After Atalanta

I appreciate a thoughtful piece of student sport journalism once in while; something that doesn't say "Title IX is reverse discrimination and men are now the underrepresented sex." The latter sentiment was actually one I read in response to the news the University of Delaware was cutting its men's track program. Anyway, this piece is out of Boston University, which is currently the home of the number one hockey team in Hockey East. And it's not the men's team. The BU women's team is doing quite well this season. (Far better than my own UNH Wildcats. Sigh.) What's more impressive is that the women's team is new to the Hockey East scene. Not brand new. But less than 5-years old I believe. And they have zipped to the top of the contender list quite quickly. One might argue about depth in the women's game and it's true that other conferences have, in recent history, been stronger than Hockey East for the women, but the DI women are producing so...

You know the saying: you don't know what you have until it's gone? Yeah, that doesn't apply here. Because I was happy when I found it and furious when it was taken away. I was quite pleased to turn on Comcast Sports Network to see WBB: Baylor versus Big 12 rival Texas A&M. And it was a good game. And there were only 5 minutes left, which was great for me because I am not a huge basketball fan and I have a lot of stuff to get done this afternoon. But bonus for people are more devoted than me and good for me for exactly what I needed. Plus we all know the last 5 minutes can last--well much longer than that. And it was close--and it remained close as the seconds ticked away. And then CSN cut away. Are you freakin' kidding me? I yelled at the television. (And yes, I did really say freakin' because it's Sunday. This has nothing to do with the lord but with the fact that the new school week starts tomorrow and I need to clean up my potty mouth before entering a cl...

Oops. I love Stevie Smith's poems. "Not Waving, But Drowning" is one of my favorites. But it is fairly well known so here is another. IN MY DREAMS In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away, Whither and why I know not nor do I care. And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter, And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air. In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye, And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink, I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going, I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don't know what I think.

Justine Henin has announcement her retirement--again . Losing to Svetlana Kuznetsova last week in Melbourne and nursing an elbow injury she has had since Wimbledon last summer was apparently enough to make Henin reconsider this unretirement. I've never been a huge fan of Henin's, but her comeback was a little bit interesting--if only momentarily. I thought it--along with the comebacks of Clijsters, Hingis, and Davenport (with their respective and varying levels of success)--spoke more to the issues with the tour and women and professional sports more generally. What will I remember about Henin? The first time I saw her. US Open playing Anna Kournikova, whom she beat. She wore Le Coq Sportif back then (I have this weird memory for sports fashion) and had on a hat (which she continued to sport throughout her career). She was not as powerful and polished back then. But the one-handed backhand stuck out. The French Open hand incident against Serena Williams--which I think the press...

The smaller problem: the women's basketball team is losing freshman forward Samarie Walker. Walker was number 10 in her recruiting class--the number forward in the country coming out of high school (in Ohio). But apparently there was discontent from the start. Like Elena Delle Donne (though, yes slightly different, I know), Walker thought she didn't just want to play basketball any more--or at least that is what she told people last fall. But also like Delle Donne, turns out she just doesn't want to play for UConn allegedly because of the pressure and scrutiny. It seems that UConn was her mother's dream. Walker is headed to Kentucky where she will be eligible to play in spring 2012. She has already made the move to Kentucky and is a matriculated student. She will be practicing with the team. Obviously Auriemma has spoken about the situation as have some unnamed sources. But we'll never really know what happened, in part because it likely remains pretty confusing for...

Journalist Shannon Owens has penned (can one still say that in the digital age?) a column about how Venus Williams's exit from the Australian Open--and the press coverage of her during it--says a lot about the position of women's sports in the media and the collective imagination. We all know by know the dress controversy and the controversy over the controversy. Owens points out that part of the problem is that we (women's sports fans, sports fans generally, maybe even society generally) are so stuck on a few faces that it becomes a problem when one of the faces makes an early exit--a la Venus Williams after her leg injury to that muscle that so few of us even knew we had. Of course Owens could be accused of being a little American-centric here. After all Kim Clijsters is still around and any follower of women's tennis knows her face and story. But her overall argument is on target. So few female athletes get any kind of star billing and when they do, they stay there....

