Winning never gets old

Kalin, who was the Post-Gazette Female Athlete of the Year for the 2005-16 school year, made the P-G Fabulous 5 all-star team in basketball this year and also the P-G All-Area team for soccer last fall.

She used to play AAU basketball this time of year, but doesn’t any longer because she is a senior and already signed to play basketball at Duquesne University. Maybe she needed something to do, so she tried track and field for the first time. She won the 800-meter run at the Pine-Richland Invitational last Friday and her time of 2:17.02 is third best in the WPIAL this spring.

Why specialize?

Trackingfootball.com came up with an interesting statistic that maybe parents —and even some coaches— should think about in this age of youngsters specializing in one sport. Of the 253 players selected in this year’s NFL draft, 87 percent played at least two sports in high school. Also, 45 percent played basketball.

I’d love to throw those statistics at the next high school athlete who says he gave up a sport because he wanted to lift weights instead for football.

While on NFL draft statistics, guess what state produced the most picks? According to Maxpreps.com, it was Georgia. Twenty-nine picks played high school football in Georgia. Florida was next with 27, California had 26, Texas 23 and Louisiana 16. Pennsylvania had 11 NFL picks, with seven playing in the WPIAL.