Christen Press & The USWNT: Living the Dream, But is the Dream Enough?
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, 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.”
Keith Bulluck, Pro Football Hall of Fame Nominee, Talks Tennessee Titans, NFL’s Concussion Crisis
At this point, former NFL linebacker, longtime Tennessee Titan and recent Modern Era Pro Football Hall of Fame nominee Keith Bulluck is well into his post-playing days. It’s been three, almost four years now since he traded taped cleats, neck rolls and the bright lights of the gridiron for MBA classes and the steady thrum, if not exactly thrill-a-minute excitement, of business meetings and portfolio-building. But for Bulluck, even these twilight years, even these golden days in the sun enjoying what he built for himself during a decade-plus NFL career, haven’t dampened his football spirit, haven’t lessened his love for the game.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Danny Lansanah: The Fight For An NFL Dream
He felt his phone buzz. He saw the name of his agent flash on the screen. But he didn’t answer. When the phone buzzed again, indicating a voice mail, he clicked it quiet.
He thought his dream was dead.
Carolina Panthers RB Brandon Wegher’s Super Bowl 50 Path: The Road Less Traveled
Carolina Panthers running back Brandon Wegher is all business. That’d probably be the case for most NFLers readying to take part in the biggest spectacle their sport, maybe the entire sporting world, has to offer, but for Wegher it is an approach born out of necessity. Really, when you’re an undrafted free agent rookie who spent time with four collegiate programs and dealt with a bevy of questions regarding your off-the-field focus before landing, ultimately and unexpectedly, with a Super Bowl squad, you don’t have much choice but to be no-nonsense.
It’s succeed or fade away. Win or kiss that NFL paycheck, those roaring fans, that shaking, shuddering stadium, goodbye.
How To: Survive The NFL – Jacksonville Jaguars’ Jonas Gray From Undrafted To Super Bowl-Winner To Battle-Tested Vet
In 2012, after a four-year career at Notre Dame that wound up being a little short on highlights, running back Jonas Gray found himself drawing the attention of the NFL. Gray wasn’t sure where he’d land in that year’s NFL Draft, but expectations were somewhere between the second and fourth rounds, dictated ultimately by how he ran during the pre-draft process at venues like the NFL’s rookie scouting combine and Notre Dame’s Pro Day.
How To ‘Work It Out’: Laney Jones’ Guide To A Lively Spirit, Majestic Life
From an exotic animal farm nestled in the soft-stemmed marshes of central Florida to a collegiate experience so achingly normal as to spur a short stint at the Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts and kick start a musical career that, while still in its nascent stages, is just aching to flower, Laney Jones has always found her own quirky way through life.
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.
Austin Plaine – Finding Beauty In Simplicity
Homegrown is a word often associated with talent. Down-to-earth a term more often uttered in respect to a person’s demeanor, their approach to other people and the world around them.
Songwriter Austin Plaine is both.
Soren Bryce On Avoiding Songwriting Pratfalls Along The Musical Path
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.
On Fourth of July, Takeru Kobayashi Checks America’s Pulse
How many hot dogs will you eat?
For most, it’s a fairly innocuous question, usually asked by a friend or family member during the midday hours of Fourth of July, America’s celebration of its illimitable and (mostly) unquestioned freedom. It is just another tradition to honor on this most revelatory of days, right at home within the framework of patriotic celebration alongside fireworks, beer and potato salad.
For Takeru Kobayashi, for the man known to a generation of competitive eating fans simply as Kobayashi, the question carries the weight of a lifetime spent in contest, spent pushing himself farther, harder, faster in the hopes every year of devouring more than his opponents, in the hopes that the physical discomfort that will, of course, result, will have been worth it.
At this point, it’d be fair to wonder if Kobayashi believes it was.
Team Eazy: The Championship Group Text You Never Knew Existed
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.
Boxing Diva to Boss Lady
Two decades in New York City jails will leave their mark on you. The uniforms – so uncomfortable, so drab – the cold roundness of the bars, the perfectly imperfect symmetry, the unquestionably defined lines of the place itself. From the way you dress to the way you carry yourself, even to the way you speak, an indelible sign, like an unyielding bruise, lingers long after you’ve made it out.
For Renee Aiken, that mark is most evident in her work.
After Bronze in Rio, Kristi Castlin Aiming for New Hurdle
Kristi Castlin was just 12 years old when her father, Rodney Castlin, was gunned down by a man demanding money out of the coffers at the hotel where the Castlin family patriarch worked. No child is equipped to deal with the devastating effects of such a loss, and Castlin—bright, talented, quick as she was even then—proved no exception.
At Rio Games, Seeking “Out” Heroes
Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African President, once spoke in no uncertain terms of his love for sport, of his admiration for its transformative nature, of its ability to join even the most diametrically opposed cultural forces, if only for a short time.
“Sport has the power to change the world,” Mandela said once, his voice ringing out to a stadium of 65,000, moments from tearing one another apart. “It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.”
And while Mandela – the man whose contributions to not only his home country, but the world at large, were so vast, so far-reaching that we spent last Monday, as we will every July 18, celebrating his legacy – was speaking of the black-white racism threatening to rip asunder the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and in turn, Johannesburg, his words apply more broadly even, may be required now more than ever for an America – and a world – that finds itself asking why, oh god why, again and again and again.
For Charley Cullen Walters, an Olympic analyst and LGBT advocate preparing to wing his way to Rio for the 2016 Summer games, Mandela’s words represent a similar lesson of acceptance, of self and culture-wide growth, that he too preaches, that Walters hopes is refreshed in the minds of Olympic-loving fans, of the world, not just every two years, but every day, every morning when they brush their teeth, send their children to school, every evening at the close of day, when they shutter their home, those same children soundly asleep in the nearest room.
Choredale Booker is Mr. Get It Done
Chordale Booker doesn’t get to call himself an Olympian, just missed out in early December 2015 on the opportunity to don the gloves and represent his country and his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut in the ring at Rio alongside the rest of America’s athletes.
But that’s OK – for now.
Because Booker is Mr. Get It Done; and, well, he’s going to do just that.
Part the ropes, point him to an opponent, and Booker will knock down that obstacle.
He’s been doing it all his life.
Calvin Setar 