A Child Molester, A Slave Plantation and Depression, How Sports Can Have Dark Pasts
Although sports stories are usually happy or sad, they can also contain dark pasts. In The Best American Sports Writing 2020 by Jackie MacMullan, there are three stories that deal with bad backgrounds.
UCLA is known for producing some of the best college basketball teams ever. Who can forget their basketball teams runs in the 50s and 60s? However, Mike Kessler and Mark Fainaru-Wada tell the story of an infamous child molester in 44 Years. 41 Allegations. Now the Past is Catching Up.
Conrad Montgomery Avondale Mainwaring was an Olympian. His experience and coaching were very valuable to those who ran track at UCLA. That might have been one reason why someone may have been afraid to speak out against him.
Another reason is how Coach Avondale was able to disguise his abuse. His training included masturbation habits to get rid of sexual urges so student-athletes could focus only on getting better. He also told his athletes not to do drugs, drink or have involvement with girls.
Coach Avondale was so evilly good at what he did that when one of his athletes, Vernon Sharples, stopped receiving treatments, he felt rejected. Coach Avondale was very effective in convincing his athletes his mischievous and criminal behavior was normal. One of his victims, Brian, called him “very diabolically clever because he was coaching it as nonsexual.”
His criminal behavior did not come without negative impacts on those he trained. One of his athletes contemplated suicide, and other suffered from drug addiction before eventual death.
In Louisiana is one of the cruelest prisons and one with a controversial past and present. John Griswold details this big house in The Exiled and the Devil’s Sideshow.
It is called the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. It houses 6,300 men, three-fourths serving life sentences. It also was a slave plantation in the 19th century.
If that wasn’t enough, Angola is also a rodeo arena. It is the last prison rodeo in the country.
The events in this rodeo are also pretty bizarre. There is something called Wild Cow Milking and another event called Guts and Glory, where a poker chip is tied to “the meanest and toughest Brahma bull available,” according to the website. The object is to grab the poker chip, also called a chit, and the winner receives $1,500.
The rodeo takes place one weekend every April and every Sunday in October. Although Angola has a rough reputation as a former slave plantation and the most populous maximum-security prison in the country, it still contains this entertainment aspect that draws rodeo fans from all over the country.
In Olympic Cyclist Catlin Was Driven to the End by Kent Babb, 2016 Olympic silver medalist Kelly Catlin didn’t seem to have a dark history, but she fell into an unfortunate category.
Catlin had a successful father, Mark, who overcame huge odds. Mark’s dad was a heavy drinker that died young, but he was able to put himself through medical school and become very successful.
Kelly feared of letting down her parents and not being enough growing up. Even with her Team USA silver medal, she felt it wasn’t enough.
Mark became more and more concerns with Kelly’s disconnect from the things surrounding her. She started to spend more and more time indoors on the weekends. The one thing that was there for her and that she really excelled at, cycling, started to become a chore.
She vowed to graduate Stanford and try to apply the methods she read about from other suicide survivors. She also wrote a list about the pros and cons of living, but she ended up committing suicide.
Kessler and Fainaru-Wada’s story sounds like a documentary that can interview the survivors and go more in-depth of how Coach Avondale was able to do what he did for so long. Angola’s history and relevance today can also be told in a documentary. Kelly’s story sound’s so depressing and something that should most likely be a feature story.