Former Lake Highlands resident Amy Love is poised on the brink of a bold gambit that could revolutionize the way media and athletics interact, and she owes it all to her onetime home of Dallas.
Love, now a resident of San Jose, Calif., has just published the inaugural issue of Amy Love’s Real Sports, a (initially) bimonthly magazine dedicated to the players in – and the fans of – women’s athletics. It’s the culmination of her dreams and vision, but it might never have come to pass had she not slipped and fallen behind the counter of the neighborhood McDonald’s where she worked while her family lived here.
The budding young athlete – who until then had imagined sports as her career – injured her back and had to find another goal.
Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem; even at 15, Amy was already used to tough challenges. Six years earlier, when she was living in Danville, California (Dad’s job as an exec for Coca-Cola meant the family moved around a lot), Amy participated in a ground-breaking lawsuit that sought to allow her to play on what had previously been an all-boys team.
After much contention and more than a little acrimony, Love won her lawsuit and was allowed to play; the next season, over 200 girls followed her.
“It didn’t seem like a very good deal at the time,” Love chuckles. “But yes, you could definitely say that fall set me on the path that’s taken me here.”
“Here” is the first issue of Real Sports, a well-laid-out, 68-page glossy magazine that seems capable of standing toe-to-toe with the smattering of similar publications currently in the marketplace.
Love, however, has done things differently than her competitors.
“A lot of those other magazines have much more fashion, self-help, and health and lifestyle-type things,” she says.
“Real Sports is a lot more about action, the drama of play; that’s why we have so many photos of women actually participating – just like male-oriented magazines.”
“That’s also why we really concentrate on providing the reader with the hard information they need to get involved and stay involved with their favorite sport.”
To this end, Real Sports serves up a mix of major-issue features, community-level news, and coach and celebrity profiles.
“My participation in sports had a lot to do with who I ended up being, with my drive to excel,” she says.
“Sports is fun, but it can also help you with the rest of your life. There’s no reason to exclude women – or girls – from that message.”
