After Atalanta

I didn't see the third place match between the US and Norway this morning but I saw, during halftime of the championship (won by Germany, the first repeat victory in women's world cup history), that Brianna Scurry was in goal for the US. Not that surprising. I suspected she might be "punished" for speaking out against the decision to replace her in the semis and her obvious diss of Scurry. But then I read that not only was Solo not starting--again--she had been booted from the team. She was not at the game today or yesterday's practice, a move made by Ryan but supported by the team. Ryan has hinted that reconciliation may be possible but Solo's future still remains unclear. Blogger Megan McArdle has a good post about what kind of message is being sent by such punishment. McArdle argues that this belief that everyone has to be friends to be successful is something embraced by women's teams. I'm not exactly ready to applaud anyone who caters to either t...

I took yesterday off. Day of mourning. Plus I was tired after getting up early to watch the stunning defeat of the US by an amazing Brazilian team lead by the mind-boggling, dizzying footwork of star Marta. The defeat was actually not all that stunning. I suspected the US might not be able to pull this one off. Certainly not with the way they had been playing thus far (with the possible exception of their match against England). Do I think the replacement of Hope Solo had an effect. Yes. But I also think a better team, a team with better leadership would have rallied and risen above this change. But they were despondent on that field and everyone knew it. Julie Foudy was right when she said it was not fair to either Solo or Brianna Scurry. Overall, I thought Foudy did an excellent job in the booth this World Cup. USA Today comments that Foudy, when Shannon Boxx was kicked out of the game on a bad call by the referee, she said the US was playing a man down. She did, but she immediate...

I know everyone's watching college football, or professional football, or the pennant race. Some of us are watching the World Cup. But it's hard not to think about college hockey which is gearing up for season openers. The Boston Herald ran a brief column today on the Hockey East conference, in which my alma mater UNH plays. Both the men's and women's teams have been voted first in the coaches' pre-season poll. (The men tied with rival BC.) Alas, reporter John Connolly called the women's team the Lady Wildcats. Grrrr.... I have written previously about the problematic use of the term Lady to designate women's teams and expressed my continued disappointment in Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt for her support of the practice. But at UNH, we don't even use the term. (I would have to look into whether we ever did.) So that means Connolly is just using to distinguish--and by distinguish I mean demean because of course "Ladies" can't play...

It will be early, 7:30am EST, but it will be worth it. The US takes on Brazil in the FIFA Women's World Cup in what I predict will be the best game to date in this world cup. And as excited as I am, I am a little worried. Brazil has not been scored on yet this tournament and they are playing good soccer. The US, on the other hand, is not playing that great--or at least like the #1 team. And the latest news is that starting goalie Hope Solo is being replaced by veteran Brianna Scurry. It makes sense because 1. Scurry is a good goalie with significant international experience, and 2. she has never lost against Brazil. But Solo is not happy about the change and it seems that this change could shake up some team dynamics in tomorrow's game. Additionally, as this NY Sun article points out the obvious, the US has not been playing a pretty game and have been relying heavily on forward Abby Wambach. It was no secret coming into the World Cup that Wambach was a key player, that she wo...

A few days ago I mentioned the Slapshot and Shop women's hockey tournament to take place in Woodstock, VT in November. I emailed the contact name provided on the website to express my displeasure with the marketing of the tournament--particularly the logo that has a hockey stick with a pink purse dangling off it and the website which features what I called a "vampy avatar" who says "shopping is a sport." I got a short but not at all unpleasant reply that said my comments would be passed on to the women's team hosting the event who had designed the logo themselves . This information was intended to silence my complaints apparently. As if, upon learning this marketing strategy was devised by women and not men, I should have slapped my hand to my forehead and proclaimed, "Well, golly gee; if women created it then it must be just fine." There seems to be a very big misconception about feminism out there: because there exists in some forms of feminism a...

...by the start of this article in which the author talks about his pre-Title IX mother watching the World Cup: Mama Lopez watches a ton of sports from her wheelchair. She loves Steve Nash and Edgerrin James, but there’s a special place in her heart for the U.S. women’s national soccer team. See, her arthritic knees aren’t the first thing that’s kept her from running. As a child of the late 1940s and the ’50s, she wanted to run track, play field hockey and other sports, but societal pressure at the time kept her off the field. But the tears were kept at bay. Because as much as I sympathize with Ms. Lopez's situation, I have some issues with her son's coverage. Tobias Lopez writes a generally supportive article of the World Cup and women's sports. And Lopez does note the diversity of the US squad this year. This is something no one is talking about, which is surprising given how Americans like to point to sport as an arena of racial harmony and a model of this so-called colo...

