After Atalanta

A friend and colleague sent me the link the You Tube video (below) promoting women's rugby at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. QU added women's rugby in an attempt to come into Title IX compliance, after it was told, by a federal judge, that it could not--at this time--count competitive cheerleading as a sport. It also added women's golf and kept--per the judge's order--women's volleyball. You may recall that QU tried to cut its women's volleyball team, but because it was not providing equitable opportunities to women, it elevated competitive cheer to varsity status to compensate for the cut. But it was also revealed that there had been some roster doctoring going on. So, as said friend noted, it was kind of interesting that the promo video stressed--repeatedly--opportunity. Seems to be a word they only recently learned. And you know how it goes. You learn a new word and you just want to use it over and over again. I also found it kind of amusing that the v...

The Monday morning quarterbacking was all about the Patriots' second half demise yesterday. Nothing about the battle of the locker room bullies. (That I saw. If there was any kind of comment--please send me the link!!) Apparently I was the only one who saw the intrigue in having one team whose harassment of a female reporter made national news twenty years ago take on another team whose harassment of a female reporter made national news just last week. I guess karma really isn't a bitch. Anyway, that's not really what I want to be talking about. I wanted to go back to the Erin Andrews/Ines Sainz comparisons made in the aftermath of Sainz's statements that she had been subject to inappropriate comments in the Jets locker room. The discourse was about whether Sainz was more self-sexualizing than Andrews. And I come down on the "it so doesn't matter"side of the debate. Why? Because our culture is doing a fantabulous job sexualizing these women all on its own...

Not sure why I am so averse to discussing the more hyped stories. I guess I like discovering the little ones and sharing them. But some are just unavoidable and it seems the harassment of a female reporter by some Jets players last weekend is going to be one of those stories. In this case, I think I resent that we are still having these conversations; that people think things are fine and dandy because "progress" has been made and then shock and outrage occurs when such an incident is revealed. I, myself, was called out a few months ago for noting that female sports reporters are still subject to harassment. I could do the I-told-you-so dance, but I have no desire to dance over such a situation. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, sports reporter Ines Sainz has said that she was subjected to offensive comments in the Jets locker room while covering the team's practice last Saturday. The response from the Jets and NFL was swift, investigating and apologizing ...

Yes, I went for the cheap titillation with the not-so-accurate headline. But I am so very amused at the way this whole cheerleading; sport or not? thing has gone down since the ruling earlier in the summer in the Quinnipiac case. Every week since the ruling (that said only that the Quinnipiac competitive cheer team could not be counted as a sport for the purpose of Title IX) I have seen many, many stories, editorials, rants and tears about whether cheerleading is or is not a sport. Thankfully this week there are new headlines, like this one from the NYT: Group to Create Sport of Stunt . It's just a blurb about how USA Cheer is working in collaboration with 15 college cheer programs to create the sport of stunt. This announcement, the blurb notes, comes just a week after USA Gymnastics announced it was partnering with the 6 current varsity intercollegiate cheer teams to create team acrobatics and tumbling. Oh, but there has to be more to this than the blurb is letting on, I said to ...

...like I did. The Women's World Baseball Cup was held last month in Venezuela. The tournament gained attention (again not mine--I missed this whole thing; though I did read that there was very little media coverage; regular Sports Center watchers might be able to report whether the WWBC got any air time in the US) because of a shooting that occurred in the first few days of the tournament, held every other year. A South Koren player was hit by a stray bullet* in the leg. She was treated and is fine, though the team pulled out of the tournament. Japan seemed to dominate most of its competition throughout the tourney and came away with the gold. They beat Australia in the gold medal game. The US team won the bronze medal game against home team Venezuela. Two Americans were named tournament all-stars. *What exactly makes a bullet stray anyway? It's an odd phrasing, no? As if bullets just are randomly flying around like trash that people toss out their car windows. Completely eras...

Note the staid title. It's because "you're f*&^ing kidding me" kept running through my head after reading this NYT piece and I couldn't get past that most basic but not very telling sentiment long enough to come up with a witty/snarky title. So Gigi Fernandez, former professional tennis player, decided rather late (relatively) in life to have children. And becoming pregnant was quite difficult for her. Not surprising because fertility rates in women do decline as we age. Fernandez and her partner, former pro golfer Jane Geddes, made the decision when Fernandez, who was to be the bearer, in her 40s. After many rounds of in vitro fertilization that did not take, Fernandez had the eggs of a personal friend inseminated and implanted in her.* And now she and Jane have twins. Before I get to the problematic aspects of this story, I just want to say "good for them!" It sounds like they went through a lot during this long process. But the messages Fernandez ...

