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'38 pieces that will be remembered for seasons to come For 25 years, sports journalists south of the border have been collected in best-of anthologies. With Best Canadian Sports Writing, editors Stacey May Fowles and Pasha Malla offer a long overdue rejoinder from the North, showcasing top literary sports writing from diverse homegrown talent. This extraordinary anthology of recent writing mixes columns and long-form journalism, profiles and reportage, new voices and well-known favourites such as Stephen Brunt, Rachel Giese, Eric Koreen, Morgan Campbell, and Cathal Kelly. The assembled pieces offer polished prose, unusual perspectives, and rare insight into their subjects, whether it s a Filipino basketball league in the Yukon, the rise and fall of ski ballet, or a field trip to the Mexican hometown of the Jays Roberto Osuna. With its many voices and approaches, Best Canadian Sports Writing expands the genre into more democratic and conversationa

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	19 octobre 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773050867
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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BEST CANADIAN SPORTS WRITING
EDITED BY
STACEY MAY FOWLES & PASHA MALLA

CONTENTS Introduction SAM RICHES Home Court: Filipino Hoops in Canada’s Frozen North RICHARD POPLAK The Ace Age SHANNON PROUDFOOT Long-time Listener, First-time Caller CATHAL KELLY A Fish out of Water at the Bassmaster Classic AMELIA SCHONBEK The Journeywoman CHRIS TURNER The Journeyman RACHEL GIESE Puckheads: Inside the Crazed Arenas of the GTHL ROBIN BENGER On Cricket DUANE WATSON Legend PAUL TAUNTON The Hazy Edge of Memory: Torvill and Dean’s Perfect Bolero at 30 KATHERINE LAIDLAW This Will End Well SARAH KURCHAK Changing the Way We talk About Autism in Martial Arts SARAH KURCHAK Why People with Down Syndrome Should Be Allowed to Compete in MMA SARAH KURCHAK Why Kimbo Slice Mattered to the Autism Community DEMAR GRANT The Nike Crown League Experience HALEY CULLINGHAM The Tallest Man on Turf SPENCER GORDON Getting Over DENISE BALKISSOON For Women at the Games, Sexist Media Is the Biggest Hurdle DENISE BALKISSOON When We Tell Athletes They’re “Not Female Enough,” We’re Hurting Sports MICHAEL CHRISTIE All Parents Are Cowards JESSE RUDDOCK The Todd Bertuzzi Knock-Out Club EVA HOLLAND The Rise and Fall of Ski Ballet DONNOVAN BENNETT Being a Black Sports Journalist JOHN LOTT Meet the Most Obscure and Longest-Serving Member of the Blue Jays DAN ROBSON Home and Really Far Away: The Boys from Whale Cove ANDREW FORBES Intergalactic Heat Check: NASA’s “Thermonuclear Art” and the 2015–16 New York Knicks MORGAN CAMPBELL Street Racers Dodge the Law JOHN DOYLE Making History: Women, Soccer, and the World Cup SHIREEN AHMED Nah, Bro. All Muslims Do Not “Love” Kobe Bryant KARIM ZIDAN Dagestani Dynasty: How Fighting Became the Nurmagomedov Family Business ERIC KOREEN A Week in the Life of Toronto Raptor Chuck Hayes ANSHUMAN IDDAMSETTY Swole with No Goal ARDEN ZWELLING Josh Ho-Sang vs. The World OMAR MOUALLEM Bret Hart on the Fight of His Life MIKE SPRY The Shame of Pageantry: The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony KRISTINA RUTHERFORD Game Before Self WILL DI NOVI Skin in the Game STEPHEN BRUNT Sure Thing Acknowledgements Contributors About the Editors Copyright

