…On Being a Sports Girl

Like many other sports fans, I am eagerly waiting the women’s gymnastics competition at the 2008 Summer Olympics. As I saw in person a few weeks back, the US women’s team expects to be quite competitive, as the senior championships demonstrated such an amazingly high level of competition. Despite the great performances at the Visa US Championships, no members of the Olympic team were named after the competition ended - just all but four of those who competed advanced to the Olympic Trials, held this past weekend in Philadelphia.

But was an Olympic Team for Women’s Gymnastics named after this weekend? Oh no. Two gymnasts - Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin - were “guaranteed” spots on the team, but four spots and three alternates still remain open. These team members will be determined in a “selection camp” held on a private ranch in Texas owned by the King and Queen of Modern Gymnastics, Bela and Marta Karolyi. This camp will be closed off from the public and media, and will be held in late July. The Olympic Games begin two weeks later. Keep reading →

I had these grand plans to blog about the NHL Draft. Grand plans. Then I realized that I haven’t seen my boyfriend play softball in two years (yep, I’m a horrible girlfriend), and that he had a make-up game scheduled for the exact same time as the first round of the draft. I decided that it might be a good idea to attend the softball game, and get home in enough time to catch the last few picks of the night. Keep reading →

Never have I been a true fan of professional basketball. Yeah, as a tweenager, there was some excitement in Rochester when the Toronto Raptors came into existence- but they quickly flew away, once we realized how horrendous they really were. (Although that never stopped the proliferation of purple Vince Carter jerseys around the city.) But otherwise, the NBA did not register on my radar - I’m really short, I grew up in Hockey Land USA (Detroit can be Hockey Town, but Western New York is Hockey Land), and out of all the professional sports out there, my father thought basketball was the most corrupt. (Ever the conspiracy theorist, my father believed that all sports were corrupt - but he watched most of them anyway, because they were fun.) This all added up to my never exhausting my Sports Girl energy on following the Boston Celtics when I moved up here four years ago.

Last night, however, I became the most despised of all sports fans - the bandwagon jumper - and went to a local bar to watch Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Since I moved here, I’ve spent every potential championship game for a Boston sports team working an event on campus designed to keep the students from rioting. For the first time, a Boston team could win a championship and there were only a handful of students around, and thus no need to throw an arena-sized viewing party. Keep reading →

I don’t have as great of notes for the seniors as I did for the juniors - for both senior sessions, I sat with friends, and didn’t have the time to take detailed notes. The seniors were amazing to watch, mostly due to the sheer excitement of the crowd - it’s rarely that loud even for hockey games. Hundreds of little girls watching their heroines will do that.

Again, I am not the world’s greatest gymnastics writer, but I was there and know just enough about the sport to understand what’s going on. To review the senior competition, I’ll borrow a device from one of my favorite sports writers, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, that I haven’t used in a while: Ten Things I Think I Think. Keep reading →

Yep, I’m still working on my thoughts from Seniors Day 1 - the Celtics and the Red Sox distracted me (I had Sox tickets last night, and was distracted by watching the Paul Pierce-drama filled Celtics-Lakers game after Seniors ended on Thursday night, and had work early in the morning on Friday…a timely post on Seniors was just not happening.)

The Junior Championships just completed, with Jordyn Wieber taking it handily. She really distanced herself from Samantha Shapiro at the end of Rotation 2, with nearly a 3 point lead in the all-around. I game late, and I don’t know what happened to Shapiro in rotation 1 (she was first up on floor exercise), but she was either marked down because she was first, or something went wrong. I walked in as Wieber began her floor, and she was on - it was a statement performance. No one was going to take the title away from her this afternoon. The following are my thoughts on the rest of the session before I head back to see the seniors. Keep reading →

I’m back from Day 1 of the Juniors competition at the US Gymnastics Championships. Before I head back to the arena for the Seniors at 7pm, here are some notes from this afternoon. Keep reading →

I have 6 posts in draft form that I’m working on. I need to drink more caffeine when I get home from work each evening in order to finish them all. But before I finish all of them, I have more important blogging to do!

Yes, your trusty wanna-be sports blogger will be attending the Visa U.S. Championships for women’s gymnastics this week at Agganis Arena in Boston, MA. This is the closest I have ever gotten to attending anything having to do with the Olympics, as this event is the first part of the three-prong Olympic team selection process for the women’s gymnastics team. I am not an official media member, so there will be no fancy live-blogging. But I will be taking notes and blogging after the junior preliminary round and the senior preliminary round on Thursday. Will I give you all the skill by skill breakdown? No, I think International Gymnast does a great job of that. But who else can comment on leotard colors (please, I hope no one breaks out lime green) and any standouts like when I picked out “Scrunchie Girl” (later World Champion Chellsie Memmel) during the 1999 U.S. Classic Child Elite competition. Take note, Junior competitors - if I find a reason to anoint you with a nickname during the competition, then this means only good things for your competitive future.

So I hope that you check back on Thursday for my blog entries about the Visa Championships! I promise to consume enough caffeine that day to finish them all!

(Or The Skating Monk takes on Semi-Threatening Underrated Cat-Like-Animals)

When I was a Brownie Girl Scout, my troop partook in the Strasenberg Planetarium Sleepover. The name of this program pretty much explains it – roughly 50 Girl Scouts take over the planetarium for an overnight and stay up late watching every show in the planetarium’s rotation. You then get two hours of sleep in the planetarium lobby, where they then wake you up at an ungodly hour by blasting “Here Comes the Sun” and handing you a Wegmans donut and orange juice before forcing you out so they can open for a more profitable event. As you can tell, it was the highlight of the year, especially when your troop eschews camping, like mine did. (We didn’t like getting dirty. Or ticks. Or dampness.)

On a late March Friday evening, I took part in the Great Garden Sleepover Party, or as everyone else knows it as, the Hockey East Semifinals. I was there from 5:15pm - five minutes into the first semifinal game between the University of New Hampshire and Boston College - until the bitter end of the Boston University versus Vermont game – with a final whistle at 1:05am. Such an evening epitomized college hockey for me – spirited, crazy, and a true sports fans dream.

Keep reading →

(or, a Bills fan and a Dolphins fan walk into a bar and sit next to a Browns fan)

For years on end, I’ve watched the NFL Draft from the comfy and private confines of either my apartment, dorm room or parents’ living room. I would applaud picks, criticize picks, and throw things at the screen when the Bills or 49ers made moves I did not like in the privacy of my own - or my parent’s own - home. This 2008 draft was the first in which I found someone to watch with, and went to a bar with potentially other fans around me. Keep reading →

I remember this combination of dread and excitement. I remember feeling it every morning of every 49ers playoff game in January 1995, back when I eschewed the Bills to make lovey-dovey eyes every time Steve Young appeared on the television screen or sports section. (I had just turned 13 - ripe age for a celebrity mega crush!) I wanted Steve Young and the 49ers to win the Super Bowl so badly that they, and not my then sickly two month old little brother, was what I prayed for when my CCD instructor made us repeat the Apostles Creed like the Rosary was made of it. (There’s a reason it’s not.) Keep reading →