After Atalanta

I don't write about basketball a whole lot and I certainly am not even attempting to be as comprehensive in my coverage as a blog like Women's Hoops Blog , but there were a few stories that have caught my attention of late. 1. Dave Zirin has a good column on the Rutgers women's basketball team post-Imus. They're having a great season, ranked 5 in the nation. [UPDATE: Latest poll puts them in 4th.] Didn't know that? That's exactly Zirin's point. Despite the rhetoric and the belief a mere few years ago that women's basketball was showing signs of taking off, there hasn't been the attendant media coverage. Various powers in the media always say to us women's sports fans that if there was more interest, they would cover it. There's plenty of interest in women's basketball and still far too little coverage. 2. A few weeks ago news broke that the Seattle Storm has some new owners . Four local women have bought the franchise (not a done deal, th...

...doesn't mean you have to use it. I'm talking about text messaging. As I wrote about not too long ago, the NCAA DI committee voted to uphold the ban on text messages to recruits. I thought it was a good move, but others think it shows the fuddy-duddy side of the NCAA. An editorial in The Baltimore Sun says the ban flies in the face in the way things are today. I agree if the writer means by that sentiment that we seem to have constant instant access to one another. Email, pagers, cell phones, Blackberrys--all these in addition to old-fashioned phones which still exist in homes and businesses. If you can't be reached instantaneously, people start to worry or grumble. But that's not what he means. The writer means that texting is now a way of life--for the younger generation anyway--and that coaches should be allowed to use it. Concerns over cost (to the receiver as well), harassment, volume, times of day can all be worked out, the editorialist states, with a little re...

In a case of strange bedfellows, a Christian conservative editorialist has called the NCAA's decision to prevent member schools from eliminating or reducing a pregnant athlete's aid money a score for women's rights. Yeah, I thought so too but not for the reasons Thomas Ranson states . He's excited because it means fewer abortions. Female athletes win because they don't have to murder their innocent children or risk death and permanent damage by having an abortion. They can avoid, he writes, those blood clots that can afflict young women who get abortions. Not exactly the reasons I was thinking when I heard the news. I was more excited by the fact that coaches and athletic departments and unversities had to start actually following the law that prevents them from not penalizing pregnant women. A victory for women's rights generally but also a small step in curbing some of the insanity that exists in big-time (and more and more, little-time) college athletics and ...

I thought this article about the number of concussions female athletes are incurring might make me hit my head--against a wall in frustration. But it did a decent job acknowledging the cultural factors that may contribute to the seemingly larger numbers (the article presented only raw numbers not percentages per sport) of female high school athletes who report concussions. Of course part of the problem is the actual reporting. The study suggested that female athletes' concussions are reported more often because of cultural pressure on boys to just suck up injuries and get back into the game. Also part of the cultural explanation is that girls are seen as inherently more frail so when they incur injuries--like a head injury--they are more likely to be examined. I did not like that the article stated that female athletes are more "prone" to concussions early on because it implies that they are physically weaker; that their bodies cannot handle hits and falls, etc. Reading o...

So that means it's a good time to get some exercise--outside. The NYT ran an article last week about cold weather exercise. It's not bad for you at all--assuming you have the right gear--they don't talk about that as much as they should, I thought. Because, in fact, fewer injuries occur during cold weather exercise than warm weather endeavors. Taking the article to heart I headed out yesterday for some cross-country skiing. Okay, I was going to go before I even came across the article, but I felt a lot more confident knowing I was less likely to get injured. And it actually didn't feel that cold at all. Piece of advice though: if you go out, go back to the lodge to rest and go back out again, change your sports bra and shirt. 'Cause cold sweat makes you brrrr chilly those first 20 minutes or so until you have started re-sweating enough to compensate. I am also going to go beyond the article's recommendations and suggest some winter exercise at night. I went sno...

A few days I commented that young female athletes are frequently subject to sexual harassment to which they have little recourse and receive little sympathy. The situation in Warrensburg, MO goes beyond even this lack of empathy. Six high school athletes there accused the basketball and softball coach (it's the same person) of sexually inappropriate conduct. According to the article there was a brief investigation this past fall during which no one bothered to talk to any of the accusers. The coach, who is also a local elementary school teacher, was allowed to continue coaching. The girls have filed a lawsuit against the coach and school district. Allegations against the coach include: inappropriate touching of female athletes during practices and weightlifting sessions; pressing his body against players repeatedly; putting his hands inside players' tops; forcing players to change into their team uniforms on the bus to an away game. Since these are allegations that have yet to ...

