Backrow to Baseline 

Darcy Nelson Smoot (‘02) is the technician. Crisp passes, excellent form, and court-awareness were only some of Nelson Smoot’s skills that allowed her to make a large impact during her time on Pinewood’ Girls Basketball team.    While Nelson Smoot’s father played lacrosse at Princeton, there were not many women athletes she could look up to.     “I remember my mom telling me she didn’t really have opportunities to play sports, even when she was in high school,”  Nelson Smoot

Whether it’s racism and xenophobia, low wages, or the inability to hate-watch Caitlin Clark games after a long day harvesting crops, I do not understand how lower-class people survived the Gilded Age. And to make it even crazier, we can still see some parallels in the current day through labor disputes. The Gilded Age, or what I would like to call the Rusted Age, was a time when rich white “robber barons” took out their anger and generational trauma on people of color a

From Pinewood Girls Basketball to managing NCAA All-Americans, Gabby Yang (‘25) stays connected to the game, even if not on the court.     Growing up in Redwood City, Yang often attended Warriors and Stanford basketball games, which piqued her curiosity in the sport.     “It was really interesting and fascinating,” Yang said. “I could see myself through them. That’s what I aspired to be and what I wanted to do in the future.”     Yang’s basketball dreams drove her to start pl

For me, the November through January winter season is the worst part of the year. Whether it’s seasonal depression, finals, or the impending doom of second-semester junior year, the winter season can be particularly difficult. Maybe the worst part is seeing one of my favorite teams, the South Carolina Gamecocks, in their current roster situation. It seems like signing the nation's leading scorer, Ta’Niya Latson, could not fix their roster issues. What’s going on at Dawn’s Day

Duke’s Cameron Crazies relentless cheers make home wins electric, creating an atmosphere like no other. Unfortunately, if you just started watching Duke this season, you haven’t yet experienced that level of excitement. Why is that? Because Duke is not winning, at all. Duke’s women’s basketball team, led by USA Women’s National Team coach and 2025 AmeriCup winner Kara Lawson, is having a rough and unusual start to the 2025 season.      Previously ranked #7 in the country and

San Diego, led by West Coast Conference (WCC) Player of the Year Nemo Beach and Setter of the Year Kylie Munday, has just received the eighth seed in this year’s NCAA Women’s Volleyball tournament. Guided by Coach of the Year Jennifer Petrie, San Diego is on an 18-game winning streak and recently won the conference championship after going undefeated in conference play. This team, composed of five all-conference players, is the modern-day mid-major Avengers. Their dominance l