Thinking Lincoln would back down and apologize when confronted with such a decision, Lincoln surprisingly accepted. Demanding “satisfaction”, he then challenged Lincoln to a duel. Thinking Abraham Lincoln was behind everything, Shields publicly accused him of having his future wife Mary Todd write the letters. As a result, his reputation really began to suffer in political circles. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, Todd continued writing letters and articles to the paper under a phony name. But Mary Todd, Lincoln’s future wife, complicated matters. This wasn’t an uncommon practice in politics back then. In the letter, Lincoln criticized and poked fun at Shields. While living in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln crossed Shields by writing a letter to a Springfield newspaper called the Sagamon Journal. He was also a political rival of a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. At the time, a man by the name of James Shields was the Illinois State Auditor. The name changed when a hospital was built there to quarantine prisoners from the Alton Confederate Prison Camp who had become afflicted with communicable disease.īut in 1842, a very interesting event happened on this island. Louis.īefore the Civil War, it was called “Sunflower Island”.
It’s located about nine miles north of the city of St. No longer an actual island, it’s now a recreation area on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. “It’s a four-to-five-hour drive.This is a view of the city of Alton, Illinois from “Smallpox Island”. ” His other daughter Tayler is a UW freshman but not playing. It does live streaming, does highlight videos, uploads to YouTube.”Īs for Gabby, “She’s happy,” said her father. This is where his app, which can be downloaded from the Apple App Store, can help in this regard, McCaa stressed. So, unless the player, especially a Black player, is top-level, playing on a top-level club team playing against top-level club teams, the player is outside the eyes of coaches. I ended up talking to a lot of African American dads.” “I was recording everything…trying to generate some interest in my daughter. “I designed this for parents who are like me,” explained McCaa. He then developed a mobile app called E-Z Volleyball. A few years ago, as he tracked his daughter’s progression, McCaa had a bright idea: Help other parents like himself get their playing daughters noticed. “I think there needs to be some efforts to get more girls of color, Black girls, playing,” he pointed out.įurthermore, unless the volleyball player is playing club or considered a top-level recruit, as Gabby was once seen, getting seen by college coaches is hard since they use club or traveling volleyball as fertile recruiting sources. Her father said he believes seeing more volleyball games on television regularly rather than just during Olympic competition would help attract more Black fans, “and that may spark some interest.”īut McCaa and I do heartily agree on this-volleyball at all levels needs to be more diverse. The game has become even faster since in 1999 it moved to rally scoring (a point on every play whether or not the team served the ball), then instituting a designated defensive player (libero in 2002).īeing tall isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for playing volleyball, but height doesn’t hurt.
Watching volleyball, especially women, there’s nothing else to compare-balls flying up and out in lightning-like fashion and athletes of all sizes leaping up in the air or diving without care to keep the ball alive. “I love this sport,” admitted McCaa, which instantly bonded us together. We spoke briefly afterwards and agreed to speak further in an extended interview, which we did over the phone. When I ran into him a couple of weeks ago at Maturi Pavilion where Minnesota hosted Wisconsin on a rare Sunday night match-usually games are staged on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday-McCaa was there along with other family members to watch Gabby. Like me, Sam often felt like a sore thumb at volleyball games.
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