Connect with us

Sports

Minnesota, a Mecca of Women’s Basketball, Is Having Its Moment

Published

on

Guests strolling out of the luggage declare space on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport this weekend have been greeted by an area movie star. “Welcome to Minneapolis,” stated Lindsay Whalen, in a recorded message broadcast over the loudspeaker. Whalen is a Minnesota native who helped carry the College of Minnesota girls’s basketball group to its solely Closing 4 in 2004 and who was a core piece of the Minnesota Lynx’s dynasty that received 4 championships. At the moment, she is the pinnacle coach of the College of Minnesota Gophers.

Whalen’s story is only one of many that designate how Minneapolis, which is internet hosting the 2022 girls’s Closing 4, turned one of many nation’s most fervent girls’s basketball communities. Connecticut, Phoenix and Columbia, S.C., are additionally hotbeds of the ladies’s recreation, however Minneapolis is distinctive due to the breadth of its girls’s basketball ecosystem — and since all the main males’s skilled leagues are additionally represented within the metropolis, that means enthusiasm for the ladies’s recreation can’t be patronizingly attributed to a dearth of choices.

“Lindsay Whalen advised me, ‘Hey, you construct this factor and win, individuals will come,’” Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve stated of her and Whalen’s first season with the group in 2010. “Lindsay was proper. Folks haven’t let go.”

The final time the Closing 4 was in Minneapolis, in 1995, the W.N.B.A. didn’t exist. Twenty-seven years later, the perfect girls’s faculty basketball groups within the nation will compete on the identical courtroom the place the Minnesota Lynx have drawn a mean of over 9,000 followers a recreation since 2012, inserting the group constantly among the many high squads within the W.N.B.A. in attendance.

No N.C.A.A. girls’s match recreation has ever been performed on a W.N.B.A. courtroom, so it’s simply the town’s good luck that an excellent native participant is featured within the Closing 4. UConn sophomore guard Paige Bueckers first turned a star at Hopkins Excessive Faculty within the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, serving to cement that faculty’s repute as a woman’s basketball vacation spot.

Advertisement

“Unexpectedly, you had this phenom, this child that everyone had seen on social media with all these fancy passes and fancy strikes,” Tara Starks, the pinnacle coach at Hopkins and Bueckers’s former Novice Athletic Union coach, stated of Bueckers’s highschool profession.

Her homecoming has been one of many greatest tales of the match up to now, including one other chapter to Minnesota girls’s basketball lore. Starks is busy writing the subsequent one, with Hopkins gamers dedicated to Stanford, Arizona and, naturally, Minnesota.

Based on a current Related Press evaluation, Minnesota has essentially the most ladies’ highschool basketball gamers per capita within the nation. Thanks partly to the realm’s highschool and youth basketball scenes, Whalen was capable of recruit to Minnesota the tenth greatest 2022 class within the nation, in keeping with ESPN — a category crammed fully with gamers from across the Twin Cities.

“From the Lynx to the Gophers to highschool basketball after which the funding in youth basketball, the help for ladies’s basketball right here is a few of the greatest I’ve ever seen — and I lived in Connecticut,” stated Minnesota affiliate head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis, whose father Mike Thibault coached the Connecticut Solar and presently coaches the Washington Mystics, each of the W.N.B.A. “I can see as we recruit that the expertise stage is so robust right here,” she added.

A part of the motivation for youthful gamers, in keeping with their coaches, is that the proximity and success of the Lynx make taking part in within the W.N.B.A. appear each tangible and fascinating. “They discuss it on a regular basis,” stated Starks. “‘I need to get to the league, I need to play within the W.N.B.A.’”

Advertisement

The Lynx didn’t at all times appear aspirational, although. They’re one among solely 5 of the league’s 12 franchises that share house owners and arenas with N.B.A. groups, but it surely was nonetheless a battle to get apply amenities and promotion that got here near what their male counterparts obtained. Rebekkah Brunson, who performed on the group for 9 years and is now an assistant coach, remembers when apply was held within the small courtroom within the basement of the Goal Middle.

“Profitable got here first,” Brunson stated. “After which ultimately, we acquired to a degree the place you noticed somewhat bit extra of that equal footprint. Nevertheless it took some time.”

