sports

Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. Listener Nastassya Saad wanted to know: Is Marin County’s Dipsea Race really the oldest in the country? 

The Golden State Warriors’ off-season is underway. In one of their last moves in Oakland, the team introduced its three draft picks at its convention center practice facility. But while the new players posed for the media, the vets have other things going on. In the latest episode of Bounce: the Warriors’ last season in Oakland, KALW’s Ben Trefny has more.

The Golden State Warriors season ended last week with a dramatic loss to the Toronto Raptors. It’s not the send-off Oakland fans were hoping for as the team bids farewell to Oracle Arena. Now, a season of promise turns into an off-season of uncertainty. There are still signs of the team all over the Town and that’s not going to change any time soon. In fact, the logo for this podcast is the iconic Warriors’ bridge image dripping off a brick wall, and that’s from a mural in Oakland by Illuminaries. In this edition of Bounce, we catch up with Illuminaries co-founder Tim Hon whose crew are painting for the Dubs. 

We're only two games into the playoffs and there's already a lot of drama. In this episode of Bounce, we'll cover a heartbreaking injury, a gutwrenching defeat, and we'll meet some of the people who show up outside every game to make a living.

The new series Bounce begins by looking back...

Everybody loves a winner when it comes to professional sports, and with recent success, it seems like there are new Golden State Warriors fans popping up every day. But long before the big names of today’s super team came along or there was ever such thing as “Dub Nation,” there was a franchise that didn’t begin in the Bay Area.

From Audiograph, signature sounds of the Bay Area:

The Bay Area has a rich pro sports scene with distinctive voices who bring us all the action.

From our Audiograph archives:

Last week, 14-year-old Maxine McCormick won a pair of gold medals at the world championships in England: for women’s trout accuracy and for salmon distance. So where does a girl go to learn to be the very best? The Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Are sports a way to cultivate virtues like loyalty, collaboration, and discipline, or to indulge feelings of rivalry, tribalism, and obsession?

On a recent Friday, Michael Uy (pronounced We) showed me his dog Abbie’s custom board. It’s got a unique fin alignment — he says it helps her steer better — a notch to hold a camera in place and a leash to keep it from getting lost in the waves.

It’s the final game of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department's Junior Warriors 8th grade girls basketball league. The SOMA Stars and the Lady Hurricanes take their positions on the court. A tall, wiry man – the referee – steps to the center. He looks at all the girls, smiles, and tosses the ball straight up in the air. Two girls jump for it, and the game is on.

If things go the way Bay Area sports fans hope, by the time voters head to the ballot box on June 5, the Warriors may be in the middle of the NBA finals at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

But if the Warriors make the finals next June, they’ll be playing in San Francisco, in their brand-new stadium in Mission Bay.

Proposition I wants to discourage moves like this one. If it passes, San Francisco would have a quote “official policy” discouraging owners of professional sports teams from relocating to the city.

Our specialist this week is Richard Rocha, Director of Operations for the San Jose Sharks’ practice rink — otherwise know as the “ice guy” for the Bay Area’s only professional hockey team.

On a fall evening at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto — better known as “The Farm” — college-football rivals UC Berkeley and Stanford meet for their annual showdown at the 120th “Big Game.”

The stadium is divided in half, with Cal fans in blue and gold on one side, and Stanford in Cardinal red on the other. Chants and cheers can be heard throughout the crowd.

The band always wins

This weekend, the Bay waters will be filled with dragons. Well … dragon boats, anyway. The Northern California International Dragon Boat Festival takes place at Lake Merritt Saturday and Sunday. So, what’s Dragon Boat racing about?

This story has been updated since it originally aired in November of 2016.

For many people, this is a time to reflect on what it means to live in the United States. The election season revealed a divided nation, and many folks are saying they feel like strangers in their own country. Clearly, many already did.

John and Ken present their annual look back at the ideas and events of the past year that have challenged our assumptions and made us think about things in new ways.

This piece was produced Gabriel Chen, one of our high school student summer interns.

With the Olympics taking place right now, U.S. sports fans are getting treated to lots of coverage of summer sports like basketball, swimming, and gymnastics. But one sport may be overlooked by many Americans: Badminton.

On Sunday night, much of India was watching television with bated breath. All for one young woman at the Rio Olympics. Her name is Dipa Karmakar and a billion people’s hopes were resting on her shoulders.

On the July 20th edition of Your Call, former U.S. Olympic soccer player Jules Boykoff joins us to discuss his new book Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.

Sports used to make me feel like the outsider, the one left out of the game. 

While the world was marking the passing of Muhammad Ali, another giant in the world of sports in India died in Kolkata to far less notice. 

Dayla Soul's film, “It Ain’t Pretty,” shows what it's really like for the women who charge at San Francisco's Ocean Beach. Because, Soul has a problem with the "surfer girl" image.

 On the December 3rd edition of Your Call, we’re talking football! Specifically, the Super Bowl 50.

Title IX was passed in 1972 to ensure that all girls have equal access to sports. So why are sports so important to girls? This episode, we talk with Brandi Chastain of World Cup fame--not just because she kicked the winning goal and liberated women to sport their sports bras, but because she inspired thousands of girls to play soccer. And we talk with the CEO and Founder of Title Nine clothing, Missy Park, about how sports can affect outcomes for girls in life and in business. The power of sports for girls. That's our Inflection Point.  

As a child in the 60’s, Caroline Hickson rode the bus with a friend all the way to Candlestick Park to watch Giants baseball games.

If you think Asian-Amerian man, chances are you don’t think of sweaty guys pushing, shoving and shouting on a court. But that’s exactly what 9-Man is and has been since the 1930s. 

A new documentary by film maker Ursula Liang explores the game that became volleyball.  

The Bay Area was well represented in Super Bowl XLIX. The MVP, Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady, is from San Mateo. His favorite target, Julian Edelmen, is from Redwood City. And the man who could have won the game for the Seahawks, running back Marshawn Lynch, went to high school at Oakland Tech. In fact, Oakland has an especially rich history of athletes making it to the pros.

Behind a wall in a park in San Francisco, there’s a large and thriving vegetable garden. That might not seem like such a big deal. But the park is AT&T Park, the wall is the centerfield wall, and the veggies that grow there are served up to hungry fans of the San Francisco Giants.