After Atalanta

I was astounded the other day when I read over at Women Who Serve , that a junior player was using an earpiece to receive coaching from her father. The earpiece thing falls into more hi-tech cheating in my mind--though I guess if you've ever watched any James Bond movie or Alias you're probably thinking not so much. A little more low-tech: cell phones. But apparently they can and have been used for cheating. Or so was reported to me when I got the rules for tennis districts, which start tomorrow. Be there 30 minutes early, use a super tiebreaker for the third set...OK...OK...no cell phones on court because text messaging has been used for coaching. Seriously? Previously you had to make sure your cell phone was silent. Any ringing cell phone resulted in point penalties. This year--any sighting of a cell phone on court results in loss of points. Guess I am just going to have rely on some old-fashioned, tried and true methods of cheating: look up to my fan box and wait until someo...

I can't even come up with some snarky to start this post because I am just so astonished by the news that the Beijing Olympics are going to engage in gender verification. Oh yes, it's true. When Ebuz alerted me to the NYT article linked above, I so naively and with the slightest bit of hope said "are they testing the men too?" Yeah, right. In fact, they aren't even testing all female athletes or even just a random sampling. They are testing "suspect" athletes. Has there been a situation of late to which we could so aptly apply the term witch hunt? So many questions...Who decided this? When? Why is it being allowed to happen? Is there any possible way to stop it? And I am so so curious as to the criteria being employed to determine suspect athletes? Do they win too much and too well thus relying on the stereotype that women can't be too good in sports? Are their muscles too big reinforcing some biological essentialism that does not account for a spe...

In the car this morning I heard a preview on NPR for this evening's All Things Considered which would air a profile on the US women's water polo team. How interesting, I thought. I don't know anything about the team. I should remember to go to the website and listen to it. Of course by this evening I had forgotten all about it. Luckily I happened to be in the car when the segment was running. And luckily there is this really long light in my town where I sat through two cycles which enabled me to hear the whole thing . And I was really surprised by a few things. No, not that some players have such strong legs and good egg beater kicks (it's described in the segment for the uninitiated) that they can propel themselves out of the water to about their hips. Though that did impress me greatly. I was surprised that women's water polo has only been in the Olympics since 2000. That fact I learned today. But what the whole segment got me thinking about was that this team--t...

I have been putting it off; my thoughts on the fight between the Shock and the Sparks last week. (In my defense I was getting ready to and then riding 100 miles on the coast of Maine.) I missed the fight live. I actually saw the first little scuffle that Lisa Leslie stopped by grabbing hold of Candace Parker at the other end of the court, thought "bet that will get some media play of the girls-can-fight variety" and then switched the channel. Oops. Guess I should have stuck around a few more minutes. Not that I haven't been able to see multiple angles of the event at You Tube. So first, the brawl itself. Whose fault? Does it really matter? Some kind of version of "equal" suspensions and were levied by the WNBA. Detroit's assistant coach Rick Mahorn received a two-game suspension. Most are saying that he certainly didn't mean to push Lisa Leslie hard enough to knock her to the ground or that maybe Leslie was already off balance so that Mahorn's light ...

Here's where I and a lot of my friends are this weekend. Positive thoughts for good weather and that my back holds out for the whole ride are welcome!

According the Title IX Blog, the University of Iowa athletic department is in trouble --again. Several years ago there was Pierre Pierce incident in which the star basketball player was accused of sexual assault against a female student-athlete. His coach, Steve Alford, came to his defense long before any evidence was in. Turns out the evidence did not quite exonerate Pierce who, regardless, got off lightly--to put it mildly. Not too long afterwards he was involved in another criminal offense and this time he was out. Now a couple of members of the football team have been accused of assault and harassment of a female student-athlete who was told not to come forward with her allegations because it would handled from within. Except that it wasn't, of course. The harassment continued despite assurances from football coach Kirk Ferentz and AD Gary Barta that things would be taken care of. I mentioned this case to someone not as familiar with athletic department culture who was incredul...

