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Leveling the playing field for women

Published

4 months ago

August 29, 2025

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She brought women’s soccer to Palestine. Now Honey Thaljieh is advancing equity in sports on a global pitch.

By Orly Halpern

This is where it began.

This patch of cracked cement strewn with broken glass and gravel, ringed with a beaten-up chain-link fence that can barely contain the errant soccer balls. “It’s the same. Nothing has changed,” says Honey Thaljieh, sweeping her gaze over the lot where she and a handful of young women played soccer more than two decades ago as students at Bethlehem University in the West Bank, the occupied Palestinian territory.

On an overcast day in April, a group of young boys, their shoes crunching over the debris, kick a ball into the goal. Thaljieh remembers how bad it hurt to fall on the unforgiving surface. Still, it’s like home, she says. She tells the boys a photographer will be taking photos of the makeshift pitch. “It’s not a pitch; it’s a prison,” a short 9-year-old named Mohammed answers back. Honey breaks out in her trademark gusty laugh. Prison. She has used that same word to describe her own obstacles: Her gender was a prison, her nationality, the social restrictions of Arab society, war, all of it.

But prison or not, for Honey Thaljieh, this patch of ground was a launchpad.

Young and determined

Thaljieh grew up in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Bethlehem’s old city, a street away from the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the grotto where tradition holds Jesus was born.

The third of five children in a Palestinian Christian family of modest means, Thaljieh had little to do at home. In the conservative Palestinian society of the 1980s and early 1990s, girls were discouraged from playing outside. She was stir-crazy. “I used to come back from school and watch the boys playing football,” Thaljieh says, sitting on a heavily stuffed old-fashioned sofa in the family’s living room, where her soccer trophies still decorate the shelves. She’s here for the Easter holiday, visiting from Zurich, where she works at the headquarters of FIFA, the international soccer governing body, and where she’s a member of the Rotary Club of Zurich Circle International.

Here at home, the memories are everywhere, especially of the pull of soccer and of her intuition, already as a kid, that the game could deliver at least a sense of freedom. One day, as a 7-year-old Thaljieh passed the boys, the ball happened to roll in her direction. She started skillfully imitating the dribbling and kicking that she’d seen players do at the World Cup on her family’s black-and-white TV. The boys were shocked. As in many parts of the world, soccer was a male-only domain in Palestinian society. “But when they started to see how good I was with the ball, they started to fight over me and which team I should belong to,” she says. So Thaljieh began joining them, kicking a ball made of wadded-up newspaper around the impossibly narrow alleyways outside her home, often in her bare feet.

Less impressed was her father, who did not want his daughter playing outside with the boys and definitely not playing soccer. When he returned from a long day of work, he would scold her and force her inside. “I would cry and cry, and then the next day, repeat. Every day, same story. I didn’t give up. He gave up!” she says.

Now 70 years old, Micheal Thaljieh looks sheepish when asked about his opposition. Sitting behind the counter of his modest shop near Manger Square where he sells dish-washing liquid and cold drinks alongside Palestinian olive oil and soap, he does his best to explain. “You know, it was Arab society here and it was a little difficult then for a girl to play football, but in the end, she had to play and see her life and the world progress,” he says. The shop is decorated with flags and banknotes from the countries where Thaljieh has played. 

“There was no safety, no freedom anywhere. I grew up with these traumas.”

So the determined girl kept playing. She wore shorts, breaking another cultural taboo on the modesty of women’s attire. She’d come home bruised and sometimes bleeding. Her defiant spirit would define her attitude toward future obstacles. And they would be many.

‘No safety, no freedom’

Israel has occupied the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other is Gaza), since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Today, Palestinian cities and villages are hemmed in by a tortured patchwork of Israeli military checkpoints, tall concrete walls and fences, and Israeli settlements, considered by most of the world to be illegal under international law. For the territory’s 3 million Palestinians, trying to get somewhere a short distance away can be a dangerous, hourslong exercise in frustration because of Israeli restrictions on movement throughout the territory.

Multiple uprisings against the occupation have triggered Israeli military crackdowns and years of bloodshed, dashing hopes for Palestinian statehood and independence. “There was no safety, no freedom anywhere,” Thaljieh remembers. “I grew up with these traumas.” During her junior year of high school in 2000, a conflict known as the second intifada, or uprising, broke out. Backed by tanks and helicopters, Israeli forces invaded Palestinian cities and imposed a siege on residents.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other is Gaza), since the 1967 Mideast war.

Illustration by Madison Wisse

The fighting lasted for more than four years. In the streets of Bethlehem, gunbattles raged and, in one of the most dramatic moments of the conflict, a group of Palestinian fighters holed up inside the Church of the Nativity near the Thaljiehs’ home. The Israeli military deployed tanks in Manger Square and snipers took positions around the sixth-century church in a standoff that lasted more than a month. During that time, Thaljieh and her family were forced to stay in their home. “We were only allowed out for short periods to buy food,” she says.

