Sporting Life

With a bright sun shining down on TDECU Stadium, ceremonial red shovels in the ground (or at least in a long tray of fresh dirt) and a crowd of enthusiastic University of Houston football backers milling about, it’s a day for believers. And Tilma…

Ramon Walker Jr. goes into the Fertitta Center stands, still bringing the energy. He’ll hug his mom Sharanda and wrap his former roommate Ja’Vier Francis’ uncle, Troy Randle, in an embrace too. Families of players in Kelvin Sampson&#8…

With 170,000 square feet of interior space and four stories, the new Life Time near The Woodlands is certainly a mammoth one. The largest in Texas in fact. Life Time Shenandoah is also unique among the 170-plus athletic training centers. It is the firs…

The strain is evident on Renu Khator’s face. It is halftime of what will turn into a 32-point win for Kelvin Sampson’s powerhouse basketball program on what once beckoned with the promise of being a potential super Saturday for Khator&#8217…

Loss hits people in different ways, sometimes comes back when you expect it, sometimes rushes back in when you don’t see it coming. Real loss. Nothing that happens on a basketball court or any other playing field remotely qualifies. Real loss is …

Karen Sampson is clear when asked if she and her husband, University of Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson, decided to go to college at UNC Pembroke (then known as Pembroke State) together. “I wasn’t going where he was going,” Ka…

It is almost a throwaway line from Dusty Baker in his goodbye to Houston, but it carries plenty of meaning. And brings all the confidence of a 100 MPH fastball behind it. “I see Yordan (Alvarez) and (Jose) Altuve,” Baker says when asked abo…