It has been a long time coming, but the SQNEWS Wall City Sports Magazine is finally here!
It’s an exciting time for sports lovers at San Quentin and around the prison system so they can see themselves represented in a rehabilitative light.
The Wall City magazine special Sports Edition is full of invigorating articles that cover some of the many topics sports fans love and it digs deep into the unacknowledged perspectives to find that sports are more than just sports.
Sports such as basketball, football, handball, running, tennis, horseshoes, chess and baseball have all transformed the lives of numerous individuals in some way or another.
Take guys like Ron Leflore, who served time in prison after a complex upbringing only to one day find his way of life through the love of playing baseball. Or Austin Thurman, who was serving time at SQ for committing a crime but he continued playing the sport he loved which is baseball. He paroled and went on to play in a professional league, hence changing the trajectory of his life to a positive direction.
Or imagine a White guy and a Black guy bonding during a prison marathon and breaking the curse of decades of forged racisms. Take the old school grueling gridiron days of penitentiary football at SQ, when living prison life was rougher than today’s system is. Guys were able to navigate through the wars and partake in a good old competition of some football and develop their preferred skillsets.
The magazine even has a great article on chess, a game that allows people to stimulate their minds, which is cognitive skills and mental focuses.
Sports come in all types of categories. However, the magazines objective is about emphasizing how much sports play an intricate part and vital role in the reform and rehabilitation of the incarcerated.
The front cover highlights the incarcerated athlete while the back page features Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors visiting SQ.
It took the collaboration of the SQNews staff with the guidance of the editor-in-chief and outside volunteer advisers to put the long-awaited sports mag together. The team thought it was important to shine the light on the role sports play in helping the incarcerated with rehabilitation.
Some of the categories that sports assist with for the incarcerated are anger management issues, conflict resolution situations, cognitive thinking abilities, physical health, mental health, stress, and a host of other issues.
Sports most importantly teaches a person discipline and accountability. So, we at the SQNews hope that you will see the importance of how sports plays a designing role in the incarcerated road to reform and we hope that you will see it portrayed in Wall City magazine’s special Sports Edition.