Israeli soldiers raided hundreds of homes, including Thaljieh’s. In the dead of night, her sister shouted for her to get up. Thaljieh remembers thinking she was having a nightmare until the voices of soldiers coming down the hall got louder. They forced the family into the street in a trauma that still sometimes disturbs her sleep.

Amid the turmoil, Thaljieh was trying to complete normal teenage rituals, including preparing for her final high school exams, known as tawjihi, essential for anyone seeking to go on to a university. It’s a nerve-wracking affair in the best of times. The day Thaljieh was to take one of the exams, an Israeli tank crushed the family car that would have gotten her to the testing location. Determined to get there, she flagged down an ambulance and pleaded with the driver, “Please, can you take me?” To her astonishment, as she opened the doors, she discovered other desperate students also hitching a ride to the exam. Despite the odds, Thaljieh finished second in her class and was accepted to Bethlehem University.

Forming a team

Thaljieh started at the university in 2002, as the conflict rolled on, and was restless. “Nobody was playing football because they were scared of the Israeli soldiers,” she says. She saw an advertisement hanging in the cafeteria recruiting young women interested in football. Samar Araj Mousa, the first woman to direct the university’s sports programs, wanted to create a women’s football team.

To see if this new student could really play, she sent Thaljieh to the men’s soccer coach, Raed Ayyad. In an encounter that echoed her first street matches with the boys in her neighborhood, the man with a long beard looked at her and said, “You play football? Take a ball. Show me.”

“I started dribbling,” Thaljieh says, “and then I shot the ball. It hit the fence and burst. He looked at me and said, ‘Now we can start to play football.’”

But a team of one is not a team. Araj Mousa advertised around other schools and at a home for orphans. One young woman was spotted competing in a men’s cycling race and was recruited to join. Thaljieh also tried to persuade women playing on basketball and volleyball teams. But soccer was seen as a man’s sport. “They said, ‘No football, we will become masculine,’” Thaljieh recalls. “And I said, ‘Look at me. Nothing changed!’”

Four young women joined. They trained on the concrete court next to the university and played younger boys’ clubs since there were no other women’s teams. Newspapers and TV stations began telling their story, and soon three more women’s teams were established, in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Jericho and in Gaza. “Their stories were like mine,” Thaljieh says. “They started in the streets somewhere, or in a refugee camp, or in an orphans village.”

Thaljieh walks the streets in Bethlehem, where she attended university and played soccer, eventually joining an unofficial national women’s team.

Image credit: Samar Hazboun

The effort grew into an unofficial national women’s team of more than a dozen players. In 2005, they traveled on a shoestring budget to neighboring Jordan to play in their first tournament with a full 11 players on the field per side. “We lost — epically,” Thaljieh says. And they continued to lose. With no money, no league, little equipment, and inadequate infrastructure, they were the ultimate underdogs.

On top of that, Israeli military checkpoints made it difficult for players from different cities to train together. The women could get held up for hours at checkpoints, sometimes late at night. Even those parents who encouraged their daughters to play worried about their safety on the roads, and players began to leave the team.

The women desperately needed support. To get it, they first needed official recognition from the Palestinian Football Association. Only then could they form a professional league and formally compete at the international level. While finishing her bachelor’s degree, Thaljieh and the team’s backer, Araj Mousa, campaigned for recognition, including lobbying officials and appearing for TV interviews.

Later, Thaljieh even got hold of the phone number of the president of the Palestinian Football Association, Jibril Rajoub, a senior figure in the ruling Fatah party and a former top security official. “He was surprised. He said, ‘How did you get my number?’” Thaljieh recalls. “He’s a very powerful man.” Soon after, they met face-to-face at a men’s match at the Khader stadium near Bethlehem, where she sold him on the idea of a national women’s team. “He was very open-minded to the girls playing football, very encouraging, very supportive,” she says. “So it was like a win-win.”

A career with FIFA

A turning point came in 2008, when FIFA representatives arrived and officially launched a Palestinian women’s league. It was a dream come true: national and international recognition. Within a year, the national team was playing on a full-size turf field in the West Bank in front of thousands of spectators. “When I started in football, no one wanted to recognize girls playing,” Thaljieh says. “So that was the moment that I said, ‘Wow. I made it happen. It worked.’”

Thaljieh captained the team for a total of seven years until injuries forced her from the playing field. She began developing youth sports programs around the West Bank and realizing the impact she and her teammates could have on children there — and around the world — who needed to see someone who looked like them to imagine themselves as champions, as leaders.

Thaljieh looks through photos of her playing days, which included seven years as captain of the Palestine women’s national team.

Image credit: Samar Hazboun

Thaljieh earned a master’s degree in sports management from the FIFA Master program and in 2012 landed an internship and then a job at the organization’s Zurich headquarters — completing a remarkable rise from Bethlehem’s alleyways to the highest body for soccer in the world. With FIFA, she began working in its women’s football development program, which supports 211 member associations with everything from league development and commercial strategy to leadership and coach mentorship. The role opened her eyes to the fact that women’s fight for equality in athletics, among other arenas, extended far beyond her homeland.