1. Some, um, unusual I would say searches of late, such as "Wimbledon braless." What exactly does this mean? That Wimbledon is in need of support? That the searcher is wondering whether Wimbledon will enforce a bra policy alongside its predominantly white rule? Hard to say what the searcher was looking for, but I doubt any answers were found here. Another answer not to be found here and frankly I can't believe even the asking the question "why naive has two dots in it?" even brought someone here. 2. Ana Ivanovic is in the semis at the Australian Open and has a good shot at making it to the finals. [ UPDATE : She made it by rallying from 0-6, 0-2 down against Daniela Hantuchova.] That means searches for her have picked up. Still getting the very odd "Ivanovic armpits" but also searches that seem to want a little more than just the armpit shot. Some searchers are getting lazy though. "Ivanovic body," for example is not going to get you very far...

1. The United States Agency for International Development recently gave a fairly large grant ($95,000US) to the Ghana Society of Physically Disabled Sports. The money will go toward the creation of men's and women's wheelchair basketball teams that will compete internationally as well as a tournament that will assist in identifying athletes for these teams. 2. Cricket in the Olympics? Could be. Honestly, I am a little surprised it isn't there already given its international popularity (not in the US but there are certainly enough countries with viable national teams to create a strong field from the outset). Cricket has been recognized by the International Olympic Committee . But recognition is not any kind of guarantee of inclusion in future Olympic Games though the sport's governing, the International Cricket Council (ICC) body seems to want to work toward that goal. Part of convincing the IOC that cricket is Olympic-worthy will be strengthening the women's game. ...

1. The University of Utah gymnastics team held a "pink out " during a recent meet where they encouraged attendees to wear pink to raise awareness about breast cancer. Those wearing pink got in for free but were asked to donate the usual price of a ticket ($4) to the representative of the American Cancer Society who was at the meet. I've said before that I think such events are part of some weird form of activism (because just wearing pink isn't really doing anything at all especially when only $1 of that shirt you bought for $20 in Target is going to an organization you don't even know the name of let alone what their practices and politics might be) that plays on gender stereotypes. I find it problematic that when women's sports teams engage in such events it's seen as something they're supposed to do. The Utah coach said "since we're a women's sport, it seems like the right thing to do." When men's teams use pink equipment (like...

Andrea Burns, an Australian columnist, writes about the sexualization of female tennis players taking, as her starting point, the recent gushing over Venus Williams's backside by a TV commentator. She seems a little surprised by all the drooling and ogling over the women, which makes me wonder: where has she been? Has she been paying attention to women's sports--and not just tennis--at all, ever? This statement makes me think that no, she is only just noticing these things: I thought the one place where women could be equal with each other - judged not merely on appearance, but on skill - was the sporting arena. There are a couple of problems (OK, probably more) with making this sentiment a reality. One, men control the sporting arena. Even when, as Burns is doing, we look at how women compare to women, we can never get away from the fact that they are playing in a "man's world." This leads to point two: men control the discourse--inside and outside of the sportin...

1. I am getting daily alerts--more than one a day actually--about the female ski jumpers and their fight to get their sport into the 2010 Olympics. There does not seem, however, to be much new news. But every time something little happens, the Canadian media, most often the Globe and Mail , report on it. But I thought this article was worthy of a brief note. Former jumper Eddie Edwards has said that he does not think the women are ready for Olympic-level competition. This is fairly ironic because Edwards is none other than Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards from England who qualified, via a loophole in the regulations, for the 1988 winter games where he gained instant notoriety despite being the worst jumper in the field. Edwards does not think battling the IOC decision using a human rights argument is a good idea and that the women should just wait it out. Quite a disappointing statement from someone who himself was not qualified for competition; I would actually bet that most of the...

Sounds like some interesting stuff happened last weekend in Nashville at the annual NCAA meeting. The very controversial issue of male practice players in women's basketball was brought up by Division III administrators. They did vote to accept the proposal that would limit the use of male practice players to once a week during season but provides for unlimited use during the off-season. DI has not taken a vote on male practice players but I am guessing support for a proposal that would limit how DI coaches can coach is not going to be well-received, especially because every coach I have heard speak on the issue is balking at the idea of regulation. In some very interesting news, the NCAA has decided to allow some Canadian universities join the organization. After previously receiving executive committee approval, the DII committee was the first* to vote to allow Canadian universities to become NCAA members. A ten-year pilot program will be started and we could see Canadian parti...

As I suspected would happen, UNC settled the sexual harassment and Title IX suit brought against Anson Dorrance, head coach of the women's soccer team, by former player Melissa Jennings. The more I think about this situation, the more pissed off I get. First, the settlement was paltry--especially in light of the huge Title IX verdicts and settlements we saw in 2007 (Fresno State and University of Colorado most notably). Most of the $385,000 will go towards lawyers' fees. It's not all about the money, I know. But I think the sum sends a message about how seriously sexual harassment is taken in our country--in other words, not very seriously. I hear this fact, I know the history, but this case makes it all the more obvious. I have been fortunate enough never to be sexually harassed but how I have been so lucky is a wonder given how ubiquitous the practice is; how many people, people I know, have been subject to sexual harassment. And, of course, like Anson Dorrance, the offen...

