Fall sports are back, and families are once again chasing the college dream. Football stadiums are filling up across the country. Soccer fields are packed with young players. Volleyball gyms are buzzing every weekend. Cross country runners are racing toward personal records. Field hockey players are fighting for roster spots. For many families, the season … Read more
Sick of the gym? Summer offers a golden opportunity to get your workout in countless new ways in the great outdoors. Exercising outdoors not only improves physical fitness but also boosts mood, short-circuits stress, and provides a sense of overall well-being. Whether you’re into hiking, gardening, or sports, summer is the perfect time to let … Read more
You may not have seen the men’s 10,000-meter race at the Olympics but if you had you would have witnessed one of the more incredible physical achievements of these Games or any Olympics of all time. In these long races, which are diabolical 6.2 mile sprints, the fastest men are almost always from Kenya and … Read more
Five: Kate Douglass winning the Gold medal in the 200 meter breaststroke – her first as an Olympian. She smiled and her smile has a way of making us smile. Such a humble and classy young lady, so cool under pressure. She makes us all proud to be citizens of the same country, her country, … Read more
The suddenness of it all when you touch the wall. Did I win Gold? Did I win a medal? What was my time? Who won? You feel this for the Olympic swimmers as they finish their races which are the crescendo moments of their young lives. It’s all so raw. The emotions, the honest facial … Read more
Nineteen years ago I sat at a New Jersey swimming meet and noticed a 12-year-old boy dive in the pool to do the 100-meter individual medley. Looked smooth and fast. Really fast. But this wasn’t altogether unusual. I saw dozens of really fast swimmers back then. Seriously, Jersey was – and still is — loaded … Read more
The mind can control us. Even if we don’t want it to. We can want to think one thing and the brain will keep playing a tape we don’t want to hear that makes us feel hopeless and inferior. I have suffered through this. I want to believe I’m intelligent but my brain keeps playing … Read more
What would Bobby Finke do if he found himself behind in the race? What would he do if he didn’t feel he had much energy left? What would he do if the race felt like it was getting away from him? If he realized that maybe he wasn’t going to win, that it wasn’t his … Read more
People may climb to the top of their sports, become the best at what they do, and yet their lives are never as idyllic as they appear to be. Or they just get unlucky. Something bad happens. Tiger Woods won 15 major golf championships but we all know the sadness that has occurred in his … Read more
Here in America, we value persistence. If someone gets knocked around, rejected by a friend, fired from a job, or loses a swimming race, we want to see that person come back, keep trying, be resilient, and fine-tune their craft. That’s all there is, really, trying and trying again, working to get better no matter … Read more