“I came to Europe and I was shocked that women are not represented,” she says. At the time, there were no women on FIFA’s top decision-making body. Women’s teams, banned in many European countries until the 1970s, still lacked resources, adequate facilities and pay, and were subjected to harassment, sexism, and social stigma. In the United States, the four-time World Cup champion women’s national team fought for years to wrest from U.S. Soccer in 2022 a promise to equalize pay with a men’s team that has made it to a World Cup quarterfinal only once since finishing third in the inaugural tournament in 1930.

Today, Thaljieh is FIFA public relations manager with focuses on spreading the message that football is for everyone and using the sport as a platform for social change, diplomacy, and inclusion. Initiatives she’s been part of have included helping female refugees become involved in the sport and running campaigns to end violence against women. One mission she especially cherishes is delivering new soccer cleats to children in refugee camps and poor communities around the world. She knows how it feels; she didn’t get proper playing shoes until she was 21. “I see the happiness on their face,” she says. “I feel it. It gives me goose bumps.”

Around the world there are signs of change, including the appointment of FIFA’s first female secretary general, Fatma Samoura, in 2016. Growth in sponsorships, attendance, and broadcast viewership point to the value of the professional women’s game.

Thaljieh picks up one of the many trophies from her soccer career

Image credit: Samar Hazboun

And Thaljieh uses her platform to push for inclusivity in football and for women’s empowerment, capturing the attention of audiences at TEDx Talks and other high-profile venues. One such talk, at a Rotary club in Zurich, led to an invitation to join the Rotary Club of Zurich Circle International as it was forming in 2020. For the first project she proposed as a member, the club purchased and distributed water fountains to Bethlehem public schools with the help of Rotary members there. The club’s charter president, Hermann W. Delliehausen, says Thaljieh has brought energy to the group and a willingness to do things differently. “When she enters the room everyone is focused on her,” he says. “She’s a very, very, very special person. She’s the sunshine of our club.”

The next generation

As her visit home to Bethlehem nears an end, Thaljieh stops by the Diyar Women’s Football Club that she’s supported for years. Seven teenage girls are passing balls back and forth while their coach watches at the expansive Dar al-Kalima Indoor Sports Hall. Inaugurated in 2014, it’s one of the largest indoor sports venues in the West Bank. The squeak of the girls’ sneakers, the coach’s shouts, and the thud of the balls echo through the high-ceilinged hall.

“I took football as a tool to fight oppression, inequality, injustice.”

Thaljieh walks in, dressed in a knit blue blazer and fitted black jeans with her recognizable curly black mane framing her large eyes and big smile. Thaljieh isn’t tall, but here, too, her presence is clearly felt.

Selina Ghneim, a 15-year-old with a long ponytail, pink shoelaces, and a big sore on her left knee, exchanges looks with her friends. Thaljieh approaches the girl, a member of the Palestine national team for women under 20, and gives her shoulders a squeeze. “Do you know who I am?” she asks playfully.

“Yes,” the teenager says shyly. “You are Honey Thaljieh.” 

“What else?”

“You work at FIFA.”

Honey knows who Selina is too. “She made the goal against Jordan,” she says. 

The teen smiles softly, looking down, simultaneously proud and starstruck. Ten days earlier the U-20 team won the West Asian Football Federation championship, the first international title for a Palestinian national women’s team.

Thaljieh (center) with some of the women and girls of the Diyar Football Club that she supports in Bethlehem.

Image credit: Samar Hazboun

Two women, Maha Araj and Sarab Shaer, have come to the hall to see Thaljieh. Two decades earlier, the three played together on the newly formed team at Bethlehem University and later on the national team. Today Araj is the coach of the Diyar club and Shaer is coaching the club’s under-15 players. Shaer, who was living in a home for orphans when she started playing soccer, credits Thaljieh with changing her life. “She encouraged me to take courses, to develop myself,” she says. “I received a bachelor’s degree in sports management. Without her I would never have made such achievements.”

The women marvel at the indoor training facility. It’s a far cry from their cracked concrete court. From their original group of five players there are today more than 300 girls and women playing in 15 clubs around the West Bank competing locally and internationally. Teams established in Gaza fared far worse under an Israeli blockade of the territory starting in 2007 and the current war. “We don’t even know if any of the girls are still alive,” Thaljieh says.

Adversity is ever present, and looking back Thaljieh doubts she’d be the person she is today without the hardships and without football, which she regards as an instrument of liberation. “I took football as a tool to fight oppression, inequality, injustice, and poverty, to fight for equality, women’s rights, and opportunity. It gave me all the opportunities I needed to bring me where I am today.” Now, in her footsteps, countless others can follow.

