Douglas Abrams JD's blog

The American Medical Association calls domestic violence a "public health problem that has reached epidemic proportions." Most victims are vulnerable women and children assaulted by male perpetrators. Most victims emerge physically battered or emotionally scarred. An alarming number end up being murdered.

"It's Not Right"

Sophia and Elizabeth Glazer have a game plan that uses youth sports to help stem domestic violence in their community. Their efforts in the local youth football league this past autumn set an example which will hopefully prompt students elsewhere -- athletes and non-athletes alike -- to help make their own communities better places to live and raise families.

"Sports does not build character. Sports reveals character," said journalist Heywood Broun more than half a century ago. He meant that athletic competition can bring out either the best or the worst in an athlete, depending on the inner strengths or weaknesses that the athlete brings to the game. Sports can be noble or ignoble, depending on who is playing and how they play.

On the night of September 26, 2014, fans displayed the ignoble side of sports at a high school football game in Plainfield, Connecticut. Within hours, however, the noble side prevailed as Plainfield student-athletes confronted a wrong that had reportedly festered in their town's sports programs for years.

On Saturday, July 19, 2014, it took 11-year-old Cole Bissonette five tries to sink a basket for the Light Blue team in the Jammers summer youth basketball league run by the Punta Gorda (FL) Police Department. His first shot was an air-ball, but 13-year-old Black team opponent Kenny Scribner saved the ball from going out of bounds and passed it back to Cole, whose second shot hit the front of the rim and bounced away. 

It was the ideal ending to a 17-year coaching career, the sort of final curtain call that coaches imagine as their tenure winds down. In the Massachusetts Division 2 boys track and field championships in New Bedford on June 1, North Attleboro High School earned one point in the 4 x 400 relay, the day's final event. Derek Herber had already announced that this would be his last season as coach, and now his team had won its second consecutive state championship, edging runner-up Central Catholic High School, 69-68.

Sixteen-year-old Atlanta-area first baseman Alex Norwood hit a dramatic grand slam in a winning cause on March 21, but his truly game-changing hit was none that never appeared on the scoreboard.

In a junior varsity game at Newtown High, the Rockdale County High junior came through in the clutch in a way that mattered even more when, between the second and third innings, home plate umpire Woody Reagin suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed.