DURING THIS YEAR’S Olympic basketball competitions, viewers witnessed what appeared to be blatant holding and moving screens on nearly every play. But because International Basketball Federation (FIBA) rules were in effect, those normally illegal moves were not called by officials. I questioned whether the competitiveness of those games was worse or better than what we typically see in sanctioned NBA and WNBA matchups.

But how exciting were the Olympic men’s and women’s basketball games and the finals? Off the charts—that is, if you are a fan of USA Basketball. Even if you aren’t, the on-court action in nearly every game was fast, exciting, and fantastic.

If the NBA adopted a smattering of FIBA rules, those changes would greatly enhance the play, competition, and entertainment value of NBA games. My suggestions include:

• Eliminate the defensive three-second violation, allowing players to stay in the free throw lane indefinitely, even when not defending an opponent. Removing this violation helps defense but also puts the onus on offense to cut through the lane to open the middle and move the ball effectively around the perimeter of the court to create open shots. It also helps if the center can hit 3-point shots. Getting rid of this violation would not take away layups, just uncontested blow bys or overmatched back downs.
• Limit the number of fouls allowable to five per contest per player, instead of six. This puts more pressure on players to perform better and coaches to work smarter.
• My biggest recommendation is to allow players to be more physical. With a big man allowed to clog the middle and the expectation that defensive players keep their hands and arms vertical—especially when an offensive player initiates contact (which, in my estimation, is an offensive foul that never gets called)—this change would help keep defensive players from getting backed down to the basket, where they have two choices: Allow a score or get called for a foul. Actually playing defense is not a choice in that situation. This would change that.

The NBA is all about high energy offense, while defense is the casualty. If the adage, “Offense wins games; defense wins championships,” is true, then let teams play defense in the paint without getting a foul called. Offense has a distinct advantage in the game with the current rules.

For much of the 1980s, I played basketball at the Jordan YMCA on Westfield Boulevard. At the time, the first court in the old gym was reserved for talented Hoosiers like John Laskowski, Ray Tolbert, and Vicki Hall, among other former high school and college stars who came to play pickup ball.

Those games were self-officiated. If I called a foul, it had to be a good one. Many times, games devolved into a pushing match for inside position or a hack-fest for driving players, with an occasional minor “discussion” over a call.

In retrospect, those games had many of the same characteristics as FIBA-officiated games. We saw lots of holding, moving screens, and slapping, but very few fouls were called. Each game was hotly contested, and the competition was fierce, but we shook hands at the end (fist bumps and high fives weren’t the norm yet). The winners stayed, and the losers called next game.

I enjoyed watching that same style and physicality play out in the Olympic games. Let’s face it, the NBA—and don’t get me wrong, I love watching the NBA—has become desensitized.

When I say desensitized, I’m referring to the plethora of ticky-tacky fouls officials call based on what they see on screens away from the ball for things like reaching and hand checking—the overemphasis on these fouls to get calls that do nothing but slow the game and stop the flow of play.

In my opinion, the main reason to adopt some of these FIBA rules is to give the players final say in how they play. Let the game be decided and settled by the athletes instead of the officials. And really, isn’t that all we ever want out of basketball anyway?

The post Naysayer: Hey, NBA! Let’s Get Physical, FIBA-style appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

I’m positive that by now, everyone has witnessed Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever in action. How could you not? Even the most casual sports fan can’t miss the impact Clark has on her sport. I say “her sport” because it is her sport right now, and everybody else is just playing in it.

It’s being called the Caitlin Clark Effect, much like the Michael Jordan Effect and the Larry Bird Effect. Whatever you call it, Clark reigns supreme in the public/media eye for now. And why not? There is even a name for the increased revenue she’s brought the WNBA— Caitlin-nomics.

Opponents love to see her come to town because their arenas sell out. Courtside seats cost in the thousands. Las Vegas set a new attendance record of 22,000 to watch Clark and the Fever get blown out by 20.

She is setting rookie records weekly and recently recorded the first ever triple-double for a rookie in a July home win over the mighty New York Liberty. The Fever were on a roll leading up to the break in their season for the Olympics. Clark led all players in fan votes (700,735) for the All-Star team. Teammate Aliyah Boston came in second (618,680).

But despite all Clark’s accolades, records, interviews, commercials, and shoe deals, one player does not a team make. Other Fever players are present on the court and, despite their lack of publicity, form the core of this WNBA team.

So, let’s start with fellow All-Star Boston. She is the Fever’s original building block. Her talent gave the fledgling team credibility during last year’s late-season push, and now her play contributes a solid inside presence and defensive stability.

The more I watch her and Clark work together on the pick and roll, with Clark dumping down to a rolling Boston for an easy deuce, I see why Boston was a No. 1 draft pick, a collegiate All-American selection, and Player of the Year when she was with the University of South Carolina. She is a powerhouse.

She’s much more effective scoring off the dribble, attacking her defender, rather than off the block. Plus, when given the time to line her feet up, she’s a capable 3-point shooter, at 40 percent, and is nearly a 50-percent shooter from the field. She’s not an automatic double-double yet but is working her way there quickly.

Then there is the third Fever All-Star, point guard Kelsey Mitchell, an exceptional scorer to say the least. This Ohio State grad and second overall pick by the Fever in the 2019 draft is a tough, gritty player who can fill up the hoop quickly. She came into this season as third in franchise history in points scored, third in field goals made, and second in 3-point field goals made.

Her outside prowess allows her to drive to the basket with ease, in part because of her ball-handling skills. In a recent road win, she singlehandedly brought the Fever back from the jaws of defeat by popping in 16 points in the second half after going scoreless in the first half. She raised her 3-point shooting from 40.5 percent to over 51 percent while leading the Fever in scoring at 16.6 PPG.

NaLyssa Smith was a 2022 No. 2 selection and lived up to the pick by making the All-Rookie team. She also participated in the WNBA All-Star Skills Challenge, averaging 13.5 points and 7.9 rebounds. She shot 41.9 percent from the field in the 22 games she started in as a rookie.

