After Atalanta

UPDATE: Still haven't found my pics but many thanks to Diane who sent me back one of my Srebotnik pics from last year's US Open. Mostly this post is motivated by the fact that I have all these pics I take at tennis tournaments and never seem to use except to send to Diane over at Women Who Serve who uses them in the appropriate posts. So here it is: my picture of Katatina Srebotnik who ousted Serena Williams today at Roland Garros. I, for some reason, really like Srebotnik. She has that certain female athlete swagger that I find attractive. I saw her at the US Open last summer which is where this picture is from. [As I write it, big sister Venus Williams is teetering on the edge of upset as well. Maybe by the time I finish writing there will be a result.] I don't have pictures of this but it does go with the theme. At yesterday's Women's College World Series--first day of play--number 1 seed Florida was upset by Louisiana-Lafayette. Also, Arizona State upset Bama th...

You think I am going to say wrestling, right? Because there was that article earlier this week in the NYT about small colleges adding women's wrestling . But no, the NCAA has not even added women's wrestling to its list of emerging sports. This is unfortunate. Especially in light of the sport the NCAA has been considering adding: beach volleyball. An NCAA committee is investigating the possibility of intercollegiate beach volleyball. There definitely seems to be interest in places like Florida--where this article is out of. But one has to wonder at the viability of a sport that can only be played in certain areas of the country. (I know there are other sports like this--the issue is whether we want to add another.) And one also has to wonder why the NCAA is investigating this sport as a potential emerging sport but not seriously considering wrestling. Hmm...could there be an image problem with women's wrestling? What else is on the list of emerging sports? Well there's...

Girls and women that is--who will be a more obvious segment of the competitors' pool at the X Games. I have never followed the X Games closely but I do remember that in their early days there were female athletes. Then as time went on they seemed to disappear. This article in USA Today explains some of the history, which involved numerous cancelled events and competitions due to lack of participants and fewer events overall than in the men's field which really took off. But the S3 Supergirl Event is starting to change that. This year, the event's second, takes place later this summer in Huntington Beach, CA and has snow, surf, and skate events and will feature Olympic and X Games stars. Supergirl will be creating a line of action clothing and is counting on marketing its product to the up-and-coming actionistas--the term coined to describe female action/extreme sports athletes. As for one of the original action sports events, the X Games is expanding their program this year...

No, not because of the day off. My semester is over so every weekend is a three-day weekend in the summer. (Well, as any academic knows, that's not really true. What really happens is that you keep on going forgetting that certain days are holidays and become really confused when you can't find any place open for lunch and why there was so much traffic in the middle of the day which is what happened to me yesterday.) Anyway Memorial Day weekend is a great time for sports. I watched a fair amount of softball this weekend and on Sunday found myself happily ensconced on the couch toggling between Serena Williams's first round match at Roland Garros and the Women's College World Series. There was golf on as well with the Corning Classic concluding in New York though I didn't actually get to see any of it. I was even mildly interested in the Indy500 given Danica Patrick's potential. I followed the results on the ESPN ticker but before I could change over to watch (b...

Some within the world of sport (sociologist, psychologists, advocates, coaches, etc.) suggest that sport teaches valuable life lessons and skills like teamwork, leadership, conflict resolution and other characteristics that make athletes (and former athletes) potentially more successful in life (in a liberal, capitalist world). Some of the data and research may be debatable but one thing does not seem to be in question. If you are an elite female ski jumper in this world, you have learned persistence. Good for them. A group of jumpers--and former jumpers-- have filed a lawsuit against the VANOC--the organizing committee of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics citing gender discrimination. And here we find out how little I know about the Canadian legal system. A lawsuit was filed a while ago by a parent of a Canadian jumper but it ended when VANOC agreed to advocate on behalf of the athletes with the IOC--who, of course, listened and nodded their heads attentively and then said, no. How this law...

I was listening to last week's episode of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me ( I am several episodes behind--thank goodness for podcasts) and the "Not my job" segment was all about miniature golf. Why was miniature golf created at St. Andrews in Scotland? Yep, for the "ladies." So they wouldn't play with the big boys because, the belief was, that they couldn't play the non-mini version. The Wikipedia version of events fails to acknowledge the sexism of the game's origins, but contest Jesse Ventura (yes the former pro wrestler, former MN governor) aptly(?) addressed present-day sexism in golf when he said that he wishes things were still the way they were in golf in the 19th century when the game was founded.

