Dots: The Place Beyond the Plain

Hello, it’s me. I’ve been wondering if you’d like to see some dots?

• Christian Caple takes a look at which of Washington’s freshmen this year have the chance to become key contributors next season.

• Pro Football Focus looks at their top transfer guys this offseason, including a new Dawg at a much-needed position.

• D1Softball takes a preview at UW Softball post-Gabbie Plain.

• A four-star athlete from the class of ‘24 just backed off his USC commitment and lists Washington high.

• The US men’s national soccer team has had all sorts of drama the last week+ that we’re used to seeing with high school and college football everywhere. That is: The parents. ESPN looks at overbearing parenting culture in American youth sports and beyond (and America in general) and how that harms development and our wellbeing.

Former 25 year-long Washington Women’s Soccer coach, Leslie Gallimore, is interviewed in here as well.

A good snippet that I’m sure we’ve all encountered:

“It is very hard to get Americans to accept suppressing, even temporarily, their individual desires in favor of group goals and endeavors,” said Doug Lemov, who is the author of “Teach Like a Champion” and is the chief knowledge officer and founder of the teaching education company of the same name. “And every ‘institution’ — every school, every club, every team — lives or dies on collective action problems. Can I get the individual members to make small temporary sacrifices that will bring us all immense long-term benefit if we all make them?

“Increasingly, clubs are finding that no, they can’t cause people to engage in these behaviors like they used to.”

Anyways, recommend giving this piece a read.

With Kaleb becoming a free agent shortly, he picked a very good year to kick ass:

Doubt this will happen, but:

Do good things, don’t do bad things, and bow down to Washington.