Smith is flourishing in her role as the team’s blue-collar worker. She’s a “do whatever it takes for the team to win” kind of player, which is a valuable commodity for any squad, currently pulling down eight rebounds per game and disrupting opponents’ inside plans with her defense.

Watching her play and on-court interactions with her teammates improve as the season progresses has been compelling; she has an uncanny ability to shed her defensive person and get “lost” in the offense, only to pop down the lane wide open for a pass from Clark and an easy two. Smith is also scoring well this season, averaging over 11 points per game and 1.3 assists.

Coming off the bench is veteran forward Katie Lou Samuelson, the 2019 fourth overall pick by the Chicago Sky. She has a well-traveled career so far, with the Fever being her fifth WNBA team. She plays over 18 minutes per contest, and she brings a calm experience to the lineup. She’s not a big scorer anymore (5 PPG), but she certainly was a scorer when she played for UConn.

Erica Wheeler is another savvy veteran off the bench. Originally undrafted out of Rutgers, Wheeler is in her second stint with Indiana after playing elsewhere for two seasons. Her assist to turnover ratio is nearly 2 to 1, and she shoots a high percentage (88.9 percent) from the charity stripe, which increases her value in late-game situations.

Moving on to guard Lexie Hull, the sixth pick in the 2022 draft. Now in her third season with the Fever, Hull played in 26 games her rookie season and prior to that was a pivotal member of the 2021 Stanford national championship team. Her emphasis this season is on defense, but she is a more than capable ball handler when Mitchell and Clark are on the bench.

For some local talent, Grace Berger, the seventh overall pick in 2023 out of Indiana, is coming on strong. The four-time All-Big Ten selection is averaging just less than 4 points per game so far and grabbing two rebounds per contest.

As one can see by looking at the draft positions of the Fever roster over the past four years, this team is jam-packed with youthful talent, and it is just a matter of time before they begin to win more consistently.

The victory over the Liberty recently provided a key win over one of the WNBA’s elite teams. As it stands now, that home win was only the second over a team with a winning record.

Caitlin Clark will be Caitlin Clark. She’ll get what she’ll get and set records in the process. But for the Fever to attain greatness—which is within their grasp—the players behind the player that propelled them to being a household name must also be pretty darn talent. And lest we forget, they are.

The post Naysayer: The Superstars Of The Indiana Fever Not Named Caitlin Clark appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

“I WAS A basketball player. Loved it. Thought I was going to be really good—small town Northern Wisconsin kid. I got to college at [University of Minnesota in Duluth], and, man, I wasn’t as good as I thought,” says George Padjen in his first interview as head coach of first-year volleyball team Indy Ignite.

“There was a friend who asked, ‘Hey you want to play intramural volleyball?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’” he goes on. “I figured [the game] out pretty fast. I got proficient, and after a couple years of playing in high-level adult leagues, the coach at St. Scholastica, a club in Duluth, asked me, ‘Hey, could you come be an arm [coach] at practice?’ I was 21or 22 at the time.’”

In 2003, a new job took Padjen to the Twin Cities, where he reconnected with an old friend who had just been hired as assistant volleyball coach at Concordia University.

Often in life, timing is everything, and at that time, Concordia was transitioning into Division 2. While on the golf course, Padjen’s friend asked him if he wanted to be an arm coach at Concordia. He agreed, coming on part-time for the first year.

The next year, he became a little more involved, and the following year, his friend informed him that a full-time position had been created for him if he wanted it. “I’m like, ‘Yeah let’s do it,’” he says, and so began his time at the university as an assistant coach. “And 21 years later, here I am in Indy.”

Word-of-mouth was a most effective promotional tool in helping Padjen make his journey from college assistant coach to head coach of a professional volleyball team.

He describes how Sydney Hilley, a setter and free agent signed to the Ignite, boosted his career, explaining, “I worked with Sydney when she was 13 to 14 years old until she left to play for Wisconsin. When she’d come home, I would help her. She just trusted my coaching.”

Last year, Hilley played professionally for the Omaha Supernovas in the Pro Volleyball Federation’s inaugural season. While Omaha had coaches in place, Hilley felt that Padjen could help them with their skills training. “Because she thought I was a strong trainer, she went to the Omaha brass and talked to them about me.” 

Around the same time, Ignite co-owner Don Hutchinson called Padjen up and said he’d heard Padjen’s name through Hilley. “We went through a few days of figuring things out, and they offered me the job.”

In his 21 years at Concordia, Padjen was happy in his role and never considered looking for another coaching job. “After 10 years of telling people, ‘No, thanks,’ the calls stopped coming,” he recalls. “So, when [the Ignite management] called, I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this opportunity will come up again.”

After meeting with Hutchinson, fellow Ignite co-owner Jim Schumacher, and the team’s general manager and president, Mary Kay Huse, Padjen could see their passion for the sport. “I could tell the city’s passion also. I am familiar with the reputation of Indy as a sports city,” he adds.

“I really appreciate Don and Jim for taking a shot. I never had the ego where I had to go coach somewhere bigger than where I was. It was never about me.”

The post Naysayer: Introducing Indy Ignite Coach George Padjen appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

You’re originally from the Northeast. How have you liked living in the Hoosier state?
I grew up in West Seneca, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. My wife Jackie is from Indianapolis. In trying to find a place of our own to call home, we fell in love with our house in Zionsville—so much so that we got married on our property. I love the area. I’m not there as much as I’d like to be with my professional contract obligations and Team USA training, but I’ve been able to make a few friends through Jackie and our kids.

How did you wind up falling in love with volleyball?
The sport has been in my family. My grandfather played in the senior games, and two of my older sisters played high school, club, and college volleyball. I started to play my freshman year in high school after becoming bored with soccer. The real love of the game followed quickly after that. Being part of a team carried a sense of belonging. The transition to high school can be tough, but with volleyball practice starting early in the fall, I went into high school with built-in friends, some of whom I’m still close with to this day.

Who was your inspiration when you were first starting?
I wasn’t aware of who the best players in the world were when I first started playing. My inspirations then were the older guys on the varsity team at my high school. I wanted to be as confident as they were playing and as cool as they were off the court. That theme was constant as I continued at Penn State and throughout my years on Team USA, always striving to fill the shoes of those who had gone before me.

