After Atalanta

As is tradition, the national champions went to the White House to get their pic taken with the president, give him a #1 Huskies jersey (but not a lady Husky jersey--after all, it's not Tennessee!), and get some well-deserved pats on the back. This time around though, they got to actually play ball. President Obama is, of course, a huge hoops fan. And he took the women out to his own private (no press) half court to play some P-I-G. And the president used the event as an opportunity to praise the visibility of women's sports. No mention of his own erasure of women's hoops when he failed to fill out a bracket for the women's tourney earlier this year. And I was a little but surprised to hear him say that his daughters get to see, while he sits down for a little Sports Center, "women staring back." Not sure where they see this. I rarely see women on Sports Center. I can't even get highlights of WPS games, so I don't hold out hope that they will make the ...

...is ken : ken \KEN\, noun: 1. Perception; understanding; knowledge.2. The range of vision.3. View; sight.

I see articles or scholarly presentations about the "progress" of women in the Middle East, especially in countries or regions in which there is little separation between Islam as a religion and Islam as a government. Invocations of progress always raise those little red flags for me, but I, too, was pleased to see more Muslim women or women living under Islamic rule, working out, participating in sports, and generally finding their own place and activities in sport and physical activity. From adaptations to fitness clothing to facilities, it seemed that more and more women had the opportunity to become physically activity and even compete at the highest levels of their chosen sport. In Saudi Arabia, a country with very strict regulations on women's movements, habits, and dress; a country that has never sent a woman to the Olympics; many women-only gyms were sprouting up and becoming quite popular. But many are now being closed . Gyms in Saudi Arabia need licenses and tho...

...needs a new home . With the closure of the Sports Museum of America , all the items donated by athletes are without a permanent place of display. But the down and out museum will not give them back to the donors, which has a few people pissed off. Brandi Chastain, former owner of previously mentioned sports bra, doesn't seem to be too hurt over the loss of the famous bra. If she wanted it back, she would have to pay $250. The Soccer Hall of Fame is interested in the item. [I bet if the museum put it on Ebay they could get a lot more for it!]

So it turns out I was not the only one who was a little concerned about Donna Lopiano's new position as head of the Women's Baseball Committee for the International Baseball Federation. She told me last night (well me and the rest of the audience at her talk) that Sue Enquist (former UCLA softball coach) and sports writer Christine Brennan had called her up, a little incredulous themselves. Their worries were slightly different: that Lopiano was going to be hurting softball's chances of getting back into the Olympics. But she's pretty confident that that's not likely to happen. There's no way women's baseball can grow quickly enough to be viable for the 2016 Olympics. Her acceptance of the position made sense, especially after I was reminded of her story of her Little League baseball experience: she was "drafted" first in tryouts as a pitcher and was told she could not play because Little League rules banned girls. So her goal is to bring baseball ...

To the Olympics, that is. I am not talking about the bids by various sports (karate, softball, baseball, rugby, golf, among others) to earn a spot on the Olympic roster, but two situations all about gender exclusion. The first is the ongoing battle by female ski jumpers to get into the 2010 Winter Games. Their day in court came yesterday (and will continue all week) as they argue that the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) must allow them to compete because the organization is bound by the Canadian Charter and not the IOC. The jumpers' lawyer presented the legal arguments yesterday and will do so today as well. VANOC will respond later in the week. There is no testimony, just arguments. It's going to be an interesting decision; perhaps even precedent-setting. What happens when federal law applies to one group that is subject to the rules of another organization/group that is not bound by the same laws? Happens sometimes in the United States with Title IX. Schools are bound by ...

The International Baseball Federation is just relentless! Realizing it could not get back into the Olympics on its own merits (or rather because of its many demerits), it cozied up to International Softball in an attempt for a joint bid . It wanted to ride the more clean (i.e., not steroid injected) coattails of its "sister" sport. But softball said no thanks. Baseball's plan b is to include a women's division. They plan to grow women's baseball. As I have said, "yes, let's grow women's baseball." But the timing, of course, is suspicious given that so much energy has been put into keeping women out of baseball. But now baseball needs women. And it apparently needs Donna Lopiano to convince everyone of its commitment to women's baseball. Lopiano has been named chair of the International Baseball Federation's Women's Baseball Committee. Well, they certainly cannot be accused of engaging in a half-hearted attempt. While I certainly do ...

This is my week of incredulity, clearly. And it has been topped off by Dave Zirin, whose work I usually admire. Whose books I actually assign in my class. But his piece in The Nation really ticked me off. And what ticks me off more is that he's making a great point. A point that I have made in various ways for a while now. Basically that Geno Auriemma is an egomaniac, slightly off, and a grandstander who is taking away from his players. Unfortunately he keeps calling the UConn team the Lady Huskies. As I have mentioned previously, the UConn team actually does not use the term Lady to refer to its women's teams. (It's one of the few things that doesn't irk me about them.) Also, as I have mentioned previously, we shouldn't be using the term lady even when the teams themselves do so because it just reinforces all the negative stereotypes about women playing sports. A few years ago, Zirin spoke at the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sp...

