1. sports

Academic Learning Packets
Sports Stories
Learning Packets for Students
in Physical Education Classes
2007 Edition
Questions and puzzles all copyright ©2007 by
The Advantage Press, Inc.
The Advantage Press, Inc. PO Box 3025, Lisle, IL USA (630) 960-5305
Sports Stories ALP: Table of Contents
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Athletes sharpen financial game
He’s happy to have big weight on his shoulder
College hoops’ biggest winner
Fencing teaches good balance, coordination
Former boxer Floyd Patterson’s life
Hoop dreams: use a cirlce around your waist for muscle tone
NBA star ames invests in housing project
100,000 and Counting
Number crunch: U.S. soccer program needs more athletes
Sporting behavior
Star high school athlete becomes his own man
New heights
Making all the right moves
Defending their hockey gold
Wrestler’s world is never limited by his disability
Play it smart
The free ride to first includes bruises
J-Mac’s meaningful message
Too many 300s?
Deaf athlete aiming for title
Teacher Answers
Sports Stories 2007
Introduction
Advantage Press, Inc.
A Note To The Teacher: Use of Academic Learning Packets:
The learning packets included in this notebook address a number of contemporary issues
facing young people today. Teachers are urged to read all articles before distributing them
to students. This preview will allow you to make certain the material is appropriate for
the group you are teaching. Teachers will find that the enclosed articles are excellent for
opening discussion on important subjects that otherwise might be overlooked.
Academic Learning Packets are designed by educators to make your professional life
easier. Immediately! These packets can be used to “fill some empty time,” or to enhance
instruction. They are built around current, interesting, and newsworthy topics. And their
use in your classroom is limitless. Here are a few recommendations:
1. Curriculum Enhancement. Information in the articles is usually too current to be
found in most text books. If you find student interest in a particular topic, you might
consider having all students read an article and then use the given questions as an
aspect of a chapter or unit test. Questions can also be used to generate classroom
discussions. Students will find the puzzles to be an interesting way to assess what
they have learned.
2. Group Work. If you want students to work together on a project, the articles and
questions can be used as a starting point. You can divide your class into groups of
three or four and give each group a different article to study. The groups can complete
the questions or puzzles together and then report back to the whole class on what
they have learned. This can be an excellent way to promote cooperative learning in
your classroom.
3. Testing Situations. Select an article and a puzzle and make several copies. If a
student finishes a test early, give him or her the article and puzzle to work on while
others are still taking the test. This can count as extra-credit or simply be used as an
enrichment experience. If a student was absent when a test was given, he or she can
be sent to a study hall or the library with an Academic Learning Packet when you
hand back the exams to the rest of the class for review.
4. Substitute Plans. Photocopy the table of contents page and take it home with you. Put the Academic Learning Packet Notebook with your substitute folder in your desk
or in the school’s office. If you are suddenly ill and have no viable lesson plans,
review the table of contents page to select an article which might be appropriate for
your class. When you call in sick, give instructions for your substitute to copy and
use the selected article, questions and/or puzzles.
Sports Stories 2007
Introduction
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. Study Hall Monitor or Homeroom Teacher. When students come to study hall or
homeroom with “nothing to do,” an Academic Learning Packet can provide a meaningful activity.
6. Discipline Uses. Students assigned to detention or suspension rooms can complete
Academic Learning Packets during their assigned time. This not only helps to make
better use of a student’s time while detained, but also provides a meaningful activity
for students to focus on while being held out of class or after school.
7. Extra-Credit Assignments. Academic Learning Packets are an excellent way to
control the nature of extra-credit assignments. There will no longer be a need for
accepting reports plagiarized from the encyclopedia, or copied word-for-word from
a newspaper.
Sports Stories 2007
Introduction
Advantage Press, Inc.
Athletes Sharpen Financial Game
Sports Stories, 2007
Chicago Tribune
It’s an old story, and it doesn’t have a
happy ending. An athlete puts his trust and
paycheck in the hands of a sports agent or
financial adviser who takes advantage of his
naivete. The player’s money is consumed
by inflated commissions or is frittered away
in bad investments.
Even players with long, high-profile careers
like former Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen have become financial victims.
Packet #1
most-prominent business schools to
learn more about entrepreneurship,
finance and management.
“I think players are realizing they are not
going to play forever, and they aren’t going
to be able to lean on their agent for their
entire life,” said Mike Haynes, a Hall of
Fame football player who is the NFL’s vice
president of player and employee development. “They are being proactive and trying
to pursue ways to educate themselves.”
But there’s growing evidence professional
athletes are getting smarter about how they
manage their money, players and league officials say. The sports stars are acting less
nouveau riche and more financially astute,
which is a good thing according to agents
and players’ unions.
• More athletes are using prominent
banks and investment houses to
handle their financial affairs rather
than relying on a lone financial adviser who may be hard to check up
on.
• Fewer players are letting their agents
double as their financial adviser. “It
should be separate,” said former
Chicago Bears safety Tony Parrish.
• NFL players are lining up to attend
three-day seminars at the nation’s
Sports Stories 2007
Money management issues are getting more
attention these days for a simple reason:
Players are making astronomical amounts
of money, which makes them targets for
everyone, from family members seeking
loans to scam artists offering to double
their fortunes.
The current average salary in Major League
baseball is $2.9 million, putting ballplayers
on a par with many CEOs. Of course, many
athletes end up playing only a year or two
before they are injured or cut.
Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sometimes the biggest financial enemy
faced by an athlete is himself. Temptations
to blow a lot of cash abound in the form
of expensive cars, yachts, mansions and
private jets.
“Their first inclination is to blow it on
jewelry or 15 homes around the country.
They run around like they’ve never seen
a dollar in their life,” said Chicago sports
agent Keith Kreiter. “You have to tell them
to take a deep breath. The goal is to be able
to live off their interest.”
Football League Players Association.
Two years ago, Pippen sued his investment adviser, alleging Robert Lunn had
dissipated $17 million given to him by the
Bulls star to invest. According to the suit,
Lunn placed Pippen’s cash in risky deals,
some in which Lunn had an undisclosed
personal financial interest. Lunn also allegedly refused to provide performance reports
on Pippen’s investments despite repeated
requests.
Pippen won an $11.8 million judgment
against Lunn, who ended up filing for bankruptcy and closing his firm.
In one of the most notorious cases in recent
years, William “Tank” Black was sentenced
to 60 months in prison and ordered to pay
$12 million in restitution in 2002 for defrauding his athlete clients through a variety
of investment schemes over a three-year
period.
Athletes are used to putting their bodies
at risk. A good percentage of them act the
same way with their money, some financial
advisers say.
Recently five current or former Denver
Bronco players filed suit in Georgia to recover $15 million from an Atlanta hedge
fund they say defrauded them.
Between 1999 and 2002, 78 pro football
players were bilked out of more than $42
million by financial advisers with questionable backgrounds, according to the National
Sports Stories 2007
Black had encouraged his clients to invest
in Cash 4 Titles, a car-title loan business
that turned out to be an offshore Ponzi
scheme. In another case, he received free
stock from a small public company by
falsely promising his clients would promote
the firm. The stock was supposed to go to
the athletes, but Black kept it for himself
and sold the shares to his clients.
Despite such publicity, unscrupulous agents
haven’t gone away, warned Kenneth Shropshire, a Wharton professor and director of
the Wharton Sports Business Initiative at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
“Those guys are out there and will be out
there,” he said. “If you wouldn’t risk going
to jail for $1,000, what about $1 million or
$2 million? That’s the amount the agent is
looking at. They can get 3 percent or more
of an athlete’s salary, and that’s just the
contract negotiation.”
Gale Sayers, the Hall of Fame Chicago
Bears running back, said he knows a lot of
players who made big money but “don’t
have a dime today.” They have only themselves to blame, Sayers added.
given power of attorney over their clients’
checking accounts, allowing the agents to
write checks for bills as if the money was
their own.
Since then, some agents have come up
with new ways to charge their clients. In
addition to the commission for negotiating
a contract, agents would charge clients for
other services, including paying bills, booking airline tickets and making restaurant
reservations.
“A lot of players don’t know what they
make. They let their agent take their money
and pay their bills. After four or five years,
they have no money left,” he said. “Nobody knows how to handle my money like
me.”
Sayers became a stockbroker during his
second year in football. When his short but
meteoric career ended in 1971 because of
injuries, he went back to college, got his degree and went into athletic administration.
After he decided his options were limited
in that field, he moved back to Chicago and
started a computer supply company. He is
still at it 25 years later.
Sayers’ advice to players is straightforward:
“Prepare to quit. You should be preparing
to quit when you’re in high school. You
may not go to college. You may not ever
play pro ball.”
In the old days, some agents wanted to be
everything to their athlete clients: contract
negotiator, father figure, therapist, banker
and investment adviser. Many agents were
Sports Stories 2007
“They want to act like a concierge from a
distance,” said Orien Greene Sr., the father
of Boston Celtic backup point guard Orien
Greene Jr. “They want to charge these kids
$10,000 or $15,000 a year for this service.
They’ll tell a kid coming out of college,
‘We’ll pay your bills.’ My son has six bills.
That’s a real hard job.”
His son’s first agent was leading “us down
a dark road,” Greene Sr. said. “The other
agent didn’t even tell us the NBA had a
401(k). They match 130 percent of what
you put in, so if you don’t know to do that,
you are caught unprepared.”
His son now is represented by Kreiter.
“Keith rescued us out of that situation with
minimal financial gain for himself,” he
Packet #1
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said. “When you have a first-time athlete,
you need guidance from an ethical professional.”
Although it may be less lucrative, some
agents are taking a hands-off approach to
their client’s money.
Mark Bartelstein, one of Chicago’s top
agents, negotiates contracts for clients but
steers them to outside firms like Morgan
Stanley or Merrill Lynch for money management services.
“We don’t get anything for it. We don’t get
referral fees,” Bartelstein said.
The separation-of-powers approach has
been a success, he said.
Sports Stories 2007
“Our clients listen to us. We have a great
relationship with them. At the end of the
day, it’s their money.”
Kreiter is following the same game plan.
He believes it’s time to stop treating athletes like rich children and to start treating
them like midsize corporations that need
everything from insurance products to private banking services to media relations
advice. Within this corporation, the athlete
is the chief executive, but he or she needs
someone to act as a chief financial officer.
Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #1
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. What old story doesn’t have a happy ending?
2. What is growing evidence showing?
3. What are NFL players lining up to attend?
4. Who is Mike Haynes?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. Why are money management issues getting more attention today?
6. Why is one of the biggest financial enemies of an athlete himself?
7. What has Pippen claimed about his investment adviser?
8. What did the car-title loan business end up being?
9. Who is Kenneth Shropshire?
10. Who is Gale Sayers?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 1
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
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Across
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6. Chicago sports agent _____
Across
7. Orien Greene Jr. was a backup point guard for
the _____ Celtics
6. 9. Scottie
Chicago
sports
agent a_____ Pippen
became
financial _____
10.
He
sued
his
financial
adviser
_____
7. 13.Orien
Greene Jr. was a backup
point guard
Players are making _____ amounts of money
the _____ Celtics
16.for
Sports
stars are acting less _____ rich
Sometimes
the biggest
enemy
faced
9. 18.
Scottie
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a financial
_____ by an athlete is _____
10.19.
He
sued are
his realizing
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adviser
_____ Players
they are
not going to
forever
13._____
20.Players
are
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_____
amounts
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One of Chicago’s top agents
16. 18. 19. 20. money
Sports stars are acting less _____ rich
Sometimes the biggest financial enemy
faced by an athlete is _____ Players are realizing that they are not going
to _____ forever
One of Chicago’s top agents
Sports Stories 2007
1.Down
William “Tank” _____
2. Mansions and private _____
3. A former Chicago Bears safety _____
William
“Tank”
_____ 4.1.
Many
athletes end
up playing
only a year or
two
before
they
are
injured
or
_____
2. Mansions and private _____ 5. Athletes are used to putting their _____ at risk
Aofformer
8.3.
Power
_____ Chicago Bears safety _____ 11.
Sayers
advice
to pro end
athletes
is, “prepare
4. Many athletes
up playing
onlytoa year
_____”
orvice
twopresident
before they
are injured
or _____ 12. NFL’s
of player
and employee
development
_____
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14. Fewer players are letting their agents _____
riskadvisers
as financial
15.
_____
8.Chicago
Power
of _____ 17. A former Chicago Bears running back
11. Sayers advice to pro athletes is, “prepare to
_____” 12. NFL’s vice president of player and employee development _____ 14. Fewer players are letting their agents
_____ as financial advisers 15. Chicago _____ 17. A former Chicago Bears running back Packet #1
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports WordSearch 1
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Packet #1
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He’s Happy to have Big Weight
on his Shoulder
Sports Stories, 2007
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
When Derrick Johnson was just 12 years
old, his life changed. He may not have
known it at the time, but it did.
A friend of his older sister would come to
Johnson’s home in St. Louis, talking about
weightlifting competitions and showing
medals and trophies he’d won.
“What kid doesn’t want medals and trophies?” asks Johnson.
The friend, Dameko Wilkerson, took Johnson to the Lift for Life Gym in downtown
St. Louis.
And in doing so, he took Johnson from one
life into another.
“Most of my friends from back then are in
jail now - or worse,” says Johnson. “This
place gave me the opportunity to stay off
the streets.”
In the beginning:
Johnson says he’s always been involved
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #2
in sports. Even before going to Lift for
Life, he would play basketball and football
whenever he got a chance.
“I guess that’s why I liked this place so
much,” he says. “It was just kind of natural
for me.”
The gym is open every day from 3 to 7
p.m. and is free for inner-city kids ages 8
to 18.
Wilkerson was Johnson’s first coach at
the gym, helping him learn Olympic-style
weightlifting techniques.
When Johnson entered high school - he
attended Rockwood Summit in Fenton as
part of the desegregation program - his
interest in weightlifting never waned, even
though he played a plethora of sports in
high school. His freshman and senior years
he wrestled - making it to the state championships his senior year - and in between
he ran track and played football, basketball
and baseball.
His dedication was legendary. “I’d come
from a two-hour football practice after
school, then train (at the gym) for about an
hour before heading home.”
Johnson also took weightlifting classes in
high school. “The coach would always have
Packet #2
Advantage Press, Inc.
me get in extra stuff. He knew I wanted to
compete.”
But high schools aren’t famous for competitive weightlifting. In the one competition
Johnson entered, he won first place.
College:
Johnson got scholarship offers for wrestling
at several colleges. But at that point in his
life, “wrestling wasn’t something I wanted
to do,” he says.
So he chose Louisiana State University,
where he received financial assistance
based on his weightlifting prowess. “But it
was too small for me, so I came back here
two years ago.”
After a year at Lindenwood University, he
is now attending UMSL, where he’s majoring in political science; he has about a year
of school left.
them.
The siblings have all been successful in
weightlifting.
“A lot of people here are saying there’s
some kind of gene that runs in our family,”
Johnson says.
Competitions:
Competitions have taken Johnson all over
the world, from South Korea to Belarus
to Puerto Rico, and soon he will head to
Turkey to compete in the World University
Games. He received three gold medals at
the national collegiate competition and was
selected to represent the United States as
one of the top eight men in weightlifting.
He competes in the 62-kilogram, or 136.6pound, weight division.
In competitive weightlifting, athletes do two
moves: the clean and jerk, and the snatch. In
the clean and jerk, a bar loaded with weight
is lifted off the floor to the shoulders and
then pressed overhead. In the snatch, you
rapidly lift the weight overhead from the
ground in one continuous motion.
“There’s a lot of technique involved there,”
says Johnson.
With his move back to St. Louis, he returned to the Lift for Life gym.
“I wanted to help kids like I was helped,”
he says. Some of those kids were his four
younger siblings. Now, he’s coach to
Sports Stories 2007
In 2005, he placed first in his division at
the World Junior Championships, sort of
Packet #2
Advantage Press, Inc.
an Olympics for those under age 20. In
that competition he lifted 112.5 kilograms
(about 248 pounds) in the snatch and 135
kilograms (about 298 pounds) in the clean
and jerk. He hopes to lift 113 kg on the
snatch and 140 on the clean and jerk in
Turkey.
Johnson’s goal is to compete in the 2008
Olympics. “But for now, I’m just trying
to take it one competition at a time,” he
says.
His workouts:
Johnson spends about an hour and a half in
the gym four or five days a week. For the
most part, his workouts are like any other
weight training workout: lots of squats,
bench presses, etc.
He spends part of the time working on technique, though, in the snatch and the clean
and jerk. For cardiovascular workouts, he
plays basketball whenever he can.
Marshall Cohen, who founded Lift for Life
18 years ago, says Johnson is a special guy.
“It’s spectacular that he’s so goal-oriented
and driven. ... He has the character and
education to set a great example for these
kids. They look up to him and see him as a
great role model. You can’t beat that.”
Sports Stories 2007
He also spends five days a week at the gym
coaching younger kids, working in the
kitchen there or playing games with them.
He watches his diet somewhat, especially
before a competition, to make sure he
makes his weight class.
“I’m a fairly healthy eater, I’d say. I don’t
buy junk food. You won’t find any ice
cream in my house.”
Packet #2
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #2
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. How did Dameko Wilkerson take Derrick Johnson from one life to another?
2. Where are most of Derrick Johnson’s friends from back then now?
3. What did Wilkerson help Johnson learn?
4. According to Johnson what aren’t high schools famous for?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #2
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. Why did Johnson leave Louisiana State University?
6. What is Johnson’s major at UMSL?
7. What games will Johnson be competing in while in Turkey?
8. What are the two moves that athletes do in competitive weightlifting?
9. How is the snatch move performed?
10. What is Johnson’s goal?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #2
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 2
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
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Across
2. Johnson got _____ offers at several colleges
6. Political _____ 7. Johnson’s _____ is to compete in the 2008
Olympics
9. Johnson doesn’t buy _____ food
10. Rockwood _____ 13. The gym is _____ for inner-city kids
16. Lift for _____ Gym
17. Johnson received _____ gold medals at
national collegiate competition
18. The gym gave him an opportunity to stay
off the _____ 19. St. Louis is his home _____ Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. High schools aren’t _____ for competitive
weightlifting
3. He found Lift for Life
4. Puerto _____
5. Johnson competes in the 62-kilogram _____ division
6. Louisiana _____ University
8. Johnson’s friend _____ 11. Bench _____ 12. Johnson has always been involved in _____ 14. The clean and _____
15. Johnson played a _____ of sports in high
school
Packet #2
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Sports WordSearch 2
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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science
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jerk
goal
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Sports Stories 2007
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College Hoops’ Biggest Winner
Sports Stories, 2007
USA TODAY
LEBANON, Ill. — Walking down St.
Louis Street, it is apparent this is the type
of town where Harry Statham would be
found coaching basketball. The two-block
main drag includes a barbershop, a dentist’s
office and the chamber of commerce, but
no McDonald’s.
You can get a banana split at Dr. Jazz Soda
Fountain & Grille, but don’t look for coffee
at any Starbucks.
Most important, being 26 miles east of St.
Louis, it is just outside the limelight.
A unique coach needs a unique town.
And the McKendree College coach is a
singular act.
As in No. 1.
Statham (STATE-um) has modeled his
teams the last 40 years on the up-tempo
Packet #3
offense and aggressive defensive style of
Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky teams.
“I liked that as a young kid so I incorporated
it,” said Statham, 68, a native of Brookport,
Illinois, on the Kentucky border. “More
good shots win. I am very conscious of shot
selection. Go down. Attack. Get something
good.”
Only two men have won more basketball
games at four-year colleges than Rupp’s
876.
North Carolina’s Dean Smith won 879.
Statham is 903-351 at the NAIA school,
where enrollment is 1,500 and a ticket is $3
for general admission or $5 for a reserved
seat.
Rupp and Smith are two of the most famous
coaches in any sport. Outside of basketball
junkies and almost everyone in Lebanon,
Statham has achieved his records with no
spotlight.
The McKendree coach has a word to describe that phenomenon: Perfect.
For Statham, the best of all worlds would
be for his team to continue to win and for
nobody to talk about him.
“It is not a ‘me’ thing,” says Todd Reyn-
Sports Stories 2007
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olds, vice president of student affairs. “He
will go out of his way to defer his personal
achievements to everyone else. It is always
about somebody else. Of course, everybody
knows Harry has done remarkable work on
his own.”
Kent Zimmerman, the radio voice of McKendree basketball, said Statham was “almost dreading what was about to happen”
when he broke Smith’s record.
“And I can tell you what is in that bag,” says
Paul Funkhauser, who played for Statham’s
first team and coached with him for 15
years. “A turkey sandwich and a plastic
container with cut-up vegetables.”
• Practice is from 2-4 p.m.
• He is asleep before 11 p.m.
• Vacation spots are Hawaii and Las
Vegas.
• Before McKendree takes the floor on
game days, the William Tell Overture
plays. “When that thing comes on, I’m
always ready,” the coach says. “It turns
the light on for me.”
“But when it finally did happen, he kind
of realized the significance of being the
winningest coach in college basketball,”
Zimmerman says. “I hope he was able to
appreciate that a little bit.”
Right by his side
Former broadcaster Bruce Veach says:
“Every game has equal meaning to him.
