Author: Kat (Page 55 of 89)

On the 15 day DL

13 May, 2009 / Kat

You have noticed I haven’t been posting lately, and I don’t want you all to think I am abandoning the site all together. I am having an increasing amount of trouble with an injury to my right wrist, making it difficult to type. I am saving up all of my “typing power” for work – where we are in one of our busiest times of the year – and for the writing gig that pays (the Examiner.) By the time I get home at the end of the day, the last thing I can do is use my right hand – boooo.

This should be all figured out within the next week – I imagine I’ll be all gussed up with a brace shortly – and I’ll be back at it full time. If I was a member of a MLB team, I’d be on the 15 day DL for an undisclosed upper body injury. Just think of it as that.

Thanks for your interest in my site. I’ll be back soon.

Where Have I Been? Well, Writing About Lacrosse, Of Course.

4 May, 2009 / Kat

The National Lacrosse League playoffs are in full swing, and the NCAA Championships in Division I men’s and women’s lacrosse are about to start. Thus, I have been busy covering both for Examiner Boston.

Alas, the Boston Blazers were defeated in the first round of the playoffs this weekend, but they still made a great showing for a team in their inaugural season. There is still much college lacrosse to be covered, and the Boston Cannons are currently in training camp and begin their season in two weeks. So there will not be a dearth of lacrosse to watch and cover – in fact, there might be too much! Keep your eyes peeled on my Examiner page for more lacrosse coverage.

There’s No Crying in Vintage Baseball Wear

26 April, 2009 / Kat

I am still working on the eagerly awaited first annual “Sports Girl Kat College Hockey Year End Awards”, and in the meanwhile, have decided to share with you all one of my new latest fashion finds. (Me? Fashionable? Yes.)

Before it was even universally accepted, my casual wear has consisted of sports related shirts and jeans (or jean skirts when the weather obliges.) Thankfully, instead of wearing super large, nearly dress like football jerseys or t-shirts, many lines have come out that cater to women like me. I featured one back in January (CPR Gear) and am featuring yet another one today – Vintage Blue.

"Dottie" a t-shirt by Vintage-Blue

Vintage Blue is a female owned company out of Philadelphia (but with Boston ties – owner Liza Gonclaves was raised in Boston) who hold the exclusive license to The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League images and team names. If you have seen the movie A League of Their Own (and really, who hasn’t?) you know of the AAGPBL, which was the first professional sporting league for women in the 1940s. While a large portion of America’s men were overseas in the World War II effort, women’s baseball took the place of men’s baseball to provide sports fans with professional baseball to watch.

Vintage Blue creates t-shirts and tote bags with images from this classic and unique time in baseball history, all cut quite fashionably. These shirts make kind of-sort of tomboy me look like I actually tried to look awesomely cool. Upon first glance, they just look like retro, comfy shirts with a fun design, but up close, you figure out that the designs are sports related.

"Martha," a very neat V-Neck that I so am buying, by Vintage Blue

In addition, just in time for the end of Earth Week, this line of shirts is eco-friendly, using chemical-free fabric and recycled paper for all tags and marketing materials. The company has been featured in a bunch of recent “Green Expos” along the Eastern Seaboard. They also contribute 5% of their profits to non-profits around the Philadelphia area and beyond, and supporting programs that encourage positive encouragement and outlets for young women.

Right now, Vintage Blue shirts are being sold in the neighborhood outside Phillies home games, at various Philly retailers and at boutiques like Boston’s Bodega. Their full line is available at their website, which also has their line of non-baseball related shirts. Even if you aren’t interested in their shirts, their website is one of the better web designs I have seen recently – graphically, it’s very unique.

The dear ladies of Vintage Blue – most especially Liza – have passed along a coupon for readers of …On Being a Sports Girl: Buy their “Catch a Foul, Steal a Kiss” shirt, and get one of their totes for free. Not too shabby! Thanks Vintage Blue, and keep churning out these fun shirts!

