And You Thought ‘Out of the Hood’ Stories Were Only For Male Athletes
Meet Krystal Vaughan, Washington Mystics rookie forward and another testament to what good can come out of hoods all over the country, and world for that matter.
Like Carmelo Anthony, she came up in a not so nice part of Baltimore, and like Kevin Durant, she frequently comes back home to Maryland to provide inspiration for family and friends still working their way out of the struggle.
But unlike those two guys, stories like Vaughan’s are not frequently told.
Before she was 10 years old, Vaughn had learned how to duck and run away from drive-by shootings that ripped through young people’s conversations as they gathered on street corners. When she was 12, Vaughn saw a man shoot and kill a convenience store clerk. When her family moved from the Freedomway projects off Federal Street to North Montford Avenue, neighbors regularly broke into their house. Older kids chased and picked fights with Vaughn, her older sister Marian and younger brother Lloyd as they walked home from school.
Women’s basketball can’t be so boring that people don’t even want to recognize stories of hard work and tenacity within its sport, can it? These are the same stories we hear about all the time in the NBA and NCAA men’s basketball, so why don’t the ladies receive love at the same clip?
If you took the name Krystal Vaughan out of this story and replaced it with a name like Kevin Vickers, you would automatically pay more attention. People naturally identify with those who look like them and share common characteristics. But for those of us who grew up in areas like this, and have experienced trouble like this, every single child coming out of these conditions deserves our attention and adulation.
Especially our little sisters.
Comments
By Truth About It Dot Net on August 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Her……..and the Williams sisters.
Krystal v. Snoop Pearson, who wins?
By JC on August 7th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Snoop for sure. Snoop is a ‘G’ in real life.