March Madness

Don’t tell my daughter, but she was a pretty good athlete. Somebody saw her swimming at the Y in second or third grade and tried to recruit her for a swim team. One summer, I took her to a tennis camp at the high school she would attend in another three years. The tennis coach wanted her on his team. But I think she made the right decision with baseball/softball. The swinging and the hitting have led to some pretty long drives in another sport she dabbles in, golf. About the only game I didn’t encourage Clare to play was basketball; too much temper to go into so compact a body. She would’ve fouled out in the first five minutes of every game or been kicked out for fighting. I thought of that last night watching local sports on the TV. It’s playoff time in girls’ high school basketball, and yesterday was the championship games. God bless WGN and NBC-5 for showing highlights; ditto the Sun-Times for its stories in today’s paper. And the Tribune? Couldn’t be bothered. No, instead the Trib devoted three full pages—broadsheets, no less—to the future of Bears’ quarterback Justin Fields. Wait, there’s more. As of 10 AM today, the paper’s website had not a word on any of the games, so, don’t tell me I’m too focused on legacy media. I’m pretty sure local papers will cover the games, but it’s not the same. To make the Chicago papers means something, or used to. Clare got her name in the game summaries back in the day, and she was named a top-100 player by the Sun-Times at the start of her senior year. Nobody can take that away from her. I only wish high school athletes today had the same opportunity for recognition.