Bryce On Avoiding Songwriting Pratfalls Along The Musical Path (Interview)
The nervous energy, the simmering anxiousness bottled up inside the willowy frame of an 18-year-old girl, bottled up until it’s fit to burst, is nearly palpable as Soren Bryce, two shows into her most recent road swing across the West Coast, speaks in clipped, staccato bursts of her passion for music, the way the piano has opened a whole new door to songwriting, the way a path – sometimes followed, but hopefully blazed – can be the driving force behind the love in your life.
For Bryce, music is that path. And wandering the Pike Place market in Seattle, still sporting the warming glow of the previous night’s performance in her voice, Bryce knows she’s right where she needs to be – for now.
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Austin Plaine — Finding Beauty in Simplicity (Interview)
Imagine yourself rolling along a dusty orange highway, arm slung carelessly along the sill of an open window, the wind whipping your hair about your face in great, steady gusts. Through the portal of the window, low, arid landscape blows past, mile after desolate mile.
Imagine yourself – pack slung across your back, crunching softly through a frozen, moonlit landscape, the light reflecting gently off the paper-thin sheet of ice, just solidified, like new skin, atop the glittering snow.
Now imagine yourself on a knotty pine porch. The sky above you clear and bright, the trees dotting the area just in front of the low cabin a collage of greens and browns, peppered in places with burnt orange and pale yellow, painted thickly here, there, by an American elm, sprouting like a broccoli floret grown to mammoth proportions, a Black ash, it’s nubby ridges a veiny grid work of flecks of crumbly bark, seemingly begging to be peeled from its trunk by idle hands.
Here, amongst the elms and the ash’s, amongst the dense deciduous framework, in the cool, clear lakes, in the rolling wheels of a West Coast-bound car, in the moist leather of that cold nighttime field, and on that very porch, Austin Plaine finds inspiration.
And here, Plaine writes…
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The 4onthefloor’s Gabriel Douglas On The Musical Journey Of A Lifetime
Listen to any song from The 4onthefloor’s recently expanded discography – they just released their third studio album, “All In,” in May – and you get the distinct impression that lead singer Gabriel Douglas and the rest of his band mates – Nate, John and Jake – are having one hell of a time stomping out their particular brand of straightforward blues rock – rock which is clear, if not clean, raw, if not ragged, honest without fear, steeped in simplistic beauty and free of pretention, devoid of suppositions about themselves and about the world.
Calvin Setar 