This story originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

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A look at aging baby boomers in the United States | News, Sports, Jobs

Published

4 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Your Sports Nation

CORRECTS FIRST NAME TO DIANE – Diane West and her grandson Paul Quirk pose for a photo, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Marietta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

The oldest baby boomers — once the vanguard of an American youth that revolutionized U.S. culture and politics — turn 80 in 2026.
The generation that twirled the first plastic hula hoops and dressed up the first Barbie dolls, embraced the TV age, blissed out at Woodstock and protested and fought in the Vietnam War — the cohort that didn’t trust anyone over age 30 — now is contributing to the overall aging of America.
Boomers becoming octogenarians in 2026 include actor Henry Winkler and baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, singers Cher and Dolly Parton and presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
The aging and shrinking youth of America
America’s population swelled with around 76 million births from 1946 to 1964, a spike magnified by couples reuniting after World War Two and enjoying postwar prosperity.
Boomers were better educated and richer than previous generations, and they helped grow a consumer-driven economy. In their youth, they pushed for social change through the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s rights movement and efforts to end the Vietnam War.
“We had rock ‘n’ roll. We were the first generation to get out and demonstrate in the streets. We were the first generation, that was, you know, a socially conscious generation,” said Diane West, a metro Atlanta resident who turns 80 in January. “Our parents played by the rules. We didn’t necessarily play by the rules, and there were lots of us.”
As they got older they became known as the “me” generation, a pejorative term coined by writer Tom Wolfe to reflect what some regarded as their self-absorption and consumerism.
“The thing about baby boomers is they’ve always had a spotlight on them, no matter what age they were,” Brookings demographer William Frey said. “They were a big generation, but they also did important things.”
By the end of this decade, all baby boomers will be 65 and older, and the number of people 80 and over will double in 20 years, Frey said.
The share of senior citizens in the U.S. population is projected to grow from 18.7% in 2025 to nearly 23% by 2050, while children under 18 decline from almost 21% to a projected 18.4%.
Without any immigration, the U.S. population will start shrinking in five years. That’s when deaths will surpass births, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which were revised in September to account for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Population growth comes from immigration as well as births outpacing deaths.
The aging of America is being compounded by longer lives due to better health care and lower birth rates.
The projected average U.S. life expectancy at birth rises from 78.9 years in 2025 to 82.2 years in 2055, according to the CBO. And since the Great Recession in 2008, when the fertility rate was 2.08, around the 2.1 rate needed for children to numerically replace their parents, it has been on a steady decline, hitting 1.6 in 2025.
Younger generations miss boomer milestones
Women are having fewer children because they are better educated, they’re delaying marriage to focus on careers and they’re having their first child at a later age. Unaffordable housing, poor access to child care and the growing expenses of child-rearing also add up to fewer kids.
University of New Hampshire senior demographer Kenneth Johnson estimates that the result has been 11.8 million fewer births, compared to what might have been had the fertility rate stayed at Great Recession levels.
“I was young when I had kids. I mean that’s what we did — we got out of college, we got married and we had babies,” said West, who has two daughters, a stepdaughter and six grandchildren. “My kids got married in their 30s, so it’s very different.”
A recent Census Bureau study showed that 21st century young adults in the U.S. haven’t been adulting like baby boomers did. In 1975, almost half of 25-to-34-year-olds had moved out of their parents’ home, landed jobs, gotten married and had kids. By the early 2020s, less than a quarter of U.S. adults had hit these milestones.
West, whose 21-year-old grandson lives with her, understands why: They lack the prospects her generation enjoyed. Her grandson, Paul Quirk, said it comes down to financial instability.
“They were able to buy a lot of things, a lot cheaper,” Quirk said.
All of her grandchildren are frustrated by the economy, West added.
“You have to get three roommates in order to afford a place,” she said. “When we got out of college, we had a job waiting for us. And now, people who have master’s degrees are going to work fast food while they look for a real job.”
Implications for the economy
The aging of America could constrain economic growth. With fewer workers paying taxes, Social Security and Medicare will be under more pressure. About 34 seniors have been supported by every 100 workers in 2025, but that ratio grows to 50 seniors per 100 working-age people in about 30 years, according to estimates released last year by the White House.
When West launched her career in employee benefits and retirement planning in 1973, each 100 workers supported 20 or fewer retirees, by some calculations.
Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are among those pushing for an increase in fertility. Vance has suggested giving parents more voting power, according to their numbers of children, or following the example of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in giving low-interest loans to married parents and tax exemptions to women who have four children or more.
Frey said programs that incentivize fertility among U.S. women hardly ever work, so funding should support pre-kindergarten and paid family leave.
“I think the best you can do for people who do want to have kids is to make it easier and less expensive to have them and raise them,” he said. “Those things may not bring up the fertility rate as much as people would like, but at least the kids who are being born will have a better chance of succeeding.”

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Published

4 hours ago

December 24, 2025

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Tennessee Developments: Rolling on the River

Published

12 hours ago

December 24, 2025

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Major cities in Tennessee are reimagining their public riverfronts as vibrant community spaces.

By Cary Estes on December 23, 2025

River City Company launches a visionary plan for the Chattanooga riverfront, showcased in the rendering.

When Tennessee native Anna Mae Bullock – better known as Tina Turner – famously sang about “rollin’ on the river,” she was referring to the Mississippi River, which runs along the western edge of the state.

But the Mighty Mississippi makes up only a small portion of the more than 60,000 miles of waterways flowing throughout Tennessee. And increasingly, this natural resource is being further enhanced through public-private partnerships designed to make many of the Tennessee riverfronts even more attractive and accessible. This, in turn, is expanding recreational opportunities and boosting local economies.

