Category: The Ringer

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 20199:41 pm

Andrej Stojakovic Is Paving His Own Path to the NBA

A cacophony of whistles, buzzers, and sneaker squeaks permeates throughout a nine-court gym. A teenager with a familiar last name and a silver cross dangling from his neck clutches a basketball in one corner, far from the horde of cameras clicking across the court. He can see some of his Compton Magic teammates jockeying to get into the frame on this mid-May morning in Anaheim, California. The teen, standing a gangly 6-foot-7, doesn’t seem to hear any of it. He dribbles side to side, staring ahead. He doesn’t break a smile, doesn’t say a word. He is keenly aware that he’s in the spotlight. People know his name. Now they want to see if he’s any good, especially since he recently picked up scholarship offers from Kentucky, Kansas, and UCLA. Sometimes it takes referees a second to figure out who he is: “Stojakovic …” one will say. “Why do I know that name?”

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 201910:40 am

Isiah Pacheco Is Running for Much More Than Super Bowl Glory

Before every game, Kansas City Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco takes a moment to himself, bowing his head and saying a quick prayer for his late siblings, Celeste Cannon and Travoise Cannon. They are always with him. Before the game. During the game. After the game. In his heart, his mind. He thinks about them often—and if they could see him now. See how far he’s come since he lost them.

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 201910:28 am

Yunus Musah Is From Many Places, but Just Found His Home

Yunus Musah didn’t quite know how to answer people when they asked him variations of the same question. Where are you from? He was 16 years old, a budding football prodigy who had just left Arsenal’s academy to join Valencia CF in Spain’s La Liga in 2019, when the queries seemed to peak. He was suddenly out of his comfort zone, away from everything he knew. His world was moving quickly. He’d pause a second, trying to gather his thoughts. Of course, he knew the literal answer.

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 20197:54 am

ASHTON JEANTY’S LONG RUN TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL SUPERSTARDOM

For miles and miles, Ashton Jeanty peered out the window of the team bus, watching the European countryside float past him. It was 2018, and Jeanty was a ninth grader on the Naples Middle/High School Wildcats football team, traveling with his teammates from their small Italian farmland town of Gricignano Di Aversa, on the outskirts of Naples, to play a game in Spangdahlem, Germany. This particular bus trip would take 18 hours—one way. But for Jeanty, who had moved to Italy with his family two years earlier, it was thrilling to pass through Austria, Switzerland, France, and so many unfamiliar places, where a kaleidoscope of cultures awaited him. “You’re blessed,” Jeanty’s mother, Pamela, would tell him. “Some adults save their whole lives to get to see Europe.” The Wildcats team was made up of international students and American teenagers like Jeanty, the children of military families who lived near the U.S. Naval Support Activity Naples base, and they mostly competed against other American military schools. They flew to Spain to play, and once, on a football trip to Belgium, they had to walk an hour to meet their bus because a marathon in Brussels had closed streets and snarled traffic near the airport.

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 20197:40 am

Book Richardson is out of prison but he doesn’t feel free

When Richardson is in this mode, black dry-erase marker in hand, jotting down notes on the board, he feels most whole, most alive. Coaching, hooping, losing himself in the rhythm of a play. “He’s so passionate about what he does,” says 14-year-old Elijah Novotny, one of Richardson’s players. “I can just feel his energy.” It’s in these moments, Richardson says, that he forgets he’s coaching middle schoolers. It’s almost as if he’s back on the Division I court, back at the University of Arizona, where he served as an assistant coach from 2009 to 2017. He was known in college basketball circles as one of the top recruiters in the country, and he regularly helped his teams land top-10 recruiting classes. While in Tucson as part of Sean Miller’s staff, Richardson helped continue the Wildcats’ winning tradition; he was part of five Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights, four Pac-12 regular-season championships, and a pair of Pac-12 tournament titles. Sometimes, when he’s alone on the Gauchos’ court, long after his players have gone home, Richardson turns off the lights and imagines himself in another time, another place. Before the FBI investigation. Before he lost his job, his career, and his sense of identity. For a moment, his shame dissipates, and he allows himself to dream. “I find myself back on the college bench,” he says. “I find myself back in the college locker room. I find myself trying to get to a Final Four.”