Like I am not feeling ill enough with a yucky cold, now I read that Geno Auriemma is going to be the next national team coach . It's enough to make a gal want to stay in bed all day. I don't get it. Sure he's a good coach if you look at his record. I happen to think coaching is more than a record. And it's no secret that I am not a fan of Auriemma and his latest reward for coaching a national championship team has landed him a permanent spot on my "I really don't like you" list. It's not as if previous coaches have done such a bad job; at least the pile of gold medals would seem to indicate that. It's not as if there are not plenty of other people who can do the job. Because on the international stage and especially at an event like the Olympics where there still isn't gender equity, I think it's important that the US send a coach who is at least an advocate for gender equity and/or women's sports. But I think that Geno just likes being...

I thought this story was going to be a little more controversy laden when I read Diane's snippet about the gender verification of professional tennis player Sarah Gronert from Germany. Of course the controversy could be larger than the article is letting on. After all they only say that Gronert was born with male and female genitalia but has been living and certified as a female since birth. Kudos to the writer for not referring to her as a hermaphrodite. But someone should have explained what exactly Gronert's condition is. I think they should have, anyway. I kind of have mixed feelings about this. If it had been explained that Gronert has one of any number of genetic conditions, it might have helped defer some of the controversy and some of the apparently vicious comments she continues to encounter. (Apparently not everyone has seen that Oprah episode .) On the other hand, do we really need to know? Is it a bit voyeuristic of us to demand explanations for every non-conforming...

In fact, it's a little bit disgusting. When I was watching the championship game last Tuesday--or rather the pre-game--I thought I heard something about Geno Auriemma and Augusta National. But I was doing other things, I didn't hear the exact context, and when I googled seeking further information, I couldn't find anything. But a re-googling brought up this article about Auriemma's friendship with golfer Fred Couples. Couples promised his friend a weekend of golf anywhere he wanted if UConn won the championship this year. Auriemma's choice: Augusta National. People accuse me of "reverse discrimination" (no such thing by the way) and not believing in the better candidate getting the job (you know, the myth of meritocracy) when I start to go off about men coaching women's teams. And moments like these just affirm all my objections. So here's a guy who coaches women's sports; who is regarded as one of the best coaches in all of women's baske...

Don't get too excited. I'm not actually going to answer that question. I just raise it in light of my new ability to actually follow the Women's Hockey World Championships in Finland. The US lost their first game of the tournament yesterday to Canada, 2-1. Know how I know that? Because I read it on Facebook! Yep, I joined the US National Team's Facebook page and I get the status updates (every period of play, actually) along with the blog team member Caitlin Cahow is going while in Finland. Also, UniversalSports.com is live broadcasting the games. I think this is the first time ever. So if you want to watch the gold medal game between the US and Canada on Sunday, head there. So the point is that all this technology makes it easier for fans to follow. And if we prove ourselves to be a formidable group maybe we can start moving up and get, I don't know, a spot on the ESPN ticker??

Doubt it, but I am still glad that there is a documentary in the works about the female ski jumpers' battle with the IOC for inclusion in the winter games. Virginia Madsen's Title IX Productions is part of the project which will be called Fighting Gravity . No word on the film's estimated time of arrival.

Today at 3pm. Megan at Because I Played Sports (see blogroll to your left) is blogging from the draft and probably Twittering (tweeting?) too if you're looking for some live action.

When international baseball got rejected by softball in their attempt to sweeten their IOC bid for reinstatement into the summer games, they went back to the drawing board. Their latest plan: add women's baseball . My thought on their latest plan: get a new plan.* Women and girls have been dissuaded--by various means--from playing the game. (I haven't read Stolen Bases yet, but it's on my list.) And it appears that they are only encouraged when men's baseball is in some version of dire straits, a la WWII and now when they have been eliminated from the Olympics because of...well...a bad reputation, basically. But that's the tactic they are going with. More details are coming soon, apparently. But the head of international baseball says women's baseball is a growing sport with an estimated 300,000-500,000 women playing internationally. Not sure where the numbers come from, or how they compare to the numbers of female softball players. But remember that it seemed p...

