Category: Sports (Page 1 of 5)

A Whole New Running Perspective

May 23, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve started running again. Slowly, slowly, slowly. It’s not so much that I’m running slowly, but that I’m easing my way back into a regular running routine. I run a couple of miles once a week. I’d like to sneak in a second day of running on a regular basis…we’ll see if that happens!

The thing that’s different about my running this time is my approach. In the past, I’ve always run with a specific goal in mind. As a kid, I competed at the kid’s track meets in the summer. In high school, I ran for the track team, again for competition. In college and beyond, I ran ran to stay in shape for soccer or to train for a specific race.

Honestly, though, I never really like running in and of itself. When I’ve tried to do it without a 5K to train for or a competitive edge involved, it was kind of a slog. And even when in training, it was something I did because I had to do it to succeed in whatever goal was the end game. I’ve always preferred exercise in the form of a team sport.

But now, post two children and with some extra pounds on these old bones, I’m running with no specific mileage or time goals in mind. I’m not training for anything or looking to compete. I just go out and run.

via GIPHY

I run in the scenic downtown area while The Boy has dance class. Sometimes I run around the green. Other times I head to the little wooded area behind the library and the harbor. If I feel like checking out the boats or the baby geese, I do. If I don’t feel like running up a hill, I walk. I don’t keep track of how far I run or how long. It’s very low-key and low pressure. It’s almost meditative.

As someone who grew up playing many competitive sports and who continued that into adulthood, it’s very strange to exercise this way. The only other time I’ve exercised like this was when I did yoga, which I mostly did while I was pregnant so there was a necessity to the low-key manner.

And you know what? I kind of love running this way. It’s liberating. There’s nothing at stake; there’s only gain. I win by running. Period. And it gives me some much-needed alone time. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure this out!

Have you ever gained a new perspective on an old thing?

March #InkRipples: Feminism, Title IX, and Aging

March 7, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

I guess I was born a feminist. When I say “feminist,” I mean someone who believes women should have equal rights to men (for further discussion on this, see my post “Females in YA: Part 9 Feminism”). What girl isn’t born a feminist? And for that matter, what boy isn’t? I have a hard time believing a boy could be born and suddenly think, “I am a far superior being than any girl and deserve to be treated as such.”

But then we (both girls and boys) are exposed to our parents’ ideas, beliefs, and prejudices; and then our peers’ ideas, beliefs, and prejudices (and by extension their parents’ I/B/P); and societies’ I/B/P. So somewhere along the way, many of us become non-feminists. Or maybe we stop thinking that feminism is still important or relevant.

I think this was me in middle and high school: though I never stopped believing women deserve equal rights to men, I just didn’t see the need for feminism anymore. Admittedly I fell into the trap of thinking being a feminist meant I had to be a radicalized bra-burning, man-hating woman. And I also believed I was being treated equal to my male peers.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older: It was an earlier push for equal rights that granted me the ability to be apathetic about it. I grew up playing sports in a post Roe v. Wade world and post Title IX era, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

That created an environment where my fellow female athletes and I were often celebrated along with our male counterparts because we were just as successful, or even more successful. We were treated with respect and won awards and accolades. We wore our own letter jackets, not our boyfriends’. Not to say we never heard the comments about “playing like a girl” or where our “place” in the world was, but I always felt those comments were from people of an older generation who had no clue. They were antiquated ideas, outdated. Or so I believed at the time.

As I’ve gotten older and my horizons have expanded beyond my (maybe progressive) hometown, I’ve seen a bigger picture of how women are being treated in the U.S. and the world. It’s not a pretty picture. I’ve also been educating myself about the gender pay gap (see “There’s A Gender Pay Gap At Every Age, And It Only Gets Worse As Workers Get Older” by Shane Ferro), sexism in the tech industry and Hollywood (see “Why are women leaving the tech industry in droves” by Tracey Lien and “The Women of Hollywood Speak Out” by Maureen Dowd), and the cost of staying home to raise children (see “When Being A Stay-At-Home Mom Isn’t a Choice” by Jillian Berman).