The only difference was after 900 we ate
cake.”
Things are that uncomplicated in Statham’s
world.
• You win games by getting the right
kids.
It is that simple.
“The kids we recruit here have been alike,”
he says. “They are good kids academically,
and they love basketball. Over the years
we have done a good job getting those
people. When we don’t get them, we’re
not as good.”
His only contradiction is to be presump-
• He wakes up at 6 a.m. and exercises
for 90 minutes.
• His wife, Rose, packs him a brown-bag
lunch. He eats in his office and returns
the bag to her at the end of the day.
Sports Stories 2007
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tuous enough to think he knows what it
takes to mold players into winners. And
then, when it turns out he’s right, he is surprised that anyone — say, Smith — would
notice.
“I figured he probably didn’t know who
we were,” Statham says about receiving a
phone call from the man whose record he
broke. “We talked for about a half-hour.
Then he wrote me a nice note. He was very
gracious.”
In 1966, Statham, who spent five years as
a high school coach, came back to his alma
mater for “a few years” in hopes of ultimately landing “a really good high school
job” where he could win a state title.
Four decades later he is the college’s athletics director, the basketball court bears
his name and his teams win at a milestone
rate.
Sports Stories 2007
Early success did lead to thoughts of bigger jobs. But after 15 years at McKendree,
Statham knew he was a lifer.
“He was happy doing what he was doing.
For some people, you don’t need to do anymore than that,” Zimmerman says.
Some have speculated about what conditions would force Statham to retire and
leave McKendree.
“The only reason he would hang it up is
when he doesn’t enjoy it anymore,” says
Woody Derickson, who has been friends
with the coach since college. “I’ve never
known anyone who enjoys his job as much
as Harry.
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #3
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Where is Lebanon, Illinois?
2. On what defense and offense has Statham modeled his teams after?
3. What two men have won more games at four-year colleges than Coach Rupp’s 876
wins?
4. What does McKendree College charge for admissions to a basketball game?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. What is the best of all worlds for Statham?
6. Who is Todd Reynolds?
7. What does Statham do with his brown lunch bag at the end of a day?
8. What does Statham usually eat for lunch?
9. On game days what song plays before McKendree takes the floor?
10. Who is Woody Derickson?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 3
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
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3
4
5
6
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20
3. Statham is a native of _____, Illinois
4. Statham’s vacation spots are Las Vegas and
_____ 7. A brand of coffee
9. Aggressive _____ style 12. Statham has achieved his records with no
_____ 14. Statham knew he was a _____ 16. The type of sandwich Statham usually eats
for lunch
18. The college Statham coaches at 19. Vice-President of student affairs 20. A former broadcaster Sports Stories 2007
13
Down
1. He played for Statham’s first team 2. St. _____ Street 5. Dr. _____ Soda Fountain & Grille 6. A Kentucky coach _____ 8. North Carolina’s Dean _____ 10. Things are uncomplicated in Statham’s
_____ 11. The radio voice of McKendree basketball
13. The best of all worlds for Statham is for his
team to continue to win and for nobody to
_____ about him 15. Rupp and Smith are the two most _____ coaches in any sport
17. Statham’s wife Packet #3
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Sports WordSearch 3
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
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Fencing Teaches Good Balance, Coordination
Sports Stories, 2007
The Baltimore Sun
“I was desperately seeking some physical
activity,” says Dr. Joanne Watson, 37, a
family medicine physician at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.
Her husband, Bruce, also a doctor, had
been dispatched to Kentucky with his Army
Reserve unit. Suddenly, Joanne was sole
caregiver for their three young children
and in need of an occasional sanity-saving
energy burn.
Packet #4
Maybe it’s the snow-white uniforms that
remind you of cavalrymen dipped in powdered sugar. Or maybe it’s the French-laced
terminology.
Most people might think the toughest part
of the sport is squeezing into those tight
pants.
Au contraire.
“There’s a lot of legwork,” says Watson.
“We call it physical chess. Getting yourself
into position, the lunging. It’s aerobic and
it’s anaerobic.”
Ray Gordon, 43, a professional fencing instructor who serves as club president, says
you work the quad muscles and hamstrings
especially hard.
She also recently had dropped 53 pounds dieting and wanted to keep the weight off.
“I hate the treadmill,” says Watson. “I hate
the gym. And I hate walking.”
She spotted an ad in a community newspaper for the Chesapeake Fencing Club and
decided to check it out. The club has about
60 saber-rattling active members.
Even seasoned fencers, however, concede
that their sport has an image problem.
Sports Stories 2007
“Fencing is very high intensity,” he adds,
“so it’s more like sprinting than jogging.”
Longtime member Dan Collins, senior director of media relations at Mercy Medical
Center, says fencing also develops upperbody strength and balance.
“You burn calories at a higher rate than
a professional football player,” says Collins.
Roughly 500,000 Americans fence recre-
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ationally, according to Mike May, spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers
Association. Membership in the tournament-oriented U.S. Fencing Association
stands at 25,000, up about 50 percent in
four years.
“We are seeing rapid growth,” says Cindy
Bent Findlay, the association’s media relations officer.
area on an opponent’s body. With the epee,
everything is fair game; with the foil, just
the torso. A saber scores anywhere above
the waist, including the head and arms.
A point is awarded every time a sword tip
touches a hot spot on the body, which is
wired to record electronic hits.
The standard match lasts 9 minutes - or until
a fencer registers 15 touches.
Watching Gordon and Collins spar is like
watching a mating ritual in the animal
kingdom.
There’s lots of fancy footwork and parrying punctuated by split seconds of frenzied,
meaningful action.
She attributes that spike to the proliferation
of coaches and the U.S. women’s team having won gold and bronze medals in saber
fencing at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
They stutter-step up and back on a 40-footlong, 6-foot-wide strip marked by colored
tape on the wood floor - their truncated
battlefield.
Very few Chesapeake Fencing Club members dream of someday striking Olympic
gold. They practice two nights a week for
the fun of it.
“I’m still in the think-too-much stage,” says
Watson, pointing out instinctive moves the
two men employ that are invisible to the
untrained eye.
Watson did drills for more than a month
before proceeding to an actual bout, whereupon, she recalls, a 12-year-old fencer
“kicked my butt.”
Collins, dripping sweat, takes a seat on a
folding chair after he and Gordon finish.
There are three weapons of choice: foil,
epee and saber.
The swords vary slightly in weight and grip,
but, most critically, in the size of the target
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #4
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He says he grew up chubby, “the last-kidpicked-for-dodge-ball type of thing.”
Twenty years later, he’s more than 40
pounds lighter and part of what he calls
“this underground society of fencers.”
In 1986, he intended to sign up for a course
on automobile maintenance at the Towson
YMCA and instead wound up taking a fencing course Gordon was teaching.
He owes that transformation to now-bestfriend Gordon, who has stripped off his
workout clothes and walks by wearing a
favorite Descartes-inspired T-shirt.
Back then; Collins was overweight and
plagued by high blood pressure.
It reads: “I fence, therefore I am.”
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #4
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Dr. Joanne Watson?
2. Where did Dr. Watson find out about fencing?
3. Why does fencing have an image problem?
4. What are some physical benefits of fencing?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #4
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5. Who is Ray Gordon?
6. What does Gordon say is worked especially hard on your body when fencing?
7. What does Dan Collins say fencing develops?
8. How popular is fencing as a recreational sport?
9. Why are we seeing rapid growth in this sport?
10. How are points scored with a saber?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 4
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Across
2. 3. 4. 6. 8. 11. 12. 13. 15. 17. Watson did drills for more than a month
before proceeding to an actual _____ You work the _____ muscles and hamstrings especially hard
A standard match lasts _____ minutes Fencing is more like sprinting than _____ Most agree that fencing has an _____ problem Cindy _____ Findlay Au _____ A family medicine physician _____ Chesapeake _____ Club Physical _____ Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. 2. 5. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 14. 16. Serves as club president _____ US women’s team won gold and _____ medals in the 2004 Summer Olympics You burn calories at a higher rate than a
professional _____ player Sporting _____ Manufacturers Association
Fencing is very high _____ Swords vary slightly in weight and _____ There’s a lot of _____ Collins says fencing also develops upper-
body strength and _____ The pants are _____ There are three weapons of choice: foil,
_____ and saber
Packet #4
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Sports WordSearch 4
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bout
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grip
nine
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Former Boxer Floyd Patterson’s Life
Sports Stories, 2007
Chicago Tribune
Floyd Patterson, who avenged an embarrassing loss to Ingemar Johansson by
beating him a year later to become the
first boxer to regain the heavyweight title,
recently died at the age of 71.
Patterson died at his home in New Paltz,
New York. He had Alzheimer’s disease
for about eight years and prostate cancer,
nephew Sherman Patterson said.
Patterson’s career was marked by historic
highs and humiliating lows.
He emerged from a troubled childhood in
Brooklyn to win the Olympic middleweight
championship in 1952.
Packet #5
losing the title to Johansson at the Polo
Grounds in New York City.
Patterson returned with a vengeance at the
same site in 1960, knocking out Johansson
with a tremendous left hook to retake the
title.
“They said I was the fighter who got
knocked down the most, but I also got up
the most,” Patterson said later.
Despite his accomplishment, he was so
humiliated when he lost the title on a firstround knockout to Sonny Liston in 1962
that he left Comiskey Park in Chicago wearing dark glasses and a fake beard. Patterson
again was knocked out in the first round by
Liston in 1963.
Patterson got two more shots at winning
the title a third time. Battered and taunted
for most of the fight by Muhammad Ali,
Patterson was stopped in the 12th round in
1965. He lost a disputed 15-round decision
to WBA champion Jimmy Ellis in 1968.
In 1956, the undersized heavyweight became at age 21 the youngest man to win the
title with a fifth-round knockout of Archie
Moore.
But three years later, Patterson was knocked
down seven times in the third round in
Sports Stories 2007
Overall, Patterson finished 55-8-1 with 40
knockouts. He was knocked out five times
and knocked down a total of at least 15
times. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.
After retiring in 1972, Patterson remained
close to the sport. He served twice as chairman of the New York State Athletic Com-
Packet #5
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heavyweight in 1956.
After regaining the title, Patterson was
the verge of losing it again when he was
knocked down twice by Johansson in the
first round in 1961. But Patterson knocked
down Johansson before the round was over,
then won on sixth-round knockout.
mission.
His second term began when he was picked
in 1995 by Gov. George Pataki to help rebuild boxing in New York.
On April 1, 1998, Patterson resigned the
post after a published report that a threehour videotape of a deposition he gave in a
lawsuit revealed he couldn’t recall important events in his boxing career.
Patterson said he was very tired during the
deposition and, “It’s hard for me to think
when I’m tired.”
Patterson, one of 11 children, was in enough
trouble as a youngster to be sent to the
Wiltwyck School for Boys. After being released, he took up boxing, won a New York
Golden Gloves championship and then the
Olympic gold medal in the 165-pound class
at Helsinki, Finland.
“If it wasn’t for boxing, I would probably
be behind bars or dead,” he said in a 1998
interview.
He turned pro in 1952 under the management of Cus D’Amato, who in the 1980s
would develop another heavyweight
champion, Mike Tyson. Patterson fought
as a light heavyweight until becoming a
Sports Stories 2007
He made a successful defense, then lost
the title to Liston in a fight a lot of people
didn’t want him to take. In fact, taking the
match caused a split between Patterson and
D’Amato.
Patterson said in 1997 that another person
who didn’t want him to fight Liston was
President Kennedy.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” Patterson said
he told Kennedy. “The title is not worth
anything if the best fighters can’t have a
shot at it. And Liston deserves a shot.”
Patterson retired after been stopped by Ali
in the seventh round of a non-title match in
1972 at Madison Square Garden.
Patterson and his second wife, Janet, lived
on a farm near New Paltz, New York. After
leaving the athletic commission, Patterson
counseled troubled children for the New
York State Office of Children and Family
Services.
He also adopted Tracy Harris two years
after the 11-year-old boy began hanging
around the gym at Patterson’s home. In
1992, Tracy Harris Patterson, with his
father’s help, won the WBC super bantamweight championship.
Packet #5
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #5
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. What did Floyd Patterson do to avenge a loss to Ingemar Johansson?
2. What did Patterson win in 1952?
3. What did Patterson do to disguise himself after his loss to Sonny Liston?
4. What happened in the 12th round against Muhammad Ali?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #5
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5. What was Patterson’s overall record?
6. What honor did Patterson receive in 1991?
7. How did Patterson stay involved in boxing after his retirement from the ring?
8. What type of school is the Wiltwyck School for Boys?
9. What did Patterson accomplish after leaving the Wilwyck School for Boys?
10. Who was another person who didn’t want Patterson to fight Liston?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 5
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
9
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Across
4. 5. 7. 8. 10. 12. 13. 16. Madison Square _____ International Boxing Hall of _____ Patterson was humiliated in this city Patterson was one of _____ children
Mike _____ WBA champion Knocked out this fighter in the fifth round Patterson’s career was marked by _____ highs and lows.
17. Avenged an embarrassing loss to Ingemar
Johansson
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Patterson adopted him Governor of New York in 1995
President John _____ New York _____ Gloves Helsinki _____ Patterson lost his title to this fighter at Polo
Grounds
7. A disease that Patterson suffered from 9. New York State _____ Commission 11. First name of Floyd Patterson’s nephew 14. Muhammad _____ 15. Wiltwyck School for _____ Packet #5
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Sports WordSearch 5
Find the hidden words and circle them.
U D
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Packet #5
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Hoop Dreams:
Use a circle around your waist for muscle tone
Sports Stories, 2007
Packet #6
part dance and total fun.
LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
A bright pink and green hoop revolves
around the waist of instructor Rayna McInturf as she drills students with lunges and
squats.
“Shake it like Elvis,” she says with a smile
as the women surrounding her, all with
hoops in motion, pick up speed.
“It just feels good, and it’s almost meditative,” says Sammi Triolo, a student of
McInturf’s from Hermosa Beach, California who has been hooping for more than a
year. “I also do a lot of yoga, and the two
really complement each other.”
In Los Angeles, as well as other cities across
the country, the spirit of hooping is catching on, with private classes being offered
for novices as well as advanced students.
McInturf’s six-week class for beginners
costs $240 for 12 sessions, and she offers
it several times a year.
“A lot of people who’ve never done it before don’t think they can,” she says. “But I
have the full belief that I can teach anybody
to keep a hoop moving around their waist
in about five minutes.”
This is an intermediate hooping class at a
dance studio in Hollywood, and it’s a far
cry from the schoolyard practice many
may remember from childhood. These
days, “Hula-Hooping” is gone. It’s been
transformed into “hooping,” a practice for
adults that enthusiasts say is part exercise,
Sports Stories 2007
That’s because these are not the old-fashioned, lightweight plastic rings from the
toy store. Instead, larger, weighted hoops
are used, made from heavy-duty irrigation
tubing and then decorated with colorful
tape. McInturf says the weight and larger
dimensions make them much easier to use
than hoops of the past.
To start, participants begin to propel the
hoop around their waists, using an undu-
Packet #6
Advantage Press, Inc.
lating movement in the hips. “If you make
a mistake, you just pick up your hoop and
keep going.”
Once the basics are mastered, more complicated moves are added, such as moving
the hoop up and down the body by using
different muscle groups. Eventually, more
advanced students may choose to practice
with rings of fire.
travel hoops, which can be taken apart and
stored in an airplane overhead bin.
“You never know when you might get an
opportunity to hoop,” she says
Once you’ve caught the fever, benefits
can include better muscle tone and weight
loss.
“My body has been transformed from hooping,” says Anah Reichenbach, who has been
doing it for 10 years. “I’ve seen people happily lose a lot of weight. We’re so trained
in the ‘no pain, no gain’ philosophy that
it’s shocking that you can have fun and get
in shape.”
McInturf calls it “an amazing cardiovascular exercise,” and says it strengthens and
tones every major muscle group in the body.
“It’s especially good for the core muscles,
the abdominal muscles and muscles in the
back.”
In McInturf’s intermediate class, music
with a strong beat plays in the background.
“You can hoop dance to anything you like,”
McInturf says, “Even classical music or
heavy metal.”
Because this is a grass-roots pastime, the
specialized hoops are available from performers and instructors such as McInturf,
who makes them herself and offers them
for sale in classes and online. They’re designed for adults of all shapes and sizes and
cost from $25 to $55 each. She even makes
Sports Stories 2007
Things can get wild in class, and sometimes
hoops start flying. But it’s all part of the
learning process.
“Hooping isn’t painful unless you whack
yourself on the head,” Reichenbach admits. “And that does happen, but not very
often.”
Packet #6
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For more information
Here are some resources for those about
to hoop:
Triolo says she practices hooping at home
in front of the TV or in the park with friends.
She relies on classes to stay on track. “They
give me a chance to learn new tricks, brush
up on my skills and have a structured exercise time.”
When students arrive at their first class,
they’re often stiff and nervous, McInturf
says. But by the end, everyone is relaxed
and making jokes. In addition to the physical benefits, hooping also relieves stress.
- www.hooping.org: This organization lists
instructors and makers of hoops nationwide. It also offers news and other points
of interest for anyone who uses large, customized hoops.
- hoopnotichoopdance.com: Rayna McInturf’s site features information about
classes and custom-made hoops.
- www.hooprevolution.com: Anah Reichenbach’s site offers hoops for sale, as well as
a hooping history and workshop info.
“It can pretty much eliminate a bad mood in
five minutes,” McInturf says. “You cannot
remain upset inside your hoop. Something
magical happens when you get in there and
move around.”
For Triolo it’s like a trip back in time.
“It helps you get really comfortable with
your body, and it’s like playing,” she says.
“It really touches that sense of letting go
and being a kid.”
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #6
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #6
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. What revolves around the waist of instructor Rayna McInturf?
2. What has “Hula-Hooping” transformed into lately?
3. How much does McInturf’s six-week class cost?
4. How do enthusiasts describe hooping?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #6
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5. What is it about the rings that makes them easier to use today?
6. What are some advanced moves with the hoop?
7. What are some benefits of hooping?
8. Where does Triolo say she practices hooping?
9. In addition to the physical benefits what else can hoping do for you?
10. Who is Anah Reichenbach?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #6
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 6
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
11
10
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Across
1. 4. 6. 7. 11. 12. 14. 16. 18. 19. _____ Reichenbach
_____ and larger dimensions make today’s
hoops easier to use
Classical music or heavy _____ Hermosa _____ These hoops are available from performers
and instructors
Hooping and _____ can complement each
other
Los _____ Rayan McInturf is a _____ instructor
Hooping is part exercise, part dance, and
total _____ Rings of _____ Sports Stories 2007
Down
2. 3. 5. 6. 8. 9. 10. 13. 15. 17. The opposite of an advanced student
Stomach muscles Hooping benefits include better _____ tone and weight loss
“It feels good, and it’s almost _____ McInturf’s studio is located in this city
The spirit of hooping is _____ on
“Shake it like _____” Hooping is like _____ New students are often _____ and nervous Hooping touches that sense of letting go
and being a _____
Packet #6
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Sports WordSearch 6
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
M Z
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Angeles
Packet #6
Advantage Press, Inc.
NBA Star James Invests in Housing Project
Sports Stories, 2007
Cleveland Sun News
LeBron James traded his basketball jersey
for a gray business suit and white hard hat
as he announced his involvement in a $4.7
million housing development in one of the
city’s roughest neighborhoods.
The Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star and
three friends, who
formed LRMR Development LLC, are
among the investors
in the 18-unit project in Cleveland,
Ohio that will feature two- and threebedroom, 2,000square-foot townhouses expected to
sell for $265,000 to
$325,000.
“We’re very excited about refurbishing
and bringing great things to what we call
the ‘hood. Everybody else may call it the
city but we call it the ‘hood,” James said
to cheers at a symbolic groundbreaking for
the project. “That’s where we grew up at
and we never ever had an opportunity like
this.”
Donning the hard hat that barely fit the
head of his 6-foot-8 frame, the 21-year-old
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #7
James clutched a shovel as he posed for
photos with neighborhood children during
a pounding rain at an event marking the
release of plans for Parkside Townhomes.
The homes will overlook Rockefeller Park
near the Glenville neighborhood east of
downtown, where one of his business partners grew up. They will be built on a lot that
used to be a
vibrant retail
center but has
been vacant
for years.
The lakeside
area, once
home to the
city’s most
affluent families, is in the
beginning
stages of a
redevelopment after race riots in 1968
caused widespread arson and looting that
chased away businesses and residents for
nearly 40 years.
The nonprofit Glenville Development Corporation, formed in 1978, is charged with
revitalizing the neighborhood and is overseeing the effort with Beirne Enterprises,
a suburban builder based in Medina, that
together with James’ company will pony
up about one-fourth of the money for the
project.
Packet #7
Advantage Press, Inc.
“I got hit on the head for doing stuff I wasn’t
supposed to do. But you live and you learn.
I’m here today as someone who’s making
an impact on the neighborhood and on the
city.”
Tracey Kirksey, executive director of the
development corporation, said it was James
and his team who came to the city looking
for a real estate project to invest in.
“We have been truly, truly blessed but I also
believe we have been lucky,” she said.
