Jill's first piece in The Times was an essay sent in cold.  It was an existential musing on playing co-ed football and the price you have to pay to catch the game winning touchdown. After that she took on co-ed softball and detailed how it's easier for a man to get a hit than a woman and then wrote essays on a host of her other athletic adventures. That led to an assortment of articles including opinion pieces, sports coverage and straightforward reporting. 

PictureTommy Mickens in his younger days.
Jill wrote about a former drug kingpin who served 20 years in federal prison and came out looking for redemption.  It's a fascinating transformation. “I don’t take pride in what I did to my community,” Tommy said. “I deserved the time I got. But I feel great now. I provide jobs for people now, but it’s the right way.”

Of Crime, Punishment and Aerobics
"It was a stinging 9 degrees on a recent Thursday morning when Thomas Mickens bounded into the Rochdale Village Senior Center in Jamaica, Queens...."

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Photo by Chester Higgins Jr. for the New York Times
The Home-Schooled Don’t Just Stay at Home appeared in the Museum section and details how museum programs for the homeschooled are springing up all over the country. "It seems like a perfect match: treasure-filled institutions with an abundance of resources and slow, off-peak hours welcoming eager children with schedule flexibility. But the relationship is not without its challenges."

"IN June 2010, Lenora Todaro was looking for ways to build on her home-schooled 8-year-old twin boys’ interest in knights, castles and other aspects of medieval history. “I thought of architecture,” recalled Ms. Todaro, who then reached out to the Center for Architecture, a public gallery space in New York...."
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Central Park:  These two stories document an historic change to a beloved playground in Central Park:  The Great Lawn.

The Great Outdoors:  Trying to do without a Glorious Dustbowl  
"If Central Park really is the lungs of New York City, the place where New Yorkers go to breathe freely and relax, the Great Lawn is the heart of the lungs. Thousands of sports stories, love stories and life stories spring from that 15-acre so-called lawn.... I have lived many unforgettable New York moments on those grounds. Like the time I turned out for a regular Wednesday evening ultimate Frisbee game and Paul Simon and his band showed up to rehearse for his free concert the next day. We ran and dove and danced around the lit-up field while Paul strummed and sang to his new Brazilian beat. Then, we came out the next day and squeezed into the crowd of 600,000 for the concert."

Soapbox:  Great Lawn or Great Yawn - "MOTHER and son tossed a light ball on Central Park's newly restored Great Lawn on a warm mid-October afternoon…"

Here's a few of Jill's other pieces for the New York Times:  

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Celebrating Women's Sports One Image at a Time

NEW YORK CITY MARATHON: NOTEBOOK; Keeping Busy Along the Way
NEW YORK CITY MARATHON: NOTEBOOK; Late Bloomer's Happy Ending ...
 MARATHON 2004: NOTEBOOK; A Glimpse of Greatness Lifts an Otherwise ...

Essays:
Cavers Uncover Faith in Heart of Darkness
Backtalk; in coed football, x's and o's vs. x and y chromosomes ...
Coed Softball- (And why it's easier for guys to get hits than women)
OUTDOORS;Attention, Mudville: Madame Casey Is Now at Bat
Climbing the Mt. Behind the House
OUTDOORS;Trying to Do Without a Glorious Dust Bowl
Finding a Rich Experience in Searching for Gold

Opinion:SOAPBOX; Great Lawn or Great Yawn? 

Women's Basketball:
PLUS: BASKETBALL; Liberty Returns With Deeper Bench
W.N.B.A.: ROUNDUP; Local Flavor for Liberty