You seem to have a quiet confidence about your team. Why is that?
A majority of this team has been together and competing together for Team USA since 2013. During those 11 years, we’ve shown that we are able to win in big moments. Our dedication to our pursuit of Olympic gold has never wavered. We have worked hard to refine our systems of play. Every single one of us has fully invested in that process.

At the last summer Olympics in Tokyo, your team didn’t advance beyond pool play [the qualifying competition for the medal round], stunning fans. Were you and your teammates bitter over that unexpected outcome?
It’s hard to translate the feelings about our performance in Tokyo into simple emotions. “Heartbreaking” is a term that comes up often because of the amount of time and effort we individually and collectively put into preparing for those games. It amounted to five years. And we had great performances along the way, so we were slotted in as a favorite. And then not to advance from pool play … it was shock, followed by grief.

How is this team going to grab the gold in Paris?
We’ll do it by leveraging our strength, which is in the way we can adapt our game plans to specific opponents and still stay true to our core system of play. We’ve really worked hard over the past few years, especially to implement new strategies that give us more ways to win by exploiting the weaknesses in other teams.

You are a three-time Olympian, soon to have four under your belt, at age 37. Have you got a fifth in you?
I realize I am very fortunate to have had this long career. Of course, I also understand the finiteness and fragility of being a professional athlete. As I continue to play, my body feels the wear and tear more. But I’m dedicated to putting everything I have, physically and mentally, into the Paris games. Then, with the support of my family, I’ll take it year by year after that. The Los Angeles 2028 games are still far off.

You’re clearly a big family guy. Did you grow up in a close-knit family?
You’re right; my family is everything to me. And yes, I grew up spending every weekend and holiday with aunts, uncles, and cousins. My cousins were my first friends, actually, and they remain a great reminder of who I am deep down inside. My brother and I inadvertently started a holiday tradition by dressing up as Uncle Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation one Christmas. The next year we wore Batman and Superman jumpsuits. Our dressing up for Christmas eventually expanded into themed New Year’s parties the whole family participated in. I remember a masquerade, a disco- themed party, and a pajama party. I want to give my kids an even better childhood than I had.

You travel 50 weeks out of the year to locations as far away as Korea, Italy, China, and Turkey. Surely that is difficult?
Yes, plain and simple. Jackie is the best thing in my life, providing constant support and love, as well as  challenging me to be better for myself and for our family. My children, Jamie and Juno, are my inspiration to be the father that they deserve, the one I know I’m capable of being. But I can only be that father when I’m active in their lives and present. However, I feel setting the examples of dedication, consistency, sacrifice, and grace as I pursue my professional goals is valuable to them as well. Finding the balance between work and home requires consistent attention, but I’m committed to doing it.

Has that ongoing challenge affected your focus on the court at all?
At times it has been very trying. It’s a delicate balance that I fight for daily. Juno and Jamie are still so young, and it’s been difficult to miss their early childhood milestones. Being away from my wife is just as hard, if not worse. I’ve considered retirement a few times since starting a family. But right now, I’m confident in my abilities to be fully invested in our team’s mission to bring home gold from Paris.

Was the struggle to maintain a work- life balance part of the reason you quit volleyball for a time?
I was pushing everything aside for the sake of my volleyball career and the teams I played for. I sacrificed my personal life with everyone dear to me, which only made me a selfish and lonesome person. So I stopped playing to address the major derailment of my relationships with the people I cared about most, my family. I returned to volleyball a few months later, after time in therapy and being more open with my loved ones. Before I took the break, I was sure it would only hurt my abilities on the court. But ironically, it enriched my life so much that it carried over to the court and significantly increased my enjoyment of playing.

During your offseasons, you played for Russian volleyball team Zenit- Kazan. Being a fan favorite, your jersey was hung from the arena rafters in St. Petersburg. What accomplishment is most memorable to you from your time in Russia?
We won 18 gold medals in the seven seasons I was with them, including winning the CEV Champions League Competition [the top men’s volleyball competition for the whole of Europe] for four consecutive years. Zenit- Kazan is one of the best club teams of the past 20-plus years.

How about when it comes to Team USA? Which achievement are you most proud of?
Two come to mind. We played 11 matches in 15 days at the 2015 World Cup to win the title for the United States for the first time in 30 years. That was a big accomplishment. And, of course, taking the bronze home from Rio.

What’s next for Matt Anderson once his competitive days are over? Or have you not thought that far ahead?
I actually have thought about it, although I haven’t allowed myself to fully dive into all the possibilities. I have spent the last 20 years on someone else’s schedule, having my days planned out for me by coaches, trainers, travel agents. It will be foreign to me to have full control of my daily life. All I know for certain right now is that I will take some time to be fully present at home with Jackie and our kids, enjoying the fruits of my hard work, before embarking on anything else.

The post Ask Me Anything: Matt Anderson, Olympian appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

• Races happen only on weekends through mid-October.
• Grandstand seating is first come, first served. But the “nosebleed” section is still close enough to smell rubber and gasoline.
• July 20 is Hall of Fame Night.
• You can buy a pit pass—but only the day of—in the office at the north end of the track.
• Bring your earbuds. You can listen to the public address live.
• Teacher? Show your school ID for a discount.
• Don’t even think about bringing your dog.
• Or a cooler.
• It’s great for kids, but find the no smoking, no alcohol section: the aluminum seats on the south end.
• Get live timing and scoring on the Race Monitor app.

The post Unspoken Rules: Indianapolis Speedrome appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Depending on who you ask, Central Indiana residents might define a perfect summer morning in a variety of ways. Some homeowners, for example, enjoy a cup of coffee and then a quick walk off their back decks to the links to start the day. They have no need for golf carts or caddies. They’re happy with the simple tranquility of swinging a golf club and the satisfying thwack of the ball leaving the tee and soaring through the air. With a golf green right in the backyard, there’s no worrying about the ball disappearing into a forest or
nearby pond.

