Backrow to Baseline 

Photographers and videographers like Samantha Zagha (‘20) are the unsung heroes of every highlight play, buzzer beater, and major upset. But growing up, Zagha was not surrounded by sports. “My mom is incredibly introverted and not sporty at all. Same with my dad. I grew up like the opposite of being exposed to sports,” Zagha said. Although she didn’t discover her medical condition until college, it made activities like running difficult earlier in life. Due to this, sh

It’s halftime. Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo are tied. Marina Mabrey is going off, and Carla Leite is matching her energy. However, my mind has been plagued with one question: Where is Haley Jones? In her four years in the WNBA, it seems like Jones has been on more teams than most seasoned vets. But let’s take it back a second. Jones is a Bay Area legend, attending Archbishop Mitty High School and committing to Stanford University as the number-one recruit in her class

Caitlin Ciardella (‘11) has had a full-circle Pinewood experience. Due to her father’s position as an athletic director at St. Veronica’s, she was constantly in the gym watching sports. “My family was super involved with basketball. My older sister played too, so I was just exposed to it from five [years old] on,” Ciardella said. At a young age, she was also able to attend Stanford Women’s Basketball games and witness legends like Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird play at the U

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