LRMR Development was formed with
James’ associates from high school known
as “The Four Horsemen.” The company’s
name comes from the first letters in the
men’s first names: James, Randy Mims, St.
Vincent-St. Mary High School teammate
Maverick Carter and Richard Paul.
Paul, 25, who met James when the star was
in high school, grew up in Glenville.
“I lost a lot of lives, a lot of friends in this
neighborhood on these streets,” Paul said.
Sports Stories 2007
Other investors in the project include
National City Bank, which is providing
a $3.4 million construction loan, and the
city, which is putting up a $300,000 grant,
according to Mayor Frank Jackson. He
thanked James and other investors “for
understanding that it takes all of us working together to make Cleveland a true city
of choice.”
James, has said he wants to use his basketball fame and fortune to invest in businesses
that allow him to give back to the needy.
He said he was excited about LRMR’s first
project.
“It’s wonderful how things can happen
in such short time. LRMR Development
Company, I mean we’re four young men
but we’re dedicated to making things better
especially for the city of Akron and the city
of Cleveland,” he said. “Hopefully we can
expand through the state of Ohio and keep
going all the way through the United States,
and like I like to say, go global, throughout
the whole world.”
Packet #7
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #7
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is LeBron James?
2. What is LeBron James doing to help others?
3. What is the LRMR Development Company?
4. Who are “The Four Horsemen?”
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #7
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. Who is Tracey Kirksey?
6. What type of housing will the project feature?
7. Where is the project located?
8. What happened in 1968 to the lakeside area?
9. How would James like to expand the project?
10. How are the National City Bank and the city contributing to the project?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #7
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 7
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Across
4. 8. 9. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Cleveland is located in this state
LeBron _____
The development is in one of Cleveland’s
_____ neighborhoods You live and you _____ Cleveland _____ Eighteen unit ____ Bernie Enterprises is based in this suburb
The _____ Horsemen James’ name for the city
Executive director of the development
corporation
Race _____
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. 2. Glenville _____ Corporation This area was once home to the city’s most
affluent families 3. Arson and _____
5. Paul grew up here
6. James wore this type of hat at the groundbreaking
7. National Basketball _____ 10. Parkside _____ 11. Maverick _____ 14. Rockefeller _____
Packet #7
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports WordSearch 7
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
Y
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100,000 and Counting
Sports Stories, 2007
POST-DISPATCH
As a financial planner, Joe Leuchtmann is a
numbers guy. Oddly enough, that translates
into his other passion: running. He deals
with pace, speed, time and, most of all,
miles. For 26 years Leuchtmann (LUTCHmun) has kept a log of how far he has run
each day.
“I guess that since I was a kid I had an
aptitude for numbers,” he says. “I always
wanted to keep track of what I was doing.
As I got older, my motto was: ‘What gets
measured improves.’”
Looking through his current log, you’ll find
mostly miles - 12 being the most
common number. Occasionally
you’ll also find temperatures,
notes on the terrain, or the place
he ran and the time of day.
Recently, Leuchtmann finally
hit a number he’d only dreamed
about: 100,000 - as in miles. In the beginning:
At age 14, Leuchtmann was a
smallish kid who played football only because that’s what his
friends were doing. One day, for
the heck of it, he ran five miles.
That’s right. The first time he
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #8
ran, it was five miles. He wrote that number
in a notebook.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” he says.
“I didn’t know what I was getting myself
into.”
He was getting himself into a lifetime of
running. Starting with track and cross country at middle school, he won championship
after championship.
“I think that about that time I understood I
had a gift,” he says.
He was all-state in high school and allAmerican in college at the University of
Illinois. After that he ran for six
years with team Adidas, an elite
racing squad. He got better and
better. He ran the first of his 24
marathons in 1984, finishing in
just 2 hours, 19 minutes. At one
time he was ranked the eighthbest marathon runner in the
United States. He competed in
two Olympic trials.
Challenges:
In 1996, Leuchtmann was logging
120-130 miles a week, often at
a 5-minute, 30-second pace. He
was training for the Olympic trials, certain that it was his year to
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Advantage Press, Inc.
do well.
Running now:
“I knew in my heart I could have made
2:11,” he says. At that time, his best was
an amazing 2:15.
Despite the setback in his competitive running, Leuchtmann still runs almost every
day.
One day, he was training in Queeny Park
and slipped on the ice in the middle of a
24-mile run. “I fell flat on my face, but ran
the rest of the way.”
“It’s so habitual,” he says. “It’s such a part
of my life; it changed my life.”
When he got home, he noticed a sharp pain
in his ribs. His wife, Cynthia Fleck, a registered nurse, suspected it was serious. She
was right: He’d broken three ribs.
After the stock market closes each day, he
is out the door of his office in Creve Coeur
for his runs. He runs all over the St. Louis
area, but his favorite is the hilly Queeny
Park. “I don’t necessarily like the hills, but
the hills make you better,” he says.
After his run, he either goes back to his office to work into the evening, or he heads
home to south St. Louis County.
“It was a bad time to get hurt,” Leuchtmann
says. He decided to go ahead and compete
in the trials. Despite the broken ribs and
a fever, he was with the leaders halfway
through, but he couldn’t sustain that pace.
After the disappointing finish and after
several months of recovery time, he tried to
make a few comebacks. But he wasn’t running anywhere near what he had in ‘96.
“After that, I just didn’t have that killer instinct in my head,” he says. “That knocked
me for a loop. Looking back, I wish I could
have kept going.”
Sports Stories 2007
And he’s using his skill to help others. Soon
he’ll run the Walt Disney World Marathon
for Team in Training, an organization that
raises money to fight leukemia and lymphoma. A friend’s sister died recently of
lymphoma, and he’s running in her honor.
Last year, he raised $6,000 running for
Team in Training in San Diego.
“If my running does some good,” he says,
“it’s all worth it.”
Changing bad habits:
Leuchtmann says he’s about 20 pounds
heavier now than during his competitive
days. Six months ago, he was 35 pounds
heavier.
“I got this way by having really bad hab-
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its,” he says. It was the stress of his job
that drove him to multiple outings a week
at local fast-food places. “That stuff is
garbage.”
So, in the past six months he’s started cutting back on the fast food, the desserts and
the sugary sodas. He’s lost 15 pounds in
that time, and hopes to lose more.
Injuries:
In his years of running, Leuchtmann says,
he’s never had a serious injury. However,
he has been plagued by plantar fasciitis and
bone spurs for about 10 years. The pain has
lessened as the years have gone on, but he
says he still runs through some pain.
At one point, he couldn’t even walk in the
morning, it hurt so bad. But by staying off
crowned roads that slope on the sides, replacing his shoes every 300 miles, sticking
his socked foot in an ice bucket after every
run and taking glucosamine chondroitin,
he’s been able to reduce the pain significantly.
He says that when he was eating fast food,
he could feel it in his sluggish runs. “It was
like sand in a gas tank,” he says.
But now that he’s cleaned up his eating,
running is much easier. “I can tell a big
difference in my running.”
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #8
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. What is Joe Leuchtmann’s occupation?
2. What did Leuchtmann finally achieve that he had only dreamed about?
3. What was his motto as he got older?
4. How did Leuchtmann get started keeping track of the number of miles he ran?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. When did he realize that he had a gift?
6. What honors did Leuchtmann win in high school and college? 7. How fast was Leuchtmann running a mile in 1996?
8. What injury knocked Leuchtmann for a loop?
9. When does Leuchtmann begin his daily run?
10. How is Leuchtmann’s running helping others?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 8
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
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Across
3. 5. 8. 9. 10. 11. 13. 15. 16. 17. 19. 20. Walt _____ World
Fast ____ for Leuchtmann was like sand
in a gas tank
Queeny _____ The number of Olympic trials Leuchtmann
participated in
Stock _____ For Leuchtmann running has _____ his
life
Leuchtmann participated in cross country
and _____ in middle school
Leuchtmann’s passion _____ Leuchtmann attended the University of
_____ Leuchtmann broke three of these Leuchtmann slipped on this
“What gets _____ improves”
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. 2. San _____ Leuchtmann runs to help raise money for
this disease
4. At one time he was ranked the eighth best
_____ runner in the US
6. Running for Leuchtmann is an _____
7. Glucosamine _____ 12. Joe Leuchtmann is a _____ guy
14. An elite racing squad _____ 18. The first time Leuchtmann ran it was
_____ miles
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Sports WordSearch 8
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
O T
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Number Crunch:
U.S. Soccer Program Needs More Athletes
Sports Stories, 2007
Alex Rodriguez occasionally arrives at
Yankee Stadium wearing an Arsenal jersey.
That’s as close as soccer gets to the top
American athletes.
Packet #9
yewu that came up through the national
team program in the last few years, how
many athletes instead play college football
or basketball, or minor league baseball?
For most teams at the World Cup, their
nation’s strongest, fastest and slickest are
on the field. For the United States, they’re
on baseball diamonds and basketball courts,
or in weight rooms preparing for NFL
camps.
“We have to do a much better job at broadening the base of elite athletes. Especially
in the Hispanic community and the AfricanAmerican community,” U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati commented,
after the Americans were eliminated in the
first round for the third time in their last
five World Cups.
For every Landon Donovan, DaMarcus
Beasley, Bobby Convey and Oguchi On-
While today’s team is faster, stronger and
more skillful than the past, offense is still
sparse. Since returning to the World Cup
in 1990 after a 40-year absence, the United
States has 15 goals in 18 matches - and
three of those were scores that opponents
accidentally put into their own net.
“We’re still waiting for that great striker to
emerge, that guy that Real Madrid say they
have to have for $30 million and then he
goes and leads La Liga in goals for three,
four years in a row,” U.S. goalkeeper Kasey
Keller said. “That’s what we’re waiting
for.”
In the rest of the world, clubs have youth
Sports Stories 2007
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programs that expose hundreds of thousands of young boys to soccer. Players are
identified as possible stars of the future
when they are 12 or so, and their careers
are nurtured.
Major League Soccer commissioner Don
Garber agrees.
Franchises including the New York Red
Bulls and Chicago Fire have created academies and each of the league’s 12 squads
has a reserve team. Before that, efforts were
focused on the stability of the league.
The incentive for teams is a league promise
that they will retain rights to players that
they develop.
In America, it’s a lot more complicated.
From 1985-95, there wasn’t even a top level
professional league in the United States.
Major League Soccer began in 1996, and
- to hasten development of younger players
- a year later the U.S. Soccer Federation
devised “Project 40.”
“That model will mirror the development
system and academies that exist in the club
systems in Europe and in Latin America,”
Garber said recently. “The thing that people
don’t really realize is that system is two
years old. It’s 100 years old in England. So
we’ve got a lot of growing to do.”
It was a program to identify the best 40
young prospects, mostly in college, and
sign them to professional contracts with an
MLS club while also putting aside money
to complete their education.
“We’re developing our game from the top
down instead of the bottom up,” said U.S.
coach Bruce Arena, whose return is not assured following the Americans’ early exit
from his second World Cup.
“That’s a naive approach if you think that
we magically select the best 40 players every two years and got it all right and that’s
it,” Arena said. “We have thousands of kids
playing that have a future in this game, and
it will only be better if there are better soccer environments year-round.”
Sports Stories 2007
Arena has belittled the level of intensity
in MLS in the past. While his World Cup
rosters in 2002 and 2006 have been just
about evenly split between MLS players
and those based in Europe, his starting
lineups have leaned toward those from
European clubs.
“We do need to get more of our younger
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talented players in Europe. We need them
in a year-round soccer environment. We
need them playing in more intense games
to help develop them mentally, as well as
soccerwise,” Arena said. “At the end, the
cream rises, and you see the top players prevail, and it positions you to be much more
successful at the international level.”
“I think the foundation the players are getting from a league like the MLS is great,”
Reyna said. “But I think eventually our
best talents need to go over for four, five,
six, seven years and really develop in Europe.”
U.S. captain Claudio Reyna, who is retiring from the national team, has spent his
entire professional career in Europe. He
said players in Europe benefit both from the
intensity of play and scrutiny of the press
and supporters.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #9
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Where are American’s strongest, fastest and slickest athletes?
2. Who is Sunil Gulati?
3. What skill does the US Soccer Team need to improve the most?
4. Who is Kasey Keller?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. What did Kasey Keller say the US team is waiting for?
6. What was Project 40?
7. Who is Don Garber?
8. What two soccer franchises were mentioned in the article?
9. Who is Claudio Reyna?
10. According to Reyna what is the benefit of being a European player?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 9
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
5
6
8
4
7
9
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19
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Down
13. 15. 17. 18. 19. 14. World _____
16. In the rest of the world, _____ have youth
programs
4. 7. 8. 10. 11. 12. Alex _____ New York _____ Bulls
This is still sparse for the US Soccer Team Landon _____ Major League Soccer commissioner We need to broaden the _____ of elite
athletes
Cream does this
Yankee _____ Sunil _____
Soccer is 100 years old in this country
Players are identified as possible _____ as
early as twelve or so
Sports Stories 2007
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 9. _____ America US goalkeeper
US coach
US Captain
_____ League Soccer
U.S. Soccer _____ The US Soccer Team has been eliminated
three out of the last _____ World Cups
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Sports WordSearch 9
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
M O T
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Rodriquez
Latin
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Sporting Behavior
Sports Stories, 2007
Los Angeles Times
A few years ago, a man showed up in San
Francisco psychologist Jim Taylor’s office
with his daughter, a competitive figure
skater. “You need to fix her jump,” he told
Taylor, explaining that his daughter had
been struggling to execute a new move on
the ice.
After meeting with the 15-year-old girl a
few times, Taylor says it became clear that
it was her father who was the problem. Her
dad was on hand every time she practiced
or competed, the skater explained, and if
she performed well, he lavished her with
gifts. When she faltered, he became angry.
On a few occasions, her father had barged
onto the ice to challenge her coach’s advice.
Father and daughter fought constantly.
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #10
Taylor spent time with the father and
learned that he was unhappy with his marriage and bored with his job. Under the
guise of helping the daughter’s skating,
he was masking his own inner pain. “All
parents love their kids,” says Taylor, “but
some are misguided.”
Not long ago, this kind of behavior was
practically unheard of among parents of
kids who play youth sports. Today, psychologists and coaches agree that many
parents have become more passionate
— obsessed, in some cases — about their
children’s athletic pursuits than mothers
and fathers of the past. Micromanaging a
child’s sports career and agonizing over his
or her success on the playing field may be
the most public expression of the so-called
“helicopter parent” phenomenon; that is,
the tendency of today’s moms and dads to
“hover” over their children.
Parents who belong to this new breed
are easy to spot. They shout more on the
sidelines, barking directions at their children, and often struggling to control their
emotions. They pester coaches about their
kids’ playing time. They complain more
loudly if a child isn’t chosen for an allstar team. Thanks to the rising popularity
of travel teams — which compete against
teams from other communities, often very
far away — some parents find themselves
devoting entire weekends, and even vaca-
Packet #10
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tions, to shuttling their sons and daughters
to tournaments.
stop, but Heyman had assigned her to the
outfield.
For some, the rabid commitment simply
interferes with other family priorities, occasionally frustrating less obsessed spouses.
For others, it becomes an unhealthy fixation. Why do youth sports matter so much
to parents today? And how does this new,
deeper emotional investment affect relationships between parents and children?
While it’s the rare violent episodes that
tend to grab the headlines, such as the Texas
man who shot his son’s football coach, most
coaches can tell stories about parents who
crossed the line of acceptable behavior
while stopping short of actual violence.
More frequently, this behavior is marked
by fits of anger or menacing words from
an out-of-control parent.
While today’s sports parents come in all
stripes, most are content to leave the coaches alone, instead directing their emotional
energy to their children.
Sean Heyman, 42, of Westchester, who
coaches a girls’ softball team, says one father angrily confronted him after a game.
“He completely lost it. He was frustrated,”
says Heyman. “He was loud, aggressive
and ready to fight.” Heyman was baffled
by the man’s ire, because the young girl
had played the entire game. His complaint?
The man wanted his daughter to play short-
Sports Stories 2007
It’s natural to feel pride when your child
hits a home run or scores a goal, or sadness
when his or her team loses, says Dr. Ian
Tofler, a Los Angeles psychiatrist. Tofler,
coauthor (with Theresa Foy DiGeronimo)
of “Keeping Your Kids Out Front Without
Kicking Them From Behind,” says it’s
healthy for parents to identify and empathize with sons or daughters, even to live
vicariously through their exploits.
However, explains Tofler, trouble starts
when parents rely on their child’s athletic
success to boost their own self-esteem or
fulfill other personal needs and aspirations.
“When your own identity becomes caught
up in the child’s performance, that’s a clear
red flag,” says Tofler. “The child becomes
more a means to the parent’s end than a
separate individual with his or her own
Packet #10
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needs and goals.”
Parents who struggle to maintain a healthy
perspective are often aging ex-jocks who
push their children too hard because they
are reliving past athletic accomplishments,
or perhaps chasing glory that eluded them
in their own youth. These mothers and fathers often believe that their budding star
can be the next Michael Jordan or Annika
Sorenstam, despite the astronomical odds.
(Estimates vary, but most sources say that
less than 5% of high school varsity athletes
end up playing on college teams. Among
college athletes, about 2% make it to the
professional ranks, though the average pro
career lasts only a few years.)
For such parents, the money and the fame
are the allure. “Parents are seduced,” says
psychologist Taylor, author of “Your Children Are Under Attack.” A generation ago,
few parents saw sports as a path to wealth
and celebrity for their children, says Taylor,
because few professional athletes earned big
salaries and sporting events only received
modest coverage in the media. Parents of a
talented youth athlete may come to regard
him or her as little more than a status symbol. “My house is bigger than yours. My
kid is going to excel in sports, and yours
is not,” says Dr. Dilip Patel, a professor
of pediatrics and human development at
Sports Stories 2007
Michigan State University in Kalamazoo.
Still other parents push their kids too hard to
succeed in sports to fill an emotional void,
says Taylor. “They’re people who have very
little meaning and satisfaction in their own
lives. They are often very unhappy.” In his
practice, he often finds that parents who
are obsessed with their children’s sports
achievements are stuck in failing marriages
or hate their jobs.
Even parents who say they don’t push their
kids to play sports can go a little overboard.
A generation ago, few parents attended every one of their child’s youth-sports games,
says psychologist Rick Wolff, chairman of
the Center for Sports Parenting, a website
affiliated with the Institute for International
Sport at the University of Rhode Island. Today many parents attend all their children’s
games — and practices. “We’re the first
generation of parents who are so hyperactive,” says Wolff.
But hyperactivity isn’t necessarily always
a bad thing. Scott Forbes says his heavy
involvement stems from having three kids
who all love playing sports — a desire he
wants to support. “If they want to do it, I’m
all for it,” says Forbes, 44, of Westchester.
But with three children playing at least two
sports each this spring, he spends about
three hours a day shuttling the kids around
town and attending every practice and game
he can. “It’s like a part-time job,” says
Forbes, who keeps his children’s schedules
on a Palm Pilot.
Forbes’ wife, Ana, also 44, attends her kids’
games and does plenty of chauffeuring
too. But while she and Scott made a New
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Year’s resolution to go out to dinner or see
a movie without the kids at least once a
month, there’s little room in their schedules
for such outings these days. “We need more
time for ourselves as a couple,” says Ana.
In a session with Burnett, the burly youth
burst into tears and said he had considered
suicide, partly because he felt rejected by
his parents. “The only way they related
to me was as a jock,” Burnett recalled the
youth telling him.
Parents who are too emotionally invested
in their children’s athletic careers may also
need to examine whether their obsession is
replacing an inner void. “The No. 1 piece of
advice I give to parents is ‘Get a life,’” says
Taylor. “Parents need to have something in
their life other than their kid that gives them
meaning, satisfaction and happiness.”
Darrell Burnett, a Laguna Niguel sports
psychologist, says highly involved parents
need to check themselves and ask whether
they are beginning to see a son or daughter
not as a person but as a first baseman or
halfback. Burnett worked with one high
school football player who injured his knee,
dashing hopes for a college scholarship.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #10
Name __________________ Date _______________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Jim Taylor?
2. What conclusion did Taylor come to regarding the father who was over involved in
his daughter’s skating career?
3. Describe the “helicopter parent” phenomenon.
4. Why is this new breed of parents easy to spot?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #10
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. What can most coaches tell stories about?
6. According to Tofler when does trouble start with parents?
7. Who are the parents who struggle to maintain a healthy perspective on involvement
with their children?
8. What are the chances that a high school varsity athlete will end up playing on a college team or have a pro career if they played college sports?
9. Who is Rick Wolf?
10. What advice does Darrell Burnett give parents?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 10
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
4
3
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Across
3. 4. 7. 9. 12. 13. 17. 18. 19. Travel _____ Most parents today are content to leave
_____ alone
Many parents have become more _____ about their child’s athletic pursuits
When a parent’s own identity gets caught
up in a child’s performance it is a red
_____ The tendency of today’s parents is to
_____ over their children
A professional female golfer It’s natural to feel this when you child does
well in sports
Most coaches can tell stories of parents
who have crossed the _____ A professor of pediatrics and human development at Michigan State University Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. 2. 3. 5. 6. 8. 10. 11. 14. 15. “Keeping kids Out Front Without _____ Them From Behind”
Coaches a girls’ softball team San Francisco psychologist
“Your Children Are Under _____” Some parents are _____ A Los Angeles psychiatrist
Parents who struggle to maintain a healthy
perspective are often _____ ex-jocks It was a Texas man who shot his son’s
_____ coach
For some parents the money and the fame
are the _____ A retired pro basketball player from Chicago
Packet #10
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Sports WordSearch 10
Find the hidden words and circle them.
