Dubai’s May 2026 Calendar: A Dazzling Array of Cultural Festivals, Live Performances, Gourmet Delights, and Family Fun Await YouDubai is...
Source: Travel And Tour World
TTW-1688080-1777914006
Original Source: Travel And Tour World
Unauthorized copying or republishing is prohibited.
Brittany Brown looks strong.
She looks confident.
She looks capable of achieving her dreams.
That's how Brown looks in the mural painted in her honor at Vista del Valle Elementary — and it's how the 31-year-old U.S. sprinter feels in real life nearly two years after winning a bronze medal in the women's 200-meter at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Read more:Alysa Liu inspires mural that's 'a little rough around the edges, but beautiful at the same time'
But that's not always how she felt decades ago during her time as a student at the Claremont school.
"I grew up very sickly," Brown told The Times last month while visiting Vista del Valle for a mural unveiling ceremony. "I had asthma. I had pneumonia, bronchitis. ... I never thought I’d be running because I just was not the person that would be running. I was told to stay inside, not go outside.”
Brown's family also faced housing uncertainty and financial struggles during that time. They moved around a lot, and sometimes Brown and her family — mother Yo-Landa, father Wayne, older sister Brandi, twin brother Brandon and younger brother Bryan — found themselves living in a hotel room near the elementary school.
Her mother told The Times that the school and the community provided invaluable support during those trying times.
“I think emotionally, it took a toll on her," Yo-Landa Brown said. "But, of course, she was always joyful. She was very observant. She was kind. I could tell she used to cry a lot, but we all just tried to keep things calm and collected around her.”
The mural ceremony was held April 24 immediately after the school's 50th annual district track meet, where Brown interacted with the participants and handed out ribbons. Vista del Valle Elementary hosts all seven elementary schools in the district each year for the meet. It was as a fourth-grade participant at the same event nearly 20 years ago that Brown discovered she loved to run — and also that she was very good at it.
"I remember running just felt very freeing. Like it just felt like, ‘OK, I'm not the sick kid. I can just try and do something,’" said Brown, who holds the Claremont High School record in the girls 100-meter and 200-meter races. "And I was also winning, so that helped as well. ... Running has brought me opportunities I never thought I would ever experience.”
The mural was painted by local artist Xiucoatl Mejia, who attended Claremont Unified School District schools from kindergarten (Sumner Elementary) through high school (Claremont High). He has painted several murals at district schools in recent years and was already working with first-year Vista del Valle principal Charles Boulden to start an after-school art club for the students.
Read more:Ohtani. Yamamoto. Sasaki. A 12-story 'cultural bridge' between L.A. and Japan to debut in Torrance
The two men thought it would be great to have a mural on campus to tie in with the half-century anniversary of the district track meet. The realization that one of the country's top sprinters was a Vista graduate who got her start at the same meet served as further inspiration.
The mural depicts an adult Brown running while wearing a Vista track uniform and carrying a torch. A large group of children runs behind her, with some of those kids resembling students from the art club.
"It just made sense to include some of the kids who were in the class and make it a little bit more custom to the school and personal to these kids," Mejia said.
Third-grader Levi Adams said being depicted in a mural on a school wall is “special because when you’re older you can go back and look at it.”
Second-grader Holland Ly agreed that "it's pretty special" to be featured in a painting that "many people" will see through the years.
Art club students also helped paint the mural.
Read more:How a mural of Altadena became a symbol of resilience for one small store, through fire and flood
"I had the kids lay out the whole track," Mejia said. "I wanted them to do that very specifically, because I wanted them to understand that that's the foundation for the race in our scene. ... I wanted them to have that part in it, and be able to look back on it and see it."
The theme of the piece initially was victory, Mejia said, but it evolved.
"As it progressed, the theme kind of changed into carrying the torch and paving the way for a better future for our youth and for our communities," Mejia said. "It became a lot bigger than what initially it was. It became something that is a little bit more powerful than any singular victory. It was a collective victory with everyone."
