YEARS AGO, AFTER a bad hurricane hit Wilmington, North Carolina, Michael Jordan came back to help the recovery effort. Jordan doesn’t go home very often, but he had some friends with him on that trip and wanted to show them where he’d grown up while they were in town. The house, a middle-class split-level, is at 4647 Gordon Road, near U.S. Highway 117. It’s the address where Dean Smith sent recruiting letters. Out front, Jordan seemed sentimental. One of the friends with him said later they didn’t feel comfortable describing the scene. It felt private. “How do most people feel when they go back to see their childhood home?” the person explained. “MJ is human.”
Someone suggested ringing the doorbell, but they worried about disturbing the current occupants, so his friends just stood there a moment with him, watching Michael Jordan look at the house where he used to live.
“Very early I had a personality split,” Jordan told me once. “One that was a public persona and one that was private.”
… Barrett was part of the “backs bubble” that returned to the team’s Auckland training base on Monday ahead of the kick-off of Super Rugby Aotearoa on June 13. As well as the two-time World Rugby Player of the Year’s new Bronco record of 4 minutes 12 seconds, the franchise also reported eight further personal bests.
“A PB, mate, always happy with a PB,” a puffing Barrett quipped immediately after finishing. “I don’t know how much kicking I’ll be doing after this, though.”
The Bronco test is a 1200m shuttle involving running to-and-from a start line to 20, 40 and 60-m marks, five times without a break.
A number of Premier League clubs have recently appointed ‘development coaches’ tasked with working with younger pros and optimising their abilities and potential.
Liverpool, Southampton and Sheffield United are among the clubs to have recruited for this role, which takes a ‘360-degree’ approach to the development of young players who have just made the step up from Academy to first-team football.
Rhys Carr, who was appointed to the role by Sheffield United in September, described his remit as being to “give them (the young players) that little extra attention and detail that they need.”
Pop quiz: Which MLS clubs have the most Homegrown Players on their current rosters? No peeking, now…
It’s not particularly difficult to guess well-known Players of Kids FC Dallas lead the way, nor are the high rankings of academy-centric sides like Real Salt Lake, Sporting KC and the Vancouver Whitecaps a big surprise.
But did you have Chicago Fire FC at the No. 2 spot? Probably not.
But that’s where they sit at present, thanks to a startling flurry of HGP signings over the past few months – seven since December, five of them just in the month of March, pushing their active total to 11 Homegrowns. They range in age from 15-year-old midfielder Allan Rodriguez, an Indiana native spotted by the Fire’s affiliate program in that state, to Mauricio Pineda, 22, who signed on after a four-year college career at UNC and has already logged two full-90 performances in the first two weeks of the since-suspended 2020 MLS season.
Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (Korea), Channel D Research News from
Researchers from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology develop a simple approach for controlling the otherwise random formation of cracks in flexible thin-film conductors, greatly increasing the durability of flexible electrodes and transistors against bending and folding.
As it plans for what it hopes is a full 2020 season, the NFL has acknowledged the inevitability that a number of its personnel will be infected by the coronavirus. Sustaining the season throughout the fall will require the effective use of testing and isolating procedures currently under development.
“We fully well expect that we will have positive cases that arise,” NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said. “Because we think that this disease will remain endemic in society, it shouldn’t be a surprise that new positive cases arise. Our challenge is to identify them as quickly as possible and prevent spread to any other participants. We’re working very diligently on that, and we’ll have some detailed plans at a later time.”
A player and two staff members from Watford were among six people who tested positive for the coronavirus in the Premier League’s first wave of mass testing ahead of a planned return to partial training during the pandemic.
Burnley said assistant manager Ian Woan was also among the six positive COVID-19 tests announced on Tuesday by the Premier League, which did not identify any individuals. The other two cases were found at a single undisclosed club.
Tests on 748 people were conducted across 19 clubs on Sunday and Monday. The 20th club, also not identified, started testing on Tuesday.
Hockey Canada says it is working on a multifaceted return-to-play plan as large parts of the country begin to ease social distancing restrictions, the organization revealed in an open letter to Canadians on Thursday.
The news comes on the tails of Ontario’s announcement that the first stage of its recovery plan, which includes the resumption of outdoor recreational activities and many individual sports competitions, is slated to kick off May 19. Other provinces such as B.C. and Alberta have already taken similar steps, while Quebec will move ahead along the same lines next week.
However, the timeline and details on the resumption of team sports, like hockey, remains unclear.
WISH-TV (Indianapolis), Inside INdiana Business, Mary Willkom from
The city of Westfield and IUPUI will Tuesday launch a nationwide study assessing public perceptions and youth sports amid the coronavirus pandemic. Mayor Andy Cook and Grand Park Sports Campus Director William Knox say the data will be imperative for venues, event organizers and sports organizations as they evaluate health and safety modifications over the next 12-18 months.
Leaders from the IUPUI Sports Innovation Institute will assist with the study, which will gauge user perceptions of satisfaction and safety at youth sports facilities. The group says it will specifically look to identify user attitudes on 10-12 adaptations that the sports and event industries are considering when facilities reopen.
Football leagues around the world are on hold while the precautions surrounding the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) are in place — but football and scouting simply cannot stop. Even during this period of social distancing, every day counts, because football – and especially the transfer market – never sleeps.
How could the big leagues plan for a return to football?
What the true impact of Covid-19 will be on clubs and leagues is the ‘million-dollar question’. Monchi theorises that a conservative approach in the short term may be the most viable. “All the big leagues are trying to find the safest plan, clearly, as safety and health have to be the most important parameters,” explains Monchi. “Finding a way to restart the championships in order to minimize the short term impact. But of course, it will have an impact, and we’ll have to start all over again, trying to understand this new model, this world, in another way. Because things are going to change, they surely will, especially in the short and medium-term.”
HSS sports medicine surgeon, Dr. David Altchek, discusses the current state of sports with Excel Sports Management partners Jeff Schwartz, Casey Close and Mark Steinberg, who provide insight on considerations for the return of professional sports. [video, 33:30]
… In-season recruiting is a balancing act for baseball coaches, but the spring is an important recruiting time for coaches around the country. The recruiting calendar heats up even more once the college regular season ends and coaches turn their attention to summer travel ball events.
Turning the spring—and now the summer—into a dead period effects recruits and coaches alike. Its affecting everyone a little bit differently, however. As college baseball prepares for an extended dead period, we can take stock of what’s happening on the recruiting trail.
… The obvious hypothesis is that young players have more time to develop before reaching their prime. But when is a player’s prime anyway, and how much do they really develop? In reality it varies from player to player, but there are trends in the data that can be identified.
… “Data is key, right? It’s fundamental,” said Monchi. “We always had data, before it was small data and today is big data. In the year 2000, when I started, there was only one form of data. It was a Word document where the scout used to put ‘It’s a good player, etc’, and that was the data. Nowadays, thanks to platforms like Wyscout, we have platforms where we can manage our data.”
Monchi has now introduced an R&D department to Sevilla, with mathematicians, physicists, specialized engineers and analysts employed at the Andalusian club. “This was unthinkable until five years ago, inconceivable,” said Monchi. “But this is the future. That is, the data analysis and the implementation of this analysis in the decision-making process is key.”