M M E
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kicking
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Sorenstam
five
allure
attack
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Sports Stories 2007
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Star High School Athlete Becomes His Own Man
Sports Stories, 2007
MONMOUTH JUNCTION, N.J.
USA TODAY
“State championship,” Joakim said as he
wrapped his father in a long embrace.
“Bravo,” answered Yannick Noah, who has
heard that word more than he has said it.
Joakim took his first steps on a national
stage recently when he played in the EA
Sports Roundball Classic, an all-star game
in Chicago for some of the nation’s best
high school basketball players. This comes
a generation after his dreadlocked father exploded into international celebrity in 1983
as the first Frenchman to win the French
Open in 39 years.
Joakim’s high school teammates know
his father is a tennis legend, but they are
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perhaps too young and too American to
appreciate the depth of Yannick’s exalted
status as a cultural hero in France, where
these days he is a reggae star.
“They’re my boys — we hang out all the
time,” the 6-10 Joakim says of his Big Red
brethren. “But it’s not like we talk about
each other’s parents.”
Yannick, 43, looks delighted when advised
of this. “That sounds like a healthy, adolescent attitude,” he says, smiling widely.
This is the story of a son who threw himself
into basketball from an early age as a way
to get simultaneously closer to and further
from his famous forebear. Joakim uses his
chosen sport — played on a court with nets,
just not a tennis court — to gain his own
identity and the approval of a mostly absent
father. It is a complex trick.
“I don’t want people to think of me as just
someone who has a famous father or something like that,” Joakim says. “I want to do
my own thing. I think that’s what motivates
me to play hard every night. It’s to be my
own person.
“Don’t get it wrong. I love my father more
than anything. I am so proud of everything
my father stands for and what he does. My
father is like my best friend and my biggest
influence. He’s like my main man. But I
Sports Stories 2007
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don’t want people to think of me as just
his son.”
Yannick, who lives outside Paris, says this
is precisely why Joakim moved to New
York with his mother and sister six years
ago. The USA was where the boy could
be his own person — and learn the sport
he loved — without the crushing psychic
weight of a father who is all at once a cultural icon, a political symbol, a pop music
star and a gossip-page habitué.
which he took last semester, and Religion
and Politics in the Middle East, which he’s
taking now.
Father-son conflict is at the root of much
classical mythology and religious tradition.
Zeus, father figure of the Olympian gods,
overthrew his father, Cronus; Abraham
nearly slew Isaac; the central story of Christianity is of God the father sacrificing his
only son for the sins of mankind.
Such stories represent “a motif that appears
across times and cultures,” says Amy Glenn,
who teaches Joakim’s favorite courses. The
stories “are about the transference of power
and prestige and about finding yourself.”
Child of myth
“Look around,” Yannick says of the packed
gym at South Brunswick High School,
where the state finals for prep schools were
played. “No one knows me. Joakim can live
the life he wants in the States.”
Joakim (pronounced JO-a-kim, says his
mother, though many classmates say JOkeem) will play next season at the University of Florida, which he chose over such
suitors as Virginia, Maryland and Notre
Dame. He wants to study world religions
and learn Arabic. At Lawrenceville, a prep
school redolent of old trees and old money,
his favorite courses are Myth and Ritual,
Sports Stories 2007
Joakim, 19, doesn’t remember when he became aware that his father was not merely
a sports hero but an emotional touchstone.
“You don’t really think of that when you’re
small,” Joakim says. “I still don’t really
think of my dad being a hero. I mean, he’s
just my pops.”
Yannick’s life reads like something out of
modern myth. U.S. tennis star Arthur Ashe
was touring Cameroon in 1971 when he
discovered an 11-year-old tennis prodigy.
Yannick, son of a French mother and Cameroonian father, had been born in France,
and Ashe arranged for him to return to play
tennis at a French academy in Nice.
In 1983 Yannick won the French Open
against Mats Wilander in Paris. The bravos
still echo.
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Later he met and married Swedish beauty
queen Cecilia Rodhe. They lived in New
York to be far from his madding crowd of
French admirers. Joakim was born there
less than two years after his father’s only
Grand Slam victory.
Joakim himself seems a child of myth.
His mother was Miss Sweden (literally, in
1978), and his father remains Mr. France
(figuratively, for all time). Joakim’s bent
toward basketball began early: Patrick Ewing, a friend of Yannick’s, gave Joakim a
small basketball as a present when he was
a baby.
Joakim’s family moved to Paris when he
was 3, a year before his parents divorced.
At 13 Joakim returned to New York with his
mother and sister Yelena, a year younger.
Yannick remained in Europe, where he
had already married British model Heather
Stewart-Whyte and begun a second family.
continents.
He was homesick at first, and the Big Red
struggled. But they hit stride in mid-January, when they played undefeated St. Benedict’s, starring North Carolina recruit J.R.
Smith. Joakim (24 points, 12 rebounds) led
Lawrenceville to an upset as the Big Red
crowd chanted, “JO-keem NO-ah!”
Yannick, who was in the country, was supposed to be there. But he attended a dinner
for the Arthur Ashe Foundation in New
York that night. Joakim said he understood.
Ashe, after all, is in some sense Yannick’s
spiritual father.
A week later Joakim sat in a classroom and
talked about how the Big Red were going
to win the state title and how he hoped his
father would be there for that.
“He didn’t come (to any games) last year
Joakim, by then approaching 6-0, played
basketball at a gym down the street from
his home in the New York neighborhood of
Hell’s Kitchen. There he met Tyrone Green,
who taught him the game as he grew into
his willowy 6-10 frame. “Jo already had a
mind for basketball,” Green says. “He just
understood things.”
Joakim played basketball at Poly Prep in
Brooklyn before transferring this season
to the Lawrenceville School, a boarding
school on a stately campus of 700 acres in
Lawrenceville, N.J., 5 miles from Princeton. He is a year older than many of his
classmates because of his moves between
Sports Stories 2007
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either,” Joakim said. “I know he’ll be there
this year.”
Multiple dual natures
The walls of Joakim’s dorm room at Lawrenceville are covered with Bob Marley
posters. Joakim sometimes wears a tattered
Marley T-shirt his father used to wear in the
1970s, though he mostly keeps it stored as
if it is a relic — holy and holey. “I listen to
Bob Marley every day,” Joakim says. And
to his father’s reggae as well? “No, I don’t
listen to my pops,” he says. “I’m just happy
he’s doing his thing.”
Joakim says his father’s music — a fusion
of reggae, zouk and pop — is for dancing.
Marley’s music is for more. Joakim believes
it is infused with the power of myth.
If you are the big tree,
We are the small ax,
Sharpened to cut you down,
Ready to cut you down.
“I love that,” Joakim says. “There’s so
many (lyrics) I love.”
At 6-10, Joakim could be a big tree, except
Sports Stories 2007
he doesn’t see it that way. “I still see myself
as the small ax,” he says. “Because one person is always going to be that small ax.”
In ancient mythology, Cronus uses not an
ax but a sickle to cut down his father. In
modern myth, Cronus (merged with another
god) appears sometimes as Father Time,
sickle slung over his shoulder — myth
degenerated to cartoon in the New World.
The old gods live closer to the surface in
older cultures. That is especially so in Norse
and African countries, says Rodhe, who
figures her son is drawn to myth by dint of
family tree.
If Joakim were a creature from mythology,
he would be a griffin, a beast that is eagle
and lion in one body. Joakim has multiple
dual natures: He is black and white, man
and child, African and Scandinavian,
American and European, devoted son and
his own man.
His life’s story is only at its start, but it already has mythic echoes: a son of greatness,
striving for greatness of his own, against
great odds.
“I know. Every time I think about it, it’s
crazy.” Joakim says. “Everybody has their
stories, though. Everybody comes from
somewhere. The thing about America is, a
lot of people just don’t know.”
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #11
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. In what way did Joakim become his own man?
2. Who was Joakim’s father? Why was he famous.
3. Describe Yannik Noah’s music.
4. Why does Joakim see himself as “the small ax?”
Sports Stories 2007
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5. Why didn’t Yannik attend his son’s game when they played undeafeated St. Benedict’s?
6. Who is Tyrone Green? Why was he important to Joakim?
7. List the places where Joakim has lived.
8. Why does the article describe Joakim as a “child of myth?”
9. What is a “griffin?”
10. Do you think it is difficult or easy for sons or daughters of famous people to become
famous in their own right? Explain.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 11
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
6
5
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
4. This term describes Yannick’s hair
7. Yannick’s country
9. Joakim’s dad is an ________ touchstone 10. Joakim’s sport
14. Joakim moved here when he was three 15. Yannick sings this type of music
16. Father figure of the Olympian gods 18. Joakim lives with his mother and ______ 19. Joakim’s main man
20. One of Noah’s teachers
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. The high school where Joakim is a student
2. He was defeated by Yannick in the French
Open
3. Yannick’s sport
5. The EA Sports Roundball Classic was held
here
6. A college in this state will have Joakim
playing for it
8. Joakim’s dad is a _______ hero in the country where he won the Open
11. The state finals for prep schools was held
in the South ________ gym
12. He “discovered” Yannick 13. Joakim lives here
17. Myth and ______ is one of Joakim’s favorite courses
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Sports WordSearch 11
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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New Heights
Sports Stories, 2007
Basketball courts are among the few places
of refuge for young men growing up on the
streets of Washington Heights. It was in a
neighborhood gym where Ruben Montilla
and Nick Blatchford met on a summer day
in 1997. Nick, a successful student-athlete
during his years at Duke University (’94),
was already planning a career dedicated to
educating and inspiring young people. As
an English teacher and basketball coach
at Intermediate School 90 in Washington
Heights, Nick knew what it took to succeed
against difficult odds; and in Ruben, he saw
a student of enormous potential.
Blatchford noticed qualities
in Ruben – natural intelligence, toughness, charisma,
determination and leadership potential – that most
would overlook in a kid
growing up in the Heights.
Nick knew first-hand that
the educational opportunities available to neighborhood kids like Ruben were
limited. Ruben grew up on 175th Street in
Washington Heights, a community where
far too many teenagers abandon hope and
succumb to streetlife – gang activity, drug
abuse, violence and teen pregnancy.
At IS 90, Ruben earned a spot on the basketball team and Nick became his coach and
mentor. As a positive influence to counterSports Stories 2007
Packet #12
act the negative pressures of Ruben’s environment, Nick encouraged this young man,
full of promise, to attend the prestigious
St. Albans School in Washington, DC, as a
boarding student.
The challenges were formidable. Young
people like Ruben are not given an equal
chance to succeed. Less than 33% of Latino
and 35% of African-American students in
New York City’s high schools graduate in
four years, and many drop out altogether. The schools they attend are often unsafe
and under-performing. In Washington
Heights, where 95% of students are Latino
or African-American, only 22% of middle
school students are meeting New York State
reading standards and 14% meet math standards. Those lucky enough to have a shot at
continuing their education elsewhere often
feel as though they’ve stepped up the plate
with two strikes on the count before they’ve
seen a pitch.
But Ruben’s will to succeed proved stronger
than the forces aligned
against him. With guidance from his teachers,
support from Nick, and
encouragement from
many others along the
way, Ruben blazed a trail
from the dead ends of an
impoverished neighbor-
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hood, to the bright horizon of a future filled
with hope and possibilities.
New Heights was founded in 2000 to give
hundreds of kids the opportunity to follow Ruben’s path, to rise above formerly
insurmountable obstacles, to become extraordinary. Ruben, the son of immigrants
from the Dominican Republic, and others
like him, inspired Nick Blatchford to leave
classroom teaching and dedicate his efforts
to the mission of New Heights.
New Heights was founded on the belief that
the current system too often fails kids, both
academically and athletically. Basketball is
overemphasized at the expense of all other
areas of a young person’s development,
leaving them lost and destined to fail.
In just four years since its establishment,
New Heights has grown into a full-scale,
six-day-a-week program that provides
academic, athletic, and leadership-building
activities for more than 150 kids in troubled
New York City neighborhoods -- preparing
them for success in high school, college and
life. Based in Washington Heights, New
Heights uses basketball as a hook to engage
kids in a comprehensive educational-athletic-life skills program that guides them
away from self-destructive behavior and
Sports Stories 2007
toward an adulthood of hope, promise and
productivity. Through New Heights, young
people are shaped to become educated,
confident, healthy, self-motivated, inspiring
and contributing citizens.
New Heights is building a culture of support
and empowerment – the staff, volunteers,
families and student-athletes share a commitment to learning and live by the organization’s core values of: Integrity - Service
- Excellence - Partnership - Compassion.
New Heights works closely with its 150
participants, ages 10-18, who are selected
for their potential as student-athletes and
leaders. Through a rigorous regimen of
academic, athletic and leadership training,
New Heights provides the character building tools its student-athletes need to reach
their highest potential as adults. It trains
a new generation of leaders and life champions who will make a positive impact on
their communities.
The New Heights approach to developing
student-athletes works. Almost immediately after opening its doors in 2000, New
Heights students began compiling a legacy
of achievement and success. More than 30
New Heights graduates are currently enrolled in college, and many others expect to
follow after completing high school. New
Heights students have formed a close-knit
community, relying upon each other for
continued strength to overcome the disadvantages they all know too well.
Ruben Montilla is attending Georgetown
University on a full academic scholarship. Before he became involved with Nick
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Blatchford and New Heights, Ruben sole
dream for his future was to play in the NBA.
Like many before him, he lacked any other
concrete plans should the pro scouts not
come calling.
But Nick Blatchford and New Heights
opened many other worlds of possibilities
that Ruben hadn’t seen before. He began
to realize he had options besides professional sports: He gained confidence in the
classroom, and a belief in his own abilities
off the court as well as on. New Heights
made it happen for Ruben, and for many
others like him.
school visits and facilitating peer-mentoring relationships.
Through New Heights’ High School Assist
program, Manny Quezada followed Ruben
to Saint Albans School. He left Norman
Thomas High in NYC, which has more
than 2,500 students and graduates less than
50% of them in four years. Like Ruben,
Manny thrived at St. Albans. During his
senior year, he lead his team to the league
championship, and was heavily recruited to
play basketball at top Division I programs.
In the fall of 2004, Manny heads to Rutgers, carrying with him dreams of leading
his new team to more championships and
graduating with a degree in economics.
New Heights student-athletes are thriving
in schools across New York City as well.
La’isha Garcia, a junior, is the top ranked
student in her class at Thurgood Marshall
Academy in Harlem. She carries a 95+
GPA and is the captain and leading scorer
on her high school basketball team. She
aspires to play basketball in college, use
More than 35 New Heights student-athletes her degree to get into a top law school and
are now enrolled in some of the nation’s top become a lawyer. With this influence, she
public, boarding and private high schools is committed to positively transforming
through the High School Assist program. her community by mentoring other young
High School Assist places New Heights student-athletes in NYC.
student-athletes in private, independent,
boarding and specialized schools throughout NYC and the nation. Students are
given full or partial tuition scholarships by
participating schools and regular contact
is maintained with school administrators
and parents to insure that each student’s
academic, athletic, social and cultural needs
are being met. New Heights staff monitors
students’ progress by conducting regular Seck Barry, a 7th grader, maintains a GPA
Sports Stories 2007
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of 90. At his home in Harlem, he often
takes care of his seven brothers and sisters,
helping them with their homework and
teaching them English. He reads a biography of Lance Armstrong on the subway
ride to school every morning. When school
dismisses everyday at 2:30pm, Seck reports
to New Heights’ Academic Support classes,
where he completes his homework assignments with the support of certified teachers
and volunteer tutors. He then heads downstairs to the New Heights home gym, where
he practices with his 7th grade teammates,
learning the values and life lessons associated with playing sports: “A teammate
always puts the goals of the team first and
respects other people. A great teammate is
unselfish, listens to the coach, works hard
all the time and never gives up.”
On weekends, Seck attends Columbia Presbyterian’s Lang Youth Medical Program,
which trains aspiring young doctors in the
field of medicine and service. He plans on
graduating from college and medical school
and – consistent with the New Heights
vision – making a positive impact on his
community: “I would like to help people,
to make a difference, especially people in
New York City and in my native country,
Guinea. If I become a doctor, I can create
Sports Stories 2007
opportunities for young people in Guinea to
get better health care and more involved in
education and live better lives. I want to be
a role model for people in Guinea and for
young people like me in New York.”
As the stories attest, New Heights’ efforts
are paying off. Nick Blatchford estimates
New Heights student-athletes have earned
close to $4.5 million in scholarship and
financial aid dollars from some of the
nation’s finest high schools and universities. Most importantly, New Heights is helping
to shape the identities and outlooks of its
student-athletes, causing them to believe
that they can -- and will -- attend top high
schools and universities and become leaders in their communities.
With New Heights’ successes comes a
renewed commitment to its mission and
growth as an organization. For every Ruben, La’isha, Manny or Seck, hundreds of
other New York City youths’ dreams of
NBA glory are dashed and their lack of
academic preparation leave them with few
productive alternatives. As New Heights
strives to develop a generation of leaders
and champions who transform their communities and who embody its core values,
Nick realizes that the work has just begun.
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New Heights seeks to broaden its reach to
help make available to a greater number
of youth the types of opportunities accessible to its current student-athletes, and to
expand programming to better serve its
current student-athletes, their parents, and
their communities. The organization and its
Board of Directors has set a goal of serving 225 student-athletes per year by 2006,
while expanding its staff from 2 full time
employees to 5.
New Heights Board Chairman Derrick
Mashore, a former Duke student-athlete
(’79) and current Executive Global Manag-
Sports Stories 2007
ing Director at Cushman & Wakefield, is
committed to the growth of New Heights.
Mashore is assembling a team of leaders
in the business world to design and build
a New York City home facility for New
Heights.
The New Heights vision now shines like
a beacon of hope, leading young people
to a place where futures are built with the
time-tested tools of education, peer support,
rigor, discipline, and direction. At New
Heights, its first generation of student-athletes is learning to kick the ankle weights
off of their dreams, and replace them with
wings. For future generations, New Heights
plans to soar even higher.
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #12
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Ruben Montilla?
2. Who is Nick Blatchford?
3. What qualities did Blatchford notice in Montilla?
4. Upon what belief was New Heights founded upon?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. What are the challenges facing Latino and African-Americans at New York City
schools?
6. Who is La’isha Garcia? Describe what she has done.
7. Who is Seck Barry? Describe what he has done.
8. The article says the New Heights vision “shines like a beacon of hope.” Explain what
this means.
9. What do you think would have happened to people like Ruben without New
Heights?
10. How might Seck Barry “make a difference?”
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 12
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
3. Often it is found that basketball is overemphasized at the expense of this 4. Thanks to the program Nick got him
involved with, Ruben gained confidence
in this room
6. Students at the program have compiled a
_____ of achievement and success 8. One of the qualities Ruben had
12. Ruben was the son of them 16. Ruben is attending this university
17. Ruben had a will to do this
19. These courts are among the few places of
refuge in Washington Heights
20. Participants in the program are selected
for the potential as _______
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. New ____ was founded in 2000 to give
kids a chance
2. More than 30 of the graduates from the
program are enrolled in one 5. Ruben has one of these which helps him
afford going to college
7. It is desired that the participants make a
positive impact on this 9. Ruben
10. In Ruben’s neighborhood many kids
abandon hope and succumb to this 11. Nick
13. Nick saw a lot of this in Ruben
14. Nick taught this subject 15. Manny _____ followed in Ruben’s footsteps
18. Nick’s college
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Sports WordSearch 12
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
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Making all the Right Moves
Sports Stories, 2007
in the challenge.
Tribune staff reporter
Alexa Schwichow is on her side on a mat,
and she has her jujitsu instructor in a clock
choke--one leg across his hip, her knee
against a shoulder blade, a hand under his
armpit.
Feeling her way through the darkness that
has been her world since birth, she tugs on
her instructor’s arm, and he rolls onto his
back.
Alexa is blind, but learning seems to come
easy--whether a martial arts exercise or a
new Braille skill--for the 11-year-old, who
will enter 6th grade in the fall at Johnsburg
Middle School in McHenry County.
Soon, Alexa will take part in the
sixth annual Braille Challenge in
Los Angeles, an academic competition for blind students from
the U.S. and Canada. She was the
only representative from Illinois
chosen this year to compete with
about 60 other visually impaired
and blind students. The competition, which is intended to
motivate students and encourage
them to study Braille, tests skills
such as reading comprehension,
spelling, speed and accuracy
and the ability to use charts and
graphs. More than 300 students
took qualifying tests to compete
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #13
Alexa began to learn Braille in preschool,
but experts say fewer students these days
study the system.
“If they went to a school for the blind, they
were going to read Braille,” said Nancy
Niebrugge, director of the Braille Challenge
for the Braille Institute, a non-profit organization in Los Angeles. “Most students are
mainstreamed now.”
