Dear Readers,

Our bodies, we know, are finite. This is one condition of being human, and whether or not we accept it, we yield to it. Our bodies get sick. Our bodies get injured. Our bodies inevitably meet their biological end.

This is too cold a truth for these dark winter months maybe. But here’s where some light comes in: 

Sport. 

Playing it: Letting our bodies go to the outer edges of what we believe we can do, slipping the leash of our mortality for a few minutes, for a moment. 

Watching it: Witnessing other bodies push the boundaries of what one human – or group of humans – is capable of. Messi besting even what Messi can do.

The easy narrative: Sport lets us transcend our finite selves. 

Yet we know this isn’t always true. We have experienced, in our bodies, otherwise. There is losing, for one thing. There is falling short – of the goal line, of our own expectations. There is not making the team, getting knocked out of the game. There is watching young, vital Damar Hamlin fall to the turf and not get up and not get up and not get up. 

What sport offers is the chance to meet our limitations. Grapple with them. Curse them. Come to grips with them and still keep trying to juke them out. Maybe more than anything, sport helps us experience ourselves as what we are: human. 

The writing work in Issue 07 holds up our human condition to the light, sees what is there – the finitude of our bodies, our hearts, our life spans – describes it and questions it and treats it with the beauty, nuance, and respect it deserves. And the humor! There is a wise, knowing levity in the lines and paragraphs in this issue, and it comes at just the right time. The term humor in its original sense meant bodily fluid. Let’s take this to mean that humor is a natural part of being human, too. 

As my fellow editor, Terry, wrote in his letter for Issue 3, “Writing about sports can’t save us from death, but … it can remind us how to live.” We hope that reading about sports here with us will help do this for you, too. 

Sincerely,

Carlee Tressel 

newest editor of the Under Review 

A note of thanks:

To Founding Editors Meghan and Terry – Thank you for bringing me onto this team and giving me the chance to do work that makes me feel fully alive. Play on, players.

Carlee Tressel is a player, watcher, teacher, daughter, and writer of sports. When she worked a campus job at a desk next to Meghan, little did she know she was trying out for a spot on her own personal sports lit Dream Team. Several years and creative projects later – including a book about the GOAT of the cold-rolled steel industry – she is honored to be the newest editor for the Under Review. Alongside her bookish bachelor farmer, Carlee writes and raises corn & kids in rural Indiana. You can write to her at carlee at underreviewlit dot com.