“It really speaks to a statewide commitment to investing in the quality of life in Tennessee,” says Patrick Osborne, planning and design director of the Tennessee RiverLine project. “The state is embracing the value of outdoor recreation. Projects like these reflect a broader movement, where Tennesseans see their waterways as assets to be celebrated and protected.”

Memphis River Parks Partnership

The City of Memphis has a front-row view to the watery wonder that is the Mississippi River. But easy access from downtown Memphis to the river has long been limited.

That began to change in 2017 with the formation of the Memphis River Parks Partnership. The goal was to convert 5 miles of mostly underused river parks into a connected network of public spaces, with multiple access points to Beale Street and other popular downtown destinations.

“It is meant to draw people together in one place that is beautiful and peaceful,” says Paul Chandler, CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership. “The intent is to unify our city and enhance relationships that might have never been developed without this park system.”

The centerpiece is the renovation of 31-acre Tom Lee Park, which opened in 2023 and receives approximately 2 million visitors annually. Chandler expects the park to become even more popular in 2026 with the scheduled opening of the Memphis Flyway, a 40-foot-high observation deck that will extend 218 feet over the Mississippi River.

“When the sun sets across that huge body of water, the view from the Flyway is going to be really spectacular,” Chandler says.

Evolving Chattanooga’s Riverfront

The City of Chattanooga made major enhancements to its Tennessee River frontage in the early 2000s with the 21st Century Waterfront plan. Now, Chattanooga’s economic development engine – the River City Co. – is bringing additional improvements to the area through the Evolving Our Riverfront Parks plan, with work scheduled to begin in 2026.

“Our goal is to add strategic features and amenities to allow for year-round daily use and enjoyment of the waterfront,” says River City Co. President and CEO Emily Mack. “We’re focusing on people-centered design and providing places of enjoyment for our community.”

Proposed changes include improvements to the riverfront pier, the creation of additional river access points, landscaping with more shade trees, two new restaurants, two new recreational spaces with playgrounds and more public restrooms.

“This is an opportunity to provide a destination for people to gather and connect with the community and with nature,” Mack says. “It will help support our existing riverfront events, which are huge to the local economy. It will also serve as an economic catalyst for our downtown businesses. This is going to have an incredible ripple effect throughout our city.”

People kayaking on the river. — The long-term goal for Tennessee RiverLine is to be a 652-mile, 1.2
million-acre river park.

Knoxville Is Part of Tennessee RiverLine

The most expansive project of them all, the Tennessee RiverLine, began as an idea by a student in the University of Tennessee School of Landscape Architecture to create a connected system of recreational opportunities along the Tennessee River.

Now, work is underway to make this vision a reality; the long-term goal is to form a 652-mile, 1.2 million-acre river park, stretching from Knoxville to Paducah, Kentucky.

“It’s a regional vision for how our communities connect with the Tennessee River and adjacent public lands,” Osborne says. “Our focus is on planning and designing river access sites, parks, recreation opportunities and the supporting infrastructure.”

The key to the project’s success, Osborne says, is through the RiverTowns Program, in which RiverLine officials work directly with local community leaders. There are currently 12 communities in Tennessee that have signed up to be part of the program.

“This is a generational project that is moving forward in phases, primarily through our RiverTowns Program,” Osborne says. “We’re helping each of these towns identify and prioritize projects that help improve river access and highlight restorative recreation practices. We want to ensure that the river is accessible, healthy and celebrated for generations to come.”

Tennessee Focuses on Outstanding Parks, Too

The most popular outdoor attraction in Tennessee is easily Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which received more than 12 million visitors in 2024. But if you want to be a little more low-key than Smoky, there are also 60-plus state parks across the state.

The offerings range from the nearly 30,000-acre Fall Creek Falls State Park near Spencer to the 11-acre Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Nashville. Scott’s Gulf Wilderness State Park in Sparta features the 110-foot-tall Virgin Falls, which requires a 4-mile hike to reach. It is one of more than 80 waterfalls that can be found within Tennessee’s state parks.

Tennessee added several state parks in 2025. Though it was a division of an existing outdoor attraction, the Hiwassee/ Ocoee Scenic River State Park was split into two separate parks to provide more dedicated resources to each area. The Ocoee River was the site of the 1996 Olympic whitewater slalom events, and the 2.5-mile course remains popular with paddlers.

Head of the Crow State Park and Fiery Gizzard State Park near Monteagle were both carved out of the already existing South Cumberland State Park.

Even more state parks are on the way. The current 950-acre Devil’s Backbone State Natural Area, which is just off Natchez Trace Parkway near Gordonsburg, is set to receive official state park status soon too.

Tennessee bird watching is also exceptional, with over 400 documented species, including residents and migrants. The Cumberland Mountains are vital, hosting the highest global concentration of the near-threatened cerulean warbler’s breeding pairs. Additionally, successful reintroduction efforts mean the majestic bald eagle is now observable statewide.

