Contenders
From the Archive
As you might expect, a team full of editors who spend most of their days at a desk aren’t remarkably gifted when it comes to playing sports. (An exception must be made for our photo editor, Rachel J. Elliott, who is a terrific volleyball player and absolute ace at cornhole.) But that doesn’t mean that many of us at The Sun don’t love sports, and pieces about competition, games, and physical prowess have sporadically been featured in the magazine, usually to the delight of our readers. Rose Whitmore’s essay in this month’s issue, “My Bowstring Heart,” is the latest in this line. Below are some sports-related pieces we’ve been proud to publish over the years.
Take care and read well,
Derek Askey, Senior Editor
Gritty All Day Long
November 2019To say I enjoy Mark Gozonsky’s writing would be a vast understatement. There’s an effortlessness—and a good-natured-ness—to his prose that delights me every time I read it, and this essay about a “hapless schmo” playing in a volunteer baseball league is no exception.
Late Round
September 1993Boxing and poetry might seem like strange bedfellows at first glance, but in Kim Addonizio’s able hands, they’re anything but—she likens a late round in a boxing match to a foundering relationship, as only she can.
About Winning
December 2015I love pieces that show me a world I might not otherwise know anything about. Such is the case with Henley O’Brien’s essay, in which she describes her time on a competitive-rowing team in college, and her relationship with a difficult coach that is at the center of that experience. Anyone familiar with the dopamine hit of a win—and the crush of a loss—will find something in it to appreciate.
The Hawk
February 2011One of the late Brian Doyle’s many gifts as a writer was his ability to show, with real pathos and humility, the character of someone he knew, even if just peripherally. That gift is on full display in “The Hawk,” an essay where he recounts the time a former football player takes up residence on the town football field.
The Game
July 2009I’m always excited when Morgan Tyree’s photographs appear in The Sun—doubly so when it’s a photo essay, and triply so when that photo essay is about my favorite sport, football. In “The Game,” Tyree documents high-school football in remote towns in Wyoming and Montana, where “many of these schools play football on Saturday afternoons due to the prohibitive cost of installing and maintaining floodlights” and sometimes someone must “haul away the cow or bison manure that has accumulated on the field.”
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