Asked about the weekend competition,
Alexa said, “I want to win.”
That spirit is evident on the mat, as Alexa
focuses on completing the jujitsu
move against instructor Bart
Palaszewski at the Curran Martial Arts studio in Crystal Lake.
When she does, he pulls her to
her feet and lightly swings her
around his back as they return
to where parents Tina and Rob
Schwichow are sitting.
“Good job, Lex,” yells her mother.
Alexa, whose blindness is caused
by Leber’s congenital amaurosis,
has learned to ski, play piano and
trumpet, and takes tumbling les-
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sons. She taught her 3-year-old sister, Jade,
how to sing the alphabet.
Alexa said jujitsu could help her if she’s
ever attacked. The explanation sounds almost like a dare.
“First, I’d break his arms,” she said, arms
jabbing outward. “Then I’d choke him to
death.”
“You don’t have to win a fight,” Palaszewski told her. “You just have to get away
to be safe.”
With a barrette in her hair and grin on her
face as she plays in the back yard of her
Johnsburg home with Jade, Alexa doesn’t
seem the type to break anyone’s arm.
“We’re depending too much on volunteers
for Braille transcription. And parents are
not informed about all their options.”
Niebrugge said parents of children whose
vision is not as seriously impaired as
Alexa’s don’t always insist that their children learn Braille.That can be a mistake if
the child’s vision worsens, Niebrugge said.
Young children, whether blind or sighted,
pick up things easily--including Braille, she
said. Later, it may be more difficult.
“[A child will] learn to read Braille at the
same pace as a sighted child will learn to
read print,” Niebrugge said. “To a blind
child, if a book doesn’t have bumps, it
doesn’t have words.”
Alexa’s parents decided early on that
Braille would be crucial for her to learn.
Experts wish more parents made the same
decision.
Advocates for the blind won a victory in
1997, when a new version of the federal
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
took effect. The law said blind and visually
impaired students should learn Braille as
a matter of course, unless school officials
drafting a child’s individual education plan
decided otherwise. But with resources
stretched thin and tools such as audiobooks
available, Braille often gets little consideration.
“Teachers are not there, textbooks are
not there,” said Mary Ann Siller, project
manager for professional development at
the American Foundation for the Blind.
Sports Stories 2007
Sometimes Alexa listens to audiobooks. But
running her fingers across Braille makes her
feel more connected to the words. Lately,
she has been reading the Harry Potter
books--10 Braille volumes for “The Goblet of Fire,” because Braille takes up more
space than printed words.
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But all she could see of the other was the
glass jar that held it.
Sometimes, even walking can be a challenge.
“I veer,” Alexa said. “I go crooked. I just
have to point my whole body straight.”
And there are some things she still doesn’t
grasp when she’s playing with friends.
“My arms will get tired,” Alexa said.
She wonders sometimes what it’s like to
see. But sight is difficult for her to imagine.
Alexa sees through her hands and fingers,
which sometimes has its drawbacks.
“They’re always talking about stuff I don’t
get,” Alexa said. “Like makeup. What is it
with girls and makeup?”
Once in science class, pupils were comparing a real cricket in a jar to a rubber one on
the table.
“I could see the fake one,” she said. “I could
touch it.”
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #13
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Alexa Schwichow?
2. What has Alexa had to overcome?
3. What athletic skills has Alexa learned?
4. What is Braille?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. Why have fewer people learned Braille recently?
6. Why do experts wish more people like Alexa would learn Braille?
7. Why did Alexa study jujitsu?
8. Why do Alexa’s “arms get tired” when she reads?
9. Why was is difficult for Alexa to compare the crickets in science class?
10. How can athletics change the life of a blind person?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 13
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
7
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Across
1. These have hurt the study of Braille
4. One of the musical instruments Alexa has
learned to play
8. If a book doesn’t have them then it
doesn’t have words
11. This chokehold has one leg across a hip
and a knee against a shoulder blade
12. Braille takes up more of this than the
printed word
15. She works at the Brialle Institute
16. Alexa sees through them
17. Running her fingers across Braille makes
Alexa feel more connected to them 18. She works at the American Foundation
for the Blind
Sports Stories 2007
19
Down
2. How some blind students read 3. They get tired when Alexa reads long
books
5. He is Alexa’s instructor on the mat 6. The Braille _______ will be held in Los
Angeles
7. The article begins with Alexa involved in
this sport
8. Alexa’s handicap
9. Alexa
10. Often Braille transcription is depending
too much on them
13. Young ones pick up things easily
14. Bart works here
19. The nickname given Alexa
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Sports WordSearch 13 Find the hidden words and circle them.
N C G
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Sports Stories 2007
D
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clock
Schwichow
blind
Challenge
Lex
jujitsu
Braille
Niebrugge
Palaszewski
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trumpet
audiobooks
Siller
volunteers
children
bumps
words
space
arms
fingers
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Defending Their Hockey Gold
Sports Stories, 2007
Packet #14
Buffalo News
Three of the fifteen members of the U.S.
Paralympics sled hockey team live in Buffalo, NY, and all play for the newly renamed
Buffalo Sabres Sled Hockey team, proudly
wearing the pro team’s “third” jerseys, the
red ones with the crossed swords.
Chris Manns, 25, of Buffalo is the veteran
of the group, bringing home the gold from
the 2002 games in Salt Lake City after he
notched a shootout goal in the gold-medal
game against Norway.
Brad Emmerson, 20, of Amherst, who
started in sled hockey at age 9 after being an
unofficial water boy on the Amherst youth
hockey team his father coached, will bring
a grinder’s mentality and a scorer’s touch
to the Paralympics.
Alexi Salamone, 18, of Grand Island, who
is still in high school, is the speedster of the
group, flying around the ice as a forward
for the U.S. team.
For the uninitiated, sled hockey is played
like regular hockey, except that players sit
about 4 inches above the ice on 4-foot-long
aluminum sleds with two skate blades attached to the bottoms. They carry two cutoff
stick blades, stickhandling and shooting
with the blade, while the metal teeth on the
other end dig into the ice to propel them
down the rink.
Sports Stories 2007
Watch the sled hockey players for any
length of time and you’re impressed by both
the speed and quick turning ability of the
sleds and the uncanny shooting accuracy, as
the players use either hand to hit the corners
of the net or go “top shelf.” Shooting drills
are filled with the sounds of pucks clanking
off the crossbar and posts.
And then you can sit down and hear the
players’ stories of how they have overcome their disabilities, whose causes run
the gamut from serious accidents to birth
defects.
Manns is a double amputee from a train accident in March 1991, when he was 10. He,
Packet #14
Advantage Press, Inc.
two brothers and two friends were looking
for snakes and mice at the railroad tracks
near Amherst and Tonawanda streets when
a train severed his left foot and his right leg
above the knee.
“I’m not going over there to win a gold
medal,” Manns said. “I’m going over to
defend it. It’s ours to keep.”
Emmerson has what he calls a mild case of
cerebral palsy, from the waist down.
As the veteran in the group, Manns plans
to tell Salamone and Emmerson to take a
few deep breaths, relax, play their game and
have a great time.
And Salamone, was born 14 months after
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with deformed legs and had both amputated above
the knee at age 4.
Salamone, a senior at Grand Island High
School, said he expects to be like the little
kid in the candy store, meeting people from
all over the world.
All three took some rough roads to get to the
ice, where they share a love for the freedom
and speed of the game.
“Just to be in the same Olympic venue,
wear the USA stuff and play for the USA
is amazing,” he said. “How many people
have that opportunity?”
“You go out there, and we’re all on the same
playing field,” said Emmerson, a Williamsville North graduate. “And it’s the one game
I can go out and play with my brother.”
These guys are athletes, and they would
rather talk about the USA team’s chances
and about the thrill of being a Paralympian.
The United States is considered one of three
favorites, along with Canada and Norway,
in the eight-team field.
Sports Stories 2007
The three local men make up 20 percent of
the U.S. squad.
Sabres Sled Hockey coach Rich DeGlopper and president Norm Page attribute the
local team’s success to several factors: the
longtime stiff competition against Canadian
teams; the family-based organization that
has disabled people playing with their ablebodied relatives; and the group’s vision.
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“We’ve always wanted to be a model for
the rest of this country and Canada, for
what a sled hockey organization could be,”
Page said.
Emmerson and Manns both wanted to talk
about a person who inspired them.
Emmerson mentioned his friend Sean Galliher, who died two years ago while exercising on a treadmill at age 17. “I want to win
Sports Stories 2007
the gold medal for him,” he said. “When
I’m out there and having a bad day, that’s
what I think about.”
Every time he steps on the ice, Manns
thinks of his late grandmother, Medora
Halbert, who pushed him and inspired him.
He knows his grandmother, who died two
months after the last Paralympics, will be
watching again as he flies around the ice in
search of gold. “I know she’s got the best
seat in the house.”
Packet #14
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #14
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who are the three men from Buffalo on the US paralympic hockey team?
2. How does one play sled hockey?
3. Describe Manns’ handicap. What happened to him?
4. Describe Emmerson’s handicap? What happened to him?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #14
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. Describe Salamone’s handicap? What happened to him?
6. Who is Rich DeGlopper? To what does he attribute the success of his team?
7. Who inspires Emmerson?
8. Who inspires Manns?
9. What is impressive about this sport?
10. Do you know anyone who has overcome a handicap and participates in a sport?
Explain.
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #14
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 14
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
1. The type of goal that won the gold in
2002
3. One end of the cutoff hockey sticks have
these to help the players move about the
ice
7. Salamone was born near this disaster 9. Sled hockey players love the ______ and
the speed of the game
11. The number of teams competing for an
Olympic medal in sled hockey 12. He coaches the Sabres
14. Some of the players are in this league
because of these
15. Three of the fifteen members of the U.S.
Paralympics sled hockey team live here 17. He’s the veteran of the group
18. He had a mild case of cerebral palsy
19. The Sabres played this country for the
gold in 2002
20. Salamone is the ______ of the group
Sports Stories 2007
Down
2. Sled hockey players have _______ shooting accuracy
4. She’s Mann’s inspiration
5. Often the Sabres play teams from this
country
6. The players have plenty of stories about
how they overcame these
8. Manns is a double
10. Mann’s said “I’m not going over there
to win a gold medal, I’m going over to
_____ it.”
13. He is Emmerson’s inspiration 16. The new name for the Buffalo Sled
Hockey team
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Sports WordSearch 14 Find the hidden words and circle them.
R O Q K
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__________
Buffalo
Sabres
Manns
shootout
Emmerson
speedster
teeth
disabilities
accidents
amputee
Sports Stories 2007
G H D
A
T
chernobyl
freedom
Deglopper
Canada
Galliher
Halbert
Norway
uncanny
eight
defend
Packet #14
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Wrestler’s World is Never Limited by his Disability
Sports Stories, 2007
USA TODAY
ATHENS, Ga. — Under the neon lights
of a deserted college workout room, two
wrestlers are locked in a dance of grimaces
and grunts.
Kyle Maynard, who was born with deformed arms and legs, practices moves
with University of Georgia teammate Chris
McDaniel.
Packet #15
arms beyond two rounded stumps and no
legs apart from a pair of short appendages
with deformed feet.
“Let’s wrap it up,” says McDaniel, 22, ringleader of the University of Georgia Bulldog
wrestling team that within hours will open
its season in Clemson, S.C.
It’s 11 p.m., and Maynard, 18, reluctantly
agrees. He lives for the battle; no big deal
when your entire life has been one.
“Hey, Kyle,” McDaniel says, “These your
warm-up pants?”
Maynard looks at the long garment and
shakes his handsome chiseled head: “Ah,
no, Chris. A bit too much leg room.”
From a distance, all appears normal — one
teen on top while his opponent braces himself on all fours. But look closer. The limbs
of the prone wrestler seem to vanish into
the mat itself as if he were up to his elbows
and thighs in Jell-O.
“Time!” yells Chris McDaniel, letting go
of his opponent.
Kyle Maynard rolls over on his back, exhausted. His arms and legs go limp, which
is when you notice that Maynard has no
Sports Stories 2007
Step into Maynard’s world and you enter
a very disconcerting place, though not for
reasons you’d expect.
Handicapped? Please.
Maynard is so passionately normal — so
eager to try anything, so ready to poke fun
at himself, so unwilling to accept limits
— that the congenital amputation that left
him limbless at birth quickly recedes into
the background as if it were a big cowlick.
Something to talk about briefly, then forget.
“I really feel like I’m average,” Maynard
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says, hopping in his wheelchair en route to
his freshman dorm. “But people seem to
think otherwise. So, I’m reaching out.”
Ready or not, here comes Kyle.
125-pound frame and pulling 440 pounds
skyward.
“I’ve traveled all over with Kyle, and what’s
amazing about him is the variety of people
who respond to his story,” says Clevelandbased screenwriter Tony Marinozzi, who is
developing a movie about Maynard’s life.
“It’s not just jocks saying, ‘Way to go, kid’;
it’s girls saying, ‘How do you use a cell
phone so well?’ “ he says. “Everyone is riveted. It’s whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics.
It’s anyone who sees Kyle and can’t believe
what he’s doing.”
A rare condition.
This year saw him receive a variety of laurels inspired by his 35-16 wrestling record
as a high school senior, including ESPN’s
ESPY Award for best athlete with a disability and a Courage Award from the World
Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
Physicians don’t know precisely how many
children are born each year with some form
of congenital amputation, which results
from fibrous bands constricting the membrane that holds the fetus, which in turn
pinches off developing extremities.
Maynard was photographed by Bruce Weber, first for Vanity Fair and again for the
current Abercrombie & Fitch Stars on the
Rise catalog.
Causes range from exposure to drugs
known to cause birth defects to genetic
flukes, which seems to be Maynard’s case
as his three younger sisters do not have his
condition.
On most weekends, Maynard, who had a
3.7 GPA in high school and now is a conscientious public speaking major, makes
time to address anyone from Midwestern
high schoolers to South Florida seniors,
preaching his “pursuit of normalcy.”
Which sounds fine if your definition of
normal is trying to break the teen powerlifting record at the Arnold (Schwarzenegger) Classic by strapping chains onto your
Sports Stories 2007
But Maynard’s almost complete lack of
major joints is as rare as his ability to cope
with the condition, says Nancy Murphy,
professor at the University of Utah and
a fellow with the American Academy of
Pediatrics.
“It’s remarkable to have all four limbs compromised and not be saddled with prosthetic
devices,” says Murphy, whose practice
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focuses on children with disabilities.
“The outside world wants to help these kids
look what we would call normal,” she says.
“What’s amazing about Maynard is his
incredible drive to do without prostheses
and work things out on his own. To say, ‘I
don’t care if the world sees me as deformed,
here I come.’
A determined son
Maynard arrived on March 24, 1986, the
first child of salesman Scott and homemaker Anita Maynard of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“I suppose at first we just focused a lot on
his face. He was my blond-haired, blueeyed angel,” Anita says. “He was our first,
so that was tough as it is. But you know,
everything was a learning experience. For
all of us.”
Watching other toddlers grip crayons between thumb and fingers, Kyle quickly
taught himself to clutch objects between his
two shortened but highly sensitive biceps
— the same technique he uses today to
wrangle french fries, pop open acne medicine packages and manipulate an itty-bitty
cell phone. Want more? He also can type
50 words a minute.
“He was tough. I remember as a little boy
he would scribble all over the place,” recalls
Anita. “Until one day I told him you had
to stay between the lines, and that was the
last time he ever colored outside the lines
again.”
The years ticked by, and equally striking
daughters — Amber, now 16, Lindsay, 13,
and MacKenzie, 9 — appeared on the scene.
Kyle was ever the big brother, proving both
doting and occasionally annoying. In other
words, the Maynard kids were normal.
Soon, Kyle’s passion for competition — a
trait stoked by both parents — found him
on the middle school football team in their
new hometown of Suwanee, Georgia, just
outside Atlanta. Despite his determination, the game was tough on Kyle. Both
of his feet were broken by hard-charging
opponents.
The Maynards immediately knew that Kyle
was handicapped only in the physical sense.
His mental focus and drive stunned them.
Sports Stories 2007
“I always told Kyle, ‘Don’t assume you
can’t do something,’ but even so, football
was hard on him,” says Scott, a demanding
ex-college wrestler who helped steer his son
toward a new sport. “In the end, wrestling
was perfect, because his opponents couldn’t
run from him.”
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The young athlete had an epiphany. “I don’t
know where I’d be without wrestling,”
Kyle says. “I love to compete. I love to get
physical. I love dominating someone like
that. I love to win. It’s such a huge part of
who I am.”
After losing his first 35 high school matches
in a row, Kyle was struggling physically
and emotionally. “I was getting worried,”
he says. “Because losing in combat like that
is very tough on the ego.”
But Kyle, with the help of his father and
Cliff Ramos, the grappling coach at Collins
Hill High School, soon developed fearsome
moves typified by the “jawbreaker,” when
he grabs an opponent in the vise that is his
two “arms.” And the tide turned.
“I guess I freaked them out,” says Maynard,
shrugging.
Their squeamishness, his gain.
Maynard won most of his matches last
year and wound up 12th in his 103-pound
class at the National High School Wrestling
Championships.
“Of course, we were proud of him for that,”
Anita says. “But we’re just proud of him,
period. Of the fact that he taught himself to
eat on his own as a kid, and that now he’s
off in college and totally self-sufficient. He
might inspire others now, but he’s inspired
us his whole life.”
Ultimate fighter?
Maynard’s dorm room is like any other on
Many opponents found they couldn’t match this sprawling 35,000-student campus, a
Maynard’s speed or his strength-to-weight spartan box that he and roommate Trevor
ratio. Some capitulated for other reasons: A Garner, 19, have tried to lighten up. For his
number of wrestlers “tapped out”- touching part, Maynard has put up a huge Univerthe mat to end the match — within seconds sity of Georgia flag, alongside posters of
of touching Maynard.
a defiant Muhammad Ali and of a glaring
Randy Couture, the current Ultimate Fighting Champion.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #15
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Kyle Maynard? Where does he go to school? What sport is he involved
with?
2. Does Kyle have a sense of humor? How do you know?
3. Why does the article say that Kyle is “passionately normal?”
4. What awards has Kyle recently received?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. Who is Nancy Murphy? What does she say about Kyle?
6. What stunned Kyle’s parents early in his life?
7. How was football tough on Kyle when he was in junior high school?
8. Describe the “jawbreaker.” How did this move help Kyle?
9. What are Kyle’s advantages as a wrestler?
10. How does Kyle “freak out” his opponents?
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 15
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
3. In congenital amputation, these bands
constrict membranes and pinch off extremities 6. The place Kyle calls his hometown 7. The _______ Classic 9. Kyle’s case of congenital amputation
seems to be a _____ fluke
10. One of Maynard’s teammates 12. The article said Maynard is ______ normal 15. Kyle is handicapped only in this sense
16. One of the things Kyle preaches is his
pursuit of this
19. Maynard wants to do without them and
work things out on his own
20. The Stars on the Rise catalog is from
_______ & Fitch
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. Kyle is a ________ speaking major
2. This sport was perfect for Kyle because
his opponents could not run from him 4. The courage Award is from the World
Sports _______ Hall of Fame 5. Kyle gets to class on one of these
8. Maynard’s school
11. He’s a screenwriter
13. Kyle is unwilling to accept them
14. One of the awards Maynard received
17. She’s a professor at the University of
Utah
18. A photographer for Vanity Fair
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Sports WordSearch 15 Find the hidden words and circle them.
Name
__________
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Sports Stories 2007
A
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McDaniel
passionately
limits
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ESPY
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genetic
Murphy
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physical
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wrestling
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Play it Smart
Sports Stories, 2007
Tiger Beat
Willy Joseph embraces challenges on a
regular basis. In fact, its something he’s
been doing his entire life.
Growing up in his native Freeport, Grand
Bahamas, Willy learned Standard English
in school while his family spoke Creole
English at home. Overcoming a language
barrier within his household was an everyday challenge.
When Willy moved to the U.S. in December
2000 to live with his uncle and pursue a
better education, he left behind his mother
and four younger siblings with the hopes of
one day helping his family reach a level of
prosperity that was limited in the Grand Bahamas. Having an entire family depending
on him while adjusting to a new culture and
a new school was an immense challenge.
Yet Willy thrived with these challenges and
embraced a new one recently with the advent of the Play It Smart program at Jones
High School in Orlando, Florida. Getting
students to buy into the Play It Smart program at Jones, a school that is in jeopardy
of state intervention after receiving a failing
grade on the state F-Cat exam for the third
Sports Stories 2007
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consecutive year, was a monumental task.
Thats why Academic Coach Greg Ford
and Head Football Coach Darren Randall
enlisted Willys help in making the program
work at Jones.
Willy is a symbol of what we want Play It
Smart to produce, Ford said. When we got
started with the program here at Jones, we
looked to Willy to motivate and inspire the
other kids. Hes responded tremendously.
Willy’s work with the Play It Smart program
at Jones High School has earned him recognition as a Play It Smart student-athlete of
the month, selected from more than 10,000
student-athletes nationwide. Play It Smart,
an academic-mentoring program started by
The National Football Foundation, places a
trained academic coach in underserved high
schools to work with student-athletes the
entire school year. Now in 128 schools in
84 cities nationwide, Play It Smart strives to
harness the passion kids have on the playing
field and channel it toward the classroom
and community.
