March 10 – March 23, 2019

Welcome to issue three hundred and eight of the Sports Doing Good newsletter. This week’s 10 stories include:

1. Is It Ever Too Late to Pursue a Dream? (Longreads)
2. ‘A Steph Curry for girls’ – How Azzi Fudd could end up inspiring others in women’s hoops (Yahoo Sports)
3. Nike and Mattel on why the least active generation in history needs physical playtime (Fast Company)
4. The Long Fight for Pay Equality in Sports (New York Times)
5. Wait, New York Has a Pro Rugby Team? Yes, and It’s a Winner So Far (New York Times)
6. NCAA Tournament’s most inspiring coach is literally living for this (NY Post)
7. Kelly Holmes on mental health and happiness: ‘I’ve been to the lowest point and the highest’ (The Guardian)
8. Esiason heads up Mikey Strong Charity Hockey Game at Prudential Center (NHL.com)
9. With NBA Connections All Over, UC Irvine Is No Ordinary Cinderella (Sports Illustrated)
10. This 8-Year-Old Chess Champion Will Make You Smile (New York Times)

10+
NHL & NHLPA Launch Female Hockey Advisory Committee (Beyond Sport)
http://www.beyondsport.org/articles/nhl-nhlpa-launch-female-hockey-advisory-committee/
‘Our inspiration is Afghanistan’ – East Timorese hope to copy cricket rise (Peace and Sport)
https://www.peace-sport.org/our-inspiration-is-afghanistan-east-timorese-hope-to-copy-cricket-rise/
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Sports Award (Sport and Dev)
https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/news/robert-wood-johnson-foundation-sports-award
Lorena looking forward to life with Laureus (Laureus)
https://laureus.com/news/lorena-looking-forward-life-laureus
NBA Math Hoops Aims to Reach 300,000+ Kids by 2020 (Beyond Sport)
http://beyondsport.org/articles/nba-math-hoops/

We present again our “Featured Video” offering(s). With the explosion of video content out there highlighting the good in sport, we want to showcase such content for your enjoyment and learning. This will be an ongoing effort.

Why This Olympic Swimmer Left Medicine for MMA (Great Big Story)
https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/singapore-tourism-mighty-may-ooi/
This Is About Legacy (Mikey Garcia) (The Players’ Tribune)
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/videos/mikey-garcia-this-is-about-legacy
An angel found her wings (ESPN)
http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=26275585

Introduction
The stories we feature each week come from all kinds of new sources, e.g. global, national, and local; sports news; human interest stories; business cases; etc. As we felt, correctly, from the beginning, good news can come from almost everywhere. Our goal was and is to help find those stories and organize them in a concise, digestible way for you.

This week we have a story from Longreads (www.longreads.com). “Longreads, founded in 2009, is dedicated to helping people find and share the best storytelling in the world. We feature and produce in-depth investigative pieces, profiles, interviews, commentary, book reviews, audio stories, and personal essays.” If the story of Dan Stoddard, a kind-of-middle aged college basketball player, is indicative of their content, we can guarantee we will go back to Longreads for more stories.

The other stories we feature this week include: young basketball star Azzi Fudd and her breathtaking potential; Nike and Mattel on why the “least active generation in history” needs physical playtime; the long, and still active, fight for equal pay for women in sports; a new New York team in a new rugby league; an inspiring coach, Greg Herenda of Fairleigh Dickinson, participating in this year’s NCAA tournament; English track star Kelly Holmes and her personal take on mental health and happiness; a charity hockey game with modest beginnings and impressive growth; UC Irvine, one of the schools “dancing” as part of this year’s March Madness; and the inspiring tale of 8-year old chess champion, Tanitoluwa Adewumi.

Finally, if you think others would like to receive the newsletter, please feel free to forward it on or have them contact us directly at sab@sportsdoinggood.com. (If you do not want to receive the newsletter anymore you can use the Unsubscribe button at the end of the email)

So, enjoy. And have a good week.

Is It Ever Too Late to Pursue a Dream? (Longreads)
https://longreads.com/2019/03/19/is-it-ever-too-late-to-pursue-a-dream/

‘A Steph Curry for girls’ – How Azzi Fudd could end up inspiring others in women’s hoops (Yahoo Sports)
https://sports.yahoo.com/a-steph-curry-for-girls-how-azzi-fudd-could-end-up-inspiring-others-in-womens-hoops-145034727.html

Nike and Mattel on why the least active generation in history needs physical playtime (Fast Company)
https://www.fastcompany.com/90315126/nike-mattel-and-olympian-sanya-richards-ross-on-the-power-of-play-at-sxsw

The Long Fight for Pay Equality in Sports (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/sports/us-womens-soccer-pay.html

Wait, New York Has a Pro Rugby Team? Yes, and It’s a Winner So Far (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/sports/rugby-united-new-york-major-league.html

NCAA Tournament’s most inspiring coach is literally living for this (NY Post)
https://nypost.com/2019/03/17/ncaa-tournaments-most-inspiring-coach-is-literally-living-for-this/

Kelly Holmes on mental health and happiness: ‘I’ve been to the lowest point and the highest’ (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/13/kelly-holmes-mental-health-happiness-self-harming-podcast-interview

Esiason heads up Mikey Strong Charity Hockey Game at Prudential Center (NHL.com)
https://www.nhl.com/news/boomer-esiason-heads-up-mikey-strong-charity-hockey-game-at-prudential-center/c-305900894

With NBA Connections All Over, UC Irvine Is No Ordinary Cinderella (Sports Illustrated)
https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2019/03/22/march-madness-ncaa-tournament-uc-irvine-kansas-state

This 8-Year-Old Chess Champion Will Make You Smile (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess-champion-8-year-old-homeless-refugee-.html