This weekend, Closing 4 attendees will stroll by a group retailer that sells Lynx and Timberwolves gear in addition to a slew of Lynx and Timberwolves logos. That parity is a results of a concerted effort towards what Reeve calls “twin branding.”

“Quite a lot of occasions if you go to a metropolis that has skilled males’s groups, the ladies’s sports activities get drowned out,” stated Reeve. “However you’ll discover that in the event you’re in our apply facility, anyplace you see a Wolves head, you’ll see a Lynx head. It’s messaging that doesn’t price very a lot, but it surely’s priceless.”

As a way to get the leverage to push for these sorts of adjustments, the Lynx needed to have followers. Among the most steadfast of these followers recognized as a part of the L.G.B.T.Q. group.

Advertisement

It took time for the W.N.B.A. to embrace L.G.B.T.Q. followers and gamers. Satisfaction Evening has been a part of the Lynx’s schedule solely since 2012. As Reeve put it, for the Lynx and the remainder of the W.N.B.A.’s groups there was the sense in the course of the early years that, “in the event that they assume we’re too homosexual, they could take this away from us.”

However when the early surge of company curiosity within the W.N.B.A. receded round 2002, the presence of the L.G.B.T.Q. group at video games in Minneapolis and elsewhere usually remained fixed.

“I’m grateful that that base by no means left us,” stated Reeve. “As a result of the best way that it was in the beginning, that will have been comprehensible.”

Erica Mauter moved to Minneapolis in 2004, and began attending Lynx video games nearly instantly.

“If you exist as a minority relative to the final inhabitants, you study to search for different individuals who may be your individuals,” says Mauter, who identifies as queer. “That’s true in all places you go. That’s true if you stroll into Goal Middle. On some stage, you’re like, ‘I can see that my individuals are right here.’”

Advertisement

Mauter stated she felt the group’s and league’s discomfort with its L.G.B.T.Q. fan base. “That is erasure,” she stated. “Such as you guys know we’re right here and we’re preserving this group afloat by shopping for tickets. The least you possibly can do is acknowledge that we exist.”

Lynx star Seimone Augustus, who led the Lynx to their first title in 2011, helped push the group and league into motion when she got here out to the general public in 2012 with the thought of utilizing her affect to advocate marriage equality.

“The athletes confirmed the braveness,” stated Reeve. “And that occurs rather a lot.”

Augustus set a precedent for activism throughout the Lynx, whose gamers turned the primary skilled athletes to hitch the Black Lives Matter protests in 2016. “Seimone popping out as an individual, the group as a gaggle coming into their advocacy and their willingness to get on the market and converse their thoughts — I’m actually happy with the truth that it’s our group, the Minnesota Lynx,” says Mauter.

Since then, the group and the league have labored more durable on inclusion. “I believe that they’ve actually reached out to L.G.B.T.Q. individuals in plenty of significant and genuine methods,” says Monica Meyer, who stepped down final yr after main OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest L.G.B.T.Q.+ advocacy group, for over a decade. “They’ve tried to make it possible for the area is absolutely welcoming and affirming.”

Advertisement

The Lynx’s basketball success and the group’s evolution off the courtroom helped construct on what Whalen had already achieved on the College of Minnesota.

“I hope that everyone who comes into the town for the Closing 4 can really feel how a lot Minneapolis actually values feminine athletes,” stated Brunson. “That everyone feels revered and appreciated.”

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Sports

LIV Golf star posts bizarre motivational message as next event looms

Published

on

LIV Golf star posts bizarre motivational message as next event looms

LIV Golf’s Anthony Kim posted a bizarre motivational message on social media on Wednesday as he prepared for the series’ next event at Andalucía in Spain next week.

Kim made a reference to working harder than a crackhead as he posted early on X.

Anthony Kim is shown during the first day of LIV Golf Miami at Trump National Doral Miami on April 5, 2024, in Florida. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

“Good morning. Does a crakhead (sic) ever let a day go by w/out finding a way to get high? NO. I would know,” he wrote. “Not gonna let a crakhead (sic) outwork me today. 1% better today lessssgoo!!!”