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 21, 201912:11 am

THE INTERNAL RECKONING OF JAVIER “CHICHARITO” HERNANDEZ

Javier “Chicharito” Hernández glances at the ink that lines his arms. He points to a tattoo of a yin and yang symbol. Then one of two elephants, a larger one and a smaller one, drawn across his right forearm. The elephants represent what he refers to as his childish side and his mature side. He calls these competing parts of him his “dualities.” And there are others. His ego versus his essence. His light versus his shadow. Chicharito versus Javi—the name he’s known by all over the world, and the one used by family and loved ones. “I have two sides,” he says. “And it’s not just because I’m a Gemini. I think we all have it.”

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 20, 201910:00 pm

ROSALIE fish wants to be the face of change

Before every race, Rosalie Fish stares at her reflection in the mirror. She pauses a few minutes and thinks of Indigenous women. Women who have gone missing, who have been murdered. Those whose names she knows, those whose names she’ll never know. Aunts, cousins, neighbors, classmates. Women who had families, who had ambitions. Who had children, friends, dreams, desires. She paints a giant red hand across her mouth, stretching across her cheeks. Red is the color that spirits, that ancestors, can see, according to some Native traditions. The hand over her mouth is meant to represent and honor the Indigenous women who have been silenced through violence—sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence—an epidemic that receives little national attention. “I had always known I was a target,” Fish says.

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 20, 20199:54 pm

INSIDE THE PAIN CAVE

When she feels as if she is running on shards of glass, when her legs feel like they are about to split open, when she thinks she can’t possibly run one more mile, Courtney Dauwalter starts visualizing the pain cave. It’s a place she constructs in her mind with elaborate detail. She conjures every crevice of the cave’s architecture: a large space with different tunnels inside. The cavernous paths in her mind can be wide or narrow, depending on the length and duration of the race. But with Courtney, they’re usually impossibly long. Dauwalter, 37, is considered the world’s best female ultramarathon runner. She might just be the greatest ultrarunner of all time, period. She races astonishing distances of 100- and 200-plus miles, even once attempting a 486-mile course. She is often on her feet for a mind-bending 24 or 48 straight hours, in the harshest environments imaginable, from steep terrain and high elevation to extreme weather.
Each race, she intends to go into the pain cave. She almost craves it. She warns herself, standing at the start line right before the gun goes off, that she is about to embark on another uncomfortable journey to the cave. “It’s not always going to feel great,” she tells herself. “But that’s going to make us better. We’re going to get better from visiting it.”

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 20, 201910:57 am

AUSTIN REAVES’S PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF WITH UNEXPECTED LAKERS ROLE

Austin Reaves took his customary seat in the back row of the Lakers’ meeting room while the team reviewed film from the previous night’s game against Oklahoma City. Lakers coach Frank Vogel paused the tape on a clip of Reaves defending Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had the ball on the right wing. “Should we double? What do y’all think?” Vogel asked the group. Essentially, Vogel was asking if Reaves would need help—or if he would be able to handle the assignment by himself. LeBron James was the first to speak up, according to Reaves, asserting that he could take SGA by himself. A chorus of agreement poured in, with multiple players saying: “No, he can guard him.” Then Trevor Ariza chimed in: “This motherfucker can guard him,” Reaves remembers Ariza saying. “We don’t need to [double].”

The Ringer by Mirin FaderDec 20, 201910:50 am

The Future of U.S. Women’s Soccer Is Here

Alex Morgan waited her turn. Before she morphed into one of the greatest footballers of all time, she was just a 22-year-old hopeful making her World Cup debut for the U.S. women’s national team. It was 2011, and Team USA was playing in its first match at the World Cup. Excitement hummed inside the team’s youngest player, as she tried to navigate the delicate balance between fitting in and standing out.