Mary Garber died the other day. Lenox Rawlings, a colleague from the Winston-Salem Journal, wrote a lovely remembrance, and an obituary appeared in The New York Times headlined: “Mary Garber, 92, Sportswriting Pioneer.”

Those who met Garber will recall a slender, diminutive woman wearing a knit cap and wire-rimmed glasses, armed with a tough manner and a clear eye. Yet for someone who interviewed her 30 years ago, her affection for those she covered is what lingers.

Garber, like many barrier-breakers, was no intentional pioneer. She was simply doing her job when, due to a dearth of available males, her beat was shifted to cover sports late in World War II. “I’m probably the only sportswriter in the world who started as a society editor,” Garber said in 1978.

The New York native encountered plenty of resistance entering previously all-male bastions in high school sports, minor league baseball, and black college athletics...

We can only speculate whether the disclaimers would have persisted if North Carolina put away Virginia Tech after leading 17-3 midway through the third quarter. Most Tar Heels may have stuck by their refusal to call this a chance to measure themselves against the ACC’s top program, the expansion member that had won 28 of its first 32 conference contests and the 2007 league title.

Perhaps this was in fact just another game, another step in a long march toward respectability and competitive excellence. Maybe it’s all about patience and learning how to win, about what coach Butch Davis called the difference between possessing talent and converting it into performance. There are many platitudes to choose from in a loser’s locker room, many hymns to ease the pain of defeat.

But, in the end, this was a 20-17 loss on UNC’s home turf, marked by four turnovers and numerous squandered opportunities. The visit by Virginia Tech provided a chance to...

What seems important in September will fade by year’s end like a defeated candidate’s hopes, woven into the greater tapesty of a football season lasting a dozen games or more. So it's worth celebrating a few undefeated starts while they remain fresh and bright, beginning with 3-0 East Carolina, which visits Raleigh Saturday to take on N.C. State.

The 15th-ranked Pirates are one of the nation’s feel-good stories, not quite on the order of magnitude of Appalachian State last year, but not far off, either. Their eye-opening wins over Virginia Tech and West Virginia to open the season earned praise for head coach Skip Holtz and his program, routinely overshadowed by its ACC neighbors.

Good as they seem, we’ll know better after this weekend whether the Greenville contingent can even lay early claim to being the state’s best college football team.

Appalachian, three-time defending champs in Division I-AA, remains prominent in that...

The course of change, like true love, never did run smooth. Just ask the LPGA, which announced, then withdrew, a plan to suspend playing privileges for golfers insufficiently fluent in English to converse with sponsors or make acceptance speeches after winning tournaments. The U.S. may be an international crossroads but, in case you haven’t noticed, custom and practice still favor English, the historic native tongue.

Leaders of the LPGA might look to the Triangle to find at least one example of contemporary assimilation sparked by promixity, common interests, and the passage of time. Here, from all appearances, after plenty of fits and starts the ultimate blending is proceeding peacefully. From Carolina Hurricanes “ice hockey” to easy access to bagels, the old antagonisms of South versus North have faded as a prerequisite to popularity and success.

The happy adjustment of a pair of Northern transplants, Tar Heel running back Anthony Elzy, an Ohioan,...