Nows and Forevers

https://theathletic.com/4295067/2023/03/25/wrexham-reynolds-mcelhenney-kerry-evans

Unlike most Americans, I did know exactly where Wrecsam was long before Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the football club there.

Wrecsam – there’s no X in the Welsh language – is full of spirit and history, like all of Cymru, the land of my ancestors and a country that I’ve grown to know and love. And since I’ve studied the Welsh language over the past several years rather intensely, you’ll pardon if I cringe a bit when the city is spelled with an X. It’s not Wrexsam.

I’m more of a South Wales kind of person, although my ancestors come from both North and South Wales (Gogledd a De Cymru). I’ve been to Cardiff and the Glamorgan Valleys multiple times and I took many of my language courses from Merthyr Tydfil and Pontypridd. They were familiar to me long before I was there because the Valley reminds a great deal of where my mother’s family is from, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania.

Reynolds and McElhenney didn’t have the same kinds of connections to Wales, but they have done so much good in Wrecsam since they bought the team. It’s a great story, as this Athletic article points out.

And Wrecsam will also hold a special place for me: I took a Welsh-language creative writing class there. That blew my mind, stretched me and allowed me to make a major leap in Welsh. There’s nothing like trying to be creative in a whole other language than what you’re used to. IT was working without a net, it very nearly broke my brain.

And I loved it.

It’s also helped me in my native language, sparking more creativity in English.