nbcnews:

Army Lt. Col. surprises daughter on ceremonial first pitch

(Photo: Chris O’Meara / Associated Press)

There was a touching moment before tonight’s Red Sox/Rays game, as nine-year-old Alayna Adams threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Tropicana Field and was reunited with her dad in the process.

More from NBC Sports.

Team SA wins World Surfing Games

The South African surfing team celebrated a superb double at the 2013 Reef ISA World Surfing Games in Panama on the weekend when they were crowned the ISA World Team Champions and captain Shaun Joubert clinched the ISA men’s world champion title.

Team SA fought a see-saw battle for the most prestigious team title in world surfing, leading the standings on days five and six before slumping to fourth place going into the final day. Joubert’s outstanding victory, however, saw them overtake perennial rivals and defending champions Australia, emerging surfing powerhouse Peru and Brazil, who earned silver, bronze and copper medals respectively.

Read more.

Australian coach goes in to bat for India’s poor

Many young men in India and Australia share a common dream - to play cricket for their country, but for cricketers in India’s poor rural communities that dream is often out of reach.

In one small community in one of India’s poorest states, however, Australian Bruce Adams is doing all he can to make sure everyone gets a shot at the big time.

Six years ago, Bruce Adams was coaching students in the north Indian state of Rajasthan, when a friend suggested another place that could really use his help.

Now he stands on the boundary of the Indira Gandhi stadium in the rural Indian district of Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh.

It’s here he’s built one of India’s biggest not-for-profit cricket academies.

Read more.

Breaking a world record is a huge accomplishment for any athlete, but 16-year-old Kayla Wheeler has managed to do it with no legs and only one arm.

Read more.

College shot putter, Cameron Lyle, gives up athletic career to donate bone marrow

We are in awe of this college athlete’s selfless act to help a stranger.

Cameron Lyle, 21, is a shot put star at the University of New Hampshire. CBS reports that he spent the past 8 years training for his final America East conference this month, but earlier this year he decided to end his career just months shy of the competitions in order to become a bone marrow donor.

According to CBS, Be The Match, the national bone marrow registry, paid his school a visit during his sophomore year, and Lyle and his teammates were all swabbed to find potential matches.

The chances of finding a perfect match outside of immediate family members are about 1 in 5 million. However, just over two months ago, Lyle received a call saying they had found a 100 percent match — and it was a man suffering from a rare form of leukemia with just 6 months to live.

“I said yes right away,” Lyle told Today. “And then afterwards I thought about everything that that meant giving up.”

The marrow extraction procedure would leave Lyle unable to lift more than 20 pounds for a month while he recovered. To save the man’s life, he would have to make the donation just before the culmination of the track and field season,effectively cutting short his athletic career, Today reports.

Nevertheless, he says he, “never had a second thought about donating.” “If I had said no, he wouldn’t have had a match,” he told Today.

Lyle headed to Massachusetts General Hospital last week where doctors successfully collected his bone marrow. The recipient’s operation took place the very next day, Today reports, and even though his college athletic career is over, Lyle has no regrets.

“You can’t measure life against anything,” Lyle told ABC. “When you have an opportunity to save someone, you gotta go for it.”

The 10-Year-Old Inventor and the World’s Cutest Patent Drawing

As a lawyer who works in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Len Nannarone has helped his fair share of tech companies. But the most important startup he’s advised is much closer to home: his 10-year-old son, Owen, a budding inventor and entrepreneur.

At the Nannarone home in suburban Boston one recent Sunday, father and son discuss Owen’s latest invention, a golf tee that records the speed and angle of the club to analyze a swing. Len is outgoing and energetic, but Owen remains quiet, his eyes partially hidden by his shock of brown hair. He deftly peels the protective cover off an alkaline battery, as if shelling a peanut, while dad explains the impetus for their design.

See, Owen takes golf lessons, and his coach uses a swing analyzer that’s just too big and clunky for Owen. “They have these huge machines,” Owen says, momentarily taking his eyes off the battery. Len chimes in. “He said, ‘Dad, can’t they put all that stuff in a golf tee?’”

So the two got to work on what has to be the world’s cutest patent application: a drawing of a golf tee that shows where a small camera will go. Inside the ball, a GPS sensor will determine how far the ball travels. Together, the sensor and camera will send data to a smartphone for instant swing analysis. “It’s supposed to track speed and distance,” Owen says.

Read more.

Physically challenged athlete sets new African javelin record

When Reinhardt Hamman, who is now a guest relations officer at The Vineyard Hotel & Spa in Newlands, Cape Town, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of five, he could not have imagined he would grow up to become a sporting star, breaking records and winning gold medals.