In that sometimes coincidental way that things converge in one's life, yesterday morning on NPR there was a story on roller derby. Learned a little more history like that it was originally a sport created for men. And then during the depression the man credited with creating the sport thought it would draw more people if he used women and they were wearing sexy outfits. Ta-da!The sport died out a bit, had a resurgence in the 70s, waned again and now is back! Read/listen all about it at NPR .

Not too long ago, one of the Title IX bloggers (those women just rock, don't they?), wrote about the issue of double headers in intercollegiate sports. Not two games played back-to-back by the same team, but back-to-back games by a women's team and a men's team. This seems to happen most frequently in basketball. The home team hosts both the men's and women's teams from a particular institution in one night. The issue has been that often the women's games are played first making it seem like they are the opening act; the warm-up for the men's game. Title IX is involved because the law requires equity in the scheduling of games and promotion both of which are at issue when scheduling men's games in primetime slots and relegating women to opening act status. Some conferences have dealt with this already by switching the order of games either at some point during the season or every year. What got me thinking about this was roller derby. Not an intercolleg...

In case you needed another--I don't personally--but here's one for the holdouts**: John McEnroe thinks that the women just are not capable of enduring the 10-month season so changes need to be made. Note that he also thinks the men's season needs to be shortened as well but he didn't apply the same incapability rationale. "I think that it's asking too much of the women. They shouldn't be playing as many events as the men. . . . The women have it better in tennis than in any other sport, thanks to Billie Jean King [a founder of the Women's Tennis Association and pioneer for equal prize money for women]. But you shouldn't push them to play more than they're capable of." This pedantic statement illustrates how either absolutely clueless or especially nefarious McEnroe is. To invoke BJK in a statement that says how inferior female tennis players are is just--well clueless or nefarious. Mary Carillo, who will now have to refrain from slapping Mc...

Having lived in Red Sox Nation* for the greater portion of my life and never having an interest in professional baseball, I have to say, I'm not quite sure of the way this manifestation of fandom works. Now I don't live in dark cave nor am I visually impaired; I've seen the anti-Yankees stuff. The Yankees Suck t-shirts. The Calvin peeing on a Yankees cap car decal. I'm aware of the rivalry. I'm also aware of the generally high level of fanaticism among Boston/New England fans. But I was pretty shocked to see a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "A-Rod slaps balls". I wonder how he explained that to his young son who was shopping with him. "You see, son, slaps balls is a double entendre meant to convey the Alex Rodriguez likes playing with men's genitals which means he is gay, which makes him less of a man and thus less of a ball player even though he just set that record. Because all the people we don't like are gay. Even if they aren't, we c...

Well it came from a lady. Gloria Ray. She was the first female athletic director of women's sports at the University of Tennessee; a position she took over in 1977 after coaching women's tennis at UT. Here is what she said about creating the Lady Vols brand: "It was fun being in on the very beginning and coming up with the name, 'Lady Vols' which at that time was controversial. I came up with a bumper sticker that said, 'Lady Vols, too.' There was a fear that a women's team would hurt the football team, so we wanted to put out the message that it's Lady Vols, too, in addition to the men, not in place of the men." Still controversial--well maybe just among the people I hang with--but for different reasons of course. Then it was the mere existence of women's sports that was controversial, today it's having to differentiate them arguably in a way the makes them seem inferior. And as we all know now--nothing has hurt big-time football, cert...

It bolsters my faith in the media and humanity generally to read pieces like Gregg Doyel's column on the negative responses to Caster Semenya this past weekend. Doyel, writing for CBS Sports starts: Someday soon, Caster Semenya could become the fastest half-miler of all time. I'm positive she's fast enough. I hope she's tough enough. Because some of us won't be classy enough. And he goes on to defend Semenya's participation and chastise the poor losers and admonish the media and hope for the best--though he, like myself, fears the worst. Let's hope we're both wrong.

So in response to the comments of athletes, notably a female runner from Canada, about the recent performances of Caster Semenya, another Canadian, bike racer Kristen Worley, has made some very insightful comments. Worley is is male to female transsexual who competes internationally. She called her fellow Canadian, Diane Cummins, to task for her comments that running against Semenya was the same as running against a man. Worley, who co-founded Coalition of Athletes for Inclusion in Sport, worked behind the scenes on Semena's behalf during the whole ordeal, which she describes like this: “But when a woman does it [excels like Usain Bolt], [a woman] who didn’t actually set a world record (in winning at the Berlin worlds last year), who (more than 10) women have run faster than..., who didn’t set a meet record, we throw her into stirrups and virtually rape her. We did that because of the way her face looks and her voice.” I was a little concerned that Worley revealed Semenya's con...