There are a lot of stories coming across my Google news alert about the World Cup. Of course none of the ESPN "news" shows that I have seen pay it much attention. I guess they figure just airing the matches for two hours every other morning is enough. But there has been print coverage of the event across the world. And despite the initial trepidations over the poor timing of the event, it has not gone completely unnoticed. Though, again, television coverage has been minimal. The coverage that does exist, however, is pretty good. We're even starting to hear the p-word, parity. Yesterday at SI.com, columnist Mark Bechtel wrote a piece that suggests he is impressed by the teams in this year's tournament. The level of competition has changed for the better. As Bechtel notes only Brazil has gotten out of the first round of play without a loss. Teams are getting better coaching and more attention--in the form of funding--from their national associations and this makes for g...

Good: Scott Allen, a columnist for the student paper at Sacramento State takes a different tack on women's athletics. (Different from too many other male--and some female--student columnists who complain about how boring women's sports are and why the university is forced to spend money on them and take it away from their precious football teams.) But Allen applauds the women's teams at Sac State and notes that, in general, women's sports deserve more media attention and a home outside of the ESPN2 ghetto. And specifically that at Sac State the women's teams have had greater success than such traditional favorites as football and baseball. Both women's rowing and volleyball are championship winners in the past few years. Bad: I like to advertise adult recreational sporting opportunities, usually teams but I am open to specific events like tournaments. But this hockey tournament for women coming up in Woodstock, Vermont in November makes me cringe. It's being...

USA Softball announced their national team line-up for the 2008 Olympics. The LA Times story about the announcement is supposed to be about the predominance of Californians on the roster (15 of the 18 are from CA; though 3 people will be cut before the Olympics to bring the roster down to 15 so that stat may change). But since that isn't really a good angle in a story about women's softball, most of the article focuses on 2008 being the last Olympics and the efforts veterans like Lisa Fernandez and Stacy Nuveman (who have both made the preliminary roster) are making to keep softball an Olympic sport. How successful such efforts are remains to be seen. The decision to take softball off the Olympic schedule along with baseball, in hindsight, seems like a confluence of misunderstandings. The fact does remain, however, that the US dominates the sport internationally with Japan and Australia working hard to catch up. But there are plenty of other sports where one or two countries d...

I am quite tired of the Nike commercials airing during the World Cup. The commercials themselves are not that bad. They feature The Office star Rainn Wilson playing a PR guy trying to bring some attention to the team. OK, I get it. This is a team without Julie Foudy (though you can always tune into the games and hear her), Mia Hamm, and Brandi Chastain. Some of the name power is gone. But I think Nike would have been better off with a campaign that actually introduces some of these new and exciting players. Give us some personalities--there are plenty to choose from. But Nike opted for the tagline: The best team you've never heard of. Except that some of us have heard of them. Some of us knew Lori Chalupny, who scored the only goal in today's game against Nigeria, and Lindsay Tarpley when they were both stars at UNC and likely national team candidates. And of course some of us have always paid attention to Abby Wambach. So like this LA Times writer I say to Nike ditch the cond...

A few women's sports news bits from around the world: 1. The Women's World Cup in soccer (or football if you're anyone except an American) is underway but it isn't the only World Cup out there as I reported recently. Women cricketers have their own world cup which will take place in 2009 and be hosted by New South Wales, Australia according to a recent announcement. 2. There's a good article in the Life and Society section of the British paper New Statesman about the state of women's athletics in Britain . Quick summary: not very good. The reasons why are explored in the article. Seems girls are worried about their image if they should engage in athletics including being oversexualized or de-sexualized. There are also very few British women athletes who can serve as role models. There also appears to be little effort to change stereotypes by those in charge of sport in Britain who are content with athletics being male-dominated. And Britain does not have an eff...

A student columnist for Arizona State wrote a piece at the end of August called "WNBA go away" in which he groans about all the "Mercury fever" in the air as the team readied itself to go into the playoffs. This brief mention in itself seems to contradict the writer's later sentiments that no one pays attention to the WNBA. He compares the league to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as he explains that, as some little girls look up to WNBAers, he looked up to and wanted to be the TMNTs. But when the turtles started losing money they went away which is exactly what he thinks should happen to the decade-old league. To prove he is "not a sexist pig," he goes through all the reasons why the WNBA and women's professional sports should exist but in the end looks only at numbers--specifically the ones that follow this sign: $. Even if it is all about money--which it isn't, or shouldn't be--he fails to consider two big issues. One, men's sports...