Boulden thinks the mural ended up being a tremendous success.
"I couldn’t be happier with how it is — the colors, how vibrant it is and what it represents to me," the principal said. "I see perseverance in there, and I see chasing dreams, and I see kids chasing after somebody who's chasing their dreams as well."
Brown is also thrilled with how the first mural in her honor turned out.
"I think it’s really good! I’m really, really happy with it," said Brown, who is currently training in Los Angeles with the long-term goal of competing for the U.S. again in the 2028 Summer Olympics. "I love the colors. It even has my choker — I wear a choker when I run a lot. It has the little, fine details, so I think that was really cool."
Her mother said she thought it was "really touching" that Mejia included images of current Vista students in the painting.
“Yes, Brittany is the Olympian, but now you have the next generation involved," Yo-Landa Brown said. "Their stories will continue to live on and they will remember that. And that will give them the inspiration to be better and to do better in their lives. I thought that was phenomenal. I felt so thankful that he was able to capture that.”
Wearing her Olympic medal around her neck, Brown addressed the student body at the mural ceremony and became emotional while talking about the hardships she overcame while attending the school.
"I really just want them to know you can create beautiful stuff, even in the struggle," Brown told The Times afterward. "It's going to be a lot harder, but you can still create beautiful stuff in the struggle. And I definitely have created a different life for me. ...
"I never thought the little girl in the hotel would freaking have a mural. I never thought, like a little asthma girl, you know, someone who wasn't allowed outside, that this would be my story. So it's definitely crazy. That's what I want them to know."
Brown's message seems to have resonated with the students. Fifth-grader Kaylee Mency said Brown's story of her childhood struggles "really meant a lot to me because she still kept going even though her life wasn’t as good."
Fifth-grader Eliana Ocegueda added: “She went to this school and now she’s an Olympian. It’s really inspiring and it kind of makes you think about you can be anything you want to be.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Tyran Stokes of Team USA attempts a dunk during the first half against Team World on April 11, 2026 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Images)
What’s the best word to describe how the University of Kansas’s men’s basketball team has entered this new era of college sports?
Along with me, please point your internet browser to a thesaurus.
For some other programs, you might choose “mercenary.” These teams have won big by luring away seasoned, proven, older players from other teams. In the mercenary column? Indiana University football and Michigan basketball. We prefer the word, “champions.”
You might tag still others with “profligate.” When an athletic department recruits a squad of young millionaires to a historic program, the expectations are higher than a March Madness second round loss (by almost 20). Yes, I am talking about you, Kentucky basketball.
A handful of schools have gotten downright “litigious.” The University of Washington recently sued its quarterback, who waffled back and forth about whether he would return to campus last year. Meanwhile, the University of Georgia is seeking $390,000 from a former defensive end after he transferred to the University of Missouri. See you in court.
The atmosphere at Kansas basketball in the nascent days of the NIL era is different. Call it “dramatic.” During the past 12 months, the emotional rollercoaster ride has tested Jayhawk fans who previously basked in constant conference championships and juggernaut status.
As an instructor at the Lawrence campus, I have watched the mood among students over the past few years go from disbelief (“There’s no way that we won’t win the Big XII!”) to protest (“It’s just not fair!“). This year I was surprised by the mid-week apathy among students. Basically no one was talking about the Jayhawks in my classrooms, a rare symptom from those in crimson and blue.
Many of the storylines that have defined this time at KU are tethered to the financial tumult that has shaken college sports. Athletes deserved compensation, but when the NCAA restrictions fell, pandemonium reigned.
The millions of dollars in players’ pockets have unsteadied all campuses, but perhaps “The Hill” most of all.
Earning the word choice of dramatic means plenty of ups: Headlines! Recruits! Big wins! A star coach!
Last week brought another highlight. Wednesday morning, my gym blared the news from sports channels on big screens in every direction: The nation’s top high school player is coming to Allen Fieldhouse.
