A level playing field...

College and professional sports are very quick to abuse and distort words that otherwise would have a deeper meaning - inspirational, hero, warrior to name just a few. Growing up surrounded by sports, I didn't really notice it, but once I started working in college athletics, it became abundantly clear. Particularly when I was tempted to call a comeback effort heroic.

In contrast, today's stories do actually feature athletes who have done something inspirational, and it wasn't hitting a 32-foot jumper at the buzzer to send the game into a second overtime.

College golf doesn't garner that many headlines, especially if it's NAIA college golf. But Yahoo! Sports featured a golfer very worthy of the attention (thanks for the story tip-off, Blair). University of St. Francis' Grant Whybark had the opportunity to lock up individual and team spots in the NAIA National Championship. But Whybark did something completely against the competitive drive athletes are supposed to possess - he deliberately shanked a drive so Olivet Nazarene's Seth Doran could go to Nationals too.

Awhile back, I did a post on Natalie Randolph, the Calvin Coolidge Senior High School head football coach. She is one of a handful of women nationwide who head up high school football programs. Randolph has more than held her own in the tests administered by outsiders and a few of her own players. But what has caught the attention of the New York Times this time around is Randolph's commitment to her players in the classroom.

I'm a little sick of professional athletes who whine about how tough their lives are or who only give 10 percent a la Hanley Ramirez. They should take a page from Rafal Krolczyk, a high school boys gymnast on the Niles' West junior varsity team, featured by the Chicago Tribune. "No Fall" Rafal, a moniker he picked up from teammates, competes in the pommel horse for Niles West, an event regarded as one of the hardest events to master. None of this distinguishes Krolczyk from thousands of other high school gymnasts. What does make him stand out from the crowd is that he does this (with full support from family and teammates) despite having cerebral palsy.

A lot of athletes out there do overcome personal hardships to compete at a high level. They even made "The Blind Side" out of Baltimore Raven Michael Oher's story. Now, as a Hokie by association, I naturally view askance anything that comes out of the University of Miami. But this time I really appreciated the Miami Herald story on Saints rookie Jimmy Graham.

Signed away to a group home at 11, Graham survived a rocky childhood after being taken in by a woman who could barely afford it but couldn't walk away from him. He went on to earn dual degrees in five years from Miami while playing four years of basketball (and one year of football) where he was known for his tenacious rebounding and defense. Now with the Saints, Graham hopes to reach out to troubled kids in New Orleans.

(Photo courtesy of The Chicago Tribune)

Win one for the Gipper!

I'm probably about to induce the revocation of my sports fan card, but I have no idea who the Gipper is. However, he has been invoked more times than is probably known as coaches exhort their players to try their hardest.

Today's blog is about inspirational moments in sports. I apologize here for the lack of clever transitions in today's post, but the amount of rain I'm currently getting makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth, muttering to myself. It does not make me want to channel Steinbeck or Hemingway. At least not Hemingway's writing talent.

Cornell's men's basketball team made a fabulous run in this year's barely controlled chaos known as the NCAA Tournament. A friend of mine is responsible for generating media coverage for the team, so I'm fairly certain he's responsible for getting this little nugget out into the Interwebs. Remember Jason McElwain, the autistic teenager who played just four minutes in the very last game of his high school career and knocked down six threes on the way to 20 points? Well, it turns out he bonded with Cornell's head coach Steve Donahue, who has an autistic son. According to ABC, McElwain served as an advisor and source of inspiration for the Big Red throughout their tourney run.

Tonic provides a list of the top 10 most inspirational coaching moments on film and in real life. Ethan Zohn's column touches on everything from Jim Valvano's touching "Don't ever give up" speech at the ESPY's to Jim Belushi's rousing rant in Animal House. Zohn even managed to find Knute Rockne's famous "Inside 'em and outside 'em" speech (which may or may include the Gipper reference - the rain is making my Internet too slow to load a video).

Finally, this last item appeared in the Boston Globe this morning after I heard about it on the radio on the commute in. The Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Mass., and the Perkins School for the Blind held the first known fencing competition among the blind yesterday. Coach Cesar Morales champions fencing for the blind students as a way to help them develop skills they'll need in every day life. Fencing aids the students in orientation, balance and navigation. Fencing has been taught at the Carroll Center since it opened in 1954 as the first civilian residential rehab center for the newly blind.

(Photo courtesy of The Boston Globe)

A little of this and that...

So I couldn't decide on a theme for today - Olympics or Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day or Olympics? I decided to do both. I'm such a multi-tasker. : )

(PS - I have emerged from my technical difficulties with an entirely new power cord, so sorry about my absence yesterday...)

Author Debbie Robbins, who may have the most creative self-help book title I've seen, posted an article on Huffington Post listing 14 tips to surviving Valentine's Day. These tips are aimed at single and coupled people alike, which is nice, because usually these articles are for "lonely hearts." Robbins has a refreshingly upbeat and no-nonsense tone, and she's kinda funny to boot.