I see the assault on a woman’s right to make choices about her own body and the rampant and disgusting sexism in this year’s presidential election, and the importance of feminism is more obvious to me than ever before. I have a desire to be more outspoken in my mindset of being a feminist. I sometimes feel alone in this because sexism isn’t rampant in my everyday life and in the live’s of many of the people I know, and there isn’t necessarily an immediate need for us to rise up and demand equal rights. I’m lucky to live in a place where my rights as a woman are protected…for now.

It’s that “for now” that gives me pause and drives me to a greater call. I want the next generation of women to feel secure in their rights and that they are considered equal to men. I want them to feel this way their whole lives, not have a sense that their worth erodes as they get older, which is something I have begun to feel and I’m only in my mid-thirties.

Feminism is a topic I have many, many thoughts on, far too many for one blog post. I know, too, that it’s a divisive topic. I’ll be revisiting it throughout the month here on the blog. Coming up soon, look for a post about how my first novel ELIXIR BOUND ended up having many feminist viewpoints in it, initially without a lot of intention on my part.

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (March is all about feminism), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. Be sure to check out Kai’s and Mary’s posts this month. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption

July 30, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

First off, I wanted to mention I have a very rare but special Sunday post coming up on August 2nd, so keep a look out for that. In the meantime, it seems you all enjoyed last month’s spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads, the short story blog I post for once a month, so I thought I’d spotlight this month’s story as well.

In June my story was “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail”. When I first conceived the idea for the Tales From the Field series, I had planned to have each story be told from a different girl’s point of view, but Olivia’s tale demanded more. Here’s an excerpt from July’s story “Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption”.

Tales From the Field: Olivia’s Redemption by Katie L. Carroll

To free yourself from guilt you must forgive yourself.

The game is about to start. The strategizing, the pep talks, the warm-ups are done. My stomach is a pit of tingling nerves, the good kind, the ones that keep my reflexes sharp. I let out a long exhale, my breath smoking in the cool evening air. Our undefeated season is on the line tonight.

My ten teammates line up in front of me, their white home uniforms bright under the lights. I clap my goalie gloves together and stare down our gold-clad rivals, the Valley High women’s soccer team.

Time to get in the zone.

For some inexplicable reason, I glance into the stands, the side where the Valley fans sit. It takes me right out of the game. Marco. He’s here. I knew he would be, but seeing him is worse than I imagined. The tingling, game-ready nerves turn to anxious, stomach-twisting ones.

Marco, of course surrounded by his entourage of teammates from the Valley High boys’ team, stands down by the fence separating the field from the stands. He faces the crowd, his back to me, thank God. I don’t think I could handle seeing his chipped-tooth smile right now. He’s wearing the blues of the Italian National Team, not the Valley High black and gold. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe our kiss at camp this summer actually meant something to him.

Then I remember him cheering on his schoolmate as she sprinted to the ball, my hesitation, the ball bouncing off her foot and over the goal line. The shame of losing the camp championship for my team, all because of some stupid boy, creeps up my face in a blush…

You can check out the rest of the story at the Lightning Quick Reads blog! Enjoy!

Spotlight on Lightning Quick Reads

June 11, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

I wanted to take today to highlight Lightning Quick Reads (#LQR), a flash fiction blog I contribute to, along with ten other authors. There is a theme every month and we each write a short story and post it on our designated day (mine is the 11th). There are also author spotlights, event announcements, a reader flash where readers can share their shorts, and the occasional giveaway. There are a ton of great stories coming out of the blog!

Most of my stories are a part of series I’m calling Tales From the Field about a women’s high school soccer team. Each piece is from a different players perspective, and I’m really pleased with how the stories are coming out. I was a pretty competitive soccer player growing up and find it really easy to think of material. And it’s not just about soccer because in high school all of life’s issues seems to get tangled up into one big messy ball. It’s about soccer, competition, pressure, love, and life.

