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By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

My big “a-ha” moment came from hearing the Young Rascals song “Lonely Too Long” on New Year’s Day. Ah, how Felix Cavaliere’s soulful voice made kids like me feel seen in 1967! And here I was, decades later, experiencing a wild sense of déjà vu.

Three weeks before this year’s Boston Marathon, the Boston Globe’s “Weekend” section featured a piece titled “A playlist for your long run this weekend.” Three weeks prior to race day is when marathoners typically do a long training run, perhaps 18 or 20 miles. The idea of the Globe piece was that such a long run can be mentally as well as physically challenging. Are you really up for spending that much time putting one foot in front of the other? Would some music help you get going?

In May 1965, I got on a bus going from Baton Rouge to Lexington, Kentucky. I wasn’t alone as I was working as the athletic trainer for the 28 members of the LSU track team. We were going to compete in the SEC championships. A few days before departure we were given the news that the school was not flying us to Kentucky, but that we had to take the bus about 700 miles — about 15 hours. One doesn’t need advanced training in exercise science to know that sitting on a bus that long prior to athletic competition is not ideal.

As the school year comes to an end and children embark on summer break, it can be challenging for parents to carve out time to exercise. Many families are juggling child care, work schedules, limited summer camp hours, and a host of other daily responsibilities while their children are home from school. Yikes. Even the thought is quite overwhelming.

I think my running looks better than it did a year ago. I’m still getting slower, but apparently my form is improving.

I made my first sports bet when I was in college. I was getting a haircut and the barber handed me a betting sheet for the week’s college football games. I sat down, filled it out, gave him $5 and left. The next day I learned that I had won – easy money. I showed up early the next week, got the new sheet and placed a bigger bet. I lost all my money. The pain from losing that money overwhelmed the joy of winning. I never placed another bet, intrinsically knowing that I wasn’t as good as I thought.

As the weather turns and the spring flowers bloom, you may be thinking of picking up a new outdoor activity and I hope golf is at the top of that list. While long considered a sport for the elites in country clubs, recent research by the National Golf Foundation has reported some encouraging new trends. The number of golf trials has hit record or near-record levels in recent years, with 3 million or more on-course beginners starting every year since 2020.

Sport is a powerful platform for driving social change. We have witnessed athletes stepping beyond the lines of the field to use their voices and influence to bring awareness to issues that truly matter. From calls for racial justice to advocacy for gender equality, the sports world has served as a podium for broader sociocultural conversations.

Bill Bradley, the great Knicks player and Rhodes Scholar, went up for a jump shot at the end of the game. As usual, it was good and put the Knicks up by eight points with almost no time on the clock. Rather than the usual cheer, Bradley heard some boos coming from the fans. Confused, after the game Bradley asked the trainer why some fans had booed him. The trainer told him that the spread on the game was projected at six points and that winning by eight had cost fans money.

Old school coaching tells us to leave emotion out of sport.We’ve heard it all before – Toughen up! We need you! Get it together! Stop crying!

I rarely listen to podcasts, but “The Omnibus Project,” by musician John Roderick and “Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings caught my ear months ago. Besides the fact that a typical installment lasts about as long as one of my workouts on an exercise bicycle and weight machines, Roderick and Jennings are pretty funny, and they dig into some wonderfully obscure subjects. They found themselves in particularly obscure territory recently, when they chatted about pedestrianism, which, as you’ve correctly supposed, is a fancy word for walking.

There was a time when 18-year-old boys and girls joined a college athletic team and left four years later as 22-year-old men and women, confident, trained, and effective team members. Coaches had time to focus on long-term development, looking at the big picture rather than short-term gains. Coaches helped individuals identify their strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and worked to help them improve, enabling them to reach their potential. The successful coach had a basic philosophical understanding of the place of sport in the student’s life. Good coaches understood that their athletes were also students and that achievement in the classroom was paramount to success.

March Madness starts in two weeks and we’ll be watching a lot of basketball. I’ve been watching basketball for over 75 years, starting with my All American father when I was just a boy. Later, I followed my brother who was the point guard on a great high school team. With all this legacy, I thought I would be good at basketball as well, but that was not to be. I could run, jump, and shoot, but when I got on the court with nine other guys, I felt like I was in the middle of Hwy 91 without a car. Not so for many of the players we will see in the coming weeks. I continue to be amazed by the skill of today’s players, their ball handling and speed is truly amazing.

As soon as I write “Picture Main Street” here, I’ll hasten to say this is not an opinion piece about whether or not widening sidewalks, reducing the number of automobile lanes in downtown Northampton from four and a half to three, and adding more bike lanes is a good idea. I appreciate concerns from downtown businesses about losing sales because getting around town may be difficult during the remodeling. I also think narrowing Main Street ultimately won’t make the traffic more congested, and the result may look as nice as the pedestrian-friendly centers of Boulder, Colorado, and Burlington, Vermont.

Within the disciplines of sport management and sociology of sport, there is a common phrase that many sport academicians know to be true: Sport is a microcosm of our social world. This phrase argues that sport is a repackaged enterprise of our values, politics, culture, economics, etc.

It’s NGWSD season!National Girls and Women in Sport Day is celebrated annually to honor the achievements of women and girls in sports, raise awareness about the importance of gender equality in athletics, and encourage more participation in sports at all levels.

When I was in high school in Tennessee, I came north to visit Amherst College. Among the campus buildings that caught my attention was the Coolidge Cage. I had never seen such a thing before: a square floor plan, four-sided pyramidal roof, and space not only for basketball but for sports I associated with the outdoors, including tennis, baseball and especially track.

It’s Saturday morning and you’ve just come down on the side of your ankle while playing in the neighborhood basketball game. The pain is immediate as you limp to the sideline. “Get some ice,” someone yells. You lie down, put your leg up on a chair and wait for the ice. Upon arrival you wrap the ice tightly around the ankle. You have just satisfied the age-old rule of RICE, the recommended treatment for acute injuries for 46 years. RICE stands for rest, ice, compression, and elevation, all factors designed to reduce blood flow as well as inflammation. RICE was first proposed by Harvard physician Gabe Mirkin in his 1978 text “The Sports Medicine Book.”

(Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a new monthly column that will run in print on the second Monday of each month)

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