Russ Greene, owner of Greene Exterior Design, has watched the artificial turf trend for home landscaping projects explode over the last few years, reaching a peak during the pandemic. “It catapulted interest in golf into the stratosphere,” Greene says. “People quickly realized they could play golf and social distance easily.” That popularity created demand in the marketplace—clients not only wanted to play the game, but they wanted a worry-free space to practice.

Greene recently installed an artificial turf golf green for a Carmel attorney with the goal of bringing a little slice of Crooked Stick Golf Club to the family’s yard.

The client wanted a place to practice the game he loves, hitting a huge variety of short game shots, with the green mimicking real course conditions. “My short game stinks,” the client laughs. “As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Greene created a setup for the family to work through pitching longer wedge shots from 75-90 yards, closer wedge shots from 35-50 yards from a variety of different angles, short and long greenside bunker shots, pitches and runs, flop shots, and everything in between from both short and deep rough areas.

An avid golfer himself, Greene spent the last several years honing his craft to help him better collaborate with customers to create truly unique backyard setups. The client did some research and contacted Greene, who took the client on a field trip to three completed in-home golf green installations and let him tee off. “That firsthand experience from these projects gave us a sense of what we liked most about his prior work,” the client says. “When Russ started asking us questions about the design or where holes should be cut, how deep the rough should be, how severe a break should be, we just kept repeating, ‘Build it like you would for yourself, Russ!’” Artificial turf installation requests these days aren’t limited just to the links. Greene describes a recent project that included bocce ball and pickleball courts and a whiffle ball tee, in addition to a golf green. He says the family wanted to get their kids outside and away from screens.

Greene also points to turf as a great option for man’s best friend. “I’ve installed dog and pet runs,” he says. “These projects minimize the amount of mud your dog will track into the house because artificial turf drains naturally and quickly. That’s a win for everyone, really.”

Greene says clients are opting for artificial turf even for basic home landscaping. He points to his own yard as an example. “I realized I was spending hours of my weekends just on basic maintenance,” he says. “Artificial turf always looks good and cuts yard work time significantly. I now have more time with my family.”

Whether the new backyard golf green in Carmel has improved the client’s golf game remains to be seen. But anything that brings family together to enjoy the outdoors is a definite hole-in-one.

The post Par For The Course appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

(1) The Art of John Lennon Now through July 6
Give peace a chance at fine art gallery CV Art and Frame. Admission to the exhibit of the late Beatle’s works, around societal themes that touched his life, is free. 110 S. Main St., Zionsville.

(2) July Fourth Celebration July 4–July 6
This year, the traditional fireworks celebration at Victory Field goes over three nights. Don red, white, and blue and cheer on our Indians as they take on the Louisville Bats.

(3) The Beach Boys July 6
Mike Love—at age 83—and his band will send the iconic sounds of summer wafting through Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park. As he has for three decades, John “Uncle Jesse” Stamos will be on drums.

(4) Legally Blonde July 11–August 25
The roast beef is still hand-carved at Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre, and sorority-queen-turned-Harvard-Law-student Elle still charms in this fun, award-winning musical version of the iconic movie.

(5) Brickyard Weekend July 19–21
NASCAR celebrates 30 years at the Racing Capital of the World when the Brickyard 400 brings the action back to the 2.5-mile oval at IMS.

The post July’s Best Bets appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Tara Moore likes the tennis courts at Fortville’s Memorial Park for her private lessons. One of the two is usually available in this low-key spot where the concrete isn’t cracked and the net doesn’t sag. It lacks some basic creature comforts, like benches, a water fountain, and bathrooms. But there’s peace.

Standing on the court, with her shiny long hair pulled back into a ponytail, Moore feeds balls softly to an adult recreational player and energetically offers positive reinforcement—literal pro tips: “When you hit the forehand volley, give your hand a little bit of squeeze,” she calls out, the trace of a British accent detectable.

The woman groans with faint trepidation at nearly every ball that comes her way, then returns most of them over the net easily. It’s a couple levels above dinking, and it seems thoroughly boring. A boring advanced-beginner lesson on a boring community court in a boring Hancock County town.

Which isn’t to say Moore is bored.

After spending more than 10 years hopping around the world to play professional tennis—an expensive grind of a sport, especially when prosperity and fame dangled just beyond her reach—“boring” now means stability, peace, and a Tesla. At 31 years old, Moore finally values those things. “I’m enjoying the mundane side of being a normal person. Going to work, cooking dinner for myself, playing with my dog, getting ready for bed—it’s nice. I just got a Costco membership,” she says. “That’s my life.”

And yet, this wasn’t supposed to be Tara Moore’s life. She was never supposed to be in Indiana. As a 10-year-old phenom growing up in Hong Kong, she was recruited by famed tennis coach Nick Bollettieri, who had already honed Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova into champions. Moore attended his tennis academy in Florida and trained privately with him until she was 17. Then she turned pro and built a decent career, if not a distinguished one. It was enough to earn a living and play under her father’s British flag in posh locales such as Montreal, Morocco, and Melbourne. Even Wimbledon, where she took a 6-1 set off two-time major champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the second round.

Her name might ring a bell to hardcore tennis fans, but apparently not her face, as witnessed by the many avid players who cluelessly pass by her at Pendleton’s Community Sports & Wellness center, where she works as a teaching pro, without the faintest clue that she has beaten some of the top players in the sport. Players like Elise Mertens of Belgium, currently the No. 2 doubles player in the world, and Donna Vekić of Croatia, once ranked No. 19 in the world in singles.

Anyone familiar with inside-tennis, however, knows Moore well, partly due to her association with Bollettieri and her connections in tennis-rich Britain. The British Lawn Tennis Association has supported Moore at times, and Judy Murray, the mother of British tennis star Andy Murray, chose Moore to play for the U.K.’s national team when she was captain. In 2020, she was elected to the players’ council of the International Tennis Federation to represent professionals outside of the Top 100, like her. It was a good fit, as Moore had earned a reputation over the years for being outspoken about player rights, once tweeting, “It’s good to ruffle some feathers sometimes and hopefully we can garner some change.”

