Archive for August, 2010

Sports Dashboards salutes coach D’wan Marshall

Saturday, August 28th, 2010 by

Coach D'wan Marshall

It’s a fundamental tenet: sports participation can teach us some of life’s important lessons.

But there are some situations that sports can’t address, such as the one coach D’wan Marshall, founder of the Team Marshall Longhorns in Kansas City, MO, faced this year.

Marshall started his team a decade ago, to reach out to young boys. He teaches life lessons as well as baseball. He defines winning, not just in terms of the scoreboard, but in terms of being responsible, respectable and accountable. Off the field, his boys have blossomed.

On the field, his instruction culminated in winning the 2009 Satchell Paige American League pennant.

As he prepared for the 2010 season, his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

Coping with the news that a loved one has been diagnosed with a serious disease or illness is not one of the lessons you usually learn in sports. For many people, the news brings a numbness or paralysis. But Marshall was up to the challenge.

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Adding international competition and travel can be in your future

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by

International competition might well be in your future. It only takes one person to get the ball rolling.

For the Marin FC 15U soccer team, that person was John Novick.

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A special coach-player relationship ends in Europe

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by

The bond between coach Rick Fullerton of Marin FC and player Teddy Mauze is an unusual one because of its duration.

In youth sports, players get older and move on to other coaches or other clubs. Coaches generally continue coaching an age group with which they’ve had success. So it’s customary for coaches to see a huge turnover in players and for players to train under different coaches.

Defying that pattern, Fullerton and Mauze have been together for seven years. Their last game together was the title match of the Copa Catalunya tournament in Spain.

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Sports Dashboards salutes the Marin FC 15U soccer team

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 by

A Marin County, California, team of 14-year-olds spent a fortnight this Summer overturning much of what we thought we knew about the relative merits of youth soccer programs in Europe and America.

Italy and Spain are the last two World Cup champions, bastions of European soccer supremacy. The Marin FC 15U team entered tournaments in those two countries and marched to the championship game in each while the soccer world was focussed on World Cup 2010.

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