Men's college basketball coaches talk often about "toughness." These coaches use "tough" and "toughness" in different ways, to mean different things. Often, they mean determined or resilient. Because the men's coaches talk about toughness so often, sports reporters covering men's teams write often about toughness. They don't often write about women players being tough (or determined or resilient). But they are.
Sunday's Duke-Carolina women's game in Chapel Hill provided a good example. In the first half, Duke forward Haley Peters took an elbow in the mouth that took 16 stitches to close, inside and outside her mouth. You won't often seen a bloodier basketball player. This might have exceeded the Tyler Hansbrough and Eric Montross bloody incidents well known to long-time ACC men's fans.
Click here to read the game story about Duke's win Sunday. Click on "photo gallery" to see Peters bloodied and later on the bench with some of her stitches visible. Peters returned with 11:44 remaining in the game, hit a jump shot and later had a key rebound. She finished with nine points and seven rebounds. She helped her team win a close game. "I'm here to play," she said. "I'm not here to watch." Now that's tough. You won't see a more determined performance this season. --John Drescher
Comments
Recycled Coverage
Mon, 02/27/2012 - 18:04 — xpukguyCould you please explain why the Durant Elementary School clean-up story appeared twice in Sunday's N&O? It's bad enough for subscribers to have to read these recycled stories more than once during the week, but having it appear in the same day is terrible planning.
Hockey players are tough too
Mon, 02/27/2012 - 18:02 — xpukguyThere are times where the women's players are much tougher than the men, who flop around like soccer players who were shot. That comes from coaching.
But, on a more important note, how come the N&O continues its short-sighted policy of not having a Sunday NHL column or Sunday NHL page? We have full NASCAR pages, even though the majority of that fan base is not in the Raleigh area. We have NFL pages even though we do not have an NFL team (please hold on the Panthers are the state's team when there are still plenty of Redskins, Steelers and Patriots fans here). And, perhaps most embarrassing of all, is having to read Rick Bonnell's Sunday NBA columns when no one cares a wit about the Bobcats.
You have two fine NHL writers in Chip Alexander and Luke DeCock. Luke is busy with the college hoops coverage, and rightfully so as he does a great job. But Chip could provide enough Sunday NHL copy to justify it. Plus, take a look at the other NHL cities and see if they provide Sunday NHL columns and I'd bet the N&O is one of the few that do not provide it's NHL fans legitimate coverage.
The N&O plays a role in the growth of hockey here in North Carolina, but without providing a Sunday space, you are doing a major disservice to your readers.