LESAProject

India has two powerful resources that can make the country a sports powerhouse by 2020. The first: a hunger to succeed. A majority of our recent sporting heroes are from semi-urban and rural areas. Many have overcome tough family situations and persisted with sport in the hope of finding glory and breaking a cycle of economic hardship for their families. The second: a large pool of young talent waiting to shine on the world stage. A majority of our young populace doesn’t have a fall-back plan; they don’t have social security or affluent families backing them. They have to succeed, and ...

With the announcement by FIFA naming Brazil's Marta as their Women's World Player of the Year for the fourth consecutive year, I hurried to my virtual rolodex in an attempt to try to score a Brazilian perspective on the award. Amongst the thousands of names which have found their way into my growing list of connections, I didn't expect to find too many who make the land of Carnival their home. The Brazilian population in my rural town of Winchendon, MA can probably be counted on one hand.  Then I remembered a gentleman I had met at my first WPS Breaker's game ...

The Lowell Spinners, Class-A Affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, have announced Patrick Mason as the first annual Greg Montalbano Award Winner, to be presented at the team’s annual Alumni Dinner Tuesday, Dec. 29 at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Montalbano, a Westborough, MA native, was drafted by his hometown Boston Red Sox in 1999 after a great college career at Northeastern University.  He made his professional debut in 2000, finishing the season with a pair of starts with the Spinners. The following season, Montalbano won 12 games and earned a midseason promotion to Double-A Trenton. He was named the Minor ...

Note: I’m loosely taking a page from Clement Clarke Moore’s famous Twas the Night Before Christmas poem to give a 2009 year-in-review look at sports.   ’Twas the night before Christmas, when Tiger got defanged, By TMZ and Elin, mistresses and Y. E. Yang. He swung hard in four majors and won nary this year, With shame and fewer sponsors and a family to repair.   The Yankees got all cozy in their new Bronx confines, Won their 27th Series and again played sublime. Over the Phillies of Philly, they struck with their might And Rivera, CC, and Jeter were all stars and fall knights.   In the NBA, some sought ...

Let's go ELEVEN HOLES WITH TIGER WOODS For those of you who just can't get enough of the Tiger Woods scandal , I've enlisted all of Tigers mistresses in a power ranking article. You know, when we handicap a sports betting pick for a football game or a basketball game, we condition ourselves to refer to the power rankings we assign each team, because, adjusted for home field or home court advantage, it is a most valuable reference. So what would you do if you were make a betting line on one "Tigress" against another? In other ...

The comments made by two star athletes in two different sports over the weekend were notable, though not much was made in the media of the comments made by the athlete that actually won their game. On Saturday night in Atlanta, the New Jersey Devils fell behind 3-1 before the end of the first period, with goaltender Martin Brodeur giving up three goals on only six shots. Devils coach Jacques Lemaire pulled Brodeur after the period, and inserted backup Yann Danis to start the second stanza. The Devils, who had outshot the Thrashers 24-6 in the opening period, didn’t quit after their No. ...

I recently came across a list entitled 50 greatest coaches of all-time , yet I was horrified to see that all of the "greatest coaches" were really just the most well-known and nationally-televised coaches of all time. Now don't get me wrong, the coaches on this list are great...but to say that there isn't a great coach in the world of soccer, lacrosse, skiing, college ice hockey, track, or women's sports in general is absolutely ridiculous. When you think of a great coach, what pops into your mind?  Is it their win-loss record?  Is it the number of championships that they've won? The duration of ...

Fame has a way of getting to men. We know this, yet we pretend that we don't. So, in a twisted way, we always pretend to be shocked with the actions of male celebrities when they're caught doing what we really wanted them to do...cheat on their wives!  Like Las Vegas casinos, we plan to tear down our male celebrities well before we decide to build them up. Like the evil devils we are, we want to capture a beautiful butterfly, watch it for a moment before deciding to rip its wings off and watch it die. Yes, we are that evil...deal with it! With ...

This year, I have written several articles reflecting on the efforts of the USC Trojans in the recruiting wars that dominate prep news at this time of year. Titled, "Laying the Foundation," these articles are my effort to follow the progress of the Trojans as they vie for the best high school players in the nation. For successful college football programs, the recruiting and signing of a talented athlete is the difference between winning and losing. It's that simple. It doesn't matter how well you coach a player or how brilliant your game plan is, without the talent to implement that coaching and ...

I stumbled across an article written today about the death of Chris Henry that just appalled me! The article is titled "Chris Henry Died as he Lived." The goal of the article was basically to cheapen the life of Henry, by stating that it wasn't a surprise that Henry died a violent death. Henry did make mistakes in life. He was definitely not a saint or that good of a role model, especially during the first few years of his NFL career. Over the past two years though Henry had been trying to change that perception of himself. Other articles about Henry paint a completely ...