“I don’t think I really believed it or processed it,’’ said Sanzone, a three-year cocaptain of the Malden Catholic girls’ swimming team. “I was just kind of like, ‘Well, I’ll take it one day at a time.’ ”

Everyone around her — friends, family, coaches, and teammates — accepted her new reality. She did not.

After Thea Sanzone was injured in a boating accident two summers ago, a surgeon delivered the news that she may never swim competitively again.

More than a year after the accident, Sanzone

Little Gavin McCarthy lay face-down in the snowbank that lined the ice, his 5-foot-2 frame looking more like a crumpled checking dummy than a hockey player.

Gavin caught his breath, brushed the snow off his helmet cage and charged back onto the ice — if only to be crushed back into the snow seconds later by his older brother, Case. Fighting back was a tough proposition. After all, Case was five years older and double Gavin’s size.

Such was life at the McCarthys’ backyard ice rink in upstate Ne

It’s 4:30 a.m., and Brian Durocher snaps open a red flair pen, reaches for a blank notecard and begins to write.

Sitting on the couch in his Brookline condo, Durocher jots a note of gratitude to a donor of the Boston University women’s hockey program. He signs the 4-by-6 card with a cursive “Coach D,” checks a name off his list and grabs a new letter for the next donor. A rerun of last night’s SportsCenter plays on a TV in the background.

When the sun rises in a few hours, Durocher will enjoy

The Boston University men’s hockey team has filleted opposing defenses with speed and shiftiness all season long. On Monday night, Northeastern unearthed an antidote: unrelenting physicality.

That attention to detail paid off for the Raiders in a girls’ meet with razor-thin margins. Wellesley (46 points) pulled out a crucial second-place finish in the 4x400-meter race (4:09.04), leapfrogging Peabody (42 points) for the Raiders’ second straight state relay title at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center.

“You really want to maximize the ability of being able to move through the zone,” McLaughlin said. “I always tell the girls to get as close to the finish line as possible.”

Whil

Ralph Evans was 5 years old when he took his first batting practice at Braves Field. It was 1947, and Evans’ father pitched peanuts to him outside the stadium after they had attended a Boston Braves ballgame together. Evans swung at the peanuts with a mini bat as a small crowd looked on.

“They would cheer, and boo when I missed them,” Evans said.

Evans was — and is — a diehard Boston Braves fan. He recalls attending his first game at Braves Field in 1946 when he was only 4 years old, the ecsta

As a little kid, Nic Nobili would read up on his father’s favorite basketball players — European stars Toni Kukoč, Arvydas Sabonis and Sasha Danilović — and marvel as he attended Virtus Bologna games in his hometown of Bologna, Italy.

Put simply, he grew up on European hoops.

Through his upbringing, 20-year-old Nobili learned the values that make the European style of basketball unique — an emphasis on passing, spacing and team defense. Fundamentals. Those qualities shaped Nobili’s game as he