+
upworthy
Most Shared

This team stood up against gender inequality in sports. Their fight hit home for one girl.

The future is female.

True
DICK'S Sporting Goods

When the U.S. Women's Hockey team takes the ice at the 2018 Winter Olympics, their goal may be to win gold, but there's another prize at hand.

They will help girls all over the country, like 14-year-old Nina Herceg, fall in love with their sport.

Herceg has been enamored with hockey players' athleticism and ability ever since her dad started taking her to games when she was little. It didn't take her long to want to lace up her own pair of skates.


"After a little bit of begging, my dad finally let me play hockey," Herceg says. "And I quickly fell in love with the sport."

Herceg on the ice. Photo courtesy of Nina Herceg.

Herceg has now played for six years and is a member of the Long Island Lady Islanders. Thanks to the experience, she's made many good friends and connected with her dad on a deeper level.

She's also learned an important lesson about herself.

"I found out I'm resilient," she says. "It's given me confidence in other areas of my life to try new things — just by learning how to play hockey."

Since the 2006-2007 season, girls and women who registered to play hockey under USA Hockey jumped 32%, from around 50,000 players to 75,832 players.

The uptick of girls playing may have a correlation to the U.S. Women's Hockey Team's recent gender equality advocacy.

It's definitely deeply affected Herceg.

"They're willing [...] to fight for what they knew was right," says Herceg. "It inspired me."

The women's hockey team's activism both on and off the ice has sparked Herceg to continue pushing women's hockey forward.

Last year in Herceg's English class, students were assigned to write a letter to any business or company on a topic they were passionate about. She wrote to NBC Sports about the lack of coverage of women's sports, particularly hockey.

"It would be great if we could get more coverage for the women because it would inspire little girls all over the world to see them on TV and to have them think, 'That could be me someday,'" she says.

While NBC responded to her letter stating they do whatever they can to air women's sports, Herceg has yet to see much change in coverage.

Still, this has only motivated her to continue playing hockey. After all, she's seen the members of the U.S. team persevere despite being treated unfairly and unequally.

Herceg with the rest of the Long Island Lady Islanders. Photo courtesy of Nina Herceg.

With the women's team getting ready to fight their way to the podium, Herceg often wonders what inspires them to keep pushing forward despite the challenges they face as women athletes?

"How do they not get discouraged?" she wonders.

While she may not have the chance to ask the players this question directly, one thing is for certain: With girls being inspired by their example, we will continue to see them breaking down barriers. Because for them, it's more than a sport; it's about carrying on a legacy of women reclaiming spaces that are rightfully theirs.

"They're proving that it's possible for us to chase our dreams," Herceg says.

This story was produced as part of a campaign called "17 Days" with DICK'S Sporting Goods. These stories aim to shine a light on real occurrences of sports bringing people together.

True

After over a thousand years of peaceful relations, European semi-superpowers Sweden and Switzerland may finally address a lingering issue between the two nations. But the problem isn’t either country’s fault. The point is that the rest of the world can’t tell them apart. They simply don’t know their kroppkakor (Swedish potato dumpling) from their birchermüesli (a Swiss breakfast dish).

This confusion on the European continent has played out in countless ways.

Swedish people who move to the United States often complain of being introduced as Swiss. The New York Stock Exchange has fallen victim to the confusion, and a French hockey team once greeted their Swiss opponents, SC Bern, by playing the Swedish National Anthem and raising the Swedish flag.

Skämtar du med mig? (“Are you kidding me?” in Swedish)

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Heroic sanitation workers save abducted, 10-year-old girl while on their trash route

"I was just doing my job man. I was just doing my job and actually came across somebody who needed help."

via Dion Merrick / Facebook

At 1:30 am on a Monday morning in February, an AMBER Alert went out in southern Louisiana about a missing 10-year-old girl from New Iberia. It was believed she had been kidnapped and driven away in a 2012 silver Nissan Altima.

A few hours later at 7 am, Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine, sanitation workers for Pelican Waste, were on their daily route when they noticed a vehicle that fit the description in the alert.

Keep ReadingShow less
Humor

Woman shares wedding album her mom made that’s making people crack up

The photos were beautiful, but there was something hilariously wrong with the captions.

Woman's wedding gift from her mom is making people laugh.

There's no denying that a wedding day is a special memory most people want to hold onto for the rest of their lives. It's the reason people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on wedding pictures and hand out disposable cameras to guests—to capture memories from all angles, including behind-the-scenes moments that you may forget due to the nerves beforehand.

One mother of the bride decided to take her daughter's beautiful wedding photos and create a special personalized photo album. But upon further inspection of the gift, the bride noticed that something was amiss. Niki Hunt, told Good Morning America that when her mom, Sherry Noblett, gave her the wedding album at brunch, she admitted she may have messed up.

"She’s very crafty, so usually when she says something like that, it’s something really small. I'm thinking some of the pictures are askew, or whatever," Hunt explained to GMA.

Keep ReadingShow less

Mariandrea Villegas dancing with Phil Wright at The Dance Awards.

Humans may not always recognize greatness right away, but sometimes it's so clear it simply can't be denied.

You don't have to be a dancer yourself to see when someone's got moves, and a viral video from choreographer Phil Wright spotlights a kid who's got moves. Like, wow.

Mariandrea Villegas may be tiny, but she packs a mighty amount of energy, skill, coordination and x-factor into her dancing. Oh and joy. Did I mention joy?

Keep ReadingShow less

Prepare to get Thatcherized.

It seems that Adele is going viral once again.

Perhaps you’ve seen the image in question previously (it seems to make the rounds every couple of years). But in case you missed it—it’s Adele’s face. Normal, just upside down.

Only it’s not normal. In fact, when you turn Adele’s face right side up, what you notice is that her eyes and mouth were actually right-side up THE ENTIRE TIME, even though the entire head was upside down. So when you turn the head right side up, the eyes and mouth are now UPSIDE-DOWN—and you can’t unsee it. Do you feel like you're Alice in Wonderland yet?

Keep ReadingShow less

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

Keep ReadingShow less