For ESPN’s December Cover Story, wide receiver Stefon Diggs tells Sam Borden why things fell apart in Minnesota and how he’s circling the wagons in Buffalo.
It was one of those, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” type of conversations that manifested during a high school health class nearly 15 years ago. And when the question made its way around the room, a two-sport star-in-the-making named DeAndre Hopkins recited his answer.
“He said, ‘I’m gonna be a professional athlete,” recalled Jeff Maness, a former teacher and head basketball coach at D.W. Daniel High School in Hopkins’ hometown of Central, South Carolina. “You know … all the kids say that — ‘I’m gonna play in the NBA, I’m gonna be in the NFL. I’m gonna do this, do that.’ But he was matter-of-fact, like he had it all planned out.”
That moment resurfaced in Maness’ mind back in mid-November, when Hopkins, now a 28-year-old, four-time NFL All-Pro wide receiver, made the most incredible catch of the season during a Week 10 matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills. The game ended in walk-off fashion, after a 43-yard Hail Mary touchdown grab from the 6-foot-1 Hopkins, who leapt up and snatched Kyler Murray’s prayer of a pass from, on and over three defensive backs. He came down with the football in his XXXL Jordan Brand gloves to complete the miraculous play that lifted Arizona to a 32-30 win.
At 38 years old, Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi has no intention of slowing down. In her 16th WNBA season, Taurasi played 19 games this summer in the bubble at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, averaging a team-high 18.7 points and also 4.5 assists, and 4.2 rebounds.
One year after injuries limited her to six games and 4.3 PPG in the 2019 season, Taurasi looked less like she was approaching retirement and more like the player regarded as a WNBA legend. Retirement is not on her radar.
We caught up with Taurasi recently to talk about career longevity, playing in the bubble and just what happened when she saw a particular official in the lobby.
The aim of this study was to examine the associations between the injury risk and the acute (AL) to chronic (CL) workload ratio (ACWR) by substituting the original CL with contrived values to assess the role of CL (i.e., the presence and implications of statistical artefacts). Methods
Using previously published data, we generated a contrived ACWR by dividing the AL by fixed and randomly generated CLs, and we compared these results to real data. We also reproduced previously reported subgroup analyses, including dichotomising players’ data above and below the median CL. Our analyses follow the same, previously published modelling approach. Results
The analyses with original data showed effects compatible with higher injury risk for ACWR only (odd ratios, OR: 2.45, 95% CI 1.28–4.71). However, we observed similar effects by dividing AL by the “contrived” fixed and randomly generated CLs: OR 1.95 (1.18–3.52) dividing by 1510 (average CL); and OR ranging from 1.16 to 2.07, using random CL 1.53 (mean). Random ACWRs reduced the variance relative to the original AL and further inflated the ORs (mean OR 1.89, from 1.42 to 2.70). ACWR causes artificial reclassification of players compared to AL alone. Finally, neither ACWR nor AL alone confer a meaningful predictive advantage to an intercept-only model, even within the training sample (c-statistic 0.574/0.544 vs. 0.5 in both ACWR/AL and intercept-only models, respectively). Discussion
ACWR is a rescaling of the explanatory variable (AL, numerator), in turn magnifying its effect estimates and decreasing its variance despite conferring no predictive advantage. Other ratio-related transformations (e.g., reducing the variance of the explanatory variable and unjustified reclassifications) further inflate the OR of AL alone with injury risk. These results also disprove the etiological theory behind this ratio and its components. We suggest ACWR be dismissed as a framework and model, and in line with this, injury frameworks, recommendations, and consensus be updated to reflect the lack of predictive value of and statistical artefacts inherent in ACWR models.
The British Psychological Society, Research Digest, Emma Young from
What do you do if your child comes home with a lower score on a test than you both expected? Do you praise their efforts and focus on what they got right? Or do you home in on the answers that they got wrong, hoping this will help them to do better in future?
Research shows that the first, “success-oriented” response is more common in the US than in China, where parents more often opt for “failure-oriented” responses instead. Recent studies in both countries have found that success-oriented responses tend to encourage psychological wellbeing but not necessarily academic success, whereas failure-oriented responses can foster academic performance, but with a cost to the child’s wellbeing.
Jun Wei at Tsinghua University, China, and colleagues wondered what might drive these observed relationships: do different response styles lead children to form different concepts about what their parents want for them — and is this what produces the opposing impacts on wellbeing?