This month Hamman, now 23, broke the African record for javelin of 43.37m in the F37 class by throwing 44.93m in the annual Nedbank National Championships for the Physically Challenged. This performance secured a gold medal that he added to the gold he earned for shot-put and a silver for discus.

Read more.

Thousands of fans help make child’s MLS dream come true

It’s not often a youth soccer team plays in front of 3,000 screaming fans.

But that’s what 8-year-old Atticus Lane-Dupre and his teammates did Wednesday night. Lane-Dupre and the Green Machine scrimmaged their local pro team, the Portland Timbers, at JELD-WEN Field.

This game wasn’t part of a double-header. The Timbers weren’t playing an MLS foe later in the day. These 3,000 fans came to see a group of kids scrimmage their role models heroes.

Read more.

shortformblog:

Saudi Arabia to allow girls to play sports at private schools

Saudi Arabian girls will be allowed to play sport in private schools for the first time in the latest in a series of incremental changes aimed at slowly increasing women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s official press agency, SPA, reported on Saturday that private girls’ schools are now allowed to hold sport activities in accordance with the rules of sharia law. Students must adhere to “decent dress” codes and Saudi women teachers will be given priority in supervising the activities, according to the education ministry’s requirements.

The decision makes sport once again a stage for the push to improve women’s rights, nearly a year after two Saudi female athletes made an unprecedented appearance at the Olympics.

London marathon dream becomes a reality

Crossing the finish line of the 2013 Virgin London Marathon marked the culmination of a life dream for Khubulani Zondo. The 36-year-old athlete from Soweto recently completed the marathon in a time of just 2 hours and 31 minutes, earning a silver medal and finishing first among the South African contingent of runners. 

A few months ago, completing one of the world’s most prestigious international marathons was nothing but a pipe dream for Zondo, whose job as a security guard in Johannesburg’s West Rand has not afforded him the same privileges enjoyed by other local athletes. 

But thanks to a charitable initiative undertaken by Virgin Money South Africa, Zondo, along with two other runners from underprivileged communities, was given a unique opportunity to shine on an international stage.

“It’s always been a dream to run in the world’s biggest marathons, but I never thought I’d get the chance,” says Zondo, who had previously achieved four silver medal finishes in the Comrades Marathon. “I have watched the London marathon on TV, and when I found out about this opportunity, I knew I had to go for it.”

Read more.

gaywrites:

Jason Collins, 34-year-old center in the National Basketball Association, is the first openly gay athlete in major American sports.

He wrote this piece for Sports Illustrated detailing his decision: 

I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.

I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

This is huge. This is so huge. Follow-up to come; we’ll be talking about this one for a while. 

nativeamericannews:

Iroquois Ironmen Win Creator’s Cup Lacrosse Title

In an inredible run, the Iroquois Ironmen, an all-Native squad, knocked out the top three seeds in the Canadian Lacrosse League playoffs to win the 2013 Creator’s Cup title. The sixth-seeded Ironmen won only four games in the regular season, but it was their three stunning playoff wins that earned them this year’s championship.

Read more.

nbcnews:

First ever Palestinian marathon: Running to change West Bank’s image

(Photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters)

BETHLEHEM, Israel — Jesus’ traditional birthplace has long been linked to tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. On Sunday, around 1,000 athletes took a step towards transforming Bethlehem’s modern image by running in the first official Palestinian marathon.

Read the complete story.

nativeamericannews:

KU’s Angel Goodrich Highest-Drafted Native Player in WNBA History

Kansas Jayhawks star point guard,Angel Goodrich, Cherokee, has become the highest-drafted Native player in WNBA history. The Tulsa Shock selected Goodrich, KU’s all-time assists leader, 29th overall in the WNBA Draft, held Monday night. She is the sixth KU player to be drafted into the WNBA.

A graduate of Tahlequah High School, Goodrich will be returning to her home state of Oklahoma to join a Shock team that finished fifth in the WNBA’s Western Conference in 2012.

“It was neat to see my name pop up [on the draft board],”Goodrich said. “There was a lot of waiting and some anxiety, but as soon as (my name) came up my heart just started pounding. It’s awesome that I will be so close to home. This is such a blessing, because it’s so close. It’s right there. There will be a lot of people supporting me and cheering me on. This is really a dream come true.”

wired:

transportationnation:

This just in: New York City’s bike share program is now accepting members. The first 5,000 will get a discount on helmets.

The total cost of yearly membership is $103.43 with tax, which puts it just under the cost of a monthly Metrocard.

Next month’s system launch will include 6000 bikes at 330 stations in Manhattan south of 59th street and in Dumbo, Downtown Brooklyn, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

(Above photos: city transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan dons a sporty helmet and uses a key card to unlock a bike from its dock in Brooklyn.)

For more: http://ow.ly/k59Ba 

Woot, bikes for everyone!