I feel a little bit like a hypocrite. Well not exactly a hypocrite. But I feel a little weird about how, now that she's broken her leg, I so easily put aside my issues with Abby Wambach after she said, basically, that athletes shouldn't be political (in regards to the controversies surrounding the Beijing games next month). And truth be told my infatuation with Wambach has been waning. And I'm a little sad about it. It's a little like a break-up; just realizing you're not quite right for each other. It started a while ago when I heard from someone who used to play against her that she would engage in some not exactly fair defensive maneuvers when the refs weren't looking. And the comments about apolitical athletes was clearly a sign that the end was near. But how can you abandon someone when she's down? Anyway, this was supposed to be an update about Wambach, not about my changing feelings toward her. She had surgery last week. There's a metal rod in her...

...of their daughters' games. At least if you follow the thinking of this guy who wrote an article in the Telegraph entitled " Men are made to work not rear children ." Said writer got out of going to his daughter's sports day to work in the office and make more money. Because that's what men do. And the forthcoming legislation about parental leave has him all in a tizzy about the changing gender order. There's not a whole lot to say about his ridiculous stance. My first obvious point of course is that neither men nor women are meant or made to do anything. And second, I wonder how the writer would feel about the necessity of attending the sporting event of his son given that he must believe sports are something boys and men are allegedly meant to do.

So the elimination of "lady" from the nickname of the University of Arkansas is being presented as a smart and logical marketing choice. Who cares what the reason is (okay, I care and I will talk about that in a second)? It's gone. The Lady Razorbacks (ridiculous sounding of course, though I have heard worse) are no more. The University of Arkansas is merging its men's and women's athletic departments (not surprisingly the woman who was athletic director of the women's athletic department has been demoted and is now answering to the former men's athletic director--a subject for another post. Of course this woman also thought the lady prefix "made sense" when the departments were separate). And to create a stronger brand they decided to just all be one happy athletic department full of Razorbacks. And no one seems to mind. Yeah! Though no one is really presenting this as the right thing to do for equity. The praise they will get from feminists an...

It's me! Generally I dislike the phrase "good feminist" because it doesn't say much without an explanation of what one means when using the term feminist and it also is pretty judgy. But I'm not going there today. I simply want to point out that sometimes just sharing some facts can make a difference. Because when one of my tennis teammates emailed the group about the gift we were getting for our team captain, I felt the need to point out a problem. The plan was to purchase two gift certificates: one to the local spa, the other to Tennis Warehouse (so she could get some more animal print outfits--I won't even go there). So I responded that maybe we should consider the fact that TW still retains Justin Gimelstob as an endorser despite his recent misogynistic rants and that the company's recent apology didn't really cut it. And I was listened to. It could be that going with a local store is more practical (though the local place has lousy selection). But...

So much for Michelle Wie's big comeback. The teen was disqualified from the State Farm Classic where she had been in second place. It looked like today's final round was going to be a good with Yani Tseng, the amazing rookie who won the LPGA Championship earlier this summer, and is the leader, paired with Wie. Seems like Wie just cannot avoid controversy and this time it was all about a missing signature. She forgot to sign her scorecard on Friday after she completed her round. She left the tent where such an action was supposed to occur, was chased down by volunteers, she signed it outside the tent. But it was too late according to tournament officials who found out after she had already started playing Saturday. I don't really have an opinion on this whole thing. It seems that Wie is a little distracted though to not to something as basic as sign her scorecard. We could psychoanalyze the behavior but I don't have a whole lot of faith in psychoanalysis as a field anywa...

Me...and the US National Women's Soccer team. Because Abby Wambach has broken her leg . And not just broken her leg. But broken it in two places and in need of a titanium rod. Of course this means no Beijing for her. The breakage happened in the first half of a match against Brazil when Wambach collided with a Brazilian player. Here's a YouTube video in which you can see the incident (over and over again) for yourself. (Someday I will learn how to import these things.) I haven't listened to the audio on the 7+ minute clip yet but you can see how it happened. h/t to Ebuz for breaking the bad news to me.

