Why walk away from a successful sportswriting career just as women’s sports are experiencing unprecedented growth?
On this episode of Skin In The Game, John Cimperman and Tim O’Shei welcome longtime sportswriter and author Lyndsey D’Arcangelo, who built a career telling the human stories behind athletes and helping launch The Athletic’s WNBA coverage.
D’Arcangelo explains why she stepped away from sports journalism, including an industry increasingly driven by clicks, outrage and social media engagement instead of the kind of storytelling that first drew her to the profession. She also reflects on the remarkable growth of women’s sports and why she believes the audience was there all along.
Today, D’Arcangelo is taking the skills she developed interviewing some of the biggest names in sports and applying them in a new way as a life coach working primarily with women athletes. She helps athletes navigate performance pressure, major transitions and a question that can become especially difficult when sports have defined so much of their lives: Who am I beyond the athlete?
The conversation also explores the pressures surrounding youth sports, the role parents play, what D’Arcangelo learned from elite athletes about mindset, and why she has returned to writing through her newsletter, The Game Within.