She is also known for pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in tennis history. In 2019, at a small tournament in England, she lost every game of her first match as her opponent built the biggest lead possible in tennis—6-0, 5-0, match point. Moore famously managed to turn it around and win. But five years later, that epic comeback pales in comparison to the one she’s facing now, after her career fell off a cliff and she landed in Indiana, a tennis exile.

____________________________________

That terrible fall began in Bogotá, Colombia, when Moore and her doubles partner, who requested anonymity for this story, arrived to play a tournament in April 2022. It was held at the Country Club of Bogotá, a venerable facility with red-clay courts, a postcard mountain backdrop, and several nice restaurants—at which Moore dined alongside fellow tournament players four times. On day six, she wasn’t surprised to be selected for a random drug test after her match. “They tested me every other time I played there,” she says. “I expected it.”

Moore and her partner went on to make the final. It was one of their best results. They were clicking as a team and ranked high enough to enter May’s French Open, one of the sport’s four major events. Like Wimbledon, it carries the most cachet, perks, ranking points, and prize money.

Flying to Paris, Moore’s hopes were higher than the plane’s 30,000 feet. And rightfully so. On Court 4 at the French Open, she and her partner beat Belinda Bencic and Anhelina Kalinina. “Good players,” Moore says. Excellent players, actually—in singles, Bencic was the reigning Olympic gold medalist, and Kalinina was on her way to a Top 25 ranking. Team Moore won a close match and $13,000 to split. The week before, they had won $1,175.

Between the congratulatory texts, Moore saw an email from the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which administers the sport’s drug tests, including the one she took six weeks before in Bogotá. That was normal—the ITIA sent a lot of updates about banned substances, Moore says. She would check it later, after she had taken some time to recover and prepare for the next match, worth an additional $9,000 and a haul of ranking points.

The following night, a tournament supervisor called to deliver disastrous news: Moore had failed the drug test in Colombia. She was suspended immediately. She was out of the French Open. And she was alone—or so she thought.

____________________________________

Community Sports & Wellness president Bryant Beard, a Pendleton tennis coach who was the center’s tennis director in 2022, happened to be vacationing in France with his family that May. He went to the French Open to watch Moore and her partner, whom he knows. The partner’s parents had relocated to Indianapolis when she was young, and she and Moore occasionally trained at CSW, sometimes for extended periods. “I used to joke that if you need a place to settle down and figure out the next steps, we’re here for you,” Beard says. At the time, Moore had every reason to believe her next steps would be on bigger courts. She was the top-ranked doubles player in Britain, after all, and she was winning a lot of matches.

Between the congratulatory texts, Moore saw an email from the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which administers the sport’s drug tests, including the one she took six weeks before in Bogotá.

But overnight, she found herself back in London in a state of utter disbelief. She never could have expected this to happen to her. Neither could Judy Murray of the U.K.’s national team, one of the most respected leaders in tennis. “I have spent enough time with her to know she is an honest and fair competitor,” Murray says.

Moore, who had never failed a drug test before, contacted the Women’s Tennis Association, the governing body of the women’s pro tour, which only forwarded the same email from the ITIA stating that Moore had tested positive for the banned performance enhancers boldenone and nandrolone. As a result, she was suspended for four years. Four years. The news sent Moore into a spiral of confusion, unsure what her next moves should be or how she would get herself out of this situation. “There’s no manual. There’s no help,” she says.

The veteran player was suddenly thrown out of the arena, forbidden to be on court with any WTA player (including her own doubles partner) or any WTA-accredited coach. She couldn’t attend a tournament, show up to an official training site, or train any junior player who might one day want to go pro. “You go from main draw French Open, thinking you’re going to play second round, and then you don’t even want to play tennis at all,” Moore says.

She knew one thing: She needed a job to pay her lawyers. To appeal the drug test, she opted for high-priced representation, which she estimates will cost her $250,000 when all is said and done. “I could have paid a lot less, but I knew I’m innocent,” she says. “Lawyers are one of those things that you get what you pay for. I didn’t want bog standard.” Neither did she want to stay in London, where her high profile made it hard to shake the accusation.

Somewhere in this fresh chaos, Moore remembered Beard’s open invitation for a CSW job in little Pendleton, Indiana. After considering coaching options in Michigan and Florida, she chose CSW because it made the most practical sense. “It was nice to have a lot of hours guaranteed,” she says. “I wanted to build on my coaching abilities, and I was given the opportunity to start over without anyone really knowing who I was.” She moved in September 2022 and bought a house in Fishers, just 15 miles from Pendleton’s brand-new facility outfitted with top-notch extras such as cameras for streaming or recording matches on each court and advanced analytics on two courts. Even in Chicago, it was rare to find a public tennis facility as nice as this one.

Moore settled into coaching adult clinics and high school players. Says Beard, “What she loved about [coach] Nick Bollettieri was when he would touch you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, you can do this, kid.’ That man made you believe you could run through walls.” Moore’s experience in the limelight helped Beard, who coaches at Pendleton Heights High School, understand the pressure kids play under these days. “They’re genuinely afraid of competition. The ramifications are always so severe because of social media and because the level of embarrassment is so high. We don’t spend enough time realizing the impact,” he says. “Tara helped me see that it’s a mentally tough sport. How do we help these kids and make it so organically fun that the competition comes afterward?”

And yet no one could understand what Moore was going through at that time. “A wrongful suspension for an athlete is devastating, and the stigma associated with a positive test is lifelong,” says Howard Jacobs, a lawyer in California who has handled many high-profile Olympic doping cases. Indeed, the process has taken a toll on Moore. Once happy-go-lucky, she says, “I’m a lot more fearful of a lot of things than I used to be.” Like eating red meat. She hasn’t touched it in two years.

Following her suspension, Moore often woke up in the middle of the night, wracked with confusion. She coped by turning over rocks, researching boldenone, a strength hormone, and nandrolone, a recovery substance similar to testosterone. It didn’t take long for her to land on contaminated meat of cows injected with steroids as a possible culprit. She thought about all the meat she had ingested at the club restaurants and other spots around Bogotá shortly before being tested. Could that have triggered a positive result on her drug test? It has been known to happen—the Colombian Olympic Committee has even gone so far as to warn its athletes about the possibility of contaminated meat in the country.

