Rock climber Kaitlin Heatherly doesn't mince words. "I placed last in the World Championship, and I'm f***ing stoked about it," she said in Dead Last, a short documentary produced by REI. The outdoor giant featured Heatherly and her journey to the World Championship for good reason. She's a fierce 26-year-old adaptive athlete who was born with one arm. Growing up, [...]
There's no NFL team having as good a start to training camp as the Cleveland Browns. Sure, install is going well, players' conditioning is improving and coaches are learning which numbers they can call on. But, look to their record to see the real success. No, not their 1-0 preseason start but another defining number: 442. That's how many dogs [...]
Cancer researcher Fiona Kolbinger was a relative unknown in Europe's 2,485-mile Transcontinental Race that took 265 cyclists from Burgas, Bulgaria to Brest, France. That changed, however, when she dominated the entire field to win the event in 10 days, two hours and 48 minutes. The second-fastest rider? Ben Davies, from the U.K., who was still roughly 11 hours behind the [...]
Some count their age in years. It would be more than fair for Roy Englert, 96, to count them in world records. Englert set a new age group world record, running 5,000 meters, or 3.1 miles, in 42 minutes and 30 seconds at the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships in Ames, Iowa on July 11. The Virginia native and former attorney [...]
All eyes are on the U.S. women's national team as they prepare to go nose-to-nose with the Netherlands on Sunday. While the bulk of the attention has been on Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan (and rightfully so), there's another side to these athletes that makes the world brighter than any World Cup gold medal. In late 2015, Purpose2Play videographer Brittany [...]
It's one thing to get better with age. It's another to get faster. Just look at Julia Hawkins, the 103-year-old retired schoolteacher who collected more gold medals after running the 50- and 100-meter dash at the National Senior Games in Albuquerque, NM. According to the National Senior Games, Hawkins, whose nickname is the "Hurricane," is the oldest woman to ever [...]
Out with the old, in with the new. Enter Lindsay Gottlieb, the first women's collegiate head coach to be recruited to an NBA team's staff. With the Cleveland Cavaliers going 19-63 last season, there was no other choice but to turn the coaching roster upside down. So, rather than looking within the league, the front office turned their attention to [...]
Recently retired NBA star Dwyane Wade surprised the 2019 graduating class of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by giving a commencement speech at their graduation ceremony. "Today, you will close a chapter in your lives and embark on new experiences and journeys and memories. And it's a time to celebrate and be proud of everything you've done to make it [...]
It turns out that man's best friend is also runner's best friend. In March, Thomas Panek became the first blind person to complete the NYC Half Marathon, but he didn't do it with a human to guide him along the course. Instead, three specially-trained dogs shouldered that responsibility. Panek finished the 13.1-mile race in 2 hours, 20 minutes and 51 [...]
Two years ago, University of Tennessee swimmer Maddy Banic was carried off the NCAA Championship pool deck on a stretcher and taken to a local hospital. The culprit: a severe panic attack. Ever since then, she worked not on her kick turns, but on her mental health. It all paid off, and her healing was highlighted in March as she [...]