Play It Smart was just implemented at Jones
High School this past fall, funded as a result
of a generous grant given by the Florida
Citrus Sports Foundation. Willy is already
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noticing the difference Play It Smart is making with his fellow teammates.
The program is really helping us come together as a team, he said. People are finding
others who are struggling and making sure
to assist them in any way they can.
Willy is a big reason for the success, as he
took on a leadership role in the early stages
of the program and stressed to his classmates how serious a role it should play.
Willy knew the program was here to help
him and understood how important it was,
Coach Randall said. He had the demeanor,
attitude and respect of his teammates to
influence his peers and get them to buy into
what we were trying to do.
Willy’s influence is a direct result of his
flexibility. He switched from center to
linebacker before his junior year and was
named team captain for this past season.
He was one of six Jones football players
selected to participate in the annual postseason Orlando vs. Tampa All-Star Game.
Willy also plays soccer in the winter and
runs track in the spring.
Outside of athletics, Willy sports a gaudy
Sports Stories 2007
3.7 grade point average and ranks eighth
in his class of more than 130. He is the cochairman of Jones Minority Achievement
Committee, a program that takes incoming
freshman and works with them through
their transition to high school, teaching
them about adversity and responsibility.
Willy was also one of just 39 kids from
around the country selected to attend the
Kettering AIM summer program. As part
of the program, he engaged in college-level
coursework, learning about everything
from computer programming to calculus
to entrepreneurship.
As part of Play It Smart, Willy actively
participates in the drug and alcohol prevention services, the life skills development
component and the SAT prep classes. He
tutors his teammates in math during the
teams study hall sessions and consistently
reminds his peers about the benefits of the
program. Willy’s extensive involvement in
Play It Smart stems from a selfless passion
to help his family and to see others succeed
in a similar way.
I know that I’m the seed for the tree to grow,
he said. Im the only one whose been given
an opportunity to help my family move up
in the world. I also hate seeing kids fail. I
need to make sure that kids are getting out
of the hallways and putting the necessary
time and effort into their studies. It makes
all the difference in the world.
Greg Ford has noticed the profound impact
that Willy’s had on the Play It Smart program at Jones High School.
I’ve had kids come up to me and ask “What
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do I need to do to be where Willy is,” Ford
said. Its a real tribute to him and to what hes
had to overcome. He has responsibilities
pertaining to his student visa. He needs to
take the TOEFL exam to get into school. He
has a lot of pressure on him. But he looks so
graceful in handling everything and being
a true leader in our program.
Sports Stories 2007
Willy plans to attend either Kettering University, Florida A&M or South Carolina
State. If he’s at Kettering, he’ll participate
in a 7-year masters program in electrical
and computer engineering. He may play
football if he attends one of the other two.
Either way, Willy Joseph has a challenge
ahead of him. But thats nothing new to him.
Hes been embracing them his entire life.
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #16
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Who is Willy Jospeh? Where did he grow up? What sports is he involved with?
2. Describe Willy’s challenge when he moved to the US.
3. What is the Play It Smart Program?
4. Who is Greg Ford? What does he think of Willy?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. How is the Play It Smart Program helping Jones High School athletics?
6. What did Coach Randall say about Willy?
7. Describe how Willy does in school academics.
8. Why is Willy involved with Play It Smart?
9. “I’m the seed for the tree to grow.” Who said it? What did he mean?
10. Describe Willy’s plans for his future.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 16
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
11
12
10
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
2. Another sport of Willy’s
6. Willy grew up here
8. Part of Play It Smart includes drug and
______ prevention 12. Joseph moved in with him when he came
to the US
13. The _______ AIM program gets kids
involved with college-level coursework
15. According to Ford, they looked to Willy
to motivate and ______ the other kids 16. One of the reasons Willy came to the US 17. The type of English spoken where Willy
grew up
18. He’s Willy’s football coach
19. The National _______ Foundation sponsors Play It Smart
20. Joseph ______ his teammates in math
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. According to Ford, Willy has had a
_____ impact on the program 3. Willy took on a ______ role in the Play It
Smart program 4. Overcoming this barrier within his
household was a challenge for Willy
5. Play It Smart is an _______ mentoring
program 7. Jones Minority ________ Committee 9. Willy considers himself the ______ for
the tree to grow
10. Willy’s influence is a direct result of this 11. The program tries to harness the ______
kids have for sports and channel it toward the classroom 14. He’s Willy’s Academic Coach Packet #16
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Sports WordSearch 16
Find the hidden words and circle them.
__________
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Sports Stories 2007
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soccer
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The Free Ride to First Includes Bruises
Sports Stories, 2007
WSJ
EVERY BASEBALL player revels in having a three-hit game, and Toronto Blue Jays
outfielder Reed Johnson has already had
two of them recently.
But his feat has a twist: Mr. Johnson didn’t
hit the ball -- the ball hit him. He’s been
whacked by pitches in the leg, arm, back
and face. “Obviously, at the rate I’m getting
hit, this isn’t normal,” says Mr. Johnson.
The 60 feet, six inches separating the pitcher’s mound from home plate is increasingly
resembling a shooting gallery. Throughout
the league, batters are getting plunked at
an alarming rate. The result: an unusual
number of players getting a free ride to first
base -- and a whole lot of bruises.
Through games played during the first three
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #17
months of the 2006 season, a batter has been
hit roughly every 11 innings, the highest
rate at this point in the season going back
at least five years, according to Stats LLC.
Seven teams are on pace to have more than
80 batters drilled -- the Pirates are flirting
with a 100-beaning season -- compared
with just two last year.
No one is suggesting that pitchers are intentionally targeting batters. But the rise in
hit batters isn’t a coincidence, either. Players say it reflects several factors, including
increased use of armor-like protective gear,
which has batters standing nearer to the
plate -- and therefore closer to an inside
pitch. Also contributing: a push by the
league to have umpires use a stricter definition of a strike, which often translates into
them being stingier about calling strikes
on the outside of the plate. That has caused
pitchers to throw more frequently “inside”
-- trying to hit the part of the strike zone
closest to the batter.
Of course, the potential for a batter to get hit
has long been an integral part of baseball.
To protect batters, the penalty is simple: a
free walk to first base. The only exception
is when an ump decides that the batter intentionally tried to get hit, a ruling that is
extremely rare.
It’s a high-wire act for pitchers. They want
to throw some balls just off the plate to
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tempt batters to swing at less-good pitches.
Yet, they don’t want to put a potential run
on base by hitting the batter. (Occasionally,
of course, pitchers throw at a batter on purpose -- usually in retaliation for one of their
own teammates having been hit).
The prevalence of steroids in baseball has
tilted the balance of power from pitchers
to hitters in recent years. Now, the battleground is shifting from the inside of the lab
to the inside of the plate. But there’s more
than a batter’s bruised thigh or banged-up
forearm at stake. It has wide-ranging ramifications for baseball, from causing some
pitchers to rethink their game strategies,
to sparking more brawls and player ejections.
For most baseball fans, the mere thought
of getting hit by a whizzing fastball would
be enough of a mental reminder to stay
back off the plate. Getting hit in the arm
by a 95 mile-an-hour fastball is roughly
equivalent to having a 11-pound bowling
ball dropped on you from eight feet up,
says Blaine Norum, a physics professor at
Sports Stories 2007
the University of Virginia.
Team medical staffers say they worry most
about direct shots to bony areas, which can
cause fractures or bone bruises. Blows to
meatier body parts like the back and upper
legs often leave their mark -- literally. It’s
“very common” to see an indentation of
the ball’s stitch marks on a player’s skin
several days after he got hit, says Tom
Probst, the Colorado Rockies’ director of
medical operations. Upon impact, muscles
sometimes go into spasms to protect the
body, and as the spasms subside and feeling
and movement return, tendons and muscle
fibers become inflamed, making it difficult
to move, says Mr. Probst.
Center fielder Aaron Rowand says he could
barely get out of bed the morning after
getting hit in the back a few years ago by
a fastball from then-Texas Rangers pitcher
Chris Young. Mr. Rowand, who was with
the Chicago White Sox at the time but now
plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, jokes
that he felt like his internal organs had been
permanently damaged. “He throws a really
heavy ball,” says Mr. Rowand.
Lots of other players have already been hit
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more than once in 2006. San Francisco Giants infielder Kevin Frandsen, who recently
spent two weeks in the big leagues before
being sent back down to the minors, made
the most of his call-up: He got hit in five
of his first ten games. His childhood hero
is Houston Astros infielder Craig Biggio,
who holds the modern-day record for most
plunkings (at 276).
To safeguard themselves, more hitters wear
what is referred to in the league as “body
armor.” Previously used by players mostly
to protect existing injuries from further
damage, the arm and elbow guards have,
in recent years for some players, become
“part of their offense,” says Bob Watson,
vice president of on-field operations for
the league. About 100 players now wear
some form of padding, and four different
manufacturers outfit Major Leaguers with
the gear.
In 2000, the league began requiring that the
arm guards that players wear be ten inches
or smaller when laid out flat. Players who
Sports Stories 2007
wanted to use bulkier protective equipment
needed a medical reason. Between 20 and
30 players this year made such a request,
which the league says it very rarely denies.
Baseball’s rules define the strike zone as the
invisible box over home plate framed by the
plate’s four corners on the sides, and the
level of the letters of the player’s uniform
on top and the player’s knees on the bottom.
Traditionally, every ump has had a slightly
different conception of the strike zone, and
some have long been known to be generous
(to the pitcher) with the outside of the plate:
that is, calling a pitch a strike even if it’s
further out than the boundary of home plate
on the side opposite the batter.
In an effort to get umps to call strikes more
in line with the rule- book definition, the
league has been using a system created by a
company called QuesTec, now in 11 parks,
that robotically tracks the pitches and gives
the league and the umpires a report card after the game on the accuracy of the calls.
The upshot: As pitchers have adjusted to the
new regime of strikes, they’ve been throwing inside more. “There’s 17 inches of plate
somewhere,” says New York Mets pitcher
Tom Glavine, who has spent his career on
the edges of the plate. “You’ve got to get
those 17 inches somehow, and if it means
pushing guys off the plate, that’s what you
have to do.”
Some pitchers are trying to reclaim the
inside of the plate with something called
the “cut” fastball -- commonly referred to
Packet #17
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as a “cutter.” Now in vogue, the pitch, held
like a fastball but with added pressure on
the middle finger, veers hard and inward
toward the hands of a left-handed batter
when thrown by a right-handed pitcher (and
vice versa when thrown by a lefty). It’s no
coincidence that Casey Fossum, the Tampa
Bay Devil Rays pitcher who has hit seven
batters in eight starts, relies on the cutter.
“You have to make it a point to show the
hitters the inside corner is my corner,” he
says.
Indeed, more pitchers are pushing back,
which can quickly spark a free-for all. Umpires have been instructed in recent years to
try to put out these fires before they start.
Recently, Astros pitcher Russ Springer hit
the Giants’ Barry Bonds in the shoulder, after a tense series of pitches. Mr. Springer’s
first pitch sailed behind Mr. Bonds, earning
a warning from the umpire. His next three
pitches were inside. After Mr. Bonds was
hit, the umpire ejected both Mr. Springer
and his manager. In a game played recently
between the Giants and Rockies featured
four hit batters and five ejections.
Another fracas started when the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher John Lackey
objected to Oakland Athletics’ catcher
Jason Kendall, who wears elbow padding,
sticking out his padded elbow in an apparent attempt to get hit.
Mr. Johnson says the Blue Jays just received
a shipment of new elbow guards, which at
least a handful of his teammates are now
wearing. But they haven’t helped Mr.
Johnson so much -- he has been hit in the
face more often this year than in the elbow
guard. The face shot, he says, “kind of felt
like it ripped some skin off my cheek.”
Mr. Rowand got hit on the same spot on the
elbow on successive nights in Minnesota in
2005 -- it was so painful he wanted to cry,
he says. He wore an elbow guard the rest
of the year, but is going without one this
season and refusing to budge from his spot
on the inside of the plate.
“When that ball’s coming, you’re supposed
to get out of the way,” says Phillies teammate Pat Burrell. Pointing to Mr. Rowand’s
locker, he adds: “Some guys just don’t
move.”
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #17
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. What is the rule in baseball about the batter getting hit by a pitch?
2. Why do more pitchers seem to be throwing the ball “inside” to a batter?
3. What has caused the “battleground” to shift “from the inside of the lab to the inside
of the plate?”
4. What do team medical staffers worry about most with regard to batters getting hit
by a pitch?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. What are batters doing to try to protect themselves from getting hit?
6. Describe the rules regarding protective gear.
7. Define the “strike zone.”
8. What is a “cutter?”
9. What is “QuesTec?”
10. Describe what happened with Aaron Rowan.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 17
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
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2
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4
5
6
7
8
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10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Across
2. He said Chris Young “throws a really
heavy ball.” 5. The balance of power in baseball has
tilted from pitcher to hitters because of
this
7. The number of teams with over 80 players hit in 2005
9. More players being hit by pitches results
in more player _______
10. When a pitcher throws at a batter on purpose it is usually _______
12. Players are wearing more of this gear
14. A little over sixty feet separates the plate
from this 15. The league wants them to use a stricter
definition of a strike 18. More players are wearing body _____ 19. He holds the modern-day record for getting hit the most
20. He got hit in five of his first ten games Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. The only exception to a free ride when
getting hit is if the batter ________ gets
hit
3. 4. 6. 8. 11. 13. 16.
17. He plays for the Toronto Blue Jays
The bottom of the strike zone is around
here
Players stand closer to it in 2006
Get hit and you get a free ride to this
base
In the first part of the 2006 season, a batter has been hit about once every ____
innings
He’s a physics professor who compares
getting hit by a baseball to having a
bowling ball dropped on you
He’s the director of medical operations
for the Rockies
Arm _____ must be ten inches or smaller
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Sports WordSearch 17
Find the hidden words and circle them.
D
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Sports Stories 2007
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guards
knees
Packet #17
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J-Mac’s Meaningful Message
Sports Stories, 2007
ESPN.com
It took four minutes. Four measly minutes
for high school senior Jason McElwain to
morph from a relatively unknown student
manager of the Greece Athena basketball
team into a nationwide inspiration.
In those 240 seconds, the 5-foot-6 kid with
autism, in his first-ever appearance in a
high school game, scored 20 points and
tied a school record with six 3-pointers.
The grainy video clip of his jaw-dropping
accomplishment -- and the pandemonium
that ensued in the gym -- has made its way
from Greece Athena in Rochester, N.Y., to
“Good Morning America,” “SportsCenter”
and CNN. And as much as it tugs at the
emotions of sports fans all across the country, its most significant impact might be
felt within the autism community, where
Packet #18
doctors, parents and educators are still
buzzing about what this all could mean
for the treatment of this disease.
“A lot of us feel like this is our gift to have
this happen and to have it receive so much
nationwide publicity,” said Dr. Catherine
Lord, a professor of psychiatry and the
director for the University of Michigan’s
Autism and Communications Disorders
Center. “There are thousands of Jasons out
there, carrying the net for the soccer team,
keeping statistics for the baseball team,
playing the drum for the school band. This
serves as a reminder to give these kids a
chance whenever possible.”
The timing perhaps couldn’t have been
better. Based on statistics from the U.S.
Department of Education, autism, a disease that affects an individual’s ability to
relate socially to others, is growing at a rate
of 10 to 17 percent a year, making it the
fastest-growing disability in the country.
The disease cuts across all racial, ethnic,
social and economic lines, yet it affects
boys four times more often than girls.
When most people think of autism, their
minds immediately race to Raymond Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film
“Rain Man.” But the disease is far more
complex than that, imposing wide-ranging effects on its subjects. Some are left
speechless or entirely unable to communi-
Sports Stories 2007
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cate, while others face miniature hurdles
each day that often aren’t readily visible
to those on the outside.
There is no known cure.
“There are thousands of families across
the country, getting a diagnosis of autism
for their 3-year-old; they look at Jason
and have tears in their eyes,” said Dr.
Susan Hyman, an associate professor for
pediatrics at the University of Rochester’s
Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities. “Because the image they have in
their minds isn’t of some strapping young
teenager making baskets from half court.
“The hope and the promise this provides
-- it’s priceless.”
But hope is only the beginning. For many
in the autism community, McElwain’s
story provides a much-needed template for
the right way to integrate a special-needs
child into the mainstream community.
When Lee Grossman, president of the
Sports Stories 2007
Autism Society of America, first saw the
clip of McElwain’s magical night, he was
blown away -- not by the frequency of 3pointers swishing through the net, but by
the frenzied students who jumped up and
down and waved their arms back and forth
and held up pictures of McElwain. Before
he had even checked into the game.
“For me, that was enough right there,” said
Grossman, whose son, Vance, has autism.
“It was absolutely thrilling. That’s what we
as advocates strive so much for -- to have
kids included so they can live a relatively
normal life. By providing them with those
experiences, they can excel at a much
greater level than if they were isolated.”
That’s one of the reasons the buzz about
McElwain’s success spread so quickly
through the autism community. Even
before the story went national, Grossman
said the inbox of his e-mail account filled
up. Dr. Lord also received “countless” emails. Autism Listservs, message boards,
hotlines … they’ve all been flooded with
McElwain questions. At Greece Athena,
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secretaries have been taking calls from
parents of autistic children, seeking advice.
“The lesson that people need to get from
this is why this worked,” Hyman said.
“You’re going to have people looking at
the school, the team, the kids, the family.
There are a lot of positive interactions
there that will hopefully point towards
ways to get a similar end result.”
The impact could be potentially groundbreaking. Dr. Lord, who in 2001 chaired
a National Research Council committee
on educational interventions for children
with autism, has already begun pointing to
McElwain as an example to the families
of her patients.
“One of the things we’re always negotiating is how to get autistic kids around
other kids in a situation that’s positive,”
Lord said. “(Jason’s story) is just such a
good example of persistence paying off. It
produces motivation for the parents who
Sports Stories 2007
argue it’s too hard, they don’t want to put
their child through this.
“We can tell them, ‘Look, there is a place
where this did work. Not just because he
made great baskets, but because the team
and the school accepted him.’”
Before McElwain’s sharpshooting, highprofile role models for children with autism were few and far between. Sure, there
is the occasional child who grows up to
earn his Ph.D. and have a family or become
a top-selling artist, but there aren’t many
whom those inside the autism community
can relate to.
McElwain’s story -- and the flood of publicity that followed it -- has changed that.
Grossman is hopeful that the McElwain
experience will inspire schools across the
country to increase the number of no-cut
sports programs that are offered. Hyman
agrees that those 240 seconds can greatly
increase the opportunities for others.
“This is about looking at what sports do for
kids in America,” she said. “You see kids
with special needs on the sidelines, not
involved, while their typically developing peers are playing. I think the good to
come of this is that people will look at the
novel ways all members of a community
can participate.
“It’s wonderful that he got all those points.
But what’s most wonderful is the circumstances around it. It’s bigger than all those
baskets.”
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Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #18
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. The article said Jason McElwain “morphed.” From what to what?
2. How long did this “morph” take?
3. From what disease does Jason McElwain suffer?
4. Why did Jason gain national attention? What caused it?
Sports Stories 2007
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5. The article said “the timing perhaps couldn’t have been better.” Why?
6. Who is Lee Grossman? What was his first thought when he saw the video of Jason?
7. Who is Susan Hyman? What were her thoughts when she saw the video?
8. Who is Catherine Lord? Why does she think the impact could be “groundbreaking?”
9. Why is is Jason’s story “just such a good example of persistence paying off?”
10. Do you know of a similar story about a student with some sort of handicap? Explain.
Sports Stories 2007
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Sports Crossword 18
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
7
8
6
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Across
2. There isn’t one for autism
7. Autistic kids don’t have many of these
models 9. Professor at the University of Rochester
11. The video from the basketball game was
planed on this program
12. He’s the president of the Autism Society of
America
14. The disease is _______ at a rate of 10%
- 17% per year
16. Advocates for autistic kids strive for them
to be _______
17. Some people with autism cannot do this
18. For many, Jason’s story provides a _____
for the right way to integrate a special
needs child
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. It took 4 minutes for Jason to _____ from
an unknown student to someone famous 2. Autism is a _____ disease with wide-ranging effects
3. This group is affected much more than any
other
4. Jason’s story is a good story of ______
paying off
5. Jason’s grade in school
6. Jason’s nickname
8. She’s a professor at the University of
Michigan
9. He played Babbitt in “Rain Main”
10. Many hope that Jason’s story will inspire
schools to increase the number of ______
sports
13. Jason’s disease
15. Autism is a disease the affects a person’s
ability to _____ with others
Packet #18
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Sports WordSearch 18
Find the hidden words and circle them.
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Sports Stories 2007
L
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autism
Lord
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Too Many 300s?
Sports Stories, 2007
WSJ
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Eric Pierson
thinks there are too many perfect games in
bowling, and he knows what to do about
that.
The 41-year-old Mr. Pierson is the lane
manager for amateur bowling’s premier
event, the U.S. Open Championship, a fivemonth competition involving about 63,000
players.