I found the new blog Off the Court today. It's penned by Aussie Rebecca Leeks who describes herself as an activist and a socialist. And I like her. Well I like her blog which appears to be fairly new. There's this good post about how tennis player Caroline Wozniacki turned--in a very humorous and playful way--on the press after she was criticized for being boring in her press conferences. I have long waited for players who called the press on their inane questions. Wozniacki did it brilliantly without coming across as spiteful or arrogant. But the post that really made me feel like Leeks and I could be besties was this one: Australian Open Drinking Game . Highlights from the game: Take two drinks each time Kim Clijsters ’ child is mentioned Take five drinks when Jim Courier makes a sexist remark about his wife, someone else’s wife or one of the female players. ( I didn't know JC got married. So much for my theory that is gay. ) Have a drink when Andy Roddick touches h...

SNOW DANCE Evelyn Scott (1893-1963) Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean; Sweep the house fronts, And heave them bleak in sleep. High up the empty moon Spills her vacuity. I dance. My long black shadow Weaves an invisible pattern of pain. The snow Is embroidered with my happiness.

Glam Gal over at A Glam Slam has posted about the controversy over Venus Williams's Australian Open dress which apparently is not quite a dress. I haven't seen all that much of the Open yet this year what with the odd hours of television coverage and the fact that I'm not all that excited about watching men's five setters. So I haven't seen Venus's attire. I'm generally not a fan of her outfits, but that just means we don't share the same fashion sense. Neither here nor there. But the commentators love to talk about them and whether they are inappropriate and/or ill-fitting. Glam Gal posted the commentators' discussion: John McEnroe: "I think that dress has distracted [Venus]." Dick Enberg: "It’s distracting you." McEnroe: "That’s a fair point." Enberg: "It sounds like it might be a distraction to her opponent." McEnroe: "Well, she’s tugging at it. She’s uncomfortable with it." Mary Carillo: "Sh...

Burlington, Vermont for the women's hockey world championships . I've never been because they always seem to be held in hard to get to places. Burlington is not especially traveller friendly either, unless you have the good fortune to live in western MA a mere 3 hours away. The Quebecois fans should be quite excited as well. Of course, Hartford, CT--one of the five finalists--would have been even closer, but I'll make it work. The University of Vermont will be the primary host with a secondary private rink in town also hosting games for the (now) 8-team tournament.

A letter to the editor of the Montreal Gazette: Double standard The Gazette January 17, 2011 Re: "Pivotal year for Sharapova" (Gazette, Jan. 14). No sooner is the engagement ring on her finger and already we're wondering if this will somehow compromise Maria Sharapova's ability to play tennis? Not to mention the commentary on Kim Clijsters's talent remaining intact since she got married. I don't recall this concern surfacing when Mike Comrie of the Edmonton Oilers married Hilary Duff, or when Mike Fisher of the Ottawa Senators tied the knot with Carrie Underwood. No one wondered what effect the change in marital status would have on their hockey skill and capability. As well, it doesn't look like anyone is wondering if sporting a wedding band will affect Sasha's Vujacic's ability to play basketball. When will we ever get over the silliness of such double standards? Maria Algeri Pierrefonds

At the NCAA conference this past week in San Antonio some interesting new data was revealed. It appears that student-athletes don't trust their coaches a whole lot. And apparently the coaches of women's basketball are the worst--according to their players. Only 39 percent of respondents said they trusted their coaches. The same percentage said their coaches "defined success by not only winning, but winning fairly." Just over a third said they wanted to spend less time with their coaches. This is compared to 21 percent of female student-athletes in other sports. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association is responding to the findings by establishing an ethics committee that will examine the compliance rules around coaches' behaviors and players' experiences. Isn't this kind of exactly what female physical educators and administrators were worrying about in the 70s and 80s when women's sports were being brought into the NCAA model? Not an especially ...

