EDITOR’S NOTE: September was a rough month for professional athletes, the NFL in particular. It stirred strong feelings in our Sac-Joaquin edition coordinator and writer, Jim McCue. He sent this to me and I felt it deserving of this page this month. Hopefully you do too.    I am... Read more

   Heart Rate Variability measurements provide invaluable data for the training process. TRAINING TIME : Tim Rudd for IYCA    Heart rate variability (HRV) has been getting a ton of press lately, and with good reason. Coaches and athletes all know that training, nutrition and recovery always has been,... Read more

   Don’t wait for a suspected concussion to have your brain scanned     It’s hard to make the concussion statistics any scarier than they already are. Millions of traumatic brain injuries occur each year in sports and recreation-related activities. Many concussions are difficult to detect and many athletes underreport... Read more

   Your mental game matters — so what should you do about it?    Do your technical skills matter? Of course. How much time do you spend developing those skills? Most high school/youth athletes spend an average of 10 hours per week practicing and competing at their sport. If... Read more

     For as long as I’ve been writing about high school sports, at least 7-10 times a year, I have had the same question asked of me.     I’ve been asked this question a bit more since we began SportStars, but I’d hear it when I was in... Read more

   During the World Cup, there is a lot of talk about the formation and the tactics, but then they focus on the star players. What’s more important? P.L., Sonoma     Great question — and it applies to all sports. In fact, I’ll start with college basketball.    When... Read more

   I love the World Cup. And it’s not because I’m a big soccer fan.     I love the World Cup because it turns me — and millions of other fair weather futbol Americans — into soccer fans. All-consuming soccer fans. Even if just for a few summer fortnights.... Read more

When it comes to your summer conditioning, everything is relative  Behind the Clipboard by Clay Kallam I’m going to play football in the fall, and my mom says I should get up early every morning — or at least four days a week — and go run five miles... Read more

First Pitch by Jim McCue      The best part about reviewing the athletic year in the Sac-Joaquin Section is that all of these opinions are 100 percent accurate. No guesses or predictions this time of year as we take a look back at some of our favorite stories... Read more

   Putting together retrospective issues like this are always a fun project. This is the second year we’ve done this, but the first time in which we’ve been able to make it its own special edition. Going through our photo archives from the past nine months obviously brought out... Read more