Fagbenle becomes the fifth Olympian in Ivy League Basketball history(Ahmed Photography).
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Rising sophomore Temi Fagbenle has been named to Great Britain’s 12-woman roster for the 2012 London Olympic Games, becoming just the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history.
Fagbenle has helped Great Britain to a 6-6 record through 12 test matches during its Olympic tune up, averaging 10.5 points and 4.4 rebounds. GB most recently defeated the world’s fourth-ranked team, Czech Republic, on June 20 with Fagbenle netting 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds in a starting role. GB has also beaten ninth-ranked Korea, 11th-ranked Canada and 12th-ranked Argentina. Great Britain began its training camp on May 5 with 20 women invited to compete for a roster spot. The team went through two rounds of cuts before the final 12-woman squad was announced. GB is scheduled to play seven more test matches before the Games begin.
Great Britain, as host, received an automatic qualification to this year’s Olympic women’s basketball competition. The tournament is set to begin on Saturday, July 28 and will run through Sunday, Aug. 12. All games will be played at the newly built Basketball Arena and the North Greenwich Arena. Fagbenle is only the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history and just the fifth basketball Olympian in the Ancient Eight’s storied history. She joins Brown’s Martina Jerant (Canda, 1996), Princeton’s Bill Bradley (United States, 1964) and Konrad Wysocki (Germany, 2008), and Dartmouth’s Crawford Palmer (France, 2000).
Fagbenle matriculated to Camrbridge this past fall as the program’s first-ever McDonald’s All-American after concluding an incredibly successful high school career. She was ranked 13th overall in the Class of 2011 by ESPN HoopGurlz, and was the fifth ranked forward on the list. She led Great Britain’s U18 National Team to the 2010 Women’s European Championship, and was named Great Britain’s U18 Player of the Year as a result. As a senior at Blair Academy, she was named the New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year after guiding her team to the state and MAPL championships . After sitting a year in residency, Fagbenle will enter the 2012-13 season as a sophomore at Harvard.
article via gocrimson.com
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Fagbenle becomes the fifth Olympian in Ivy League Basketball history(Ahmed Photography).
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Rising sophomore Temi Fagbenle has been named to Great Britain’s 12-woman roster for the 2012 London Olympic Games, becoming just the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history.
Fagbenle has helped Great Britain to a 6-6 record through 12 test matches during its Olympic tune up, averaging 10.5 points and 4.4 rebounds. GB most recently defeated the world’s fourth-ranked team, Czech Republic, on June 20 with Fagbenle netting 12 points and grabbing seven rebounds in a starting role. GB has also beaten ninth-ranked Korea, 11th-ranked Canada and 12th-ranked Argentina. Great Britain began its training camp on May 5 with 20 women invited to compete for a roster spot. The team went through two rounds of cuts before the final 12-woman squad was announced. GB is scheduled to play seven more test matches before the Games begin.
Great Britain, as host, received an automatic qualification to this year’s Olympic women’s basketball competition. The tournament is set to begin on Saturday, July 28 and will run through Sunday, Aug. 12. All games will be played at the newly built Basketball Arena and the North Greenwich Arena. Fagbenle is only the second Olympian in Ivy League women’s basketball history and just the fifth basketball Olympian in the Ancient Eight’s storied history. She joins Brown’s Martina Jerant (Canda, 1996), Princeton’s Bill Bradley (United States, 1964) and Konrad Wysocki (Germany, 2008), and Dartmouth’s Crawford Palmer (France, 2000).