With the World Cup (I refuse to use the qualifier “women’s”…of course I’m not talking about the men’s World Cup, that was last year!) going on, I thought it would be fun to give you a sneak peek of my June story (check out the full story on LQR).

Tale From the Field: Olivia’s Camp Fail by Katie L. Carroll

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

The table sags under heaping containers of salad, pasta, and rolls at our pregame party the night before the big match against our cross-town rivals Valley High. But all it takes for me to lose my appetite is one comment from team captain Megan.

“We don’t want a repeat of camp finals.”

The low rumble of conversation and the smack of full mouths immediately ceases as nearly every player on the Central High women’s soccer team looks at me. I lock my gaze on the fat meatball atop a pile of spaghetti covered with tomato sauce, which I’m sure matches the color of my face right now.

“What happened at camp?” asks Brooke. An innocent enough question, if you don’t know what happened this summer—which she doesn’t because freshmen don’t attend camp—but a terribly taboo one if you do know what happened.

Reading with Beverly Stowe McClure Author of STAR OF THE TEAM

November 14, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Beverly Stowe McClure is an author, a former teacher, and a wonderful, supportive member of the kidlit writing community. Today she is sharing her MG contemporary STAR OF THE TEAM with a post about how she wasn’t always a reader. Welcome, Beverly!

JOHN NEWBERY AND A CLASSROOM OF FIFTH GRADERS

by Beverly Stowe McClure

When I was very young, I was not a reader. I listened to the radio instead. A program called “Let’s Pretend” came on every Saturday morning. This was BTV (Before TV). I loved Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White and the Severn Dwarfs and all the others. Even though I never read the books, perhaps I absorbed the stories that years later I would remember how much I enjoyed them.

I squeaked through high school, reading only what I had to. After graduation I worked at various jobs, none of them exciting. When my sons started school, I decided to attend the local university so I could find a job with a future. This meant reading, lots of it. Four years later, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree. And, now get this, I became a teacher. What was I thinking? Teaching meant more reading. I also made an amazing discovery. Not only did I love teaching, I loved reading children’s books.

One of the requirements we had for our fifth-graders was a book report every six weeks. This was before the AR program many schools have today. Our students had to read Newbery winner or honor books. Memories surfaced of how much I hated book reports in my school days, so I hoped to make them more pleasant for my boys and girls. I also had to read the books so I could tell they’d read them. Sigh. I wish someone had introduced me to these stories when I was in school. Maybe they did and I wasn’t listening. For whatever reasons, I was hooked. My students’ reports were amazing. Sometimes, they dressed like the characters and acted out the stories. Other times they wrote reports with illustrations or in story form. Most of them had fun. The teacher had fun. Reading was fun. Remember the saying: “You’re never too old to learn.” It’s true.

So today, I thank John Newbery, the wonderful books that have won his award, and my classroom of fifth-graders for showing their teacher the beauty of a good book.

STAR OF THE TEAM blurb:

A girl.

A dream.

An accident.

A dream shattered.

Eleven-year-old Kate Taylor dreams of being the star of her basketball team, Angels. When Kate’s tooth is knocked out at one of the games and her mother, who is also her coach, says she can’t play until the tooth the dentist replants heals, Kate’s dreams are in jeopardy. Add Emily, the new girl at school who claims she’s the best, and Kate faces a challenge to prove that she is the star.

Will Kate succeed? Or will Emily ruin Kate’s plans?

Find it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About the Author:

Most of the time, you’ll find Beverly in front of her computer, writing the stories little voices whisper in her ear. When she’s not writing, she takes long walks and snaps pictures of clouds, wild flowers, birds and deer. To some of her friends, she is affectionately known as the “Bug Lady” because she rescues butterflies, moths, walking sticks, and praying mantis from her cats.

For twenty-two years Beverly taught children in grades two through five how to read and write. They taught her patience. Now, she teaches a women’s Sunday school class at her church. To relax she plays the piano. Her cats don’t appreciate good music and run and hide when she tickles the ivories.

For more about Beverly visit her blog or website.