The Brotherhood in Sports Goes Beyond the Field.
How a men’s rugby team supported one of their own.
Rugby, they say, is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans. The game itself is based on warfare, with one side controlling territory and fighting for more. Read Story
LIFT
Something Healthy for All of Us
How 17-year-old Gloria Barron Prize Winners Annie and Shirley Zhu provide fresh food for 1,400 people a year.
Most of us have memories from childhood that go something like this: You’re not leaving the table until you eat all your vegetables.How lucky we were to have nutritious food, even if we had to learn to like it. According to the Houston Health Department, for nearly one-quarter of children living in Houston, Texas, the choice to eat healthy doesn’t exist. Read Story
BE HEALTHY
More Than Just Dancing
How inclusion helps overcome mental illness.
JuJu loved to dance. She had a smile that filled the room and moved as if she was actually creating the music. But when she was away from her high school dance class, she was more reserved, a little bit guarded — something the group of girls in her class noticed. Read Story
INCLUSION
Let the Kids Give it a Try
How 17-year-old Dasia Taylor developed sutures that detect infection.
Dasia Taylor is your typical high school student, with one exception. She cares about the rest of the world — and she’s doing something about it. Read Story
SCIENCE
Billy Mills
The story behind America’s first and only 10,000-meter Olympic champion.
Billy Mills was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota people. His mother died when he was 9 years old. Hurting from the loss, young Billy took up sports, believing an article given to him by a Jesuit priest that stated that Olympians are chosen by the gods. Read Story
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Beatrice Shilling
The motorcycle daredevil who became a mechanical engineer and saved the lives of countless pilots in WWll.
Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling had a penchant for speed. In 1913, at age 14, she bought her first motorcycle. She tinkered with it and roared around the English countryside, eventually racing for the British Motorcycle Racing Club. Read Story
ENCOURAGEMENT
The Art of Pitching.
A little confidence at the right time goes a long way.
Summertime brings out miniature baseball players, sliding in the dust, chasing errant balls and constantly adjusting caps. It is the season for kids to be out in the sun, working on eye-hand coordination and, most importantly, dugout chants. A game with so much time spent standing around requires clever chants to keep young minds occupied. Read Story
CONFIDENCE
For the Cost of a Box of Cereal.
How just noticing makes all the difference in the world.
Julian was having a difficult day at work. Projects were due, and his boss had just made major changes to a spreadsheet that would mean a long night. Julian isn’t the type to get angry, but he does get withdrawn. Taking a deep breath, he gathered himself and went out to grab a late lunch that would also serve as dinner. Read Story
SHARING
The Future Belongs to Kids.
So far, things look pretty bright.
The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes features some pretty remarkable kids. Teens are cleaning up our oceans, feeding their underserved peers, creating tutoring networks and collecting donations for the homeless. Many have used their screen time to mobilize volunteer efforts in ways that the previous generation just couldn’t do. Read Story
OPPORTUNITY
An Impossible Journey.
How John Wesley Powell navigated the Colorado River and Grand Canyon in wooden boats.
In May 1869, John Wesley Powell, a former Union Army major who had lost most of his right arm in the Battle of Shiloh, led 10 explorers in launching four heavy wooden boats loaded to the gunwales with 10 months of supplies. Read Story
PERSEVERANCE
A Lesson We Should Never Forget.
The incredible story of American POWs smuggling rations to Russian prisoners at Stalag-B.
In 1988, Charles Kuralt discovered a story of heroism that would have disappeared from history were it not for the determination of a former Russian prisoner who vowed to thank the men who saved his life and the lives of many of his comrades. During the 40 years of the Cold War, Dr. Nikita Aseyev kept the names of the American soldiers safe and close to his heart. Read Story
HUMANITY
Overcoming Our Own Worst Mistakes.
Kaelin Clay made an unpardonable error in football. And he owned it.
There’s a story in football that goes all the way back to 1929. Roy Riegels of Cal picked up a fumble and nearly returned the ball to the endzone … for the opposing team. He had to be tackled by a teammate and earned the nickname “Wrong Way Riegels.” He was so distraught that his coach had to talk him into returning to the game. Read Story
OVERCOMING
The Least Likely to Help.
How a bedridden attorney still fights for the rights of others.
Reggie spent his college years on the ski team. Summers, he worked odd jobs and water-skied. His life was perfect, as he describes it. Outdoors most of the time, doing homework with buddies at the ski lodge. He moved on to law school and started his own practice so he’d have time to ski. His kids learned the art of the graceful turn in waist-high powder, and all were easily identified by their raccoon faces and smiles that hold memories of the latest best ski day. Read Story
GIVE BACK
Everybody Gets on Base.
Measuring the victories of life, one single at a time.
From the heartland to urban parks, the release of school kids onto the baseball diamonds signals the beginning of summer. There was a time when baseball was the only summer game. But with competition from soccer and lacrosse, the clap of leather gloves in around-the-horn warmups is not as omnipresent as it used to be. Still, America’s game is a place for young boys to prove themselves in their pre-adolescent tribes. Read Story
LOVE
Beyond the Moon with an Eye on Mars.
The story of a young woman who dreamed of pushing the boundaries and now designs launch systems for NASA.
The billionaire space race is on. And it rivals the competition between Russia and the USA in the early ’60s. In Trekkie language, space is “the final frontier.” What has changed since those early days of Star Trek and Apollo missions is the hairstyles and the technology, but not the imagination of space dreamers everywhere. Read Story