In recent years, athletes as diverse as Columbian tennis star Robert Farah; 90-year-old Bristol, Indiana, cyclist Carl Grove; and Olympic runner Shelby Houlihan said their positive steroid tests were caused by tainted meat. While many are skeptical about their claims, Travis Tygart, CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, says they’re worth considering. Advances in testing technology mean previously indiscernible levels of some drugs are now detected. “Labs can see so much farther down that the likelihood of capturing something increases,” he says.

When Farah tested positive for boldenone in 2020, he fought his suspension, won the case, and was reinstated to play within a month. But he was the No. 1–ranked player in the world in doubles at the time. Moore would wait much longer for a hearing. As her doubles partner moved on and found new teammates, Moore’s ranking points gradually disappeared by May 2023.

Meanwhile, Moore’s certainty in her innocence propelled a dogged determination to fight for justice. She filled the void of uncertainty by digging deep into the science of cattle farming in Colombia. She contacted Colombian farmers in broken Spanish, and some were helpful and sympathetic, explaining what the steroids do and how much time could elapse between an injection and meat consumption. “You expect your lawyers to do a lot of the research. But there’s no harm in reaching out to ranchers on Instagram. Every little thing, you don’t know if it’s going to count or be a big deal,” she says.

Finally, she received an appeal hearing with an independent panel in December 2023. She attended virtually, starting at 4 a.m., for a few days. “You don’t understand a lot of things, and you’re just sat there, praying, hoping the truth will come out, and you’ll be set free,” she says.

Moore’s legal team had to show that meat contamination was a plausible cause for the positive drug test. They shared evidence that all the country club restaurant’s meat comes from Colombia, that both drugs are authorized for cattle breeding in the country, and that the steroids can enter the food chain a short time after injection. Also, three of the 21 players tested at the Bogotá tournament tested positive for boldenone, substantially higher than the average test results worldwide.

The ITIA countered that contaminated meat wouldn’t produce the amount of the drugs in Moore’s test sample. Also, because a minority of Colombia farmers use those steroids, it’s unlikely the players ate contaminated meat. But if they did, they should have known that tainted meat was a risk in Colombia and had acted negligently by eating it. In essence, the players were guilty either way.

In just a few days, the panel ruled for Moore, saying meat contamination was a plausible source of both steroids in her system. The panel was troubled by the statistical anomaly of three players testing positive for boldenone at the tournament. The report noted another disturbing suggestion: the possibility that a steroid implant placed in a cow’s ear had wound up in the beef mince of a Bolognese sauce Moore had ordered.

She contacted Colombian farmers in broken Spanish, and some were helpful and sympathetic, explaining what the steroids do and how much time could elapse between an injection and meat consumption.

The panel chastised the ITIA for trying to have it both ways with its argument. “It does not lie very comfortably with the ITIA to argue so forcefully, on the one hand, that meat contamination is a very unlikely explanation … whilst, on the other hand, arguing that the Players should have known that there was a risk of that very contamination which the ITIA has argued very probably did not happen.”

Moore was immediately reinstated to compete—if she could figure out how to do so without a ranking.

____________________________________

Moore has been in such a predicament before. Five years ago, her ranking plummeted to No. 479, and she thought that was the end for her. Being unranked is a lot worse. “If you’d asked me to do this before [the suspension] happened to me, I would have retired,” she says. “I would have thought, I’m not going to start from zero again.”

By the time she was exonerated, Moore felt differently. “Toward the end of my career, it was so monotonous. Nothing surprised me. Now I get this second chance and look at it from a different perspective,” she says. So after spending some time training with friends in Florida, Moore packed her rackets again in April and flew to Italy to play her first professional match in almost two years, partnering with a college player. They won their first match and lost the next to the eventual winner. The flight alone was $1,400, and Moore’s prize money was $98. She returned to Indy to assess where to go from there.

Ranking-wise, the only place to go is up. But as the legendary sports journalist Mary Carillo says, “There are comebacks, and then there are come-all-the-way-backs.” Moore doesn’t know if she can win her way into the Top 100 in doubles again—or even be competitive in singles. Right now, she feels motivated to try while her body is still cooperating.

Moore caught a break in mid-May when the WTA changed its policy for players cleared of a failed drug test, which might have been spurred by the high-profile case of Simona Halep, a former world No. 1 who was banned from competition in 2022 and had her sentence cut in half earlier this year. Moore can use her old doubles ranking of No. 88 to enter 12 tournaments, but she didn’t get her ranking points back. She’s still starting from zero.

Regardless of the restored ranking, Moore lost two years of competition, earnings, and momentum. She expects the $15,000 she raised on GoFundMe after winning her appeal to cover just two months of traveling and training expenses, and she is still paying lawyers because the ITIA might fight the judgment in Moore’s favor at an undetermined time in the future. She has no idea if she is always teetering on the edge of another cliff. “It’s still a stress every single day,” she says. She continues to research boldenone and nandrolone. “I have hundreds of tabs opened on my phone now.”

Moore hopes to receive ranking-unrestricted invitations called wild cards to enter tournaments in England, including Wimbledon, during the grass-court season leading up to the famous championships. Grass is her best surface, and she might have enough goodwill left in Britain to garner those favors. Plenty of tennis heavyweights are in Moore’s corner, including top coaches like Sven Groeneveld, who coached Monica Seles and Maria Sharapova among many other Top 10 players, as well as Patrick Mouratoglou, who rose to fame as Serena Williams’ coach in the last stage of her career. One of Moore’s closest allies is her former coach John Morris, who’s now a top agent representing Top 10 players Andrey Rublev and Daria Kasatkina.