Fagbenle matriculated to Camrbridge this past fall as the program’s first-ever McDonald’s All-American after concluding an incredibly successful high school career. She was ranked 13th overall in the Class of 2011 by ESPN HoopGurlz, and was the fifth ranked forward on the list. She led Great Britain’s U18 National Team to the 2010 Women’s European Championship, and was named Great Britain’s U18 Player of the Year as a result. As a senior at Blair Academy, she was named the New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year after guiding her team to the state and MAPL championships . After sitting a year in residency, Fagbenle will enter the 2012-13 season as a sophomore at Harvard.
article via gocrimson.com
“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave – and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.” — playwright and author Alice Childress
As a toddler, Michaela DePrince, was ranked “number 27” — the lowest, the worst of the children in her orphanage in Sierra Leone. “So, I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and what not,” she explained to the Associated Press. DePrince lost both of her parents in the West African nation’s decades-long civil war which claimed the lives of an estimated 60,000 people. She was born with vitiligo, a skin disorder that causes uneven pigmentation, and was taunted by the other kids as “the devil’s child.” Fourteen years later, she is considered one of the most promising teenage ballet dancers in the United States. Recently graduated from the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, the 17-year-old debuts professionally on July 20, as a guest artist of the South African Ballet Theater and the South Africa Msanzi Ballet performing in ‘Le Corsaire.’
DePrince recalls her early childhood as a time of “terrible” hardship. The one thing that gave her hope was a picture of a ballerina from a magazine that blew over the orphanage walls, which she hid under her clothing. Though she had no context for the image, she says, “I remember she looked really, really happy,” and DePrince longed “to become this exact person.” She also imagined that all Americans walked on tip toes.
Watch: Ballet Theater of Harlem
After a year in the orphanage, DePrince had to flee barefoot when it was threatened with bomb attacks. She was only four-years-old. She ended up in a Ghanaian refugee camp, where she met an American volunteer, Elaine DePrince, who would become her adopted mother. “Michaela arrived with the worst case of tonsillitis, fever, mononucleosis, and joints that were swollen,” remembers Elaine. She was also suffering from trauma. “I have a lot of bad memories,” the young dancer told theGuardian UK in a recent interview. “I remember losing my family, I remember seeing a lot of rebels killing people that I knew. It was disgusting and just revolting.”
Although it took her years to fully recover, Michaela says, “Dance helped me a lot. I had a lot of nightmares.” However, DePrince had to overcome even more than physical and psychological damage to become a professional ballet dancer in the United States. Rehearsing for ‘The Nutcracker‘ when she was eight-years-old, a teacher told her “I’m sorry, you can’t do it. America’s not ready for a black girl as Marie.” She refused to let it hold her back. “If you enjoy my dancing, why should my skin color or body type bother you?” she told the NY Post. Dirk Badenhorst, CEO South Africa Mzansi Ballet, concurs: “Brilliance is colorblind and it really is proved by Michaela.”
DePrince hopes her story will inspire other young people to follow their dreams no matter how distant they seem. “I would like to change the way people see black dancers,” she says. “I just want to be a great role model for kids.”
article by Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger | Work + Money
“Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It’s important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It’s the way in which we grow and develop.”
— Dr. Dorothy Height, Former Head of The National Council Of Negro Women
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking on a more prominent political role, first lady Michelle Obama is launching a nationwide effort to motivate every supporter of President Barack Obama to get more involved in his re-election campaign — and bring along somebody else, too.
The “It Takes One” program urges supporters to make a difference in this election, and to “start by taking one action that will help grow our campaign,” Mrs. Obama says. In a three-minute video message to supporters that was released Thursday, the first lady tells supporters that with a tighter election than 2008 likely this fall, “in the end, it could all come down to those last few thousand votes in a single state.”
“Every time you take action to move this country forward, we’re asking you to inspire one more person to join you as well,” she says. “That could be the difference between waking up on Nov. 7 and feeling the promise of four more years or asking yourself, ‘Could I have done more?’” The video opens with Mrs. Obama recalling her husband’s first campaign for the Illinois legislature, when the newly married couple would take friends along when they went out to collect petition signatures to get Obama on the ballot.
“Help one new voter get registered through GottaVote.org, recruit one more volunteer, or bring a friend to the next phone bank you attend,” Mrs. Obama says. “If we all commit to finding at least one way to make an impact, we can ensure that we’ll keep moving this country forward for another four years.” The Obama campaign said Mrs. Obama would lead the “It Takes One” effort, which will include digital media, advertising and grassroots organizing. Campaign officials said Mrs. Obama would be the face of the effort and personally participate in many “It Takes One” events as she travels the country, recruiting neighborhood team leaders, speaking to groups of women to ask them to volunteer and stopping by voter registration events.