Catch A Foul, Get a Kiss Offer from Vintage Blue

I’m always looking for neat sportswear companies to feature on my blog. If you would like to tell me all about your line, email me at sportsgirlkat@gmail.com

Fourteen Years Later, I Experience My Super Bowl XXIX

21 April, 2009 / Kat

The bracket banner outside the Verizon Center. (Photo by me.)

When I was thirteen, I read Peter King and Rick Telander’s coverage of Super Bowl XXIX for Sports Illustrated and decided right then and there that I wanted to be a sportswriter. I wanted to be there to watch someone reach a pinnacle in their sport and then encapsulate the entire emotional experience for those who couldn’t be there in words. I can not pin point a single paragraph or passage of the lead article by Telander that inspired me the most, because there are just too many – from the passage about Jerry Rice, to Eddie DeBartalo and Carmen Policy trying to fathom ways their team could actually lose, to the end passage about Steve Young being so emotionally and physically spent that paramedics had to be sent to his hotel room (which also mentioned his girlfriend of the moment, which slowly broke teenaged crushed me’s heart). At that moment, I knew one of my life goals was to watch an championship sporting event – be it a Super Bowl, winning game of a World Series or Stanley Cup, or even a Calder Cup. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to write about it.

Fast forward fourteen years, to April 11, 2009 in Washington, D.C. In the most unlikely of sports to 13 year old me, college hockey, I finally saw a championship in person. And a week and a half removed from said event, I am finding that encapsulating that moment of victory into words is the most difficult thing I have ever had to write.

You see, there are no words that I can find that describe what it was like to be in the arena when Boston University won the National Championship in overtime. And there is no single story that encapsulates the spirit of the event. And yes, I have stories upon stories upon stories that I could tell surrounding the game and during it – of the pre-game gathering with hundreds of BU fans young and old who had traveled from literally around the world, to when I paced the concourse with mothers when they went down 3-1 in the third, to the priceless interactions between players and their families at the post-game gathering – but I don’t know if they would ever do justice to seeing a team win a championship, a pinnacle in their particular sport.

I have struggled for days about what to write about the Frozen Four, the trip, the games and the overall experience, and the only conclusions I have come to, after about fifty drafts, have been 1) it was the single best thing I have ever done in my twenty-seven years and 2) how difficult it had to have been for the Telander to write that piece in 1995, to envelope what the 49ers Super Bowl XXIX win meant to them and those players, Young in particular, because that piece made me feel like I was there, and there are no words that I can find that describe that well what it is like to be there for something of that magnitude.

It was just about the neatest thing ever.

The celebration after BU won the National Championship in OT. (Photo by me.)

The Saugus versus The Swedish: The Frozen Four Battle No One Is Talking About

9 April, 2009 / Kat

Of all the storylines heading into tonight’s Boston University versus University of Vermont Frozen Four semifinal matchup, one has been overwhelmingly ignored: the fact that UVM’s Viktor Stalberg and BU’s Jason Lawrence are currently tied for fourth in the country in goals at 24 a piece, and are the last two players still playing this season from the top five in that list.

Whoever wins the battle tonight will have the opportunity to move into either second or third on that list, seeing that both MacGregor Sharp (26 goals) and Brock Bradford (25 goals) and their teams are no longer in the tournament. (Air Force powerhouse Jacques Lamoureux’s 33 goals might be a tough target to hit for either Stalberg or Lawrence, but hey, stranger things have happened in two games.)

So who’s going to win the battle tonight, come out ahead on the goal statistics and have the opportunity to add more goals to their stats on Saturday? To figure this out, I consulted with Cameron Frye, fellow hockey blogger, and professed fan of “The Swedish”, and we each took our own positions on the topic. I will let Ms. Frye go first:

On the 15 day DL

Where Have I Been? Well, Writing About Lacrosse, Of Course.

There’s No Crying in Vintage Baseball Wear

Fourteen Years Later, I Experience My Super Bowl XXIX

The Saugus versus The Swedish: The Frozen Four Battle No One Is Talking About

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