Pregnant Texan honors student Mackenzie McCollum was barred from playing on her school's volleyball team specifically because of her pregnancy. After the school allowed her back on the team, McCollum's coach cut her playing time and disclosed the pregnancy to all her teammates. The US Department of Education is now investigating the school for Title IX violations, and both McCollum and her family are on the receiving end of some pretty nasty invective. (ESPN video profile, ESPN comments)
posted by bitter-girl.com on Dec 10, 2009 - 193 comments

When people think of the pitfalls of the baseball draft, it is hard not to remember the story of Matt Harrington. Harrington was drafted in the first round of the MLB draft by the Rockies and the Padres in successive years, only to go back into the draft after failing to reach an agreement each time. As the years went by, his stock kept falling. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Nov 3, 2009 - 50 comments

"Lunch is really nice again, not mentioning a few battles with foods that were calling me like sirens called Odysseus. I had some salad some pasta and some fish and we had a nice chat with some Russian girls at an “All-Russian” table. Catching up on all the gossip, laughing, and in general making fun of people! By the way I forgot to mention that this is a men’s and women’s tournament so if you lose early and you are lacking confidence there is a good chance to challenge one of the girls to a match." Russian-American tennis player Dmitry Tursunov blogged his experiences at a 2006 tourney in Estoril, Portugal with hilarious results. [For best results, read from the bottom of the page up!] [more inside]
posted by ORthey on Aug 7, 2009 - 6 comments

PolevaultFilter! Those who like to read about successful female athletes reaching great heights & being admired for their athletic achievements will be happy to know that Aussie World Youth Polevault Champion Vicky Parnov - niece of respected Olympic Silver Medallist Tatiana Grigorieva - will become the youngest ever Australian to take part in the world titles, in Osaka later this month.
posted by UbuRoivas on Aug 6, 2007 - 18 comments

This photo has launched high school pole vaulter Allison Stokke into Internet memedom. Her reaction: "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."
posted by aerotive on May 30, 2007 - 496 comments

Republican athlete politicians With trepidation, I post a link to a Slate article (is that akin to posting a Salon article?) Anyway, I've been largely impressed with the "Sports Nut" columns. I think my favourite quote of this one is Brent Jones saying "An athlete is a small business owner whose product is yourself." And Charles Barkely reminding his grandma, unsure of her grandson's political leanings towards the Republicans, "we are rich".
posted by youthbc1 on Jun 12, 2001 - 25 comments