Diane reminds me that Fed Cup finals are this weekend in Moscow. Tennis Channel is airing the matches. I usually don't get TC but am a guest in a home with satellite TV this weekend so I may catch some of it. Last night they had the match-up between the US and Russia on featuring the match with Lisa Raymond and Venus Williams. I was surprised to see that Williams is not a great doubles player. She doesn't have that doubles court sense. Anyway, The Guardian has a column asking if there are too many world cups. I thought it would be a good follow-up to my post yesterday about the multiple women's sporting events happening this weekend (and beyond). But it's not. It's a misogynist racist diatribe. But I linked to it anyway so you can judge for yourself and so maybe someone will read it and let me know what Twenty20 is.

The Women's World Cup is not the only women's sport underway this weekend. The World Cup of Rugby began this week as well and is being held in Paris where apparently people are pretty excited about the six-week tournament. And though rugby is even less popular with American audiences than soccer, maybe we should start paying attention. The NCAA has sanctioned women's rugby and it's likely that many of the over-300 club teams that exist at American colleges and universities will consider trying for varsity status. Also, the US Open of Women's Bowling will be taking place over the next several weeks and ESPN is airing the competition on Sunday afternoons. This information is posted on a blog at afterellen.com which I link to largely because blogger Ace14 has included a clip from Grease2 (the superior Grease movie of the series in my opinion) where the Pink Ladies and T-birds bowl and sing and dance--at the same time! Don't forget the Solheim Cup which pits a US ...

Well the US Open is over which means far fewer people are looking for Agnes Szavay's breasts (I think they are still on her upper torso for anyone still searching). But Bethanie Mattek's breasts remain the inspiration for several searches. And now that we're in the middle of the Women's World Cup of Soccer the intensity over the need to know Abby Wambach's sexuality has increased. Interesting that that is what people are looking for despite Wambach's 3 goals in two games performance and her collision in the game against North Korea which had her on the ground and bleeding from the head. She was taken off the field for about 10 minutes and stitched up returning with blood on her shirt. (The whole thing only made me love her more.) But no one cares about these things apparently. Daniela Hantuchova's belly button, though, seems to rank up there in importance. Unusual search of the week is a tie: "large hoop earrings and the middle eastern women." Is...

The Purdue's women's basketball team, a frequent contender in the NCAA tournament, might have some of its momentum stymied by sanctions as a result of a cheating incident . An assistant coach with the team was found to have written papers for a player. The NCAA has penalized the team by taking away two of their 15 scholarships this year and has placed them on probation for two years. The assistant coach, Katrina Merriweather will have to go in front of an NCAA infractions committee if she hopes to remain in intercollegiate coaching. The player, Cherelle George is not likely to place college ball ever again. The incident occurred under former head coach Kristy Curry's tenure. Curry knew about the allegations and did her own looking into them but thought it was an issue of bad blood between assistant coaches.

...for all this football madness. I don't know how I missed hearing about this story when it happened in June but it's being retold now, perhaps because college football season has begun. It's obvious to even the casual observer that superiority in football is equivalent to superior masculinity. And this extends to fans. Masculinity is proved in the stands by the guy who can yell the loudest or stand the longest bare-chested in 20 degree weather. But Oklahoma fan Allen Beckett proved his masculinity by emasculating--literally--a Texas Longhorns fan, Brian Thomas, in an Oklahoma bar. Well almost literally. Beckett did not quite succeed in castrating Thomas but pulled hard enough at his crotch to leave Thomas's testicles hanging outside of his body. Sixty stitches were required to put them back. The events leading up to the near-castration are in dispute but there was trash talking going on. Some interesting points to note: 1. Neither man actually attended the school he s...

I am not a cruiser, in any sense of the word, but I would definitely sign up for this boat trip. Olivia cruises is honoring Billie Jean King with the first Olivia Ovation Award and commemorating her Battle of the Sexes win over Bobby Riggs (and not coincidentally, Olivia's own 35-year anniversary). The award will be given in October 2008 when Olivia sets sail from San Diego on the first ever Women in Sports Cruise . No firm line-up of who will be on board but the press release says WNBA players and other athletes will attend a Breakfast of Champions.