The consensus top recruit, Tyran Stokes, might carry the Jayhawks during his expected one-year stay in Kansas before departing as a forecasted No. 1 overall NBA draft pick. Landing a dominant player like this, one who can maraud down the lane but also square up from beyond the arc, signals recruiting swagger for Bill Self and his assistants.
Last year, the Jayhawks also landed the top recruit, Darryn Peterson. With Peterson at point, the Jayhawks climbed into the top 10 rankings from the Associated Press writers poll during Week 16. Eight wins in a row — two of them against the top two ranked teams nationally — would keep most fanbases happy for years.
Combine this with the constant, historic revelry of Allen Fieldhouse. Students still camp out for choice game-day seats and the chance to be in front of the national TV cameras.
These high points likely helped draw Stokes to Kansas.
But oh how the drama has swerved: Early tournament exit! Possible retirement! Campus controversy! An aloof superstar!
One KU basketball narrative rose to the top this season. Fans nationwide knew both that KU both had a gamechanger in Peterson but also that he wasn’t playing as much as everyone expected.
Fans and commentators threw shade about his commitment to the team, hinting that the big payout for his name, image and likeness should have spurred him toward being available to play more minutes for the Jayhawks.
Perhaps, they whispered, he was saving himself for an even bigger NBA payday. This high-profile swirl of money and playing time is a mid-season college storyline that could only happen in 2026.
In this pay-for-play climate, many wonder how long veteran Hall of Famers like Bill Self will wait before retirement. Today’s college hoops atmosphere is certainly a world away from 1993, when he was recruiting players to an Oral Roberts University team that was 6-21. Losing in the second round of the tournament this year made the coaching situation still more precarious.
Add in Self’s recent health troubles and it feels like the KU coaching throne is wobbling for the first time in decades, which should terrify the Jayhawks.
Teams have surged up and down in the rankings for years before players were being paid. Nevertheless, Kansas this year yo-yo-ed in rankings from No. 19 preseason, to unranked, to No. 8, to an embarrassing last-second flame-out during the tournament.
Consider also Nebraska, a team that didn’t receive a single vote in the AP preseason poll and also a team that didn’t crack the top 25 until week 6. They finished second to the national champions in the Big Ten standings and made it to the Sweet 16.
In watching college basketball today, we are crossing our fingers each season that a misfit band of transfer students gels together with heralded freshmen. But, in doing so, we often fail to evaluate these hastily assembled squads, this year’s KU team included.
All of this ignores the elephant in the room — or in this case, the elephant sitting smack dab in the middle of Jayhawk Boulevard. The athletic and academic interests on KU’s campus have confronted one another in a way I haven’t seen during my 13 academic years at KU.
When KU faculty members publicized a no-confidence vote in the university leadership this year, athletics was not just the subtext, it was the text. Associate professor Misty Heggeness (whom I once profiled for the Reflector) challenged the university’s plan to use KU’s general fund to cover athlete payments.
“It’s just a little bit frustrating that there’s this disconnect that that we as a university have been put in the position to have to try to scrounge around for pennies in other coffers to cover these student athlete salaries,” she told KCUR.
Social media predictably seized on the situation, claiming, “Kansas Faculty Revolts Over Athlete Pay…This Is Bigger Than You Think.”
Yet that headline might not even do it justice. After all, how many of these KU basketball storylines — for better or worse — do you connect to the new atmosphere of college sports? In short, it is defining the sport.
And maybe the university.
The lauded signing of Tyran Stokes might be the ticket to a national championship — money well spent by a university that loves basketball and has a generational coaching talent to guide him.
But the era of NIL tells us that the next year could also be a plummet. Perhaps a high school superstar, already famous for his temper, becomes disenchanted with the college game and dooms his team (a campus?) to not only basketball losses, but financial peril.
In the high stakes Wild West of 2026 college sports, where fortunes lean on the compensation of 18-year-olds, we must brace for both: winning and losing.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Login