Robbins points out in her article that one way to get through V-Day is to be kind to people who you are not in a relationship with - coworkers, mailmen, dog walkers, etc. Well, that is the entire point of one article at reliableplant.com. If you work in an office building, I defy you to read this article and not recognize your own company in some of her examples. There's a reason whole films and books have sprung up over office angst. Liz Jazwiec provides some solutions to those problems in this story.

USA Today made an attempt to tie its article about the US Olympic figure skating team to everyone's favorite Hallmark holiday (hint: the effort is smack in the middle of the story). Nevertheless, this is a neat little article examining the backstory to the pairs teams. Each of them have a unique rise to where they are today.

And finally, the Baltimore Sun provides an Olympics crib sheet for anyone who has some last minute cramming to do. The story lists notable movies and books either about the various Olympic Games or by Olympic athletes. Gratifyingly (to me), the first movie listed is "Cool Runnings," which holds a near-and-dear place in my heart as referenced here.

The flip side of conformity...

One of my cousins had the following as his Facebook status for this morning: "My wish for 2010 is that people will understand that children with disabilities do not have a disease; children with disabilities are not looking for a cure but ACCEPTANCE........93% of people won't copy and paste this."

Well, consider it copied and pasted, albeit not on FB. Tolerance and acceptance can be tricky. There are a lot of different people out there, and in general, people are afraid of things they aren't completely familiar with. The late, great Mitch Hedberg made a joke about that phenomenon, "Some people say 'I don't care if they're black, white, or purple...' Now hold on, we have to draw the line somewhere. F*** purple people!"

I am in the camp that supports purple people, so I was really pleased to see the following two stories. Baltimore Magazine did a write up on the Allied Sports program a few months ago. The program is a Baltimore County School System initiative for high school students with disabilities. The 16 year-old program puts a 50/50 mix of children with physical and/or learning disabilities and children without them on soccer, bowling and softball teams. Eighteen of the 24 schools have at least one Allied sport. The program promotes "sameness," the chance to shine for children who often get lost in the background.

Canada's Parent Central website posted an article on a little girl's ballet class. Normally a common subject, this particular class deserves a second look. Founded by mom Sarah Nixon-Suggitt, it is Toronto's first ballet class for physically challenged little girls. Three year-old Katie Suggitt, who has cerebral palsy, wanted to dance just like her twin sister. Suggitt's occupational therapist Barbara Lynch worked with the dance instructor to modify the beginner's class for Katie and little girls like her. Each class is staffed by older dancers at the school who volunteer their Saturday mornings. "The best thing, the beautiful thing, is this lets Katie be like every other girl," says Nixon-Suggitt. "We know these girls with special needs can do it too. They just do it a bit differently."

(Photo is courtesy of Angelina Ballerina)

Well, would you look at that...

I seem to be on a kids kick this week...It's not really a plan; I'm just going with the flow of the Interwebs. : ) Today's angle is kids getting caught on tape doing fantastic things in sports. The Boston Globe first alerted me to Oliver Wahlstrom. The Globe calls his goal the most-talked about in Boston. Filmed during a promotion at the Garden called the TD Bank Mini 1-on-1, Wahlstrom's shot looks like it would stymie even the great Jacques Plante. The YouTube version of it is below.

While signing onto my Yahoo! account this morning, I spied the following article on Tiger Woods being out-driven by a 12 year-old. After firing two shots into the trees at an event commemorating his first-ever golf course design, Woods invited a member of the crowd to come up and take a shot. Mark Benevenuto Jr., son of the club's co-owner, stepped up and teed up. Benevenuto proceeded to hit not one but two 200-yard drives down the fairway. The video from NBC Philadelphia is pretty cute. And you have to hand it to Tiger, he held his temper in check and congratulated the boy.

Classic American Inspiration...

Browsing through the stories today, I came across a link to US Magazine's story about the 25th anniversary of the first season of the classic '80s TV show, "The Cosby Show." I loved this show. I mean, flat out loved it. It is a fond piece of my childhood, so I was delighted to see the article about the cast reuniting on the Today Show this morning to talk about the show. 

CNN.com had a great story on a 20-minute "Pumpkin Pickle Pop Cookies Opera" performed by 10 four and five year-old visually impaired children in Atlanta. It was a "thank you" to their parents at the end of the program's session for all the time and work the parents put in to help the children get ready for kindergarten. The program helps children, who range in age from newborn and up, and their parents adjust to the visual impairment and excel despite it.

The last story is actually courtesy of a friend of mine at Drexel. Each year the Honda Inspiration Award is given to a senior female student-athlete who best exemplifies excellence on the field/court and in her personal life. Drexel's Nicole Hester battled Hodgkins Lymphoma her junior year of college then returned to lead the Dragons' women's basketball team to its first CAA Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance. Hester has also been honored by her athletic conference, the Philadelphia Sports Writers' Association and the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

(Photo credit: US Magazine)