The World Cup starts today in China. You can head over to The Sports Network for previews of all the times plus the latest news and schedules of the matches. But as Christine Brennan wrote this past week, the timing couldn't be worse with both college and professional football in full swing and the penant race in baseball heating up. I don't really care about these things and am excited that the event is beginning just as the US Open ends. Another sporting event to delay my full acquiescence to the fall semester routine. But Brennan makes good points. The event is barely on the radar screen and ask almost any average Jane or Joe on the street and my guess is she/he will not know a major women's sporting event is occurring right now. Brennan fully blames FIFA for the bad scheduling wondering why, after the success in 1999 which put women's soccer into the public imagination, they opted to "bury" the event in one of the busiest sports months of the year. And it ...

Last April I wrote about Mike Penner , a sports journalist at the LA Times who had decided to transition to a woman. Now back at work, Christine Daniels is the focus osf this NPR segment . It aired in mid-August and is worth a listen--or a read, the transcript is there, too. Daniels is also blogging about the transition for the LA Times .

I reached 10,000 hits on Tuesday thanks, in part, to Agnes Szavay. More on that later. But until this week it had been rather slow. Only a few people looking for those glitter headbands or Abby Wambach's sexuality. So some of these are old. 1. I heard Lindy Vivas, the former Fresno State volleyball coach who recently won a hefty settlement [UPDATE: Fresno State just filed a motion for a new trial but they won't release on what grounds yet], on the radio last month talking about gender discrimination. She mentioned that there is an obsessive interest in female coaches' sexuality. No kidding. There have been lots of searches for "(coach's name) gay." And of course there's interest in the sexuality of athletes. And lest we think this is just an American phenomenon, note that some people in Malaysia have found After Atalanta by searching for "Azalina lesbian." Azalina is the woman I wrote about a while ago because she won an award for advancing the c...

I saw the match between Justine Henin and Serena Williams and I was a little surprised at the second set score. Obviously Henin had momentum after controlling the first set tiebreaker but if anyone can break an opponent's momentum it's Serena Williams. And I am sure people wanted to know what happened. But Serena's post-match press conference was not that enlightening in terms of insight into the match. As many know by now, Williams was not exactly a happy camper at the press conference ; not many match losers are, but Williams's comment that she played poorly and Henin made lucky shots has everyone talking about lack of class and grace, etc. I, too, was disappointed to hear about the comment (I have not seen the press conference yet). I heard both Serena and Venus mention in on-court post-match interviews the strength of their opponents and how they made them win the matches. I suppose it is easier to be gracious in victory, but remember that Serena did credit Henin...

This month's It Takes a Team newsletter contains a short piece on Sheryl Swoopes who provides a little more information on how and when she decided to publicly come out as a lesbian. There is also a good feature on a Canadian wheelchair basketball player who is an out lesbian. Danielle Peers, who has muscular dystrophy but does not always use a wheelchair, has played on both men's and women's team as well as in the only professional wheelchair basketball league. She is also a frequent speaker on issues of disability and queerness and is getting a degree in disability and queer studies.

Holley Mangold , an Ohio high school senior, made an appearance on the TODAY show this morning, interviewed by Meredith Vieira. There are other girls who have played high school football--I think there's even a based-on-true-events movie that plays on Lifetime from time to time about a female quarterback played by Helen Hunt. So I am not sure exactly why Mangold is getting national attention. Perhaps because, unlike kicker Katie Hnida who also received a hefty amount of publicity when she was in high school, Mangold is a linebacker. (Also her brother is a center for the New York Jets.) And it should be noted that Mangold has been receiving attention for a while in the national media like the Times . This marks the start of her senior year and she has received from interest from colleges. She still has not earned a starting position on the team and she was quite honest this morning about her lack of speed. I was disappointed though in Mangold's response to Vieira's inquiry ...

Bruce Jenkins offers the most ridiculous assessment of the true athlete in his column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He takes some of the female players to task for their "garish dresses and odd hairstyles"but sweeps the criticism aside because such things are a matter of choice. Jeez, thanks Bruce. In addition to being quite a strange comment, it's condescending. I don't think any of the outfits this year could be considered garish and I am not sure what Jenkins is thinking of with odd hairstyle. Oh wait--is he referring to the beaded cornrows Venus and Serena Williams wore a decade ago? If so he's both living in the past and being a racist. But what's most obvious from the column is that he is being sexist. Because the real issue he has, the thing that makes these women not real athletes is all in their head--or rather on their head--specifically their ears. Yes, the large earrings sported by Sharapova and Williams (those are the two he mentions) make them...