That represents a significant increase in the first lady’s role in the campaign. Already, she has been traveling the country to raise money for the campaign and making appearances at rallies designed to energize volunteers and supporters. Mrs. Obama, whose high favorability ratings are a big asset to the campaign, was known during the 2008 presidential race as “the closer” for her ability to persuade undecided voters to come on board and her success at motivating supporters to get more involved.
The first lady planned to formally launch the “It Takes One” program during campaign stops Friday in Virginia, a battleground state in this fall’s election. The first lady will speak at a campaign event for women in Charlottesville and to grassroots supporters in Fredericksburg. Obama’s campaign also plans to launch local “It Takes One” efforts in battleground states to engage new volunteers.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
via First lady Michelle Obama to lead new campaign mobilizing effort: ‘It Takes One’ | theGrio.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking on a more prominent political role, first lady Michelle Obama is launching a nationwide effort to motivate every supporter of President Barack Obama to get more involved in his re-election campaign — and bring along somebody else, too.
The “It Takes One” program urges supporters to make a difference in this election, and to “start by taking one action that will help grow our campaign,” Mrs. Obama says. In a three-minute video message to supporters that was released Thursday, the first lady tells supporters that with a tighter election than 2008 likely this fall, “in the end, it could all come down to those last few thousand votes in a single state.”
“Every time you take action to move this country forward, we’re asking you to inspire one more person to join you as well,” she says. “That could be the difference between waking up on Nov. 7 and feeling the promise of four more years or asking yourself, ‘Could I have done more?’” The video opens with Mrs. Obama recalling her husband’s first campaign for the Illinois legislature, when the newly married couple would take friends along when they went out to collect petition signatures to get Obama on the ballot.
“Help one new voter get registered through GottaVote.org, recruit one more volunteer, or bring a friend to the next phone bank you attend,” Mrs. Obama says. “If we all commit to finding at least one way to make an impact, we can ensure that we’ll keep moving this country forward for another four years.” The Obama campaign said Mrs. Obama would lead the “It Takes One” effort, which will include digital media, advertising and grassroots organizing. Campaign officials said Mrs. Obama would be the face of the effort and personally participate in many “It Takes One” events as she travels the country, recruiting neighborhood team leaders, speaking to groups of women to ask them to volunteer and stopping by voter registration events.
That represents a significant increase in the first lady’s role in the campaign. Already, she has been traveling the country to raise money for the campaign and making appearances at rallies designed to energize volunteers and supporters. Mrs. Obama, whose high favorability ratings are a big asset to the campaign, was known during the 2008 presidential race as “the closer” for her ability to persuade undecided voters to come on board and her success at motivating supporters to get more involved.
The first lady planned to formally launch the “It Takes One” program during campaign stops Friday in Virginia, a battleground state in this fall’s election. The first lady will speak at a campaign event for women in Charlottesville and to grassroots supporters in Fredericksburg. Obama’s campaign also plans to launch local “It Takes One” efforts in battleground states to engage new volunteers.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
via First lady Michelle Obama to lead new campaign mobilizing effort: ‘It Takes One’ | theGrio.
“Humanism starts not with identity but with the ability to identify with others. It asks what we have in common with others while acknowledging the internal diversity among ourselves. It is about the priority of shared humanity.”
— Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University professor and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.
Congratulations to Idris Elba (“Luther”), Giancarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad”), Loretta Devine (“Grey’s Anatomy”) and Maya Rudolph (“Saturday Night Live”) for their 2012 nominations by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences!
Elba was nominated in the Leading Actor in a Made for TV Movie/Miniseries category, Esposito for Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, Devine for Guest Actress in a Drama Series and Rudolph for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. The Awards show will air live on ABC on Sunday, September 23 at 8 PM, EST.
“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.