Indiana Gold: Indiana’s Catchings, White to celebrate at farewell ceremony
Indiana president Kelly Krauskopf initially built the fledgling Fever around home-state star Stephanie White.
Turns out, the hard-working rookie she drafted in 2001, Tamika Catchings, emerged as the face of the franchise.
On Sunday, the two most iconic players in Fever history — one now the coach — will say farewell to the WNBA in their final regular-season home game. Coach White is taking over the Vanderbilt program and Catchings is retiring.
“I think they had an equal impact. What both leave behind and have meant to this franchise …” Krauskopf said, pausing. “Steph was the very first player I went out and got to start this franchise. They were the cornerstones of this franchise.”
.com A Farewell to Tamika
.com Catchings, Paul George Share Unique Bond
.com Tamika: The Final Season – Episode 3
Indy Star: Doyel: Catchings gave us her best; how do we thank her?
San Antonio Silver: WNBA better off because of Dan Hughes’ contributions
“People like Pat Summitt, Kay Yow, Geno Auriemma, Ann Meyers — they made me feel really comfortable,” said Hughes, who is retiring from his Stars coaching job at season’s end. “It opened the door. They accepted me. I really went to work at understanding where the women’s game was then, but also learned how it got there.”
Dan Hughes leaving extensive legacy in San Antonio
Hughes, who transformed the Stars from an afterthought when he arrived in San Antonio in 2005 to a title contender only two years later, will coach his final game when the team plays Phoenix at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the AT&T Center.
“From my experience, what I saw from him was that he generally cared about doing everything that was reasonably within his control and power to try and help his players,” said Rachel Askin, the Stars’ media relations director during the 2010 season who now lives and works in Boston. “He gave people a fair shot.”
Askin’s sentiment on Hughes’s impact is shared by many.
Excelle: Dan Hughes: appreciation for a WNBA survivor as he leaves the Stars
Swish Appeal: A Penny (Taylor) for your thoughts
Hoop: Swin Cash’s Humble Journey Nears Its End
There is an often-repeated expression that notes people may forget what you said, but they’ll always remember how you made them feel. That seems an appropriate thought for an article about Swin Cash’s impending retirement at the conclusion of this WNBA season. She is one of the league’s larger than life personalities—not only on the court, where her accomplishments are historic, but also in the hearts of fans, friends, family and the community.
BTW: Playoff Picture
.com: Inside The W with Michelle Smith
The Los Angeles Sparks haven’t looked nearly like the team that ran out to a 20-1 start as of late. Beginning with a two-game stumble right before the Olympic break, Los Angeles has won just four of 10 games. The Sparks lost their No. 1 seed, meaning they won’t have home-court advantage in a potential WNBA Finals matchup with the Lynx, and a little crisis of confidence conceivably could have been brewing in the City of Angels.
But Tuesday night’s big win over Phoenix might have been exactly what the Sparks needed to right the ship prior to the postseason.
I know… Without Delle Donne, Chicago Sky’s playoff hopes look dim
Really lovely: WNBA star Elena Delle Donne shares spotlight with her disabled sister in new Gatorade digital short
High School:
Doh! Iowa High School Girls Basketball Team Draws Backlash for Super Racially Insensitive Poster
Cool: A school gym in need gets a piece of Lady Vols history
Here it comes! An addition to the library: Dust Bowl Girls: A Team’s Quest for Basketball Glory, by Lydia Reeder. Review:
Dust Bowl Girls, ten years in the making, is bursting at the margins with the intimate details of the Cardinal team members’ lives, providing genuine heart to a narrative only half-recorded in the newspapers of the time. Taking advantage of the scrapbooks and oral stories from the personalities so lovingly portrayed in the text, Lydia Reeder paints the story of a team of hard-on-their-luck teenagers rising up out of the dust of poverty and the Great Depression, bringing hope and honor to their small city of Durant in Oklahoma.
NCAA
Around the Rim: “Swoopes” There It Is: LaChina Robinson welcomes 2016 Naismith Hall of Fame inductee Sheryl Swoopes to the show. Plus, Storm F Breanna Stewart and ESPN’s VP of Women’s Programming Carol Stiff join.
On : The absurdity of invoking Baylor rape victims in response to the NCAA
I, and countless other sexual assault survivors, would implore the North Carolina GOP not to co-opt our movement for victims’ rights in order to deny the rights of transgender citizens, many of whom are victims of violence as well. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the LGBT community experiences sexual violence at rates higher than heterosexuals. Human Rights Campaign estimates that nearly half of transgender people will experience sexual violence in their lifetime.
In addition to ignoring the plight of sexual assault in the transgender community, the North Carolina GOP’s statement is blatantly disingenuous, given the party’s history of denying legal protections for assault victims.
Need an assist? The Troll Slayer – A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors.
In February, Mary Beard, a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture at the British Museum titled “Oh Do Shut Up Dear!” With amiable indignation, she explored the many ways that men have silenced outspoken women since the days of the ancients. Her speech, which was filmed by the BBC, was learned but accessible—a tone that she has regularly displayed on British television, as the host of popular documentaries about Pompeii and Rome. She began her talk with the Odyssey, and what she referred to as the first recorded instance of a man telling a woman that “her voice is not to be heard in public”: Telemachus informing his mother, Penelope, that “speech will be the business of men” and sending her upstairs to her weaving. Beard progressed to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Tereus rapes Philomela and then cuts out her tongue so that she cannot denounce him. Beard alighted on Queen Elizabeth and Sojourner Truth before arriving at Jacqui Oatley, a BBC soccer commentator repeatedly mocked by men who were convinced that a woman couldn’t possibly understand the sport. A columnist for The Spectator, Beard noted, currently runs an annual competition to name the “most stupid woman” to appear on the current-affairs show “Question Time.”
Finally, Beard arrived at the contemporary chorus of Twitter trolls and online commenters. “The more I’ve looked at the details of the threats and the insults that women are on the receiving end of, the more some of them seem to fit into the old patterns of prejudice and assumption that I have been talking about,” she said. “It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it.” Such online interjections—“ ‘Shut up you bitch’ is a fairly common refrain”—often contain threats of violence, a “predictable menu of rape, bombing, murder, and so forth.” She mildly reported one tweet that had been directed at her: “I’m going to cut off your head and rape it.”
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