Well, it's probably always been there but now the organization is being called on it . Mauricia Grant, a former inspection official and an African-American woman, filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against NASCAR citing racial and gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Dave Zirin's column, linked above, is the first I had heard about this case though I don't usually pay much attention to NASCAR. I do pay a lot of attention to cases of discrimination in sports though. Of course NASCAR has launched a campaign against Grant saying that she never reported any of the incidents she cites in the lawsuit (and they include some lovely name-calling and incidents in which men exposed themselves to her; why do men find this an effective form of intimidation?). And this is the problem with dealing with discrimination through the legal system (ok, one of many problems but this is the one I'm focusing in). When the burden for proof is on the oppressed person; someone who is lik...

So there's an interesting column out of San Diego whose local Little League teams are in their playoff season trying to qualify for the LL World Series in Williamsport later this summer. It comments on a situation in which a team manager appealed to the game umps after it appeared that the opposing team's base runner missed home plate thus giving the appealing team the win. The manager who appealed is a woman. Mostly the story is about how apparently cutthroat Little League has become though the writer kind of shrugs that off and says "c'est la vie"--metaphorically--not literally. He then turns it into a triumph of Title IX story that a woman is a Little League manager and that she was so bold and so confident in her competitive ways (honed in her days as an intercollegiate athlete in softball and tennis). So she's not some softy woman apparently. Loretta Barlow is tough and not interested in the feelings of the other team, the writer says and then, in what I ...

...on the new Sports Museum of America in The Boston Globe . There has been a lot of media on the new museum in NYC but this one describes some of the exhibits and installations. I was lukewarm about the place--even with the new Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center--but now I think I will make a point to check it out next time I'm in the city. After all, how many times can one go to the Museum of Sex . [OK a lot but variety is nice.] Plus I am interested in seeing if the museum itself covers women's sports or if they've stuck it all in the BJK wing as if it's some kind of auxiliary to "real" sports.

Some Louisiana institutions of higher education are sticking to "tradition" and retaining the lady part of the sports teams' nicknames--the women's teams, of course. I feel like I have addressed this issue enough and I don't think I have anything really new and/or profound to add to the discussion. Helen over at Women's Hoops Blog talks about it smartly and succinctly when she employs her gender reverse test and replaces ladies with gentlemen and women with men. I wonder if such play with language would convince some of those women who want to be treated like ladies that this so-called tradition isn't really in their best interest. They cite history and tradition, but do they know what it really means--historically, traditionally--to be treated like a lady? Sure lady has a class (and race) connotation that would seem to suggest that women who qualified as ladies (versus working class women and many women of color) had a better life; were somehow less oppr...

Did anyone else know that BMX biking (the cross country race course kind; not the tricks and aerials version) had been added to the summer Olympics? Yeah, me neither. And, of course, there will be women participating because new sports have to have a men's and women's event(s) where applicable. And, despite the fact that the United States is a BMX powerhouse, there are other countries that have athletes who will strong gold medal contenders in Beijing. On the women's side there's New Zealand, France, and Great Britain. Great Britain?? Huh, interesting. Especially in light of this article about the need for greater promotion of women's sports in the UK. The BMXers are hoping their Olympic presence will increase the sport's popularity. Who knows, maybe post-Beijing we'll see a cadre of British girls hopping on their BMXes and hitting the dirt.

Lest you think Justin Gimelstob is an anomaly in his thoughts on women and female tennis players, think again. Diane at Women Who Serve posts on recent comments by Serbian Janko Tipsarevic (whose most recent claim to fame was his Wimbledon 2008 upset over Andy Roddick) which reveal his utter misogyny. And I am here to add these little discussed comments by ATP tour professional Dmitry Tursunov who feels that smashing a racket is like having rough sex. I was going to copy and paste the remainder of the comments but they're pretty violent and misogynist so you can read them for yourself here . In sum, Tursunov sees breaking a racket as similar to breaking a woman. And he only feels a little bit sorry about it when it's over. Lovely.

