… “I started talking to Ohio State, especially (football performance coach) Mick Marotti, who’s become one of my biggest mentors in life. He said, ‘Justin, these are going to be the absolute hardest years of your life. Training at Ohio State is that much different than anything you’ve ever done. But by the time you’re out, you’ll be tougher. You’ll be a better football player. You’ll be a better person,'” Hilliard recalls.
“If were to go to these other schools, I knew that I wouldn’t be as good of a football player as if I went to Ohio State and (went) through some of those things. (The choice) became obvious after that.”
Hilliard kept leveling up on the field in the meantime. He earned the elusive five-star recruit rating and became the top-ranked player in Ohio. One recruiting analyst saw Hilliard “as a guy who could come in to just about any program and play early, potentially growing into an All-American candidate and NFL Draft pick.” That seemed to be the consensus.
… How could this stringbean be the most dominant dynamo to run routes in the college game since Howard?
But when we walk into Alabama’s famed weight room—the one that turns gangly teenagers into sentient cinder blocks—DeVonta changes shape. That stringbean is now bouncing off the linoleum for split jumps with a squat bar on his back, doing explosion techniques with resistance bands tied to his body while dragging a strength coach behind him, and darting all around the gym like a bullet trapped in a steel box.
Of course, Tyler Pasher thought of giving up soccer at times.
After a one-game stint in MLS in 2017, the 26-year-old Canadian forward toiled in the lower-division USL Championship for years. But this January he was acquired by the Houston Dynamo.
Pasher had been expected to take some time to adjust to the upper-tier speed, but he’s given the Dynamo a distinctive offensive boost in the first two games of the season.
“I think every player that was in MLS and went down there has the same thought: It’s not easy to go from a lower league back up to the higher league here in the United States,” Pasher said. “It’s one of those where I just kind of said, ‘Well, if it happens, great. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’ So I just wanted to put my best foot foot forward because I had nothing to lose.”
… As the draft approaches Thursday, it’s fitting that Lance’s unprecedented ascent leads to the night’s biggest wild card. Lance, 20, could go as high as No. 3 to San Francisco. He could also slip into the double-digit range, as he promises to lead the night in green room camera cutaways.
No one is more intrigued by the whole thing than Lance, who in a matter of months went from relatively unknown FCS star to a prospect who looms as compelling as he is divisive.
“I still don’t know where I’m going to be [picked],” Lance said with a chuckle in a recent phone interview. “I don’t think I will. Hopefully I’ll have somewhat of an idea when I get into the green room. I’m excited to see what happens.”
British Journal of Sports Medicine, Christopher Napier from
… Instead of pulling her deeper into this cycle of marginalisation, that moment in 1990 catalysed Horn-Miller to do something bigger. After locking herself in her room for 6 days and thinking of abandoning her dreams of someday competing at the Olympics, her mother came to her and said, ‘If you quit now, you will hand your dream over to that soldier and you will be his victim for the rest of your life. You have to show them that we cannot be beaten. And your vehicle is sports.’ That thought of being someone’s victim for the rest of her life was not something Horn-Miller could accept. She would be a survivor. She needed to jump off this cycle. She credits the strong influence of her mother (a single mother of four daughters and one of Canada’s first indigenous rights activists) as well as the constant gaze from her youngest sibling as factors that kept her focused and motivated to overcome the familiar cycle.
… Spending so much time sitting in front of the computer during this damn pandemic makes me relate to this more than ever. I’m in my early 30s and had to really work on how I sit because my back was killing me. But the moment my back pain went away, I slowly started to slip deeper into my chair (and corrected myself several times just while writing this article.) LeBron had similar problems early in his career, but unlike everyone else on the planet, a plan for his posture while sitting was developed.
Keep in mind we are talking about a 6-9, 250lb guy, and the fact NBA benches are basically foldout chairs. I always found it absurd NBA teams spent millions on sports science but then have players sitting in the worst possible chairs imaginable just so the teams could sell a few extra tickets. Yet another reminder it’s all about the benjamins. So, LeBron was having back pain in his rookie season and realized something needs to change.
… sports psychologists have been studying a parallel condition they call athlete burnout since at least the 1980s, which carries some different assumptions. In this view, burnout is influenced not just by the physical stress of training and competition, but by the athlete’s perception of their ability to meet the demands placed on them. Burnout isn’t exactly the same as overtraining, but there’s plenty of overlap: chronic exhaustion, a drop in performance, and in many cases a decision to eventually walk away from the sport. This perspective doesn’t get as much attention among athletes—which makes a new paper in the European Journal of Sport Science worth exploring.