INTRODUCTION
The scene is familiar: a TV studio decked out to look like a man cave, a couple of aggressive guys in business casual hollering stats at each other from their La-Z-Boy recliners, commercial breaks segued with the grind of corporate rock. The faux intimacy of the homey decor and all that macho soliloquizing can seem a bit like being stuck at a family dinner with a know-it-all in-law who rains his opinions down from the head of the table — and it’s just as exhausting. That this has become the go-to aesthetic for sports commentary feels like a relic of a bygone age, and it’s hard to believe that the subterranean alpha male is still the dominant archetype of fandom. Aren’t there more of us than this?
Of course, there’s no wrong way to talk about and experience sports — some armchair quarterbacks can be insightful and hilarious at times — but what tends to be represented as the status quo doesn’t necessarily reflect the multiplicity of perspectives, experiences, and opinions of players and fans. So the initial impulse to create a collection of the best Canadian sports writing came, in some ways, from a place of dissatisfaction: we know that this country is home to a vast range of responses to the games we love, yet there seems to be a cultural failure to celebrate and spotlight these efforts in an accordingly diverse yet coherent way.
It also seemed strange — even self-defeating — that our neighbours to the south have been putting out a popular compendium of their best sports writing for over twenty-five years, while Canada has long failed to do the same. Yet we didn’t want to fall victim to that prototypically Canadian, little sibling instinct to merely chase after American achievements. So in assembling a comparable collection, we felt that it would be important to not simply transcend nationalism, but also defy certain traditions and conventions as they’ve been established both here and abroad: The Best Canadian Sports Writing , we agreed, would need to upend pervasive stereotypes of what sports writing, regardless of nationality, should be or do — and who is telling which stories.
Our call for submissions was met with an inspiring breadth of styles, topics, and perspectives. Yes, there were the traditional, artful athlete profiles and interviews, feats of skilled reportage, and reflections on the power, grandeur, and intensity of sport. But we were also treated to brilliant, sensitive insights into what sports mean to writers and fans who exist outside the alleged mainstream. The work we received and solicited spoke to the emotions and community that sports can cultivate, and how everything from minor hockey to mountain climbing can reveal essential parts of who we are and what connects us beyond borders and boundaries.
In this book, you will find experimental poetic musings on what happens on the field, court, and rink, along with generous personal accounts of where the political meets play. There are pieces that explore the relationships between sports and identity, and sports and justice, and sports and solace, and others that forgo the grand narratives of superstardom and victory to seek out stories that are human, accessible, and universal.
This collection, we hope, confirms that great sports writing isn’t limited to the sage analysis of an allegedly objective seasoned reporter, but it also includes the experiences of the thoroughly invested (and thoroughly emotional) fan. If the New Journalism of the 1960s acknowledged the potential confluences of fact and fiction, maybe the “new sports writing” bears the influence of an internet age in which subjectivity, persona, and emotion have supplanted the long hallowed authority of journalistic expertise.
Inspired by the access afforded by social media and blogs, a new kind of language has developed online to fill the shrinking spaces between athlete and fan. Publications like the Players’ Tribune, which affords athletes a platform to discuss their own experiences, and irreverent, fan-based shows like The Starters on NBA TV (previously a podcast and blog) speak to a shift away from the old Sportswriter, who, through prose, attempted to elevate himself to the same level of supremacy as the athlete: now athletes seek to relate to their fans as human beings, and fans want to engage with their favourite players as people just like themselves.
Sports have always provided analogies for cultural trends and identity, but it’s only recently that we’ve seen contemporary discourse so acutely impact sports journalism. Writers seem increasingly invested in situating athletes within the broader culture and folding their storylines into current movements, ideologies, and modes of thought. As one example, feminism is no longer somehow antithetical to the once-masculine world of sports writing, but a way to understand it more comprehensively. The cry of “stick to sports” has become increasingly absurd, as we’ve come to understand how important the game’s connection is to our daily experiences, political and otherwise.
If we are indeed in the midst of a paradigm shift, the rise of nontraditional media has certainly played a part in that transition. With myriad new publishing venues and increased access for writers and readers alike, we’re no longer spoon-fed the same tired narratives of wins and losses or the rehash of box-scores that have traditionally dominated sports culture. The online world has ushered in new styles, new approaches, and an overall tone that breaks from tradition, dismantling that pesky (and faulty) definition of who is “allowed” to document the game and which players and achievements are worthy of that documentation.
In the pages that follow you’ll certainly find traditional approaches to the game, but you’ll also find writers who celebrate their own very personal engagement with sports and its figures. They wring meaning out of the emotional turmoil of fandom, all while cheekily acknowledging the relative absurdity and grandiosity of those emotions. These writers make sense of our otherwise inexplicable emotions around the game and answer the questions that linger in our minds while we watch: Why do we care so much about people we’ve never met? Why do we cheer so passionately, hurt so deeply, and feel so much? We hope that readers discover pieces in this collection that examine the reasons for our overlarge reactions, explain the narrative, and most of all, assure us that it matters.
Just as fans’ relationships with the game have evolved over time, so have the voices and the ideas that articulate those relationships. This book is an attempt to capture the excitement of that shift. We hope the thirty-eight essays, articles, and profiles we’ve selected illustrate how vital sports are to understanding who we are, where we are, and where we might be going. And yes, the conversation still has a long way to go before the dominant narrative truly represents all people who celebrate and suffer alongside their favourite teams, nations, and athletes, but our hope is that books like this one help move us one step closer to getting there.
Stacey May Fowles and Pasha Malla
Editors
January 2017

SAM RICHES
HOME COURT
Filipino Hoops in Canada’s Frozen North
The Classical , December 31, 2013
Gavin Diore is doubled over with his hands on his hips, sweat gleaming on the tip of his nose. The searing white fluorescent lighting unique to high school gymnasiums reflects harshly off the