1. Marion Jones was sentenced last week to six months in prison. She did drugs, she lied about it, she admitted lying about it, and because of the lying (not the drug use) she is going to jail. Her story is similar to other athletes accused of doping--except that she confessed. How many in sports such as cycling and baseball are shaking their heads so hard these days you wonder if they're going to get whiplash? But Jones admitted her sins and is being made an example for others. The question that has been posed to me--actually it wasn't a question, it was more of a statement: If Marion Jones was a guy, she wouldn't be going to jail. In other words, Marion Jones is the Martha Stewart of athletics. A lying woman gets jail time, a man in a similar situation gets a slap on the wrist--or if you have the right connections, a hard slap and then a nice little pardon to ease the sting, a la Scooter Libby. But is Jones the Martha Stewart of track and field? Hard to say. They both did...

I received an email a little while ago announcing a new partnership between Texas A&M and the NCAA through the former's Laboratory for Diversity in Sport. I am pleased the NCAA is doing more than speaking about its commitment to diversity (a la Myles Brand's state of the association speech the other day) by putting some dollars behind it. But I find the announcement (linked above) so very strange. Perhaps it is because I come from a humanities background and not the social sciences (despite my attempts to "pass"), but I just find it so odd that we're going to study diversity in a laboratory. What does that look like exactly? Lab, to me, implies testing of subjects. In a kinesiology department (which the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport is associated with), I picture athletes on treadmills or other such human subject experiments based around performance. But when we are looking at how to increase diversity in intercollegiate athletics, how do you test for that...

The annual NCAA convention is taking place in Nashville right now. Of note is the proposal in front of DIII schools right now to limit the use of male practice players in women's basketball. Donna Ledwin, commissioner of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference, has this compelling editorial at Inside Higher Ed which explains the proposal and offers reasons as to why it is worth supporting, including how it fits in with the educational mission of Division III. The issue of limiting male practice players has been controversial since it was first mentioned last year some time but most of the discussion and coverage has focused on DI athletics where nearly everyone--including, and maybe even especially, female head coaches like Joanne McCallie of Duke--have balked at the idea of eliminating men from their teams. It will be interesting to see how the DIII administrators vote--assuming the discussion does not get tabled again. DI coaches are still not allowed to text message recruit...

The Canadian women (the papers keep referring to them as "teens" which I have mixed feelings about) who are leading the fight to convince the IOC to add women's ski jumping to the 2010 Vancouver Games have received the support of IOC member Beckie Scott , a nordic skier who won gold in Salt Lake City in 2002. Scott calls the IOC's policy unjust in this day and age. And although many are considering her vocal support from within a positive, it remains to be seen just how much sway one person, an athlete member, has. Some details about the negotiations have come out and they sound fascinating--especially from the perspective of a young athlete: Zoya Lynch called the back-and-forth arguments between the IOC and the female ski jump lobby "scary" and intimidating. The 16-year-old Calgary high school student said, "We try to intimidate them by getting the government behind us and they try to intimidate us by suggesting it might jeopardize getting [ski jumping...

This is a smorgasbord post of little things from the past few days I have come across. Venus Williams's Wimbledon win made the cover of TIME magazine's Best moments of 2007. Pretty impressive given that tennis doesn't get all that much attention in the US. Former national champion Christopher Bowman died from an apparent drug overdose. Bowman "the Showman" was always a little bit of the wild child on the ice skating scene and had drug problems after his skating career ended. Last I had heard though he had straightened out a bit when he became a coach. Seems the former child star syndrome strikes athletes as well (though Bowman was also a child actor--he had a part in Little House on the Prairie .) A commercial for the Big Ten Network--on a Massachusetts radio station. I live far outside Big Ten country now and was quite surprised to hear the network advertised out here. Of course the commercial was touting all the men's basketball you could ever want to watch...

Well this controversy is actually old(er). It began last year* in Rochester, Minnesota when a lesbian couple sued their athletic club (scroll down a bit to see the news blurb; slightly longer story here ) because it would not give them the family rate on their membership. A judge dismissed their civil lawsuit which cited sexual orientation discrimination and the couple is now appealing, asking that the lawsuit be reinstated. According to the club rules, no one can get the family membership unless they are legally married. And here we see what seems to be the theme of the week: it's not us (health club, IOC) who are discriminating; it's just the rules. Of course no lesbians, except those in Massachusetts, can get married. The health club doesn't seem to care. This whole story is a bit surprising to me. Every health club I have belonged to has extended their family or couples rate to my partner and me--even when I lived in Iowa! And I always thought Minnesota was more liberal...

