![]() “Here was Carril, college basketball’s rural church mouse, scurrying about in some postmodern, ethereal dome, outcoaching the 1995 Coach of the Year, UCLA’s Jim Harrick.”Īfter college, Wahl turned down an offer from the Miami Herald for a fact-checking job at Sports Illustrated. Princeton was led by Carril, the school’s irascible, diminutive coach who passed away in August. “Long after Pete Carril leaves the coaching profession, last night’s scene here will remain imprinted in the national consciousness,” Wahl wrote, in his senior year, about Princeton basketball’s now-famous upset win over UCLA in the 1996 NCAA basketball tournament. (I was one of those awed readers, as a student two years younger than Grant). Wahl excelled as a sportswriter at the Daily Princetonian, his preternatural talent clear to anyone reading his coverage of Princeton’s soccer and basketball teams. For his senior thesis, he spent a summer in Argentina studying the political culture of soccer teams. Wahl grew up in the Kansas City area, and attended Princeton University. “I’m in complete shock.” ‘Rural Church Mouse’ “I am so thankful for the support of my husband soccer family & of so many friends who’ve reached out tonight,” Wahl’s wife, noted epidemiologist Céline Gounder wrote on Twitter. ![]() “As important, Grant’s belief in the power of the game to advance human rights was, and will remain, an inspiration to all.” ![]() “Here in the United States, Grant’s passion for soccer and commitment to elevating its profile across our sporting landscape played a major role in helping to drive interest in and respect for our beautiful game,” U.S. Soccer confirmed Wahl’s untimely passing. “We are in touch with the US Embassy and relevant local authorities to ensure the process of repatriating the body is in accordance with the family’s wishes.” FIFA noted Wahl had recently been honored, along with other journalists, for covering eight straight men’s World Cups. “We offer our deepest condolences to Grant’s family, friends and his many close colleagues in the media,” a spokesperson for Qatar’s The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy wrote in a statement. He was eventually granted access to the game, and Wahl said FIFA apologized. “Qatari World Cup organizers don’t even hide their apathy over migrant worker deaths, including the most recent one.” Before the United States’ opening World Cup game against Wales on November 21, Wahl wrote that security staff detained him at Ahmad bin Ali Stadium for wearing a rainbow shirt, in support of the LGBTQ+ community. ![]() 8 sub-headline on Wahl’s Substack website. Wahl aggressively covered the struggles of Qatar’s migrant workers. They gave me a course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty cough syrup, and I’m already feeling a bit better just a few hours later. I didn’t have Covid (I test regularly here), but I went into the medical clinic at the main media center today, and they said I probably have bronchitis. What had been a cold over the last 10 days turned into something more severe on the night of the USA-Netherlands game, and I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort. “Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you. “My body finally broke down on me,” he wrote on Dec. Wahl was working around-the-clock in Qatar and had been sick during his time there. Wahl collapsed in the press box during extra time of the Argentina-Netherlands match on Saturday, and died in a Qatar hospital. Wahl’s untimely death in Qatar, where he was writing daily World Cup stories for his own subscription website on Substack, shocked the soccer world. Grant really helped create a great deal of the popularity around soccer in this country.” “A lot of people ride the wave of a sport’s popularity. “For much of its history, Sports Illustrated, like most major media companies, had been pretty dismissive of soccer,” says former Sports Illustrated editor-in-chief Chris Stone, now a deputy managing editor at the Los Angeles Times.
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