What's up with the west coast? Last month I wrote about a girl in British Columbia (ok the Canadian west coast in this one) who has been prevented from playing rugby with boys. Now in Beaverton, Oregon (suburb of Portland) a 12-year old girl who has been playing with the boys on teams at a private club, The Hoop, has been barred from doing so in the future. Six foot one inch Jaime Nared is just too good apparently and parents are pissed. Under the guise of "the rules," Nared will no longer be playing on boys' teams after parents complained about her presence. Some of the arguments went like this: the boys won't push her because they have been taught not to push girls.* In an age where in most mainstream sports winning is everything, the one thing that seems to trump even that is gender. What do I mean? Well Nared frequently scores nearly 30 points and outplays the boys. Thus she is an asset. Not that I believe her ability is the reason to let her to continue to pl...

Annika Sorenstam's recent retirement announcement has created a lot of press--all of it favorable that I have seen. And some of the articles have a particular focus: how Annika did not sell her sex appeal to gain fame and fortune. It's a good angle. There are a few problems, of course. First, the implication is that Sorenstam didn't have the sex appeal to sell in the first place. In other words, because she just isn't as pretty as say her good friend Natalie Gulbis (the comparison made in this article in the Orlando Sentinel ) she had to rely on hard work and excellent skills. Well indeed she did work hard and she is an excellent golfer. But the woman is by no means homely. I happen to find her quite sexy. But because the media rely on and help create a fairly narrow standard of beauty (in and outside of sports) the "ugly" girls are the good players and the pretty girls and just pretty girls. Note that this doesn't hurt the less than perfect female athlete...

The AP ran a story a couple of weeks ago about a women's basketball team in Saudi Arabia. The article highlighted the "freedom" from restrictions placed on most Saudi Muslim women that basketball engenders. Why is freedom in quotation marks above? Because when we talk about Asian and Middle Eastern Muslim women, especially in the context of sport, we have a tendency to impose Western norms. And, of course, we get into some problematic areas. Because of course many of the regulations placed on Saudi women's movement and dress are sexist and limiting--perhaps even debilitating. But there are a few problems. First, Western society and Western-based religions have plenty of sexist practices and regulations too. Can we really hierarchize them? Well I suppose we do. But we shouldn't. They all wreak of patriarchal stink. So such discourse as was put forth in the article (mostly in the titles that individual papers chose to place on the story) created a vision of sport as...

Two days in a row Abby Wambach has disappointed me. First she comments on how athletes should not be responsible for knowing about the political situations in the countries in which the travel and compete (a la China this summer). And now she has given a brief interview in a Colorado paper in which she says some not so enlightened things. First, she almost contradicts her statement about athletes and their responsibilities when she goes on about how much she enjoys getting to "expand as a human by doing community work, by really helping the cause and the movement of women's sports. It's not a burden of professional athletes, it's a responsibility. It's not easy getting on a plane and having to go do something, especially sometimes if you're a rookie and you're not getting paid." Apparently her idea of community does not include those outside the US or even those outside of sport. But what really broke my feminist heart was this answer in response to a ...

TIME magazine came out with an article at the beginning of the month entitled "Should US Olympians Speak Out?" Well, yes, they should. Of course the article was published before the recent earthquake which makes it difficult to critique China--the whole kicking someone while they're down kind of thing. But let's compartmentalize a little bit and not forget the myriad of egregious policies and behaviors enacted by China that did have everyone talking not so very long ago. Well everyone except maybe, many--or most perhaps--athletes who are either being told not to speak their opinions about the situation(s) or don't care much at all about what has been going on. Quite annoying have been the responses of some American athletes including Paul Hamm who believes it is up to the politicians to work this one out. Well no one is asking Hamm (who has already been that the center of quite a bit of Olympic controversy, why shy away now?) to solve the problem. It would just b...

So RP calls this afternoon and says, "have you heard the BIG tennis news?" And I say "no, when did it break?" (I had been away from my computer for a few hours). But no, it was hours and hours ago that Justine Henin announced her immediate retirement . R says, well they say she's been in a slump. Yeah, a slump that any other player would kill for. She goes out on top--the only woman to ever retire in the #1 position. As much as I thought Henin subverted some of the dominant paradigms of the game, and as much as I liked her backhand, and as much as I like saying that I remember her when she was just starting to become something other than an unknown (I saw her upset Kournikova at the US Open on Arthur Ashe many years ago when she was still wearing Le Coq Sportif*), I was never really a true fan. I never thought she was a true sportswoman and I think the whole hand up not ready yet signal at Roland Garros against Serena Williams incident really tainted her in my m...

Doubtful. If it's aim is really to draw in male fans by pointing out to them how stupid their own comments on the women's game are (like there's no action, the league is stale, women are not physical enough, etc.) my suggestion is to try again. Not that all the reasons why men don't watch women's basketball are not completely ridiculous. They are. But getting the WNBA's stars to verbalize them in the new ad campaign , called Think Great, probably isn't going to make many men--or many people who are not already fans--stop and say "gee, they're right. Women can take charges and play a physical and exciting game." Some of us already think women's basketball is great. And those who do not are not likely to be convinced. The ads themselves do not especially bother me. I think they should have more action shots in them. I think when a player says "women can't take a charge" the ad should cut immediately to a player taking a charge. ...