Doctors may be just a few years away from tracking your vital signs via electronic skin worn on the body.
Researchers in Japan say they have developed an ultra-thin, lightweight e-skin that is stuck to the chest area using water spray and can be worn for a week at a time.
The technology was developed by Takao Someya, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering. It has yet to undergo clinical trials, but Someya says he has started working with partners to develop manufacturing processes.
… Nicholas Marinelli received $7,000 for the Extra Time Training app, which allows soccer players to train smarter harder, and more efficiently on a platform that tracks their tactical and fundamental performances. Players are able to unlock their potential and hone their athletic abilities, he said. He also won the $500 Audience Choice Award. Marinelli is a senior from Staten Island, N.Y. He is pursuing a dual degree in finance and information technology, along with certificates in market research, data analytics, entrepreneurship and leadership. Marinelli is a member of the Gerald P. Buccino ’63 Center for Leadership Development.
Many organizations use wellbeing indicators – covering levels of anxiety, satisfaction with job, pulse surveys and Net Promoter Scores as a measure of engagement. Two widely validated questions, which could be used as standard parts of future measures, are: “In the past 3 months, have you ever not felt well enough to perform your duties to your normal standard, but attended work regardless?” and ‘do you feel energized by your work’.
If we had better measures we could use them not just to address negative patterns but also to promote positives – to understand what helps groups to thrive. This has been the message of the ‘positive psychology’ movement and many nations now measure happiness, offering important insights. The best predictors in the annual World Happiness Report are survey answers to the question of whether you had friends or relatives you could rely on in a crisis. We might expect that to matter for firms and groups too. An organization I helped found – Action for Happiness – for example, now has very powerful evidence on how to boost both wellbeing and feelings of social connectedness.
To help drive continuous change for women and girls in sports, Gatorade announced its newly formed Gatorade Women’s Advisory Board. The board will aim to keep more girls in the game by addressing the societal and cultural barriers that contribute to the attrition of females in sport and an ongoing decline in participation. Additionally, the Gatorade Women’s Advisory Board will provide counsel on brand initiatives to better serve female athletes.
“By establishing the Women’s Advisory Board, we have a dedicated group of women from a variety of backgrounds, professions and stages of life who will help us deepen our connection with female athletes, while also holding us accountable in delivering against our guiding pillars,” said Jill Abbott, Gatorade Head of Consumer and Athlete Engagement. “As a longstanding supporter of women and girls in sports initiatives, we know the importance of these efforts. It won’t be easy, but we’re a brand that is all about doing what is right for athletes. We will continue to ensure that female athletes have the inspiration and support to participate in and stay in sports.”
The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel on Thursday approved a change to overtime rules for the 2021 football season.
Teams will be required to run a 2-point conversion play after a touchdown when a game reaches a second overtime period. Previously, a 2-point attempt was required after the third overtime period.
Also, if the game reaches a third overtime, teams will run alternating 2-point plays, instead of starting another drive at the opponent’s 25-yard line. This is a change from the previous rule, which started to use 2-point plays in the fifth overtime period.
The creation of an independent regulator is on the agenda for a British government review of football which will also look into whether the much criticised Owner’s and Director’s Test is fit for purpose.
The review, which will be led by Member of Parliament and former sports minister Tracy Crouch, has been brought forward following the uproar over six leading English clubs joining a failed attempt to create a breakaway Super League with top Italian and Spanish clubs.
Teams at the European Championship are set to be increased to 26 players for this year’s tournament, three more than usual.
UEFA’s national teams committee recommended the change on Monday and it is set to be ratified by UEFA by the end of the week, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision, which was first reported online by The Times of London, ahead of its final approval.
The congested schedule following the shutdown of the sport at the start of the pandemic last season is believed to be the reason to provide teams with more options.
… I think the question that the few remaining Jokic-MVP-holdouts are struggling with is, how much does availability matter when it comes to the MVP race?
Inspired by a query sent to me by Tom Haberstroh of TrueHoop, I thought it would be interesting to look at the availability data on MVP candidates over time. Even though the NBA doesn’t require players to meet a minimum minutes threshold to be considered for an award, I figured voters implicitly might. It turns out, up until this year, availability has never been less relevant in the MVP race.