The SportsThink Weekly Read #10

January 21, 2022

The SportsThink Weekly Read highlights my favorite sport-related article of the week. On the last Friday of each month, I send out the Monthly Review, a longer digest of readings and other content of interest. Most articles are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read them within the past week (or the past month, in the case of the Monthly Review). Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my life-long obsession with the games we play. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!

The Weekly Read

The Positively True Adventures of the Kilgore Rangerette–Kidnapping Mom, by Katy Vine, via Texas Monthly. Thanks to Lauren Bowers for sharing this one. So… this is the second week in a row where the read is as much true crime as it is sports-related, but this is too good not to share (and I’m guessing Texas Monthly is not regular reading for many of my subscribers). Promise I’ll have some more traditional sports content in next week’s Monthly Review.

I don’t want to spoil anything before you read, so I’ll just share the article’s tagline: What pushed an East Texas mother to kidnap at gunpoint the director of the famed college drill team and her nineteen-year-old daughter? A pretty wild read.

I will note that “famed” is perhaps an understatement when it comes to the Kilgore Rangerettes. The East Texas community college’s drill team is an institution, having performed at 71 (!) Cotton Bowls in a row, in addition to five presidential inaugurations. Their alumnae have gone on to become Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and Radio City Rockettes. Kind of a big deal. (As for why American community colleges often have surprisingly robust sports offerings…that’s an analysis for another day.)

Here’s some cool vintage footage:

Here are the current Rangerettes doing their thing:

See you next week,

Tolga