Tag: sports (Page 8 of 27)

The Yet to Be Named Watch: This Is Why You Wear a Cage

7 September, 2009 / Kat

Bruins rookie camp (Photo: Twitter @NHLBruins)

Readers of …On Being a Sports Girl are quite familiar with the reoccurring feature, “The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch,” a series I began to follow the fledgling professional career of everyone’s favorite recent Boston University goaltender, John Curry. While Curry will always be one of my favorite college hockey players, and I will never give up that feature, my other favorite has now turned pro, and will now get a series of his own.

Readers, welcome to my reoccurring look at the fledgling professional hockey career of former BU right wing Jason Lawrence, a series I have yet to find a good, non confusing name for. (I originally named it something else having to do with the wonderful and memorable restaurants of Lawrence’s hometown, which also happens to be the hometown of my fiance, thus I’m quite familiar with it. However, the name just didn’t work, and I am open to suggestions.)

Lawrence is currently taking part in Boston Bruins rookie camp in Kitchener, Ontario, one of eight invitees to the camp. The remainder of the camp roster is filled with drafted or acquired young players, such as Zach Hamill and Jamie Arniel. (On a side note, another rookie camp participant is 2006 sixth round draft pick Alain Goulet, which makes me picture Will Farrell impersonating Robert Goulet on hockey skates, crooning “Bob Goulet needs a second chance.”) Continue reading

The Alumni Association: Fantasy Camps, Waiting in Line, and Getting Out of Portland

4 September, 2009 / Kat

Since a large chunk of my favorite college hockey players have now embarked on the professional portions of their careers, I present to you the first edition of “The Alumni Association,” a regular look at what some of the memorable college hockey players of the past five years are up to now.

Marblehead to Lynnfield, MA is a short distance geographically, but Marblehead native Cory Schnieder and Lynnfield’s Chris Higgins couldn’t be farther apart in their professional hockey careers this week.

For Higgins, the starting left wing for BU last year (and the LW in my most favorite line ever – Higgins, Wilson, Lawrence), Labor Day weekend will bring about his first NHL rookie camp with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Higgins, who is expected to spend the start of the season in Syracuse with the AHL Crunch, has the opportunity to be a part of a unique NHL training camp experience. Continue reading

Oh. No. You. Didn’t.

9 August, 2009 / Kat

The NFL Snuggie. The horrors.

I never truly believed the apocalypse was near until I saw this.

To celebrate the beginning of the NFL pre-season, HSN has been selling the NFL Huddler (aka an NFL Snuggie) all day. To demonstrate its use, they are continuously showing a group of male and female models sitting on the back of a pickup truck eating with various teams’ Huddlers on.

Oh, because the people tailgating in Orchard Park, Pittsburgh, Philly, or Oakland aren’t going to beat you up for wearing a massive piece of team printed felt with arms while grilling and kicking back beers in their vicinity.

Sports fans, if you fear being cold while watching a game, I would like to introduce you to this nifty invention called a jacket. Last I checked, they worked really well for most of human kind.

Blast from the Past: Why Every Sports Fan Needs to Make Their Way to Canton

8 August, 2009 / Kat

This is a special Pro Football Hall of Fame weekend for Buffalo Bills fans, with both Bruce Smith and Ralph Wilson being inducted. So I couldn’t help but recalling my own trip to Canton, Ohio to partake in Enshrinement Weekend back in 2005.

As any early reader of this blog might have discerned, I may have been a giant Bills fan as a youngster, but in addition, I was a giant Steve Young fan. After Young won Super Bowl XXIX in 1995, thirteen year-old me asked my father if he thought Young would make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “Maybe. It really depends what else he does,” said my father.

“Well, if he does, can we go to Canton to see the ceremony?” I asked.

My father, knowing that this was several years down the road at that point, if it happened at all, nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

I’m sure he thought I had forgotten his promise, until I called him on a Monday morning in February of 2005 – ten years later – to tell him I had four tickets to the Enshrinement Ceremony, and that we were going to see Steve Young get inducted.

Being in Canton during Enshrinement Weekend was one of my favorite experiences as a sports fan. It is a true celebration of the sport of football, one that even the most marginal of football fans will appreciate. To read about our trip to Canton in 2005 – the first family vacation my immediate family had ever taken – read the following blog post: “Earning the Fabiola.”

I plan on returning to Canton at some point – hopefully for a 2010 induction of Jerry Rice and Steve Tasker? Rice is next year’s shoo-in, and as evidenced by both Wilson’s and Smith’s speeches this evening, Tasker greatly deserves the honor, but he’s been overlooked by voters for a few years now. Maybe his continued broadcasting career will help him in securing spots in the voters’ minds. All I know is that if I was choked up watching Smith’s induction speech on NFL Network tonight, I would just bawl through Tasker’s.

Sitting at the Dock of the Bay

6 August, 2009 / Kat

We all have bad days, weeks, months, years. What happens when we suffer from one? We hit the bar, we sneak out of work early, we take a nap, we play with our cats, we get a manicure. And, most of the time, no one gives us a hard time about it.

Unless you’re an athlete. Because if you are an athlete, sports fans – fickle ones, at that – make it their own pastime to comment about your bad day, remind you about your bad day, and hold it over your head for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes on end.

Heaven forbid said bad day occurs due to an injury. Then you’re “injury prone,” “weak,” “not a professional,” “disingenuous.” Injury equals weakness, and unless the limb is severed, many believe you ought to be out on the field, ice, court, or pitch. Continue reading