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Sign-ups open for LaFayette Parks and Recreation baseball, softball — The LaFayette Sun

Published

12 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Your Sports Nation

BY KADIE TAYLOR

THE LAFAYETTE SUN

LAFAYETTE — LaFayette Parks and Recreation now has early-bird registration open for spring baseball and softball, ending on Dec. 31. The early-bird registration fee is $60, and regular registration is $75 — regular registration ends on Jan. 31. Upon registering $40 is due, and the remaining fee must be paid by Jan. 31.

“A lot of our kids actually trended toward going to Valley to play, and I think Roanoke as well — so we’re trying to bring those kids and families back to our program so we can actually grow our own program inside of LaFayette,” said LaFayette Diamond Youth Baseball Coordinator Jamarcus Walton. “This is the first year where we’re actually trying to incorporate the softball aspect into our program as well… We’re looking for volunteer coaches to coach any level, and we’re also looking for players to fill out all those rosters — hopefully, this year, we can have more than one team in each age group.”

Walton said there are many ways the community can get involved in helping the LaFayette Parks and Rec baseball and softball programs grow and serve local children, including sponsoring an athlete, a business sponsorships and donating funds for new bats.

“Currently, we’re in need of sponsorships, because I was just informed at the district meeting that we have to change over to USA bats — so that’s gonna be a big difference this year for the entire Diamond Youth Program in the state of Alabama,” Walton said. “So we’re going to definitely need some sponsorships in order to help the city purchase [those] — that’s for the entire 6U up to the 12U level as well. So hopefully we can get all that done. I have a lot of faith in this program, it’s grown tremendously since we first brought it back.”

With a desire to provide a space for activity, Walton said he hopes access to youth sports will support community growth and provide a space for children to have fun.

“I feel like youth sports are the one thing that drives the community,” he said. “And as you can see, without youth sports, your community sort of dwindles away. You have different families leaving the area, transition to other places that have these programs in place — but if we can bring all these extracurricular activities to our own city — I feel like that help us retain, of course, our citizens, but also help us grow and expand. LaFayette lately has been trending down the population, but we’re trying to bring the youth sports in order to bring those families back to our communities, so we actually drive success.”

Walton said for young children, co-ed T-ball is offered for ages three and four, and for ages five and six they can enjoy modified coach pitch style. Baseball and softball teams are offered for ages seven and eight which will have coach pitch double, and nine and 10 which will start kid pitch, as well as kid pitch for ages 11 and 12. The age cut off to participate is on May 1, as long as children do not turn 13 they can still play in the 12U age group.

“At the end of the day, everything revolves around the kids,” he said. “Youth sports, it’s all about the kids. So we’re trying to find ways to get more revenue and money [in the program] to do more for the kids, so we can have different cookouts and stuff like that for the kids as well. [We want] to give them something different to do [other] than just staying at home and going to school every day.”

For more information, visit Parks & Recreation of LaFayette on Facebook.

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Hurlock gets first ever Salvation Army red kettle | Latest News

Published

13 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Your Sports Nation

HURLOCK, Md – The town of Hurlock now has a Salvation Army red kettle to help raise funds for families in need this holiday season. The kettle is set up at Hurlock Gas and Deli on South Main Street, thanks to the efforts of an employee at the store.

T.J. Higgins, who works at Hurlock Gas and Deli, says the idea started when he approached Hurlock’s mayor, Earl Murphy, about bringing a kettle to the town.

“I reached out to our newly elected mayor,” Higgins said. “He said that he was open to any and all ideas. I knew the holiday season was coming up, and I just said to him, you know, what about the Salvation Army? They don’t have a presence here. You see them in Cambridge. We see them in other areas. What about here in Hurlock?”

From there, coordination with the Salvation Army helped bring the iconic red kettle to town just in time for the holidays. Higgins added that the kettle is meant to encourage everyone to chip in, no matter the size of the donation.

“Everybody sees the red kettle,” Higgins said. “They know what it looks like. They hear that bell. Sometimes it goes to the wayside in the background. But basically, it’s just about giving. It gives the community and strangers, citizens the opportunity to chip in whatever they can to help those that really need it the most.”

Troy Paul of the Salvation Army says the kettle gives the community a chance to directly support local families.

“Every dollar that’s donated here stays local,” Paul said. “So if you donate to a red kettle or donate to the Salvation Army, everything stays right here in Hurlock.”

Darrell Hurston of Elite Youth Sports, whose group volunteered at the kettle, says it’s also a chance to teach kids about giving back.

“One thing we try to teach our kids is, integrity and discipline and, and community service,” Hurston told WBOC. “Right? So this is part of that. You can’t get any more community service than the Salvation Army.”

The Salvation Army red kettle in Hurlock will remain in place through Christmas Eve. Volunteers are still needed to help ring the bell and collect donations, offering neighbors one more opportunity to support their community during the holiday season.

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Rec Sports

How sports betting lures teenagers into risky arenas

Published

14 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Evva Starr has heard thousands of pitches from student journalists over the years as the faculty adviser to Common Sense, Thomas S. Wootton High School’s newspaper.

