Author Archives: Alyssa Roenigk

Since I have my own blog and all, I got to write my version of last weekend and post it here for all three of you to read. So, yesterday, my dad sent me something he wrote up: His take on our weekend in Montclair. I guess I got the writing bug from somewhere. 

WHAT I DID LAST WEEKEND, BY FRED ROENIGK

Sooo … how was your weekend. Whatcha do?

Usually the answer is a simple choice of nothing, not much, or I worked my ass off.

But this week I had a somewhat different experience.

For the past three days, I’ve been in Dallas covering the USOC Media Summit, a bi-annual event that brings together members of the U.S. Olympic media and hundreds of Olympic hopefuls. As journalists, our jobs here are two-fold: We write each day after attending roundtables, press conference and one-on-one interviews with the athletes. (Check out our ESPN.com blog HERE.) And we fill our notebooks for London, where we will write daily stories and cover everything from basketball to badminton, gymnastics and fencing. The more athletes, PR people, press agents and reps we meet and score face time with here in Dallas, the easier our days will be during the Games. 

This past weekend was my best friend’s grandpa’s 87th birthday. That’s an exciting milestone to celebrate, no matter who’s blowing out all those candles. But his birthday brought more attention than most. Lindsay’s grandpa is Yogi Berra. And for years, my dad has been asking, “When do I get to meet Grandpa Yogi?” (Lindsay’s family is my family, so I call her grandparents what she calls them. It seems too weird to call them Mr. and Mrs. Berra, and I could never bring myself to call them Yogi and Carmen. So GY and GC, it is.)

The London Games are less than three months away. I know I’m excited. And taking lots of naps in preparation.

To help you prepare, we’re featuring a handful of athletes whose names you’ve likely never heard, but whose stories will inspire you to turn on your TV come July 27 (Opening Ceremonies) and keep watching through August 12 (Closing Ceremonies).

We call the feature GAME CHANGERS and you can read about a new athlete each week on ESPN.com/Olympics. But I’ll make it easier for you:

The NFL Draft is a strange event. The months leading up to the Draft are even stranger, starting with the NFL Scouting Combine, an event recently dubbed by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk as “The Underwear Olympics.” Over the course of a few days, an athlete can run a 40-yard dash, test in the bench press, grant a few media interviews and watch his draft stock soar with the completion of each task. Of course, he can also watch his worth plummet faster than the stock market on Black Tuesday.

There are few things cooler than watching your friends kick ass.

Fortunately, I get to do it a lot.

Amy is in the green dress - always the center of attention.

Three years ago, my friend Amy Unell was a producer at the Today Show and based in Burbank, CA. Then she was offered a fellowship at her alma mater, Duke University, and the opportunity to make a documentary that she’d been dreaming about for years, on the longtime track coach at Duke. So she took leave from work, headed to Durham and one year later, I was in NYC watching a Tribeca Film Festival screening of The Coach Buehler Story.

Gary Ziegler - the man who may one day take me back to Peru

Last Thursday, I was invited to attend women’s night at the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles. Started in 1921, the club is still a mens-only organization, but once every couple of weeks, they invite women to their weekly dinner and presentation. Current club president Marc Weitz is a fan of my blog, so he and past president Steve Bein invited me to be their guests. They’ve also invited me to give a presentation at a meeting this fall.

Friday morning, I woke up early to drive down to the Home Depot Center in Carson (home of the LA Galaxy) to watch my friend Matt Bigos race in the UCI Paracycling World Championships at the HDC Velodrome. You might remember Matt from a story I wrote on him in Men’s Fitness a few years back.

But if you don’t, a quick recap: In 2003, Matt, a former motocross racer and mechanic, was paralyzed in a car accident and told he would never walk again. Travis Pastrana was driving the car. The two developed an unlikely friendship that continues to this day.

A few years back, in response to the dwindling number of top-level action sports contests, action sports athletes began organizing their own. At first, many of them were small, grassroots events held for amateur athletes or for small prize purses. And a lot of them didn’t last more than a year or so.

But that’s changing, and it’s been really wonderful to watch. Imagine, instead of bitching and moaning, athletes are actually taking the initiative (and their own time and money) to change the situation for themselves and their peers. Even the contests that lasted only a short time made an impact on the sport and provided additional opportunities for athletes who wouldn’t have had the opportunity to compete, say, on the east coast or in a women’s-only event.

January was a long, trying month. So in lieu of a long post about my monthlong journey, I decided to post links to some of the stories I wrote in the past 31 days. There was tons traveling, a lot of good times and, unfortunately, much sadness as well. Overall, when I look back at January 2012, I will consider it a celebration of life.

I ended the college football season with stops at the Rose Bowl and BCS National Championship game in New Orleans. After the LSU-Bama game, I talked with Alabama RB Trent Richardson and found out he’d actually committed to the “goals” project we started at the beginning of the season. I felt like I’d won a national championship, myself! READ THE MAGAZINE PIECE HERE.