Belles of the ball

I've been published again: Here is a story on the recently concluded — and rather remarkable — women's soccer season at SPU.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the magazine had some space issues, and the piece was cut. What you see is about half of what I wrote.

It happens, but it's too bad. The essential numbers are still there, but in some of the missing text I tried to look at the ways the players have developed as students, Christians, and promising young people. I had some fantastic quotes from Sarah Martinez, the player I interviewed for the piece.

Right about the time I handed this story in, the Seattle Times published a series of articles about the University of Washington football team during the Rick Neuheisel era. Slick Rick won the 2001 Rose Bowl with the Huskies, but these articles made it clear that many of the players who helped him do it should have been wearing orange jumpsuits, not purple and gold.

You can find story after story about coddled, spoiled, over-entitled, misbehaving athletes. But it doesn't have to be that way. What's happening with the SPU women's soccer team is really something special. And reporting on Falcon athletic programs has restored my faith in humanity, as it were.