REMEMBER US?

The Magazine has profiled hundreds of athletes. Here's a few we caught up with.

DANIELLE GREEN
BY JERRY BEMBRY

When we profiled former Notre Dame basketball big Danielle Green in "A Soldier's Story" (Oct. 25, 2004), she was dealing with the loss of her left hand, which had been blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade while she served with the Army in Iraq the previous May. At the time of our story, Green was struggling to adjust to post-military life in Chicago. So husband Willie Byrd issued a challenge: "He bet me if I went back to school, I wouldn't finish," Green says. "That's what I needed to drive me, to prove him wrong."

True that. In May, Green will graduate from Chicago's St. Xavier College with a master's degree in counseling. She went to grad school while working fulltime as a city-wide coordinator in the sports and administration department of the Chicago public schools. "I'm really going to enjoy when I collect that $500 from my husband," she says. "With interest."

Green still loves hoops, but she also skis and golfs and even gave softball a shot last summer. "I went to swing, and I guess my shirt sleeve got too sweaty because my (prosthetic) arm flew off," she says. "Everybody just fell out, laughing."

Sure. No arm, no foul.

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN
BY GARE JOYCE

LA Kings center Patrick O'Sullivan's story ("Damage Control," June 23, 2003) was heartbreakingon his June TK, 2003 Draft Day Wayne Gretzky told Patrick he cried as he read it.

Back then, the 18-year-old sniper was a top prospect entering the NHL draft. But he was also the most controversial. "There were a lot of rumors about me," he says now, "and I think that was hurting my draft status."

He was right. Teams and scouts were aware that Patrick had been abused emotionally and physically for years by his father John, a former minor-league pro. It reached a point where his father had a restraining order issued against him, one that prohibited him from any contact with Patrick and banned him from rinks where his son played. O'Sullivan's stock plummetedhe was eventually selected by Minnesota late in the second round. Nowon pace for a 20-goal season with the Kingshe feels like his troubles are getting smaller in his rear-view mirror.

"I still get envelopes that I think are from him," he says. "But I don't open themI just throw them in the trash. Telling my story was a tough thing to do. But at the end of the day, if someoneeven if it was just one personread that story and it helped, then it was worth it."

THE SCORPIONS
BY BRYANT URSTAD

The publication of "The Mighty Scorpions" (May 24, 2004) had both positive and negative impact. Certainly not what you would've expected from a feel-good story about a ragtag bunch of Edmonton eight-year-olds, who after a winless season, blazed through Edmonton's legendary Minor Hockey Week tournament, winning the championship game at Rexall Place.

Coach Jeff Marsh was in Orlando when the issue came out, and was trying to snag a table at the ESPNZoneonly to be told the restaurant was completely booked. "I asked the hostess if it would matter if I was actually in one of the copies of ESPN The Magazine they had lying all over the place," he remembers. "She looked at me like I was insane, but we opened it up and there I was. I got a table."

But Scorpion mom Teta Weran had an entirely different reaction: disappointment. In the group shot of the victorious team, her son Steele's face was completely blocked by a teammate's armand she took us to the woodshed about it in an email. So, America, get a good look at Steele Weran (pictured WHERE): Mighty Scorpion. Mighty fine-looking kid.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE
BY JUDD SLIVKA

As predicted in "The Other Side of the Fence" (June 19, 2006) the boys on the Las Cruces soccer team became ghosts. This is what happens in the world of illegal immigration: No "card" equals no scholarship, no college, and very often, a clandestine future. Just six months after their team's trip to the state soccer championships, they walked off the graduation stage under a postcard-perfect New Mexico sky and the boys who had no papers began their slow-motion fades.

Camel, the speedy forward who led the state in scoring and made all-state? He's still undocumented, working construction in a gritty town a stone's throw from the Rio Grande. Catuy, the introspective all-state midfielder, occasionally calls or texts Roidsone of the team's captainsbut never from the same number, and never saying where he is. He says he still wants to teach. And Coach Paul, the former Army medic and first-time soccer coach who took his team to the top by teaching them about pride and teamwork? He's moved on, too, to coach in another small New Mexican town.

"I still reminisce about the season," he says. "They're still the most determined team I've ever coached."

ABBY WANER
BY ERIC ADELSON

Duke guard Abby Waner is arguably the most successful baller to come out of Colorado's Hoopsters, whose shocking story was chronicled in "True Lies" (Jan. 31, 2005). During a 2004 tournament in Oregon, parents of Waner's teammates finally confronted coach Rick Lopez about allegations of sexual misconduct with his players. In the aftermath, Waner, entering her senior year, helped refocus the team. She still calls Lopezwho committed suicide in jail in 2004the "best coach I ever had" and credits him with all she has accomplished at Duke. But the junior also continues to try to come to terms with Lopez the predator: "What he did was wrong on so many levels. It was a liefrom fifth grade on, I believed in something that wasn't true. I don't think I'll ever figure that out, and I don't want to."

VLADIMIR CHUBINSKY
BY JUSTIN HECKERT

For Vladimir Chubinsky, the impassioned protagonist of "The Miracle Merchant" (Aug. 28, 2006), our story was a career breakthrough. The Russian émigré now trains more pro athletes (including Seahawks DE Patrick Kearney) with his gravitational gymnastics weight-training system, and has gotten calls "from all over the world" by regular people and ailing former jocks who heard about him and his healing claims. Chubinsky had been working for years trying to get anyone from a college or pro team to buy into his program. Someone finally did: A large D-I NCAA baseball team (he's not saying who) contracted him to train its players for six months in his suburban Atlanta gym. Now his goals are even loftier. "I want to get a contract with team like the Falcons, or Dolphins," he says. But he knows that the groundwork for his success had come in helping non-athlete patients who battle MS and osteoporosis. "Above everything, I know the idea is to help every single person to get healthy & to help them get stronger, and better," Chubinsky says. "That's what I can do."

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