Pulled from the Archives - Happy Retirement Smitty!

I wrote the article below in the summer of 2010 on my good friend and USA teammate Keli Smith Puzo. The story, which featured in the debut issue of my fictitious hockey magazine, chronicles the iconic life of Puzo as she redefines the image of the American hockey player by taking on new adventures as mother and wife, while flourishing in her traditional role on the field . In the years since this article was written, Keli Smith Puzo has played in the London Olympics, and given birth to another son, Ian. Smitty announced her retirement recently. Congratulations, and Thank You Keli.

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America's Got Talent, Not Time

Let's take a dive into the talent pool. America’s got talent. A lot of talent. What it doesn’t have though is time and a cohesive system to identify and develop that talent to maturity. The short timeline for the development of talent undermines the country's ability to succeed at the highest level. A multitude of factors play a role, yet the most influential is the win now mentality driven by the demands of college and youth sport. This mentality - and the money behind it - dominates the American sport landscape; it leads to early selection and deselection, myopic views of talent, and the narrowing of the playing pool before most athletes have time to emerge and fully develop. Recruiting accelerates the timeline. We expect more from athletes at an earlier age. We evaluate them at an earlier age. We select and deselect them at an earlier age. The consequence is that an abundance of talent drops out of the pathway, or goes unidentified and undeveloped. A number of factor...

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A Madly Beautiful Place

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The Athlete Way

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