But A-list friends can’t offset the difficulties of competing in the basement of pro tennis. “People don’t understand how uncertain tennis is,” she says. “There are so many sports that don’t compare because you are on a team. If you have a bad day, you can be subbed out. They plan all the travel for you. They plan when you practice, when you go to fitness, your nutrition, your budget for that year. You just turn up and play your sport. The majority of tennis players are just by themselves. I plan everything. What if I lose my luggage with my rackets inside of them? How do I go to the next tournament where there will be a different surface and different tennis balls? Will it be good on my body? Can I switch over the next week?” Being unranked means every match and every point counts. “Everywhere I go, I have to make the right decisions,” she says.

The small tournaments she is relegated to pose more challenges. The tournament she attended in Italy was held at a resort. Rain put them a couple days behind schedule, and the hotel then gave its guests priority for the courts over the tournament participants. “I’m not in the Ritz-Carlton sipping champagne. I’m getting bumped off practice courts by vacationers who don’t know how to hold a tennis racket,” Moore says.

Given the obstacles, even her biggest fans aren’t holding their breath for Moore to bounce back. “It will be very tough for her now,” Murray says. “To miss over two years at this stage of her career is incredibly difficult to come back from physically and emotionally. She has lost time, her ranking, her career, her finances, and her reputation.”

But for Moore, coming all the way back isn’t the only way to win. Proving she’s a clean athlete is a victory. Giving herself the best chance with the cards she has been dealt is another. Protecting the life she has built in Indianapolis, too. But she’s torn: Is pursuing her second chance worth giving up the stability and a job she has come to appreciate?

“I don’t want my life to go away,” she says. “I’ve earned my house, my car, all of this stuff. The challenge is finding the right balance—because the things I have earned make me happy.” 

The post British Tennis Player Tara Moore Bounces Back In A Small Indiana Town appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

I took knowing how to swim for granted.

I was “taught” how to swim by my grandfather, who chucked me into Grand Lake St. Marys off the bow of his pontoon boat The Groucher when I was just a wee lad. He did throw me in the general direction of my mother, but I still had to paddle to get to her and thus learned to keep my head above water.

Following that introduction, the formal lessons I received at the town’s municipal pool came around age 5, and all I can really remember about them is my mom dropping me off at 8:30 a.m. and then being forced to jump into a freezing swimming pool. The water was so cold. So cold.

But to my family, knowing how to swim was a necessity. We lived on a lake and owned a sailboat—a 21-foot Lightning. My father, a radioman second class who served on the USS Benner in the South Pacific during World War II, liked to sail. A lot. He loved to be on the water. He said it relaxed him, even if there was no wind. So nearly every summer evening after he returned home from work, we went sailing.

And every weekend, we went out on a pontoon boat my grandfathers crafted together using eight old, 55-gallon oil drums. One grandfather was a woodworker and the other a welder by profession, so one welded the drums and supporting metal frame together while the other designed and crafted the deck, roof, and storage cabinet in the middle. Then they put a fence up around the edge to keep us kids from falling into the lake. So my cousins and I had to learn at a very early age how to keep ourselves afloat and how to swim to safety.

Swimming continued to play a big part in my life. I completed the mile swim to earn my merit badge in swimming at Camp Lakota Boy Scout Summer Camp in my early teens, participating every year thereafter just to see if I could still do it. It was at Camp Lakota that I learned how to float in a pool with ease. Later in life, I lived along the Gulf of Mexico, going out past the breakers where I could enjoy the freedom of open water swimming.

Covering the events leading up to the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Indianapolis made me think about my younger days in the water. I’ve always known the “how to’s” of swimming, so I never realized there are so many people of all ages who do not know how to swim at all.

I never even thought about it until I heard that swimming is often touted as the only sport that saves lives. Drowning is the No. 1 cause of death for children ages 1–4 years, and children under 1 year old are more likely to drown at home. Of children younger than 5, 87 percent of drowning fatalities occur in home pools or hot tubs. Bathtubs are the second leading location.

That is why Eli Lilly and Company introduced the Swim in Safety program alongside the 2024 swimming trials. The legacy program is teaching water safety to as many Hoosiers 5 and older as possible over 2023 and 2024, with a goal to train at least 25,000 individuals in 2023 and 2024 each.

What does water safe mean? It means learning and practicing progressive self-rescue and swimming skills that help reduce the risk of drowning, helping individuals to become more confident in and around water.

“The Swim Safety Legacy program presented by Eli Lilly is a statewide initiative that has already reached over 30,000 Hoosiers in 2023 and ’24 so far. Our goal is 50,000 by the end of 2024. This will be a lasting legacy,” Indiana Sports Corp chief of staff and strategy Sarah Myer states.

Shana Ferguson, chief commercial officer of USA Swimming, adds, “Part of this legacy leave-behind is legislation to mandate every second grader in Indianapolis has access to swim lessons.”

Over 54 percent of Americans either can’t swim or don’t have all the basic swimming skills, according to a recent Red Cross survey. Only 28 percent of Hispanic people and 37 percent of Black people have taken swimming lessons, according to the CDC.

“This event is going to save lives,” says Scott Davison, president and CEO of OneAmerica Financial. “Swim Safety will reach 50,000 under served citizens. This will put a dent in the history of exclusion in this country.”

We all have read the stories of people, young and old, who fall into a river, get knocked off a boat into turbulent waters, or who look away from their little ones for just a split second and are heartbroken. According to the WHO, drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional death worldwide, accounting for 7 percent of all injury-related deaths. There are an estimated 236,000 drowning deaths every year globally, so this is not just a problem in this country or state. This initiative will help address drowning deaths and build on a skill that families can continue passing on to their little ones, like mine did for me.

These trials are already a historic event. The meet, the venue, and every step Indy has taken to deliver a first-class experience for the 1,000 swimmers and approximately 250,000 attending fans are epic. But the Swim in Safety program is the real gold medal winner of this week’s competition.

The post Naysayer: The Real Gold Medal Winner Of The Olympic Trials Isn’t Even Competing appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

CAITLIN CLARK isn’t just another terrific basketball player. She’s not just a young woman who won back-to-back national Player of the Year awards while taking her school, the University of Iowa, to consecutive NCAA final games. She’s not just the leading scorer in the history of college basketball, outpacing both men and women. She is, in a word, transcendent. She is among the greatest college players ever in the women’s game, comparing favorably with Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore. A shooter with unlimited 3-point range and the kind of passing ability that makes everybody around her exponentially better, she has forced those who follow the sport to search for grander superlatives. For example: “We are witnessing a transformational moment in sports that we may not experience for generations,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the night of the women’s basketball draft. “Our sport has never been stronger.”

