Title makes it sound like this might be a regular thing, but no, I was just feeling alliterative and I have some small and unrelated things to mention.
1. So, the Elena Delle Donne interview* on Outside the Lines was only so-so. I don't think I realized that even though OtL is scheduled for a 1/2 hour, it's not really a half hour show. Delle Donne, I felt, did a good job explaining things. There wasn't really anything I hadn't already read about on ESPN.com that the interview provided, however. I thought it was quite interesting that her parents were not interviewed for this show. There was footage of her parents from years ago. I guess the one thing that I learned, or perhaps sensed is a more accurate term, is that there is a lot of upheaval in the Delle Donne household over Elena's leave of absence from basketball. She said it was a very tough summer for the family and the absence of her parents from the interview make me think that things are not quite settled yet. And this was surprising given that her parents had seemed to be so supportive of their daughter and her choices. But an interview with a former AAU coach kind of revealed that Delle Donne was perhaps pushed a little harder by her parents than we may have initially been lead to believe. In no way does this situation resemble the horror stories I have seen and heard about sport parents and it does seem like, in the end, Elena's new happiness in her current sport may help.
2. Got an email the other day from Lucy, a sports apparel website for women. I have previously noted my disappointment with Lucy for carrying Low Beams, an adhesive nipple concealer, but I clearly got over it when I ordered a pair of yoga capris from them the other day. Also they don't seem to carry the product anymore. But the email today tried to entice me to buy their newest cardio pant by promising to send me a pair of pink boxing gloves along with the pants. Um...no thanks. Ugh. If one is convinced to order a pair of overpriced workout pants because of pink boxing gloves, she's probably not the type of person to see a problem with pink boxing gloves in the first place.
3. I heard the other night on some sports talk show NOT on ESPN--surprise, surprise--that fighting in the NHL was up 30 percent from last year. Thirty percent! One guy pretended to be concerned, the other said, basically, "who cares?". He finds it entertaining and it gets fans out of their seats, he said. The third guy felt it was a little excessive especially when players are dropping their gloves in the first few minutes of the game--when nothing has really happened yet that might provoke a fight. The amount of fighting in hockey has always been ridiculous. I don't know how to describe a 30 percent increase in it--uber-ridiculous? I get it that hockey is a contact sport, that cheap shots are taken, that tempers flare--but this happens in other sports as well football, soccer. No other sport has the same amount of gratuitous fighting.
* Mechelle Voepel has more on the Delle Donne situation at her blog. I think she's been reading After Atalanta! Because she notes that Auriemma's comments make him sound like a bad coach. She still thinks he's great, others in the comments section of the post definitely see what I see: a coach who is a little out of touch with actual players and very caught up in the recruiting battles and a win-at-all-costs mentality.
No comments:
Post a Comment