Nope, I'm not talking about all the sanctions the NCAA levied on DI teams this week based on academic performance (or lack thereof). I am talking about the decisions made this time of year by colleges and universities about which famous persons will receive honorary degrees and awards. Bad decision: Washington University in St. Louis has decided to give Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate. I won't go down the list of all the anti-feminist ideas she advocates (including marital rape!) because Katha Pollitt did a great job doing so in her piece in The Nation. Needless to say, it was a bad decision. I haven't seen anything specific but I am pretty sure, given her anti-ERA campaign, she's not a fan of Title IX. (I had to throw that in because this is blog about sports and I realized that my post yesterday wasn't really about sports at all.) Good decision: Barnard College will award Billie Jean King the Barnard Medal of Distinction this month. The award is the highes...

University of Colorado has made some big news over the past few years. Controversies at the school have been in abundance, including--and maybe especially--the lengthy Title IX suit brought by former students sexually assaulted by football recruits and players. That case got settled--finally--last year. And part of the settlement included the hiring of a Title IX coordinator. And CU made big news again when they hired Title IX expert and law professor Nancy Hogshead-Makar for the position. The move, announced a few months ago now, indicates that CU is serious about changing its image and changing its campus climate (the cynic in me believes that the changes are in that order but as long as there actually is change I am not going pick nits). But a Colorado citizen can't seem to see the discrimination because the numbers just don't add up for him. The undergrad population at CU is 48 percent women and nationwide women comprise the clear majority in undergraduate classes, the auth...

1. If you live in Maine--well Maine is a big state--if you live near Waterville, ME, I should say, then go tomorrow at noon to The Center to see a screening of the documentary Kick Like a Girl and a chance to hear and talk to co-producer Jennifer Jordon. It's not that I think I have a great following in Maine, this news item was just a good chance and a reminder to me that I needed to mention and extol the virtues of this film which I ordered myself and watched over a month ago. The documentary was directed and shot (largely) by Jenny Mackenzie who is the coach of her daughter Lizzie's soccer team in Salt Lake City. The team, after beating soundly every team in their league one year decided to try their luck in the boys' division. The film chronicles their season. And it's very compelling. I showed it in my sport sociology class and we were running out of class time and no one was moving. I turned it off when class time was up and I actually heard complaints: "Bu...

Picture the scene: group of female athletes, rookies, playing a sport joining a league that is trying to gain some credibility in the male-dominated world of sport and sport spectatorship. Learning how to apply make-up. How to dress appropriately. Comport oneself. Sounds like a scene description from A League of their Own . But no, it's WNBA rookie camp . So much for Candace Parker's belief that though this is important now, "as time goes on looks will become less and less important." I think it's time, again, to question exactly what progress is, and what we have given up, sacrificed, compromised in the name of simply having women's sports in existence. I am glad there is a WNBA; I am glad more and more women participate in the Olympics in more and more events (though still not in the same numbers as men nor with access to the same sports as we have seen in the battle over ski jumping). I am so psyched women's professional soccer is coming back. But this ...

Not too long ago I mentioned Yahoo's new women-focused website and claimed that the lack of sports coverage on the site indicated a lack of insight on Yahoo's part. But I certainly hope they don't go listening to this woman who claims to be a sports fan. Brenda Scisson, a former sports reporter, has a column describing what she believes all women sports fans want. While this assessment represents only one woman's view, I feel confident that fellow female sports fans will agree at least in part, if not in whole, with my list. I wholly disagree with her whole list. It's a ridiculous accumulation of what women allegedly get out of sports that are uniquely feminine. Because sports themselves aren't gendered enough apparently. Because society has not gone to the greatest lengths possible to perpetuate the differences between men's and women's sports (and in the process inferiorize women's sports) already. Now we are gendered fandom. Okay, sure, fandom wa...

1. A tween rugby phenom is being denied an opportunity to play with the boys. Jessica Neilson, 12, who has trained with elite female rugby players, was barred from competing on her middle school team this year after having done so for the past few years (along with several other girls) because the school does not have a girls' team. Some strange bureaucracy is at work. Neilson's junior high became a middle school, which means the sports are now under the auspices of the Lower Island Middle School Sports Association. Although it has a non-discrimination policy that prevents discrimination on the basis of sex it also has an explicit rule that no girls are to play on boys' teams and boys are not to play on girls' team. Though Jessica and her mother have appealed the rule, there has been no decision which means Jessica keeps losing opportunities to play. 2. A group of Saudi women are playing basketball and hoping to one day represent their country in international play. It...