BEING YOUNG AND GREEN Edna St. Vincent Millay Being Young and Green, I said in love's despite: Never in the world will I to living wight Give over, air my mind To anyone, Hang out its ancient secrets in the strong wind To be shredded and faded— Oh, me, invaded And sacked by the wind and the sun!

Word came out yesterday that the biggest names in women's softball will not be playing for the US National Team this year. They have all decided to play full time for the National Pro Fastpitch, which is the professional league in the US. Jessica Mendoza's blog explains the situation pretty well (more on this in a sec). The scheduling conflicts between the pro league and the national team schedule were going to be too great this year and the players had to choose. And basically the entire national team has chosen to play professionally. Mendoza writes about the need to support professional women's sports and the lack of Olympians on those teams hurts the effort to grow professional softball and professional women's sports generally. And she speaks of her discussions with Billie Jean King who spoke of the importance of professional athletic opportunities for women and the need to get critical mass among female athletes in these efforts. And that is the key to this announ...

It's not my favorite in the series , but I like it in this moment. from 21 Love Poems by Adrienne Rich VI Your small hands, precisely equal to my own— only the thumb is larger, longer—in these hands I could trust the world, or in many hands like these, handling power-tools or steering-wheel or touching a human face… Such hands could turn the unborn child rightways in the birth canal or pilot the exploratory rescue-ship through icebergs, or piece together the fine, needle-like sherds of a great krater-cup bearing on its sides figures of ecstatic women striding to the sibyl’s den or the Eleusinian cave— such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence with such restraint, with such a grasp of the range and limits of violence that violence ever after would be obsolete.

This week ESPN suspended and then fired or "let go" 68-year old reporter/commentator Ron Franklin. Franklin called one of his colleagues, Jeannine Edwards, "sweet baby" during a meeting. When Edwards noted her displeasure with his condescending demeanor, Franklin called her an asshole. Franklin was supposed to work the Fiesta Bowl but was relieved of that assignment and was subsequently fired. Cheers from some on this matter. Jeers from others. Some (anonymous commenters) say ESPN is "to (sic) PC" and that Franklin is a far better reporter than little known Edwards who apparently needs bigger breasts in order for any of this to matter. (Seriously, there is nothing better for checking one's gag reflex than reading the comments on some of these stories. These are all from the above link.) A more thoughtful piece of writing came from Lori Heine at News Real Blog . Given that Ms. Heine describes herself as a recovering leftist, I knew what was coming. And,...

I was just going to let it go... But once again we have a top ten list and it includes a horse. A top ten list of the best moments in women's sports from 2010, specifically. Number 4 is the amazing career of Zenyatta, who retired this year with a record of 19-1 (after losing her last race). The list was compiled by new kid on the block ESPNW. I am not taking this as a good sign. Have to say, thus far, not too impressed by ESPNW. Turns out, I was not the only one to notice the presence of a horse. Jennifer Doyle at The Guardian had some issues with the Zenyatta story making the list as well. And it's not because we don't think horses are athletes or don't deserve to have their accomplishments recognized. As Doyle states: "While one should embrace species diversity and celebrate the unique character of our equine friends, it is jarring to see an animal appear in a top ten list of women's sports stories – with so little "real estate" allotted to the wo...

...because there's another naked calendar featuring female athletes. And it's selling out! Not surprising. A little surprising that the women of the Old Boys University rugby team thought it wouldn't be popular, though, and only printed 1,000 copies. At first I thought this was a joke. Not because I am surprised that female athletes would pose naked, but that there is a place called Old Boys University. But indeed there is. It's not a university though--or at least not what Americans think of when we say university. It's a rugby club--co-ed now. Since 1991 I believe. Miss March, Bekki Abernethy is "blown away by the coverage. I walked into the local dairy and saw that my buttocks made the front page of The Dominion Post. And I choked when I saw myself on the South African Sports Illustrated site." Though she acknowledges that there has been controversy, she said even the negative responses bring attention to the sport. Just like all of Natalie Gulbis's...