The IOC issued a statement to the media today about the forthcoming pressure the Canadian government has vowed it will put on the organization in an attempt to get women's ski jumping into the Olympics in 2010. The statement says the decision has nothing to do with gender discrimination but is rather one based on "technical merit." Such a typical liberal response. See, no one on the IOC could possibly be sexist or practicing gender discrimination because the vote to exclude women from ski jumping is just one that was based on the "rigid criteria." It just reeks of the rhetoric used in other discrimination-remedying programs like affirmative action. If you just follow the rules, meet the criteria, then you can compete just like everyone else, is what is being said here. And of course there is the implication that if you want to bypass these rules and criteria, if you want a "special exception" then is what you received really worth having? Hasn't it...

...off an icy slope and shoot into the air and land on two thin (relatively speaking) sticks. Obviously ski jumping is not a sport I am especially eager to take up, but there are plenty of women who do ski jump already and want to be able to do it in the Olympics. The ski jumpers have been doing everything in their power to get their sport into the Olympics, but with few positive results. Last September the jumpers filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission charging that federal monies (all the taxpayer dollars going towards the 2010 games) cannot be spent on facilities that discriminate--as the ski jumping ones would. A settlement on that complaint has been reached. (More on that in a bit.) Former Salt Lake City mayor Deedee Corradini has urged Canada to put pressure on the IOC , which has said it will only consider adding the sport when it sees women's ski jumping as having universal interest. And the latest news out of Canada is that the federal government will ...

Like girls' participation in wrestling, women's hockey is growing. And though young girls often start playing on co-ed teams--or boys' teams that a few girls join--the growth of the women's game has meant the growth of all-female teams; at least in the United States and Canada. And that's the subject of this blog post on Hockey.com out of Canada that discusses the first ever women's under-18 world championships. Unfortunately the author finds a way to spin the success of the US and Canadian programs by basically disparaging all the other teams that will come to the tournament this week in Calgary. And while it's true that the US and Canada are way ahead of the other national teams participating in international competition (though we must remember that the US did place third in the Turino Olympics after losing to Sweden), the author fails to consider why this is. Hockey is basically Canada's national sport so it's no surprise that they--more often th...

Since I get so many hits from people looking for information on female wrestlers and because this story is just rife with issues about gender and sexuality, I couldn't pass up commenting on it. This article in the Press-Telegram out of Long Beach, CA came out at the very end of last month and I actually read it while at my family's on Christmas Day. Some discussion ensued. It's no secret that women and girls are are entering the sport in ever increasing numbers. And it's no secret that this has created much consternation. [Again, I recommend highly the documentary Girl Wrestler as a good example of the issues faced by young girls who want to participate in the sport.] But even with growing participants there is just not enough critical mass yet to have girls' teams (though some colleges are starting women's wrestling teams). So high school teams are going co-ed. And given that wrestling matches are organized by weight categories, the concept of girls wrestling...

A paper in New Zealand has named the top ten sports teams of all time in a recent article. Pam Shriver and Martina Navratilova earned the number 7 spot on the list. It's a short little blurb but it reminds us of how impressive they were: in 1984 they captured all four Grand Slams, which was part of their 109-match unbeaten streak.

Outsports has a nice piece on Jenny Fulle , the first girl who was officially allowed to play Little League Baseball in 1974. It recounts the history of her case against LLB and the many obstacles she encountered on a local and national level. When I was doing research last year on how Ms . magazine covered women's sports, I came across Fulle's story more than once. This, along with the help she received from the her local chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), is a good example of how mainstream or liberal feminism did see the importance of, and worked for, girls' access to sport and other physical activities--something that is not often discussed or even considered in historical accounts of this period. And what's Fulle been up since fighting her way onto the diamond? Fighting her way to the top in another male-dominated business--movie production. She's an executive VP and executive producer for Sony Pictures Imageworks. And she's coaching her s...

OK--here's part 2. The Detroit Free Press lists the top ten villains in sports of 2007. Marion Jones makes the list for her doping offenses, as does Martina Hingis for her alleged cocaine use, denial, and subsequent retirement. And, of course, Don Imus is right up there with the all the dopers and steroid-user deniers. I was a little surprised to see Hingis listed as a villain for alleged cocaine use given all the actual, proven drug use of various professional athletes in basketball and football in the United States. Hingis just seems to have this aura that makes (some of) the media dislike her (i.e. the Black Widow label ). Fox Sports asks (and answers) its top ten questions in women's tennis in 2008. Question #7's answer, can Amelie Mauresmo hold up French tennis? is a likely no. And though, as a huge fan, it disappoints me to say this. I think writer Matt Cronin is right. But I take exception to his comment that she "burned out" in 2007. She had an appendect...