Dear track and field athletes: Hope you like needles, because we're going to test your testosterone levels before every competition and enter you into the appropriate category the day of your race. Sure this will cost us millions and millions of dollars but since you all want things fair and fair seems to be based on the level of testosterone these days based on responses to Caster Semenya's latest race win, let's just do it. It will be exciting, right? For us: we'll get to watch multiple race finals instead of just one. I mean you'll have no idea who your competition is until the race. You'll have no idea which category you'll be in until that race. This testing system will not only take care of people "on the very fringe of the normal athlete female biological composition" but those who get advantages from being at certain points in their menstrual cycle. And we won't have those silly labels like "fastest woman in the world"; we c...

The summit of Mt. Greylock! Probably looks the same whether you drive or pedal up. But it's more satisfying after the latter. And not as painful as I thought.

I am an athlete. I think. I've been having this conversation a lot this summer: what is an athlete? Seems to be going along with lots of conversations, internal and external, about identity--self and otherwise. So since I am being so contemplative and self-reflexive these days, I thought I would post about whether I should ride my bike up a mountain tomorrow. It's all related, trust me. So this summer I was diagnosed with Achilles tendinitis. It's been a major bummer that I initially (in April) had a good attitude about. I haven't been able to play tennis, but I also have not had to deal with all the drama that seems to come from playing tennis in a women's league. I couldn't run the bases in softball, but I could hit and do some fielding. I also, apparently, have a high pain tolerance which helped me push through activities like biking and spinning. But my good attitude is turning bad. And there's nothing worse than an athlete with a bad attitude. Let'...

Been in Canada this week--hence the lack of posts. (Always an excuse, I know!) Saw some very good tennis Tuesday at the Rogers Cup. (I've included a few photos below.) Last night at the hotel bar, where I was watching a most excellent match between Kim Clijsters and Bethanie Matteks-Sands but drinking an only so-so sidecar, I saw a commercial for the hockey hall of fame. No sound so I am not sure what the exact nature of the commercial was but I was pleased, pleased, pleased to note that two of the first three images flashed onscreen were of women. The first was Cammi Granato with the gold around her neck in Nagano and the third featured members from the Canadian women's team. Since I get accused of being a Debbie Downer so often, I just thought I would take this moment to point out the good that I do have the capacity to see. Enjoy the pics!

...who was up in her players' business and who ran a team with an iron fist; who was controlling and a little bit out of control... Think again. The story of coach Shann Hart, who is currently at University of Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, and the alleged violations of NCAA rules and general good behavior broke a while ago. It was well covered elsewhere and since I have this whole dissertation thing looming over me, I opted to bypass this one. But the news that Hart, who has now earned a spot at the center of an internal investigation by a three-person UIPUI committee, perpetuated many of these same abuses when she was head coach at American University kind of has me perplexed. With a naivete so uncharacteristic of me, I had assumed that only male coaches got away with bad behavior at one institution only to get hired (and revered) at another institution. But some not-so-deep digging into Hart's tenure at American reveals similar patterns of NCAA violations of recru...

Atalanta is tired: of fending off creatures who would have their way with her; of having to outrun every man. Her quads are sore and Achilles inflamed from overtraining and she could do without comments from women who disapprove of her warrior lifestyle. She's still bitter about being left behind but is managing. And she really hates those damn apples getting thrown in her way. Questioning what deliciousness is and wondering if she hasn't already tasted it. How tempting they are: pick them up and put an end to all this hunting and running and fighting.

I'm in crazy research mode these days, hence the lack of posts. But I have been holding on to this link for a while. It's a radio show out of Canada and addresses the issue of Indian mascots. The show is called ReVision Quest and the episode aired on June 30. It's good. I recommend it for personal information; it would probably work well in the classroom, too. Also a story I have been meaning to mention that is (somewhat) related: a lacrosse team comprised of young men from the Iroquois nation were denied permission to travel to Manchester, England for the World Lacrosse Championship. The players hold passports from the Iroquois Confederacy and England would not accept these as legitimate travel documents despite assurances from the State Department that the players would be allowed back into the US. In mid-July when this story was breaking, US Representative Dan Maffie (NY) said that if Great Britain refused to allow these players into their country it would be an "in...