Clark, the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft, is heading to the giddy Indiana Fever, where she is poised to become the ultimate change agent in a town that has already painted a downtown mural in her honor. She will not only help turn the Fever—a once-proud team that hasn’t made the playoffs since Tamika Catchings’ WNBA reign—into an elite franchise, but she will also boost business for the WNBA and women’s sports in general.

Because, to put it bluntly, Clark can bring in the crowds. Her Iowa team consistently sold out at home and often on the road in the Big Ten. She plays a feisty, energetic game, and you can’t take your eyes off her on the court. She’s also terrific with fans, who flock to her for autographs after games. In fact, Clark’s popularity is so great, the women’s NCAA final drew more eyeballs to its TV broadcast than the men’s final between Purdue and UConn.

Almost immediately, home and away game tickets for the Fever’s 2024 season flew out of the box office. Clark jerseys sold out in one day. Road teams are accommodating Clark’s arrival in their cities by moving their games to larger venues. Just a day after her introductory press conference in Indianapolis, she signed an eight-figure contract with Nike. Two nights before the WNBA draft in Brooklyn, Clark did a short “Weekend Update” skit with Colin Jost and Michael Che on Saturday Night Live. “I was so nervous,” Clark says with a smile. “I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.”

Fever fans know that feeling.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL has had star power over the years, but no one compares to the 6-foot guard from West Des Moines, Iowa, who has captured the imagination of the country. This isn’t just a sports moment. It’s a cultural touchstone.

And it’s a dream come true for Clark, who as a third grader, wrote down a wish list for her future that featured being drafted by the WNBA. (She also wanted to win the lottery, but, hey, you can’t have everything.) “At times, it doesn’t feel real,” Clark says. “There are so many people who would kill to be in my shoes. I’m lucky to get these moments. I know it can all be taken away in a second, so I just enjoy every single second of it.”

It’s also a dream come true for the Indiana Fever, who’ve seen their business take off in a way they couldn’t have imagined. In the latest sign that everything has changed in the Indy market, WTHR and WALV will telecast 17 Fever games on local, broadcast TV. Meanwhile, the Pacers are stuck on the wonky Bally app (at least for now).

“I can’t think of a better place to start my career, in a place that loves basketball and supports women’s basketball, with an organization that does things the right way.”

Clark could have stayed at Iowa for an additional season—she still had her Covid year—but she chose to make the jump to the WNBA, where she will be the top draw in the league for years to come. She was thrilled when Indiana won the draft lottery and received the first pick. And why not? Her boyfriend, Connor McCaffery, works for the Pacers. As a Midwesterner born and raised in Iowa, she loves the fact that Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, is just a five-hour drive away and that traveling to Des Moines takes seven. “I was hoping Indiana would get the first pick; it would make my life a lot better,” Clark says. “I can’t think of a better place to start my career, in a place that loves basketball and supports women’s basketball, with an organization that does things the right way and has a championship pedigree.”

Her new team won the WNBA title in 2012 but has struggled mightily on the court since 2016. The Fever averaged a second-to-last total of 4,067 fans per game last summer. And yet, in April, more than 6,000 fans, many of them younger girls, descended on Gainbridge Fieldhouse for a Fever draft party—a turnout that boggles Clark’s mind. “Wow, 6,000 people just to stare at a screen,” Clark muses. Would anyone expect anything less of the biggest draft addition in Indianapolis since Peyton Manning arrived in 1998? And while Manning clearly had a massive impact on the city, Clark’s fan club extends far beyond state lines. There are stars in the WNBA, but none have joined the league with more focus and fanfare than Clark.

Lin Dunn, the Fever’s general manager, grew up before and during the early days of Title IX, back when women were not considered capable of competing in big-time sports. Now, she glances at the TV ratings for the women’s final between Clark’s Iowa team and eventual champ South Carolina—18.7 million viewers, almost four million more than the men—and it touches her heart. “I never thought I’d live to see the day that the women’s game would get better ratings than the men,” says Dunn, who is 76 years old. “Never imagined it.”

The moment Dunn heard Clark was going pro and that the Fever would be the lucky franchise to acquire her, she says, “I fell off my couch.” On draft night, someone asked her how long it took to put Clark’s name in for the first selection. “Fifteen seconds,” she responded at the time, smiling.

THE EXPECTATIONS for this team and for Clark herself may be out of this world, but Clark has lived with pressure all her athletic life, and she has delivered consistently. “Caitlin’s game translates immediately in terms of her range, her ability to hit shots, and her vision,” says ESPN women’s hoops analyst Andraya Carter. “People talk about her scoring, but her passing is next level. She makes the right decisions. She plays the right way. She makes the right read. She gets the ball where it’s supposed to go.”

“And one of the things that’s special is she’s staying in the Midwest; it’s a perfect fit. The hero of the heartland.”

The challenge, Carter says, will be the physicality of going against grown women. “That’s going to be tough. The hits will be harder, the checks will be harder, and the players are going to be faster. Everybody who goes from college to the next level talks about the speed of the game. Any star who comes into the league, teams are going to want to challenge her defensively. But she’ll handle it.”

Says former UConn and WNBA star Rebecca Lobo, now an ESPN analyst, “There’s no comparison [to Clark] that I can find on the women’s side, and I’ve been in this league since the very beginning. We haven’t seen a player drive ticket sales like this, drive ratings like this. And one of the things that’s special is she’s staying in the Midwest; it’s a perfect fit. The hero of the heartland. In terms of attention, we’ve never seen anything close to this.”

Indianapolis is ready for the Caitlin Clark show to roll into town. The crowds are already going wild, and all they have seen so far is the pregame warmup. Clark is a game-changing, business-altering figure, and she’s become one without scoring a single point yet in the WNBA.

The post Fever Dream appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.