“I get excited whenever there’s something new,” Starr, the Rockville school’s English department resource teacher, says with a laugh. She remembers how her ears perked up last school year when Nathan Zweig, a junior in her newspaper class, proposed an article about Fliff, an app that bills itself as a free play-for-fun sportsbook. Underage use of sports betting apps in the halls of local high schools is widespread, students and school faculty say. Recent legalization, word-of-mouth, promotions on social media, and ease of access have contributed.

“That was the first time I’d ever heard of Fliff. I thought, ‘Cool. Great. Something different,’ ” recalls Starr, 52, of Potomac. “Then Nathan explained Fliff to me. Now that I understand it, I think it’s terrible.”

Fliff is one of many sports betting apps and is considered among the most popular for underage betting. This app uses virtual currency and follows a sweepstakes model, which means no purchase is needed to play. That distinction separates Fliff from more traditional online gambling sites. Signing up is easy on the colorful, flashy app. Tiny print says players must be 18, but no age verification is required. In other states, the minimum age may be older. Players can quickly earn badges and loyalty rewards, and climb leaderboards betting on an array of daily sporting events across the country and around the globe from college football to professional tennis, English Premier League soccer, NBA games and mixed martial arts.

Unlike underage drinking or substance misuse, online gambling can be almost invisible without the telltale red flags, such as garbage cans filled with beer bottles and hard seltzer cans or the acrid smell of marijuana.

“Fliff is all around me. Every day, kids at lunch are on their phones, talking about what bets are going to hit,” says Zweig, 17, of Potomac. “I have friends who don’t follow sports, but they still bet. They say it’s not real gambling, but eventually some kids will go to apps like BetMGM or DraftKings. It’s hooking people.”

Some Wootton students, however, including senior Justin Heller, 17, of Rockville, disagree.

“Well, people see it different ways. I think it’s helpful because it shows you in the end that everyone ends up losing money. It gives you free money to learn with, play with,” Heller says. “It’s taught me something definitely—to be smart with my own money and not bet it away.”

Starr green-lighted Zweig’s pitch, and soon after he published an opinion column highlighting the many risks and few rewards of underage sports betting.

In 2022, about one in seven Montgomery County high school students had gambled on something in the previous 12 months, according to the Maryland Department of Health’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted every other year. The actual numbers may be higher now, based on comments from more than 25 students, educators and parents interviewed by Bethesda Magazine.

“Most parents have no idea how widespread it is,” says Joe Cassidy, head baseball coach at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda since 2003. “Parents think their kids are just sports crazy or athletes or psyched about a game. But are they really excited about the Braves playing the Pirates when they can’t name a single player on either team?”

Gambling is prohibited in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). It is banned at school-sponsored events and on school property. MCPS did not respond to multiple requests for comments for this story.

“There don’t seem to be any real protections to prevent children from using the platform. Self-reporting age is a nonfactor,” says Starr, an MCPS teacher for 25 years. “My perspective is this could be onboarding them to a lifetime of addictive behaviors, not just gambling.”

In simple terms, according to the National Institutes of Health, addiction sets in when a substance, such as alcohol, “ … hijack[s] the pleasure/reward circuits in your brain and hook[s] you into wanting more and more.”

As with substance-use disorders, people with gambling disorder may also exhibit withdrawal, depression and anxiety, according to the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic reports that “gambling at a young age is … a risk factor for developing gambling disorder” later in life.

“There is a lot of crossover with video games. The easy access and fast pace keep triggering the brain. Kids don’t think about video games and loot boxes as gambling, but they are by definition,” says Heather Eshleman, prevention manager at The Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling within the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “I’ve seen a definite increase in the number of high schools reaching out to us since sports betting was legalized.”

Boys are far more likely than girls to engage in sports betting, says Stanley Tamale, a licensed professional counselor who practices in Montgomery County. Many of Tamale’s clients are young adult males between the ages of 19 and 24 who started gambling when they were in high school.

“Online sports betting is like a fishing rod. People have figured out the psychology of how to reach teens. Teens, especially boys, are risk-takers. They seek peer approval and acceptance,” says Tamale, 46. “But their brains are not fully developed until they are 25. The 16-, 17-, 18-year-old brain is so vulnerable.”

Tamale and other counselors encourage their clients to resist peer pressure and to be savvy consumers, skeptical of any free stuff, such as virtual currencies. “I tell my clients to think of those pop-ups as scam calls. Don’t be duped. You’re smarter than that. Don’t fall for the advertising. If it’s too good to be true, then it is.”

However, a confluence of factors—including illegal offshore betting sites, payment apps and slick mobile betting platforms—make that a lot easier said than done for adolescents eager to get some fast cash.

“Social media is a big factor in it: who will win, by how many points, how many total bases? Every day, TikTok videos promote the best parlays,” Zweig says. “If you get lucky and combine a bunch of games, then you can win. I have a friend who bet a dollar and picked seven games for a parlay [on Fliff]. He won 130 bucks.”

A parlay links together bets on a sequence of athletic events across teams and athletes, potentially earning a much larger payout than an individual wager. Picture this: the Ravens win, then the Commanders win by a touchdown and, finally, Nikola Jokić scores 25 points for a Nuggets victory.