Advertisement

Kim is tied for last in the LIV Golf standings. In Nashville last month, he finished 46th in the standings, posting an even score in 54 holes. He was 48th in Houston and 53rd in Singapore, dating back to early May.

He disappeared from the PGA Tour years ago and his return to the professional ranks was highly publicized back in January.

HAYDEN SPRINGER ETCHES HIS NAME INTO PGA TOUR HISTORY WITH EPIC JOHN DEERE CLASSIC 1ST ROUND

Anthony Kim at hole 8 in Singapore

Anthony Kim acknowledges the crowd after holing out on hole 8 during the first day of LIV Golf Singapore at Sentosa Golf Club on May 3, 2024. (Getty Images)

The last time Kim competed before joining LIV Golf was at the 2012 Wells Fargo Championship when he was 26 years old. He withdrew from the tournament due to injury, which was his third straight withdrawal.

One month later, Kim had surgery to repair his left Achilles tendon, and then he wasn’t heard from in the golf world as many wondered whether he would be back at all.

Advertisement

Kim also dealt with tendinitis in his left arm and a left thumb injury during his 122 starts on the PGA Tour.

He was open about his battle with addiction in an interview on LIV Golf Plus in April.

Anthony Kim in Tennessee

Anthony Kim is shown during the opening round of LIV Golf Nashville on June 21, 2024, at the Grove Golf Course in College Grove, Tennessee. (Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“Golf is important to me and not important to me at the same time,” Kim said, per ESPN. “I’ve had some very dark moments. I’ve had some very low moments. I’ve felt very alone, even when there’s a million people around. I needed to get my mind straight and figure out what my purpose was on this planet.”

Fox News’ Scott Thompson contributed to this report.

Advertisement

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Sports

Opinion: End the blows against the beauty of baseball

Published

on

Opinion: End the blows against the beauty of baseball

The following confession may come as a shock to those who know me: I am now a conservative. When it comes to baseball, that is.

I watched the blown check-swing call that allowed the Dodgers to win a game against the Rockies last month in an improbable comeback and to the fury of Colorado fans. The ump’s clear mistake will only add to demands that check-swing calls be included in the instant replay protocol.

But check-swing subjectivity is a fundamental part of the way baseball is supposed to function: humanly, in sublime, sometimes maddening imperfection. MLB interventions to “fix” it — larger bases, the ghost runner at second base in extra innings, batters limited to one timeout per at-bat and, worst of all, the pitch clock — are blows against the beauty of the game.

Admittedly, these changes seem to be quite popular. Games had been running longer and longer with incessant pitching changes, dawdling batters and, yes, replay reviews. But what monstrous hubris to think we know better than baseball’s Original Framers! Ninety feet between bases, 60 feet, 6 inches between pitching rubber and home plate — these are divinely induced measurements. Start messing with tradition and the heart of the game is lost to hyper-regulated “reality.”

Advertisement

Baseball is not reality. It is myth performed by real bodies. And imperfection, which is also the unexpected, beyond the reach of metrics, is where the magic comes from — magical triumph and magical heartbreak, larger than life, operatic.

There is no doubt that soccer is the “beautiful game,” but baseball gives it a run for its money. Its own beauty has resulted from the gradual accrual of tradition, which has given us a poetics.

Languor is one of baseball’s essential characteristics. Seemingly nothing happens for long minutes; no one scores, no “bang-bang” double plays, just lazy fly balls and dribbled grounders; you are swayed by the lullaby of sun and beer into a somnambulant state.

And then “just like that,” as Vin Scully used to say, there’s a majestic home run blast, a leaping catch, a fierce duel between pitcher and batter, a spectacular strikeout. The explosion of affect is all the more powerful for having emerged so suddenly from the caesura. (Soccer fans experience a version of these symphonic changes of tempo on the pitch.)

Baseball’s temporality is inseparable from its physical dimensions, the space-time of the game. The vast swath of grass between outfielders, the closer quarters of the infielders, the tunnel of focus that connects pitcher, batter, catcher and umpire.

Advertisement

The imperfection of umpires is indispensable in the gestalt. Video appeals rob us of the opportunity to yell at the ump to get glasses, or suffer much worse things. A blown call can lead to simultaneous jubilation and heartbreak, with the losers rending their garments and smarting from the insult of being “robbed.”