It isn’t that Mr. Pierson hates to see players
reach the pinnacle of bowling, achieved
when they knock down all 10 pins, 12 times
in a row, for a perfect score of 300. But, in
Mr. Pierson’s opinion, there’s such a thing
as too much flawlessness.
His management tool is oil, which all bowling alleys spread on their lanes. Oil protects
the lane surface, but oil artists like Mr. Pierson can use it to make the game harder or
easier depending on how they apply it.
The first official perfect U.S. bowling game
was rolled in 1907. It was the only one that
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #19
year. Two more players managed the feat
in 1908. Last year, members of the U.S.
Bowling Congress, the sport’s amateur association, tallied a record 51,192 perfect
games in league and tournament play.
Are today’s bowlers so much better than
their forebears of a century ago? Mr. Pierson
doesn’t think so, and most bowling experts
agree. They say that bowlers, like golfers
and tennis players, are taking advantage of
technology to improve their games.
That bothers traditionalists, who say the
integrity of some of the world’s most nuanced precision games is at risk. Golf officials have tried to fight back by lengthening
championship courses and limiting the size
of titanium club heads. Former tennis star
John McEnroe has called for a return to the
wooden racket.
But while golfers are driving farther and
tennis players are hitting more aces, they
have nothing on bowlers. To score a strike,
bowlers are generally aiming to hook the
ball into what they call “the pocket,” the
space between the front pin and the next
pin on either side. If the pins are walloped
just right, they knock or bounce into one
another, and all 10 pins will fall. It used to
be an extraordinary feat to knock down all
the pins at once a dozen times in succession. Few players had the consistency to do
that. But in the late 1980s, the sport began
to shift away from polyester balls to super-
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
engineered polyurethane balls with special
resins and particles that grip the lanes better
and strategically weighted cores that make
aiming easier.
The maple pins were covered with a new
plastic called Surlyn that not only protected
them better but made them bouncier and
easier to topple.
As a result, the bowling congress has seen
an explosion of perfect scores, with more
perfect games rolled last year than the combined total racked up in the 87 years after
official record-keeping began in 1895.
Declining interest in organized bowling has
made the problem worse. In the sport’s U.S.
heyday, the 1960s to the early 1980s, bowling alleys served as magnets for teenagers
and as social venues for adults gathering
to drink beer and compete in local leagues.
But league participation has fallen to under
3 million players from more than 4 million
at the zenith, the bowling congress says.
So many bowling-alley owners, according
to officials of the sport, have tried to make
it easier for players to roll high scores.
“There are fewer bowlers, so they want the
ones still bowling to feel good,” says Matt
Cannizzaro, the spokesman for this year’s
championship here.
Sports Stories 2007
Many bowling alleys have opted for oil patterns that raise scores, which, along with the
improved balls, help account for the climb
in perfect games, experts say. Meanwhile,
the U.S. Bowling Congress, trying to slow
the pace of perfect scores, is encouraging
the growth of “sport bowling,” a version of
the game in which the oil is strictly limited
so as to increase the challenge.
The bowling congress has watched as perfect games have soared in its prestigious annual tournament. After the first tournament
in 1895, it took 13 years before a player,
using a wooden ball, delivered the first 300
score. By the 1990s, the tournament was
regularly seeing 25 to 50 perfect games.
When players scored 64 perfect games in
the 2002 tournament, it was too much for
Mr. Pierson, the lane manager. “I think
that’s outrageous,” he says.
Mr. Pierson, who has been bowling seriously since he was 11 and has bowled in the
national tournament for 23 straight years,
began working as a lane official in 1998.
He was promoted to lane manager for the
2004 championship, giving him authority to
decide on an oil pattern and to make sure it’s
applied consistently for each competitor.
When Mr. Pierson, who lives in Waukesha,
Wisconsin, began to prepare for the tournament, one of his goals was to avoid another
flood of perfect scores like that of 2002. But
he didn’t want to go as far as 2005, when
the oil pattern helped to limit the players’
average score to about 169, and the number
of perfect games was a relatively low 13.
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Advantage Press, Inc.
Mr. Pierson and tournament officials
thought a more reasonable average score
was a bit higher -- about 171 or 172, he says.
As for perfect games, Mr. Pierson decided
“30 is a great number.”
All bowling alleys use a lubricant composed
mostly of mineral oil to protect the lanes
from the battering of dropped, heaved and
sometimes bounced balls. But, after bowling just two or three balls, skilled players
can detect the pattern in which the oil was
applied -- where it’s thick, where it’s thin
-- and try to aim in a way that after a while
grooves out an effective guide straight to
the pocket.
He says he relies mostly on his own experience to know which oil pattern will produce
the desired result. He began his calculations
this year by using a pattern suggested by
the manufacturer of the oil and the automated oil applicator, Florida-based Kegel
Co. Inc.
He applies 19 milliliters of oil -- about four
teaspoons -- to each 60-foot lane, starting
near the foul line at the front of the lane and
running another 39 feet toward the pins. As
is typically done on bowling lanes everywhere, he leaves the last 20 feet oil-free so
the ball can get a good grip on its final hook
into the pocket.
A few days before the tournament began,
Mr. Pierson invited local Corpus Christi
bowlers to try out the lanes. After watching three players, Mr. Pierson noticed that
they were finding it too easy to hook the
ball into the pocket by rolling it along a
trajectory near the center of the lane. There
Sports Stories 2007
evidently was too little oil down the center,
Mr. Pierson concluded. He widened the
track of thick oil there.
Mr. Pierson and his assistants run the red,
rectangular applicators over the lanes three
times a day. After carefully cleaning the
trunk- size machines, he fills them with oil
and lines them up in front of the lanes, one
at a time. The battery-powered machines
then move automatically up the lane and
back, removing the previous oil and then
applying a new coat. The idea is to provide
all players, whenever they happen to bowl,
precisely the same pattern.
It’s probably just as well that the subtleties
are lost on some bowlers. Ron Crocraft,
a 62-year-old resident of San Leandro,
California, bowling in his tenth consecutive
national tournament, said he hasn’t noticed
any special challenge this year with the oil
pattern. “I have no trouble with the lanes
any year. It’s the bowler” who makes the
difference.
So far, the lanes seem to be just about right
this year. Three- fourths of the way through
the tournament, players have rolled 25
scores of 300, and accumulated averages
of about 174. “I think we’re on target,” Mr.
Pierson says.
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #19
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. Describe how one achieves a perfect score in bowling.
2. Why does Eric Pierson think there are too many perfect games in bowling?
3. What control does Pierson have over the scores in the bowling tournament?
4. What can Pierson do to keep the number of perfect scores rather low?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. What has happened to the number of perfect scores in bowling over the past century?
6. What is “sport bowling?”
7. What do bowling allies use to protect the lanes from the battering of bowling balls?
8. What does the Kegel Company produce?
9. What did Pierson do before the tournament to test his plan?
10. What type of scores do the bowling-alley owners want? Why?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 19
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
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19
Across
1. This company manufactures the oil used
on the lanes
3. Particles in the new bowling balls help to
_____ the lane
6. Pins at the bowling lane are made of this
wood
9. To get a score of 300 a bowler must knock
down ten pins _____ times in a row
11. The space between the front pin and the
next pin on either side
12. He’s the spokesman for the US Open
Bowling Championship 13. One tool used to manage the lanes
14. Pierson thinks there are too many _____
games 15. Polyurethane bowling balls have special _____ 17. The “perfect number” of perfect games
Pierson is trying for
18. The US Open Championship for bowling
lasts five of them 19. In the seventies, bowling alleys were
_____ for teens Sports Stories 2007
Down
2. Owners of the bowling alleys want to make
it ____ for bowlers to attract more of them
4. Before the late 1980s bowlers used ______
bowling balls
5. Many say that bowlers are taking advantage of this to improve their game 7. When one knocks down all the pins
8. The first perfect _______ game was in
1907
10. Pierson is the _____ manager
11. Oil _____ the lane 16. The new plastic that covers the bowling
pins
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports WordSearch 19
Find the hidden words and circle them.
Name
__________
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Sports Stories 2007
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polyester
resins
grip
maple
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easier
Cannizzaro
thirty
Kegel
Packet #19
Advantage Press, Inc.
Deaf Athlete Aiming for Title
Sports Stories, 2007
Packet #20
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
it. Nothing falls into your lap.”
Unlike most athletes, Andrew Cohen
doesn’t rely on the crowd to pump him up
during competition.
Cohen also refuses to let his deafness stop
him from other achievements.
He can’t. Since Cohen is deaf, he doesn’t
feed off the crowd’s applause.
His mother, Debby, proudly says he’s a
straight-A student. He also loves computers, travel and animals.
So when Cohen, a junior at Franklin Regional High School, won the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League
Class AAA discus champion at Baldwin’s
Cibik Stadium, all he saw were people
clapping. But that was satisfying enough
for him.
Cohen also interacts well with the students
at school.
“Andrew is a special kid,” said Ron Suvak,
Franklin Regional athletic director. “He’s
overcome huge hurdles all his life. I’m
proud of him.”
“I have many different goals,” Cohen said.
“My ultimate goal is to throw the discus
more than 200 feet. There are no limitations.”
“Winning the title was a nice feeling,”
Cohen said. “It was a pleasure that I got to
represent my school and coaches.”
Being deaf since birth hasn’t stopped him
for achieving the goals he’s set.
“Nothing is impossible,” Cohen said. “If
you want something, you have to work at
Sports Stories 2007
Cohen said he has set some high goals. He’d
like to attend the University of Southern
California and compete in the Deaf Olympics. USC has a great track tradition and offers what he intends to study: animation.
John Siko, throwing coach for the Franklin
Regional track team, just shakes his head
when he watches his prize thrower practice.
He worries that Cohen works out too much
and describes him as a workaholic.
“He might love the discus too much,” Siko
Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
said. “He can be good at throwing the shot
put and javelin if he loved them as much
as he loves the discus.
ing record as a sophomore with a throw of
153-4. Jack Holliday’s throw of 152-4 was
set in 1972.
“He really works hard at the discus. I’ve
never coached an athlete so dedicated to
the sport.”
“I have plenty of blisters to prove it,” said
Cohen.
Siko said Cohen is constantly throwing the
discus on his own. He comes back to the
practice field in the evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays.
“He’s taught me some new things,” Siko
said. “I feel he throws too much, but it
hasn’t hurt him. It’s made him better.”
Siko and Cohen have a special bond. They
joke around and have developed their own
sign language over the years.
“Andrew seems to rise to the occasion,”
Siko said. “I’m comfortable he’ll do very
well. He’s made drastic improvements in
his throws the past two seasons.
“Andrew is a tremendous role model,”
said Rick Bullock, track coach at Franklin
Regional. “Nobody works harder than him.
He’s focused and has a great work ethic.”
Cohen began throwing the discus in eighth
grade and quickly became the best thrower
in junior high school. He also competed
on the wrestling team and was a swimmer
before turning to track.
“Andrew wants to blend in with the rest of
the students,” said Debby Cohen. “He tries
not to let his deafness hold him back. We’re
so proud of him.”
“I expect him to get better. He has a hitch
in his throw, but he’s been able to overcome
it. We’ve been working hard to eliminate it,
and he’s getting better at it.”
Cohen, who has the second best throw in
the state, captured the WPIAL discus title
with a school record throw of 171 feet, 3
inches. He broke the school’s longest stand-
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Stories 2007: Questions for Packet #20
Name ________
Answer each question in the space provided. If you need more room for your answers,
use the back of the page. Make certain your answers are in complete sentences. Be neat
and spell correctly.
1. In what events does Andrew Cohen participate?
2. What handicap has Andrew been forced to overcome?
3. Describe Andrew’s success academically.
4. Who is Ron Suvak? What did he say about Andrew?
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
5. List three additional goals that Andrew has.
6. Who is John Siko? What does he worry about regarding Andrew?
7. Describe the special bond between Andrew and his coach.
8. Who is Rick Bullock? What did he say about Andrew?
9. Describe Andrew’s history of throwing the discus.
10. Do you know anyone like Andrew? Explain.
Sports Stories 2007
Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports Crossword 20
__________
Name
Use the clues provided to complete the crossword puzzle below.
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2. According to his mom, Andrew wants to
_____ in with the other students
3. 6. 7. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. The previously holder of the discuss record
He’s the track coach
Siko is the _____ coach “Nothing is ________” The year in school when Andrew started
throwing the discuss
Cohen’s school
He’s the regional athletic director
Another throwing event in track
Siko communicates with Andrew using
_____ language One of the things Andrew loves
Sports Stories 2007
Down
1. Another one of Andrew’s sports
4. One of Andrew’s goals is to study this in
college
5. Andrew has been working hard to overcome a _____ in his throw
6. Cohen and Siko have a special one
8. The track coach says Andrew is a tremendous ____ model
9. Siko uses this term to describe Andrew 10. Andrew doesn’t feed off this
11. Cohen’s sport
12. Andrew wants to compete in the _____
Olympics Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
Sports WordSearch 20
Find the hidden words and circle them.
Z
Name
__________
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deaf
animation
workaholic
throwing
javelin
Sports Stories 2007
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Franklin
Packet #20
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #1
1. What old story doesn’t have a happy ending?
It is when an athlete puts his trust and paycheck in the hands
of a sports agent or financial advisor who takes advantage
of his naiveté.
2. What is growing evidence showing?
There is growing evidence professional athletes are getting
smarter about how they manage their money.
3. What are NFL players lining up to attend?
They are lining up to attend seminars at prominent business
schools to learn more about entrepreneurship, finance and
management.
4. Who is Mike Haynes?
Haynes is a Hall of Fame football player who is the NFL’s
vice president of player and employee development.
5. Why are money management issues getting more
attention today?
This is due to the large amounts of money players are making, which makes them a target for everyone, from family
members to scams.
6. Why is one of the biggest financial enemies of an athlete
himself?
There are temptations to blow a lot of cash in the form of
expensive cars, yachts, mansions and private jets.
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A Y A W H
G K A N W E
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7. What has Pippen claimed about his investment adviser?
S
He has alleged that his investment adviser had dissipated
seventeen million given to him by the Bulls to invest.
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8. What did the car-title loan business end up being?
It was nothing more than an offshore Ponzi scheme.
9. Who is Kenneth Shropshire?
Shropshire is a Wharton professor and director of the Wharton
Sports Business Initiative.
10. Who is Gale Sayers?
Gale Sayers, is a Hall of Fame Chicago Bears running
back.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #2
1. How did Dameko Wilkerson take Derrick Johnson from
one life to another?
Wilkerson did this for Johnson by taking him to the Lift for
Life Gym in downtown St. Louis.
2. Where are most of Derrick Johnson’s friends from back
then now?
Most of his friends are in jail or worse.
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Wilkerson helped Johnson learn Olympic-style weightlifting
techniques.
4. According to Johnson what aren’t high schools famous
for?
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H O R
K G U O E
Q A
3. What did Wilkerson help Johnson learn?
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They aren’t famous for competitive weightlifting.
5. Why did Johnson leave Louisiana State University?
1
He left because it was too small for him.
2
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Across
You rapidly lift the weight overhead from the ground in
continuous motion.
G O A
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8. What are the two moves that athletes do in competitive
weightlifting?
9. How is the snatch move performed?
A R
14
He will be in Turkey to compete in the World University
Games.
They do the clean and jerk, and the snatch.
U N
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E
7. What games will Johnson be competing in while in Turkey?
Sports Stories 2007
7
H
He is majoring in political science.
His goal is to compete in the 2008 Olympics.
S C H O L
O
6. What is Johnson’s major at UMSL?
10. What is Johnson’s goal?
3
2. Johnson got _____ offers at several colleges
[scholarship]
6. Political _____ [science]
7. Johnson’s _____ is to compete in the 2008
Olympics [goal]
Johnson doesn’t buy _____ food [junk]
one 9.
10. Rockwood _____ [Summit]
13. The gym is _____ for inner-city kids [free]
16. Lift for _____ Gym [Life]
17. Johnson received _____ gold medals at
national collegiate competition [three]
18. The gym gave him an opportunity to stay off
the _____ [streets]
19. St. Louis is his home _____ [Johnson]
Down
1. High schools aren’t _____ for competitive
weightlifting [famous]
3. He found Lift for Life [Cohen]
4. Puerto _____ [Rico]
5. Johnson competes in the 62-kilogram _____
division [weight]
6. Louisiana _____ University [State]
8. Johnson’s friend _____ [Wilkerson]
11. Bench _____ [presses]
12. Johnson has always been involved in _____
[sports]
14. The clean and _____ [jerk]
15. Johnson played a _____ of sports in high
school [plethora]
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #3
1. Where is Lebanon, Illinois?
Lebanon, Illinois is 26 miles east of St. Louis.
2. On what defense and offense has Statham modeled his
teams after?
He has modeled his teams on the up-tempo offense and aggressive defensive style of Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky teams.
3. What two men have won more games at four-year colleges
than Coach Rupp’s 876 wins?
Harry Statham and North Carolina’s Dean Smith won 879.
4. What does McKendree College charge for admissions to a
basketball game?
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14
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Todd Reynolds is the vice president of student affairs at McKendree College.
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1
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The best of all worlds for Statham would be for his team to
continue to win and for nobody to talk about him.
8. What does Statham usually eat for lunch?
A W Y W V U Q R M
O L
Z
5. What is the best of all worlds for Statham?
He returns his bag to his wife at the end of a day.
E R
T
T
N
7. What does Statham do with his brown lunch bag at the end
of a day?
A U
E R Q V O G W V
A ticket is $3.00 for general admission and $5.00 for a reserved
seat.
6. Who is Todd Reynolds?
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R
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A C H
N
A turkey sandwich and a plastic container with cut-up vegetables.
9. On game days what song plays before McKendree takes
the floor?
William Tell Overture
10. Who is Woody Derickson?
Woody Derickson has been friends with the coach since college.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #4
1. Who is Dr. Joanne Watson?
Dr. Joanne Watson is a family physician at Mercy Medical Center
in Baltimore.
2. Where did Dr. Watson find out about fencing?
She spotted an ad in a community newspaper for the Chesapeake
Fencing Club.
3. Why does fencing have an image problem?
It could be the snow-white uniforms that remind you of cavalrymen dipped in powdered sugar, or the French-laced terminology
that cause the image problem.
4. What are some physical benefits of fencing?
X
B C
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A
L
A
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O
I
Ray Gordon is a professional fencing instructor who serves as
club president.
Collins says that fencing develops upper-body strength and
balance.
8. How popular is fencing as a recreational sport?
3
5
A D O C
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Y
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5. Who is Ray Gordon?
7. What does Dan Collins say fencing develops?
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He says you work the quad muscles and hamstrings especially
hard.
K
Y W N
O U
There’s a lot of legwork. It’s both aerobic and anaerobic.
6. What does Gordon say is worked especially hard on your
body when fencing?
Z
B N
S
Roughly 500,000 Americans fence recreationally.
9. Why are we seeing rapid growth in this sport?
The spike is due to the proliferation of coaches and the US
women’s team having won gold and bronze medals in saber
fencing at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
10. How are points scored with a saber?
They are scored anywhere above the waist, including the head
and arms. A point is scored any time a sword tip touches a hot
spot on the body.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #5
1. What did Floyd Patterson do to avenge a loss to Ingemar
Johansson?
He beat him a year later to become the first boxer to regain the
heavyweight title.
U D
Z
E
D C
J
M R
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P
B
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T
H O B
F
2. What did Patterson win in 1952?
Y
B D N
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X O K O E
L
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X U
E H
A R R
I
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X W A
X
T
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E
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R W S
L
S M A
J
E N
F
V
Y M Z
E O L
U
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K C
Z
He won the Olympic middleweight championship.
3. What did Patterson do to disguise himself after his loss to
Sonny Liston?
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P H N C Q
I
T
Q S
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V
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I
W C H
4. What happened in the 12th round against Muhammad Ali?
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M E M F
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Q N N
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V M E H
Patterson left Chicago wearing dark glasses and a fake beard.
The fight was stopped in favor of Ali.
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5. What was Patterson’s overall record?
1
His overall record was 55-8-1 with 40 knockouts.
4
6. What honor did Patterson receive in 1991?
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
7. How did Patterson stay involved in boxing after his retirement from the ring?
2
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8. What type of school is the Wiltwyck School for Boys?
M
11
9. What did Patterson accomplish after leaving the Wilwyck
School for Boys?
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He served twice as chairman of the New York State Athletic
Commission.
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It is a school for troubled youth.
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He won a New York Golden Gloves championship and then the
Olympic gold medal in the 165-pound class.
10. Who was another person who didn’t want Patterson to fight
Liston?
President John Kennedy didn’t want him to fight Liston.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #6
1. What revolves around the waist of instructor Rayna McInturf?
U N
S G W S U N H
Q D H G A W
Z
A bright pink and green hoop revolves around her waist.
2. What has “Hula-Hooping” transformed into lately?
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4. How do enthusiasts describe hooping?
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They say it is part exercise, part dance and total fun.
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3. How much does McInturf’s six-week class cost?
It cost $240 for 12 sessions.
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“Hula-Hooping” has transformed into “hoping.”
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A
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F
5. What is it about the rings that makes them easier to use
today?
1
3
The weight and larger dimensions make them much easier to use
than hoops of the past.
5
11
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L
Better muscle tone and weight loss.