Think sport; think coed. What do you think of? Maybe it's just me, but I think of mixed gender athletic activities. Because surely people don't mean to use coed as a noun referring to the antiquated (well not that old but still...) use of the term that describes female college students. But, yes, that still happens. The Title IX blog recently noted that in a suit being brought by a young woman's parents against her school the female student was referred to as a coed. First of all, you can check out their link to a post about the egregiousness of the term and its origins in the belief that women as students were add-ons. Second, the young woman who is experiencing discrimination in the school's apportioning of athletic resources, isn't even a college student. This, to me, illustrates the interesting mental intersections of women's sports and general sexism. Women's sports, like female students--once upon a time--are add-ons in many people's minds. Even Bi...

The women should play best of five sets proclaims a British writer for the Guardian . Why should they play best of five? Because the men do is the answer that it all whittles down to apparently. And let me just say it's not the logic behind most of these arguments that I have a problem with. Yes, I know that the best of three was instituted to save women from the rigors of sport; preserve their repro systems and all that; to literally keep them weaker. And, yeah, that pisses me off. Because sure the women have the ability to play longer. And yes it has been an argument--however, unsuccessful recently--for giving women less money and less attention. If women are allowed to play best of five, the writer says, they will create more memorable matches because, to date, all the memorable matches have been contested by men over the course of five sets and many, many hours. And here lies the problem--problems rather. Because I am sitting here writing and watching as Rainier Schuettler and ...

Forgot to mention another article USA Today that ran during the month of June. I don't know what inspired the newspaper to write so many stories (ok not that many but in comparison to other national media outlets it seems like a lot) but we'll take it--especially when they're covering sports that don't get a lot of coverage, like wheelchair basketball . Of course the coverage is inspired by the upcoming Paralympic Games in Beijing in September because sports that feature (dis)abled athletes rarely get coverage in non-Paralympic years. And it features a winning team, the US women's national team that will be defending its gold medal. So the tone of the story is upbeat but it does not cross the line to gushing. It isn't condescending. The article focuses on the captain Patty Cisneros who is also a coach of the women's wheelchair bball team at University of Illinois. I wish the article had mentioned how few intercollegiate wheelchair teams there are. The way i...

I was pleased with some recent media coverage. (I know, I know; it happens so infrequently.) USA Today ran some pieces on some non-traditional women's sports a few weeks ago. The first was a feature on one of the leading female motocross riders, 17-year old Ashley Fiolek. Fiolek is heading to the X Games next month where she will participate as one of ten riders in the first women's motocross, which consists of 10 laps around a x-country course set up in the Staples Center in LA. I wasn't too excited about how both the article and Fiolek herself (girls are more hesitant to make an aggressive pass on the track, she said) set up how this is such a masculine sport. But I did like that they mentioned Fiolek's (dis)ability--she's deaf--and how she has had to train to take that into account. They did not posit her as a hero or as someone working against insurmountable odds. One might even be able to argue that her gender was more of an obstacle than her hearing loss. A ...

I thought I could just subtly overlook this story and let bloggers like Diane take care of it, but the story about Justin Gimelstob's sexist, misogynistic comments seems to making more news a week after it broke somewhat quietly across the pond. I didn't have anything profound to say when I read about Gimelstob's trashing of female tennis players generally, his sexualization of a few specific ones, and his violent comments toward Anna Kournikova (all his comments, in my mind, inflict a certain amount of violence, but his one about hitting Kournikova was most explicit). And I don't suppose I have anything especially profound to say about it now either. Am I surprised a male athlete who only had a so-so professional career by modern standards and has been given a mouthpiece by the media so easily dispenses with misogynist rants? Nope. Am I surprised that the apology he issued (or Tennis Warehouse issues--hard to tell) wasn't really an apology? Nope. Am I surprised th...