All as it should be.

I say: Bring back smaller bags and keep stealing a base a rare art! I say: No more ghost runner (what did he do to deserve to be there?) and go on all night with punch-drunk players if that’s what the game demands. And most of all I say: Smash the pitch clock with an Adirondack bat. The timer is an abomination under baseball heaven, depriving us of the organic crescendo of tension in an epic at-bat in the late innings of a close World Series game (Kirk Gibson, 1988).

When I interviewed Scully after the Los Angeles riots-uprising of 1992, I asked him what he‘d said on the air about the chaos unfolding that first night, as a game was underway at Dodger Stadium. “I didn’t say a word,” he told me. He thought first of his responsibility to the fans and their safety — what if he caused panic? And he added: “There should be one place left where the rest of the world doesn’t intrude.”

He might as well have said baseball is sacred. Not to be messed with. Not even (as if it were possible) by history itself.

Advertisement

On all this, I come down as far more conservative than, say, old-school, bow-tied traditionalist George Will, who for once approves of the “progressive” in the form of the new rules he thinks augur a return of baseball to its one-time status as national pastime. The game, awash in play-by-metrics, Will has argued, is bloated not by poetic languor but by analytical ennui.

True that, Mr. Will. We agree about baseball’s slow death-by-numbers. At the end of the day, all the measurements miss the point — the ineffable beauty of a summer afternoon ever so slowly turning to night at the ballpark.

Some of us know when a cure is worse than the disease.

There is a reason baseball was famously the preferred sport of American literati in the mid-20th century. And the pitch clock wasn’t part of the poetry.

Rubén Martínez is a literature professor at Loyola Marymount University, the author of numerous books and co-creator and executive producer of the performance piece “Little Central America, 1984.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Sports

Pat Bertoletti crowned hot dog eating champion amid Joey Chestnut's absence

Published

on

Pat Bertoletti crowned hot dog eating champion amid Joey Chestnut's absence

Join Fox News for access to this content

You have reached your maximum number of articles. Log in or create an account FREE of charge to continue reading.

By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News’ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive.

Please enter a valid email address.

Having trouble? Click here.

The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest has a new champion, as Pat Bertoletti ate 58 hot dogs.

Bertoletti’s victory comes as Americans across the nation are celebrating Independence Day. Thousands of fans descended on Conley Island to watch competitive eaters wolf down as many hot dogs (and buns) as possible in a 10-minute time span during the hot dog eating contest.

Advertisement

However, this year’s slate of competitors was noticeably missing one high-profile contestant — 16-time champion Joey Chestnut.

Patrick Bertoletti wins the men’s title with 58 hot dogs at Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4, 2024 in New York City. (Adam Gray/Getty Images)

He was reportedly barred from competing in this year’s event. Chestnut recently signed a deal with Impossible Foods, a rival of Nathan’s that has launched a vegan wiener, the New York Post reported.

JOEY CHESTNUT GEARS UP FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY HOT DOG COMPETITION FACEOFF AGAINST HUNGRY SOLDIERS

Advertisement

Instead, he will compete against soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas, beginning at 5 p.m. ET.

Chestnut’s absence left the traditional Brooklyn event wide open for a new winner in the men’s division, with eaters from around the world competing for the highly-coveted mustard belt.

Joey Chestnut with hot dogs

Joey Chestnut, winner of the 2021 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest, poses for photos in Coney Islands Maimonides Park on July 4, 2021 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File)

Last year, Chestnut, of Indiana, chewed his way to the title by downing 62 dogs and buns in 10 minutes. The record, which he set in 2021, is 76.

He was initially disinvited from the event over a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods, a company that specializes in plant-based meat substitutes.

Hot dogs on a plate

Hot dogs are ready for the 2024 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating competition at Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York on July 4, 2024. (LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Major League Eating, which organizes the Nathan’s Famous contest, has since said it walked back the ban, but Chestnut decided to spend the holiday with the troops anyway.

Advertisement

Chestnut said he would not return to the Coney Island contest without an apology.

Impossible Foods will also donate to an organization supporting military families based on the number of hot dogs eaten at the event, a spokesperson said.

Fox News’ Ryan Morik contributed to this report.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Trending