So it's over. We can all get back to our lives now that March Madness has ended. But before I put an end to blog posts about collegiate women's basketball, I have a few things to say about...yes, feminism. I will start with what I am sure many would call the nitpicky: an article in the NYT about last night's championship game, the Big East, and the surprising appearance of Louisville. The men's team at Louisville, of course, did not make it to their Final Four as expected and so that meant, according to one player, that star Angel McCoughtry had become "the man"--a term she had no problem with because, as the writer notes, she's no "raging feminist." And she understands that men's basketball gets more attention, though she believes it's because men's basketball "has been around since the Stone Age." I don't mean to pick on McCoughtry here. My point is that a smidge of feminist leanings, or heck just a little bit of women...

I decided to write you this letter to try to get my feelings out. I just...I just can't do it aloud. I need to work out some of these thoughts I have in writing. I think a big part of the problem is my own mismanagement of expectations. I mean, I know your history, I know your patterns, and yet my hopes seem to rise despite my best intentions to control them. And them--boom-disappointment. And I hope you don't see this letter as me taking it out on you. But...well...I am. I am. 'Cause I am mad, ESPN. And I am sad. And I am disappointed. I mean, I know Women's History Month is over, and that the attention I experienced last month was bound to wane. But I waited and waited this morning. I waited throughout Sports Center. I watched the segment on Tiger and opening day hoopla. I was pleased to see coverage of the Kraft Nabisco Championships and Brittany Lincicome's first major win. But I wanted highlights. Highlights of all the WPS games this weekend. Highlights of my B...

I have had my issues in the past with the Williams sisters (and their father!), but I think Venus Williams has really become a thoughtful person. This seems like a mundane and/or abstract statement. But I think it's unusual among professional athletes and it's especially unusual among female athletes to be thoughtful about issue like gender equity. But this brief interview the elder Williams sister did with a Charleston paper reflects her awareness of the world beyond tennis. And all that crap the sisters have gotten over the years for allegedly not being dedicated to their sport and too "distracted" by outside interests is just that--crap. In addition to the fact that they did not have the sheltered privileged tennis childhood of many other tennis pros, they have not lead a sheltered adult life either. I was especially impressed with her answer about why there are not more American women at the top of the rankings. Her response did not contribute to the general panic...

The women's hockey worlds started today in Finland where the US national team will be attempting a defense of its 2008 title. Not likely to see any of it on television so I guess I will searching the internet for scores. Canada's national team site actually does a better job updating than US Hockey. The AP had this little article about the training that has occurred the past several months in Minnesota for players who have graduated from college. The program was a first and coach Mark Johnson (Wisconsin's head coach) said the time and training these players have done will make a big difference.

New blog--ok just new to me--about soccer. Former coach Amanda Vandervort is the author of Soccer Science a blog that "look[s] at the soccer world from the personal perspective of Amanda Vandervort, a former college coach and fan of professional soccer, with an emphasis on the technologies that are revolutionizing the way we see the beautiful game." Vandervort has a Twitter account (is that what they are called?). This whole Twitter thing and the number of WPS players and sports bloggers who are Twittering makes me wonder if "ken" shouldn't be getting familiar with this. But I'm not sure I really need another distraction from my dissertation. [h/t to Sean from sportsBabel for sending me the link] Here's a local controversy--not local to me, but to someone. A youth soccer coach has resigned after sending an interesting email to the parents of 6- and 7-year old female soccer players in a club league in Massachusetts. There are a lot--a lot!--of comments o...

Christine Brennan's column today highlights the support some women's teams are getting from coaches of men's teams, and men more generally. Brennan points out the support Rick Pitino, Louisville's men's head coach, threw behind the women's team who made the Final Four by upsetting Maryland even though his own team, a #1 seed, was ousted last week. [Note to Brennan, though, not all of us were unaware of the Cardinal women; I actually picked them (in the bracket in my mind) to upset UMD--sorry, Pat.] Anyway, Pitino was all about getting behind the women and encouraging all the encouragement he could via his own high-powered position. And Brennan notes other examples of men supporting the women's teams and how this all points to a more enlightened generation of men and male coaches specifically. And that's all good. I am not as Pollyanna-ish (a word I heard Brennan use to describe herself more than once during her talk at the Sport, Sexuality, and Culture ...

I have been trying, of late, to whittle down my many post tags (largely unsuccessful as one can see). But it's time to add a sport to the list: kettlebel l. Never heard of kettlebell? Join the club. Well I have actually heard of it and knew people who did it, but I did not know it was a competitive endeavor. But indeed it is, with its own world championships (which means it's not as "new" as I may have lead you to believe. In fact it's a pretty big deal in Russia). There are two events, a snatch and a jerk (done with 2 kettlebells) and the competitors perform each for 10 minutes. Highest score wins. And women do it too! Or they are just starting to. A club in Albany, NY is boasting that it is the first to form a women's kettlebell team. Experts say that women love it because it makes them strong but not bulky (god forbid!) and is a good combo of strength, flexibility, and cardio. And apparently its popularity is growing in the US with many athletes using it to...