Some students believe apps such as Fliff could offer valuable lessons to teenagers who gamble.

“I think for some people it’s teaching kids to gamble. Like any other video game, you can spend a lot of time on it. It depends on the person for sure,” says Vikram Mishra, 17, of Rockville, who’s also a senior at Wootton. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to make sure you have control over yourself when you’re using it.”

Coach Cassidy, 54, of Clarksburg, chats regularly with his players about the downfalls of gambling.

“I tell my players their system won’t work. I say they may give you a free dollar, but it’s Monopoly money. They’ve got your real money. Now, with AI and all these algorithms, they run millions of simulations. The odds against you are even higher,” he says with a sigh. “ ‘Guys,’ I tell them, ‘It’s stacked against you. You’re going to lose.’ ”

Sports betting exploded after the U.S. Supreme Courtallowed states to legalize it in 2018. Last year, according to the American Gaming Association, sports gambling raked in $13.71 billion in revenue, an increase of more than 25% over 2023. It marked the fourth consecutive year of eye-popping growth. The association estimates $3 billion was wagered on March Madness games alone.

Maryland legalized sports betting in 2021. Players must be 21, have a Social Security number, and be physically present in the state when betting online. The apps track the user’s location in real time.

In D.C., players only need to be 18 to bet on Daily Fantasy Sports sites such as PrizePicks and Underdog. These sites allow individuals to use real money to place bets on specific athletes, not teams, and how they will perform in a game. These platforms offer set payouts and promotions in dollars. Given the lower age requirement, they are especially popular with young men in high school. But unlike Fliff, these sites deal in dollars, not virtual currencies.

“It’s an unfair playing field, especially for boys,” says state Sen. Bryan Simonaire (R-Dist. 31) of Anne Arundel County. “Most people can gamble responsibly, but you might be part of the small percentage who get addicted. We just don’t know who they are. I want to target them and help them.”

For Simonaire, it’s personal. His father, he says, became addicted to gambling after casinos were built near his house in Arizona. He lost $1 million, says Simonaire. “The casino was 10 minutes away. He got into the habit of going. It became an addiction as opposed to entertainment,” he says. “Now we have internet gambling with instantaneous access and nonstop advertising. The ads draw kids into it.”

In 2020, Simonaire introduced a bill related to schools teaching about the risks of gambling, but it stalled during the pandemic. Earlier this year, Simonaire worked with a coalition of individuals and organizations, including The Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling, to introduce a bill in the Maryland General Assembly to revise the state’s Youth Suicide Prevention School Program and make students aware of the link between gambling and suicide. It passed unanimously.

Simonaire says it’s up to local school districts to determine how to implement the bill. He hopes students will see gambling included in the list of risk factors, along with substances such as alcohol, opioids and marijuana, by the spring. “We have a responsibility to fund education, and we’re doing it a lot through gambling,” he says. “We also have a responsibility to help students not get addicted to gambling.”

Fifteen percent of the state’s gambling revenue goes toward the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which promises to increase the education budget by $3.8 billion annually for 10 years, starting in 2021. Between July 2024 and January 2025, nearly $59 million from sports betting was directed to public education.

“I am not an alarmist,” says Steve Goodman, 50, a professor in Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management graduate program and a sports industry veteran. “For parents, I think the first step is to be aware it’s out there. Then, understand the potential mental health piece and the money piece. Are kids betting money they don’t have?”

Goodman, who lives in Bethesda and has two sons who graduated from Whitman, adds, “Sports betting is so fast and so easily done. It’s easy to hide. Even if parents do check phones, kids can bury their apps.”

The Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling highlights two main characteristics of problem gambling. The first is the inability to control the amount of time or money spent on betting. The second is the resulting negative consequences, including emotional, financial, personal and legal problems.

“To parents, I would say, ‘Keep an eye on your teens.’ There is often a difference between someone spending more time on their phone versus hiding their phone,” Tamale says. “People hide their behavior when they have a problem. It will be the same with teens and gambling. They will hide it, and parents might not find out until a young man is in trouble financially.”

Talking is often a first step toward treating potential gambling problems.

“Teenagers are good at hiding stuff, but they’re also good at telling you stuff, if you pay attention,” Cassidy says. “Online betting is the same as a drug. It’s the rush of winning, chasing the loss, chasing the high. I equate this to smoking in the ’60s. They sort of knew it was bad, but they kept that to themselves. I don’t know how you put this genie back in the bottle. It’s just going to get worse.”

Meg Drennan is a freelance journalist who has written for Education Week, The Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR. She focuses on health and wellness stories and has a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins. She lives in Bethesda with her family.

The Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling offers an online self-evaluation tool to help individuals determine if they have an issue. The center also offers resources for counseling and peer groups, and a help line. The Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services does not have any programs designed specifically to address gambling disorder.

If you or someone you know needs help with gambling, call 800-GAMBLER (800-426-2537) or visit 1800gamblerchat.org for free, confidential support 24/7.

This appears in the November/December 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

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