UCLA's Cosby hammers it home

If you missed Sandy Banks' column Saturday on UCLA's Jessica Cosby, it's worth taking a read.

"I tell them I'm a hammer thrower, and they're thinking 'hammer,' like nails into walls," Cosby told Sandy.

But Cosby's hammer is of the track and field variety, and she is very, very good at throwing it. And that is precisely what she will do as a member of the U.S. team at the Beijing Olympics next month.

As Sandy writes:

I heard about Cosby from her mom, who works at my neighborhood grocery store. Bev Cosby is understandably proud, as the mother of an Olympic athlete. 'Jessica works out four hours a day, five days a week,' she told me. 'But throwers don't get any love,' her mother said. 'Unless you're a [track] star like Allyson Felix, no one knows you. There's no publicity.' And I wonder if it dents a mother's pride to have to keep explaining to people like me what the hammer throw is and why her daughter does it.

Read the rest of Sandy's column.

-- Debbie Goffa

Photo: Jessica Cosby after winning the women's hammer throw competition at the U.S. Olympic trials. Credit: Kirby Lee / Image of Sport-US Presswire