6
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L
9. In addition to the physical benefits what else can hoping do
for you?
17
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8. Where does Triolo say she practices hooping?
19
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She practices hoping at home in front of the TV or in the park
with friends.
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4
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E
O
B
Moving the hoop up and down the body using different muscle
groups.
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6. What are some advanced moves with the hoop?
7. What are some benefits of hooping?
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Hooping can also relieve stress.
10. Who is Anah Reichenbach?
She is a person who has been hooping for ten years.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #7
1. Who is LeBron James?
He is a Cleveland Cavalier basketball All-Star
2. What is LeBron James doing to help others?
He is building reasonably priced housing in a neighborhood
that he grew up in as a child.
3. What is the LRMR Development Company?
It is a company he and associates from high school formed
to offer reasonably priced houses.
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P U U
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K D R
K O G E D
C N W O Y N
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M L
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E
L
V N
B
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O H
They are the first letters in the men’s first names who formed
the development: LeBron, Randy, Maverick and Richard.
6. What type of housing will the project feature?
The project will feature two and three bedroom, 2,000square-foot townhouses expected to sell for $265,000 to
$325,000 each.
7. Where is the project located?
The homes will overlook Rockefeller Park near the Glenville
neighborhood east of downtown.
8. What happened in 1968 to the lakeside area?
K H
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R
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9
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S
E
Y
In 1968 the race riots caused widespread arson and looting
and chased away businesses and residents for nearly forty
years.
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5. Who is Tracey Kirksey?
He is the executive director of the development corporation.
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4. Who are “The Four Horsemen?”
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9. How would James like to expand the project?
He would like to expand the project through the state of Ohio
and keep it going all the way through the United States.
10. How are the National City Bank and the city contributing
to the project?
The National City Bank is providing a $3.4 million dollar construction loan and the city is putting up a $3000,000 grant.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #8
1. What is Joe Leuchtmann’s occupation?
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S O N
Leuchtmann is a financial planner.
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2. What did Leuchtmann finally achieve that he had only
dreamed about?
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3. What was his motto as he got older?
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4. How did Leuchtmann get started keeping track of the number
of miles he ran?
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He finally had reached the 100,000 mile mark as a runner.
His motto was” “What gets measured improves.”
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The first time he ran, it was five miles. He wrote that number
in a notebook.
1
5. When did he realize that he had a gift?
3
He realized he had a gift when he won track and cross country
championships during middle school.
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6. What honors did Leuchtmann win in high school and college? 7
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8. What injury knocked Leuchtmann for a loop?
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He broke three ribs when he fell during a run.
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He was running at a 5-minute, 30-second pace.
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He was all-state in high school and all-American in college at
the University of Illinois.
7. How fast was Leuchtmann running a mile in 1996?
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9. When does Leuchtmann begin his daily run?
He begins running after the stock market closes each day.
10. How is Leuchtmann’s running helping others?
He runs for organizations that raise money to fight various
cancers.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #9
1. Where are American’s strongest, fastest and slickest
athletes?
They are on baseball diamonds and basketball courts, or in
weight rooms preparing for NFL camps.
2. Who is Sunil Gulati?
Sunil Gulati is the US Soccer Federation president.
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3. What skill does the US Soccer Team need to improve the
most?
They need to improve offense, since 1990 they have only
scored 15 goals in 18 matches.
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4. Who is Kasey Keller?
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Kasey Keller is the US goalkeeper.
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5. What did Kasey Keller say the US team is waiting for?
A
He said they are waiting for that great striker to emerge.
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6. What was Project 40?
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A
A program to identify the best 40 young prospects and sign
them to professional contracts with an MLS club while putting
aside money to complete their education.
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7. Who is Don Garber?
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Don Garber is the Major League Soccer commissioner.
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8. What two soccer franchises were mentioned in the article?
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New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire
9. Who is Claudio Reyna?
Claudio Reyna is the US captain.
10. According to Reyna what is the benefit of being a European player?
He said that players in Europe benefit both from the intensity
of play and the scrutiny of the press and supports.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #10
1. Who is Jim Taylor?
M M E
Jim Taylor is a San Francisco psychologist.
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Taylor said the father was behaving this way to mask his own inner pain.
C
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3. Describe the “helicopter parent” phenomenon.
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The “helicopter parent” phenomenon is the tendency of today’s
moms and dads to “hover” over their children.
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2. What conclusion did Taylor come to regarding the father who
was over involved in his daughter’s skating career?
They shout more on the sidelines, barking directions at their children,
struggle to control their emotions and pester coaches.
5. What can most coaches tell stories about?
Most can tell stories about parents who crossed the line of acceptable
behavior while stopping short of actual violence.
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Tofler says trouble starts when parents rely on their child’s athletic
success to boost their own self-esteem and fulfill other personal
needs.
They are often aging ex-jocks who push their children too hard
because they are reliving past accomplishments or chasing glory
that eluded them.
T
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6. According to Tofler when does trouble start with parents?
7. Who are the parents who struggle to maintain a healthy perspective on involvement with their children?
B
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4. Why is this new breed of parents easy to spot?
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8. What are the chances that a high school varsity athlete will end
up playing on a college team or have a pro career if they played
college sports?
Less than 5% of high school athletes end up playing college sports
and only about 2% of the college athletes make the pro ranks.
9. Who is Rick Wolf?
Rick Wolff is the chairman of the Center for Sports Parenting.
10. What advice does Darrell Burnett give parents?
He says highly involved parents need to check themselves and ask
whether they are beginning to see a son or daughter not as a person
but as a first baseman or halfback.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #11
Y
1. In what way did Joakim become his own man?
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Joakim chose to become involved in basketball rather than the
sport his father was famous for - tennis.
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2. Who was Joakim’s father? Why was he famous?
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Yannick Noah is a tennis player. In 1983 Yannick won the French
Open against Mats Wilander in Paris.
3. Describe Yannik Noah’s music.
Joakim says his father’s music — a fusion of reggae, zouk and
pop — is for dancing.
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4. Why does Joakim see himself as “the small ax?”
From his father’s song:
If you are the big tree,
We are the small ax,
Sharpened to cut you down,
Ready to cut you down.
“Because one person is always going to be that small ax.”
5. Why didn’t Yannik attend his son’s game when they played
undeafeated St. Benedict’s?
Yannick, who was in the country, was supposed to be there. But
he attended a dinner for the Arthur Ashe Foundation in New York
that night.
6. Who is Tyrone Green? Why was he important to Joakim?
Tyrone taught Joakim to play basketball.
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7. List the places where Joakim has lived.
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Paris, France
New York, NY
Lawrenceville, NJ
8. Why does the article describe Joakim as a “child of myth?”
His mother was Miss Sweden (literally, in 1978), and his father
remains Mr. France (figuratively, for all time).
9. What is a “griffin?”
A griffin is a beast that is eagle and lion in one body.
10. Do you think it is difficult or easy for sons or daughters of famous people to become famous in their own right? Explain.
Answers will vary.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #12
1. Who is Ruben Montilla?
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They probably would not succeed - not in athletics and not in school.
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9. What do you think would have happened to people like Ruben without New
Heights?
4
New Heights leads young people to a place where futures are built with the timetested tools of education, peer support, rigor, discipline, an direction.
S U C C
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3
S
8. The article says the New Heights vision “shines like a beacon of hope.” Explain
what this means.
2
Seck Barry, a 7th grader, maintains a GPA of 90. At his home in Harlem, he often takes
care of his seven brothers and sisters, helping them with their homework and teaching
them English. He’s on the basketball team.
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7. Who is Seck Barry? Describe what he has done.
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La’isha Garcia, a junior, is the top ranked student in her class at Thurgood Marshall
Academy in Harlem. She carries a 95+ GPA and is the captain and leading scorer on
her high school basketball team. She is committed to positively transforming her community by mentoring other young student-athletes in NYC.
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Less than 33% of Latino and 35% of African-American students in New York City’s
high schools graduate in four years, and many drop out altogether. In Washington
Heights, where 95% of students are Latino or African-American, only 22% of middle
school students are meeting New York State reading standards and 14% meet math
standards.
I
D
5. What are the challenges facing Latino and African-Americans at New York City
schools?
Y
New Heights was founded in 2000 to give hundreds of kids the opportunity to follow
Ruben’s path, to rise above formerly insurmountable obstacles, to become extraordinary.
K Q D M D O Y C
4. Upon what belief was New Heights founded upon?
T
3. What qualities did Blatchford notice in Montilla?
Blatchford noticed qualities in Ruben – natural intelligence, toughness, charisma,
determination and leadership potential.
Y G S
Nick, a successful student-athlete during his years at Duke University. He was an English
teacher and basketball coach at Intermediate School 90 in Washington Heights.
I
2. Who is Nick Blatchford?
O P U
Ruben grew up on 175th Street in Washington Heights, a community where far too
many teenagers abandon hope and succumb to streetlife. At IS 90, Ruben earned a spot
on the basketball team and Nick became his coach and mentor.
10. How might Seck Barry “make a difference?”
On weekends, Seck attends Columbia Presbyterian’s Lang Youth Medical Program,
which trains aspiring young doctors in the field of medicine and service. He plans on
graduating from college and medical school and – consistent with the New Heights
vision – making a positive impact on his community.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #13
N C G
1. Who is Alexa Schwichow?
C
Alexa is a blind 11-year-old who will enter 6th grade in the fall
at Johnsburg Middle School and who is learning both Braille
and martial arts.
2. What has Alexa had to overcome?
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Martial arts, skiing and jujitsu.
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4. What is Braille?
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A method for blind people to read using the feelings of their
fingertips.
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Young children, whether blind or sighted, pick up things easily-including Braille. Later, it may be more difficult.
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6. Why do experts wish more people like Alexa would learn
Braille?
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There are fewer resources including books and people and
money. Also, there are more audiobooks available - making it
easier for some bind people to listen to books.
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3. What athletic skills has Alexa learned?
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Blindness
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7. Why did Alexa study jujitsu?
Alexa said jujitsu could help her if she’s ever attacked.
8. Why do Alexa’s “arms get tired” when she reads?
Because she has to hold them up reading her long braille
books.
9. Why was is difficult for Alexa to compare the crickets in
science class?
She could touch the fake cricket but could only touch the jar
holding the live cricket.
10. How can athletics change the life of a blind person?
It’s a challenge they can succeed at and then feel self-confidence.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #14
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And Salamone, was born 14 months after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with
deformed legs and had both amputated above the knee at age 4.
H
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5. Describe Salamone’s handicap? What happened to him?
T
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F
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Emmerson has what he calls a mild case of cerebral palsy, from the waist down.
R O Q K
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4. Describe Emmerson’s handicap? What happened to him?
S
V C R Q D
Manns is a double amputee from a train accident in March 1991, when he was
10.
S
3. Describe Manns’ handicap. What happened to him?
N
Sled hockey is played like regular hockey, except that players sit about 4 inches
above the ice on 4-foot-long aluminum sleds with two skate blades attached to
the bottoms. They carry two cutoff stick blades, stickhandling and shooting with
the blade, while the metal teeth on the other end dig into the ice to propel them
down the rink.
T
2. How does one play sled hockey?
G R
Chris Manns, 25 - Brad Emmerson, 20 - Alexi Salamone, 18
B O V
1. Who are the three men from Buffalo on the US paralympic hockey team?
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10. Do you know anyone who has overcome a handicap and participates in a
sport? Explain.
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How difficult it is.
S H O O T
9. What is impressive about this sport?
1
Manns thinks of his late grandmother, Medora Halbert, who pushed him and
inspired him. He knows his grandmother, who died two months after the last
Paralympics, will be watching again as he flies around the ice in search of gold.
“I know she’s got the best seat in the house.”
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8. Who inspires Manns?
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7. Who inspires Emmerson?
Emmerson is inspired by his friend Sean Galliher, who died two years ago while
exercising on a treadmill at age 17. “I want to win the gold medal for him,” he said.
“When I’m out there and having a bad day, that’s what I think about.”
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Sabres Sled Hockey coach Rich DeGlopper and president Norm Page attribute
the local team’s success to several factors: the longtime stiff competition against
Canadian teams; the family-based organization that has disabled people playing
with their able-bodied relatives; and the group’s vision.
S
6. Who is Rich DeGlopper? To what does he attribute the success of his team?
Answers will vary.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #15
1. Who is Kyle Maynard? Where does he go to school? What sport
is he involved with?
An athlete with deformed arms and legs who goes to University
of Georgia and wrestles.
2. Does Kyle have a sense of humor? How do you know?
Yes - because of what he said about the warm-up pants.
3. Why does the article say that Kyle is “passionately normal?”
Because he is so eager to try anything, so ready to poke fun at
himself, so unwilling to accept limits — that the congenital amputation that left him limbless at birth quickly recedes into the
background.
4. What awards has Kyle recently received?
X O X G B W X D
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M S M P W U O K W N M E M G O Z
16
7. How was football tough on Kyle when he was in Junior High
School?
E
S O E O O K N R
5. Who is Nancy Murphy? What does she say about Kyle?
His mental focus and drive stunned them.
I
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ESPN’s ESPY Award for best athlete with a disability and a Courage Award from the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
6. What stunned Kyle’s parents early in his life?
A
X
P
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She’s a professor at the University of Utah and a fellow with the
American Academy of Pediatrics. She said “It’s remarkable to
have all four limbs compromised and not be saddled with prosthetic devices.”
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Both of his feet were broken by hard-charging opponents.
8. Describe the “jawbreaker.” How did this move help Kyle?
The “jawbreaker” is a hold where he grabs an opponent in the
vise that is his two “arms.” That move started him on his winning ways.
9. What are Kyle’s advantages as a wrestler?
Many opponents found they couldn’t match Maynard’s speed or
his strength-to-weight ratio.
10. How does Kyle “freak out” his opponents?
Some capitulated for other reasons: A number of wrestlers “tapped
out”- touching the mat to end the match — within seconds of touching Maynard. “I guess I freaked them out,” says Maynard.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #16
1. Who is Willy Jospeh? Where did he grow up? What sports is
he involved with?
Willy Joseph is a boy who grew up in Freeport, Grand Bahamas
and moved to the US. He is a football player.
G H H D
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M M B M A
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A
2. Describe Willy’s challenge when he moved to the US.
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A O O K
He had to learn English and leave his family behind in the Bahamas. His family depended on him while he tried to adjust to a
new culture and a new school.
3. What is the Play It Smart Program?
Play It Smart is an academic-mentoring program stated by the
National Football Foundation. It places a trained academic coach
in high schools to work with student athletes.
Greg Ford is the Academic Coach at Jones High School in Orlando, Florida. He said Willy is a symbol of what we want to
produce.
The program helps them academically. By helping with study
habits and work ethic, the athletes are encouraged to stay in
school and improve.
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P O Z
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Coach Randall said Willy had the demeanor, attitude and respect
of his teammates to influence his peers and get them to buy into
the program.
S
A C
H
6. What did Coach Randall say about Willy?
R
T
Q H
O A
4. Who is Greg Ford? What does he think of Willy?
5. How is the Play it Smart Program helping Jones High School
athletics?
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7. Describe how Willy does in school academics.
Willy has a 3.7 grade point average and ranks eighth in his
class.
8. Why is Willy involved with Play It Smart?
Willy sees that it is an important part of his schooling.
9. “I’m the seed for the tree to grow.” Who said it? What did he
mean?
Willy said he was the seed. He said it because if he can succeed
with this opportunity then he can help his family move up in the
world.
10. Describe Willy’s plans for his future.
Willy plans to attend either Kettering University, Florida A&M or
South Carolina State. He wants to get into computer engineering
and play football.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #17
1. What is the rule in baseball about the batter getting hit by a
pitch?
If a batter gets hit by a pitch then he can go to first base.
2. Why do more pitchers seem to be throwing the ball “inside”
to a batter?
D
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The umpires use a more strict definition of a strike which
means they don’t call strikes on the outside of the plate.
W O N U
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3. What has caused the “battleground” to shift “from the inside
of the lab to the inside of the plate?”
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Professional baseball has started to crack down on the use of
illegal drugs by the players.
4. What do team medical staffers worry about most with regard
to batters getting hit by a pitch?
Team medical staffers worry most about batters getting hit on
bony areas like the elbow.
5. What are batters doing to try to protect themselves from getting hit?
Batters are using more body armor.
S O E Q U
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The strike zone is defined by the four corners of home plate
and the level of the letters of the player’s uniform and the bottom of the player’s knees.
Q E W Y U U
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7. Define the “strike zone.”
L
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The league requires that the arm guards be 10 inches or
smaller.
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6. Describe the rules regarding protective gear.
B Q
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8. What is a “cutter?”
A cutter is a “cut” fastball. This pitch veers hard and inward
toward the hands of a left-handed batter.
9. What is “QuesTec?”
QuesTec is a robotic system now in 11 ball parks that tracks
the pitches and gives the league and the umpires a report card
after the game on the accuracy of the umpire’s calls.
10. Describe what happened with Aaron Rowan.
He said he could barely get out of bed the morning after getting
hit in the back by a fastball.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #18
1. The article said Jason McElwain “morphed.” From what to
what?
He “morphed” from a relatively unknown student manager of the
Greece Athena basketball team into a nationwide inspiration.
2. How long did this “morph” take?
About four minutes.
3. From what disease does Jason McElwain suffer?
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4. Why did Jason gain national attention? What caused it?
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7. Who is Susan Hyman? What were her thoughts when she saw
the video?
Dr. Hyman is an associate professor for pediatrics at the University of Rochester. She was excited because of the “hope and
promise this provides” for others suffering from the disease.
S C
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5. The article said “the timing perhaps couldn’t have been better.” Why?
Lee Grossman is president of the Autism Society of America.
He was excited by the response of the students in the crowd to
J-Mac’s accomplishments.
O Y
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6. Who is Lee Grossman? What was his first thought when he
saw the video of Jason?
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There are many people suffering from autism. J-Mac’s fame will
help inspire more research efforts.
U
C
He suffers from autism.
Jason gained national attention because of what he did on the
basketball court - in his first ever appearance in a game. He
scored 20 points in four minutes.
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8. Who is Catherine Lord? Why does she think the impact could
be “groundbreaking?”
She’s a professor of psychiatry and the director for the University of Michigan’s Autism and Communications Disorders
Center. She is excited because it’s a reminder to give these kids
a chance.
9. Why is is Jason’s story “just such a good example of persistence paying off?”
He hung in there at basketball practice day after day without
a chance to play in a game. When given a chance, he was a
sensation.
10. Do you know of a similar story about a student with some
sort of handicap? Explain.
Answers will vary.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #19
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5. What has happened to the number of perfect scores in bowling
over the past century?
I
He can make certain there is no pattern that will help the bowlers
aim the ball into a groove toward the “pocket.”
K
4. What can Pierson do to keep the number of perfect scores rather
low?
Y W
He is the one who manages the oil used to protect the surface of
the bowling lane.
P O C
3. What control does Pierson have over the scores in the bowling
tournament?
X
Only two players managed it in 1908. Last year there were 51,192
perfect games in league and tournament play.
Y
2. Why does Eric Pierson think there are too many perfect games
in bowling?
D
You have to knock down all ten pins twelve times in a row.
K W O
1. Describe how one achieves a perfect score in bowling.
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Bowling-alley owners want high scores so that people will feel good
about their experience and come back.
2
10. What type of scores do the bowling-alley owners want? Why?
1
He recruited some local bowlers to try out his oiled lanes to make
certain the lanes performed they way he wanted them to.
O
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9. What did Pierson do before the tournament to test his plan?
4
The Kegel Company is the manufacturer of the oil and the automated
oil applicator for bowling allies.
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8. What does the Kegel Company produce?
Sports Stories 2007
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Special oils to protect the wood.
A N N
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5
7. What do bowling allies use to protect the lanes from the battering
of bowling balls?
Z
Sport bowling is a version of the game in which the oil is strictly
limited so as to increase the challenge.
W
8
B
6. What is “sport bowling?”
A R O
It has increased a lot.
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.
Teacher Answers For Packet #20
1. In what events does Andrew Cohen participate?
He’s on the track team. He throws the discuss, the javelin and
the shot put.
2. What handicap has Andrew been forced to overcome?
He’s had to overcome deafness.
3. Describe Andrew’s success academically.
Andrew is a straight A student.
4. Who is Ron Suvak? What did he say about Andrew?
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Ron Suvak is the athletic director. He is proud of Andrew for
overcoming the huge hurdles in his life.
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5. List three additional goals that Andrew has.
He wants to throw the discus more than 200 feet. He also
wants to go to the University of Southern California and to
compete in the Deaf Olympics. He also wants to study animation.
6. Who is John Siko? What does he worry about regarding
Andrew?
John Siko is the throwing coach at Franklin High School. He
worries that Andrew works out too much.
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7. Describe the special bond between Andrew and his coach.
They joke around and have developed their own sign language
over the years.
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8. Who is Rick Bullock? What did he say about Andrew?
Rick Bullock is the track coach at Franklin. He said that Andrew is a tremendous role model.
9. Describe Andrew’s history of throwing the discus.
Andrew began throwing the discuss in 8th grade.
10. Do you know anyone like Andrew? Explain.
Answers will vary.
Sports Stories 2007
Answers
Advantage Press, Inc.