Earlier this week we reported on USA Cycling’s Olympic Development Academy, the revamped youth development system that replaced the federation’s old model for identifying and then developing the cycling stars of tomorrow. … The story produced a wave of reactions from readers, including a fair amount of criticism. We culled the most common critiques of the program and posed them as questions to Rob DeMartini, USA Cycling’s CEO. Here’s what DeMartini had to say
… Play is so important that nature invented it long before it invented us. Almost all young mammals play, as do birds like parrots and crows. Play has been reported in reptiles, fish, and even spiders, where sexually immature animals use it to practice copulation. But the world champion of animal play may be the bottlenose dolphin, with 37 different reported types of play. Captive dolphins will play untiringly with balls and other toys, and wild dolphins play with objects like feathers, sponges, and “smoke rings” of air bubbles that they extrude from their blowholes.
Such widespread play must be more than just a frivolous whim of nature. The reason: It costs. Young animals can spend up to 20 percent of their daily energy budget goofing around rather than, say, chasing dinner. And their play can cause serious problems. Playing cheetah cubs frequently scare off prey by chasing each other or by clambering over their stalking mother. Playing elephants get stuck in mud. Playing bighorn sheep get impaled on cactus spines. Some playful animals even get themselves killed. In a 1991 study, Cambridge researcher Robert Harcourt observed a colony of South American fur seals. Within a single season, 102 of the colony’s pups were attacked by sea lions, and 26 of them were killed. More than 80 percent of the killed pups were attacked while playing.
With costs this high, the benefits can’t be far behind. And indeed, where the benefits of play have been measured, they can make the difference between life and death.
With a thick, gray morning haze hanging extra low over the Oakland Estuary and limiting visibility, U.S. men’s rowing coach Mike Teti lifted a bullhorn to his masked face from the coach’s boat and asked pair Liam Corrigan and Chris Carlson whether they had seen the American four crew in the water ahead.
They were indeed down the way, all fine — getting through another tough day of training for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Teti motored on through the debris and dirty water from a recent storm until the boat came into view from a distance. In stroke position sat veteran Tom Peszek, just the experienced athlete to be leading the way when training conditions are far from ideal.
The list of backroom staff who worked under Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers reads like a who’s who of football performance.
You’ve got Mike Forde, their Performance Director from 1998 to 2007, who went on to become Director of Football Operations at Chelsea and is now Executive Chairman of consultancy Sportsology; Brian Prestidge, the Head of Performance Analysis, who is now Director of Insights and Decision Technology for Manchester City; and Damien Roden, fitness coach from 2003 to 2007, who is now Director of Performance at Anderlecht.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. At the bottom of this article are the names of 13 prominent practitioners who had their formative years at Bolton under Allardyce from 1999 to 2007 (apologies to anyone we’ve inadvertently missed out).
It can succeed, which is to say it can perform its function of refreshment and revival. Twenty minutes or so of light, untroubled sleep, just when you need it. After lunch, perhaps; nature gently makes the suggestion. So you settle; you sink. But not too far. A delicious shallowness. You open your eyes. You’re awake again—in a state of lamblike innocence, blinking limpidly and contentedly. The prickle of health is on your skin. Ah, it feels so good. What a great idea that was, to take a nap.
Or it can fail. You go down, you get swallowed. Sweating, fidgeting, moaning. After a slow-motion, deep-sea struggle, you flounder to wakefulness.
University of California-San Diego, UC San Diego News Center from
A team of researchers has developed a flexible, rechargeable silver oxide-zinc battery with a five to 10 times greater areal energy density than state of the art. The battery also is easier to manufacture; while most flexible batteries need to be manufactured in sterile conditions, under vacuum, this one can be screen printed in normal lab conditions. The device can be used in flexible, stretchable electronics for wearables as well as soft robotics.
Acrylate and silicone have dominated the medical adhesive market for years. But the adhesives currently available require device engineers to choose between strength and wear duration, or comfort and pliability. To fill the gap in the market, 3M announced today the next generation of silicone adhesives, 3M™ Hi-Tack Silicone Adhesive Tapes. The first of its class is the 2480 3M™ Single Coated Medical Nonwoven Tape with Hi-Tack Silicone Adhesive on Liner, featuring longer wear times, supporting heavier devices and offering more secure adhesion, while providing all the traditional benefits of 3M’s base silicone adhesive portfolio.
As the clock ticks on NWSL—WSL loans, British clubs have found themselves negotiating between players’ best interests, pre-season training needs from teams across the pond, and their own personnel requirements for the remainder of the season, writes Rich Laverty.