After Atalanta

...to the post below about the induction of Foudy and Hamm into the National Soccer Hall of fame is that WOMEN'S PROFESSIONAL SOCCER IS BACK !! Or it will be back in spring 2008--a start date chosen to hold the interest of fans after the 2007 FIFA World Cup in China. Six investors have signed on to 5 markets with the 6th locale to be determined. (Please let it be Boston. Please let it be Boston. And please let Abby Wambach be on the closest possible team to me.) I was so sad when the WUSA collapsed. And now I am so happy! I hope this new venture really takes off.

Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame this summer in the player category. This is the first time the inductees in the player category are both women. Hamm's vote in was almost unanimous. I think it's appropriate that two of the most outstanding players in the history of women's soccer will be inducted together.

In an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader (out of Kentucky), reprinted from a Florida paper, the author discusses the truth behind college scholarships. It is for all the parents sinking thousands of dollars into the children's sports in an effort to get them a "full ride" to let them know that that's not how college athletics work. Most scholarships are only partial ones. Most teams are allotted a certain number of scholarships and the coach divides them among players with not everyone getting an equal piece--or any piece at all. In some sports this does not happen--like football and men's and women's basketball--where full scholarships are awarded. But in other sports there are more limits, with, says the author, fewer limits on women's sports because of Title IX. In actuality, women in collegiate sports receive less scholarship dollars than male athletes. It may look like women's soccer has more scholarships than it's "equivalent" m...

I went to my first roller derby last night. It was an all-women event, which I know stating it was all women may seem redundant, but the home team last night actually has men's and women's roller derby because they believe you should be able to participate "no matter what kind of plumbing you have." I did not know what to expect really having only acquired snippets of information (mostly in the form of images) of roller derby over the years. The main differences I found (between my hodgepodge collection of memories and the reality) was that this was flat track roller derby, it was not as fast, and there was not as much contact as I expected. This was disappointing. The group is kind of new so part of the lack of action and speed may be skill level and not reflect all roller derby. Most of the time they looked a little shaky and though I know there was strategy involved it seemed more like luck than skill when a team scored a point. What I did learn was that, yes, ther...

What a week! Illinois retires their Indian mascot and Wimbledon has finally agreed to award equal prize money to women players . Now every grand slam has equal prize money for the winners. (The French Open still maintains a disparity in prize money up until the finals, though with the Wimbledon decision many believe the French Open will have to follow suit soon.) As happy as I am to hear the news, I am a little disappointed that it appears the decision was not really due to any feminist activism. This is in part because there has been little feminist activism around the issue. Venus Williams wrote a good editorial about it last year before the tournament began and every year the media gets a quote or two from a female player who says something along the lines of "yeah, it's not fair; we should be paid the same as the men." No one takes it any further or even discusses the possibility of taking it any further. Gone are the days of Billie Jean King organized boycotts. It ap...

I do not watch The Apprentice but I have been curious about what has been going on this season because this is the season that includes an Olympic athlete chosen by the viewers during last year's Turino Olympics. Hockey player Angela Ruggiero won. As much as I love hockey and admire Ruggiero, it's still not enough to get me to watch. I only caught the very end of the first episode. And then I watched some clips of Ruggiero online. Curious, I checked back in to the website yesterday to see if she was still in the game. She is. I also found her profile that includes a bio, pics (including this one), and video. Underneath the pictures is a message board. This in itself is an issue because it implicitly encourages people to comment on the photos rather than just their performance. Anyway, from the first day they all lined up to meet The Donald it was clear that Ruggiero was not like the other women. Sure, she's blond with a bright smile. But she is not a size 4 and her upper a...

The University of Illinois has finally agreed to comply with NCAA orders to get rid of mascot, Chief Illiniwek. The university can keep the nicknames Illini and Fighting Illini (similar to the decision regarding William and Mary ). I was fairly excited by the news, so when my tennis teammate, an Illinois alum, started to say "this weekend University of Illinois decided--" and I finished "get rid of their mascot!" The glee in my voice though did not match that of her own who said something about "80-year old tradition" and "not really offensive." I forget that even though I now live in a very liberal part of the country, "liberal" philosophy only goes so far. Especially when we are talking about "tradition" after all. So I trotted out, hopefully in a non-pedantic way, why Native American mascots are offensive, how what UI presented as their tradition was not really respectful of Native American tradition, how the "dance...

The arguments against women participating in ski jumping are antiquated and include something about all that pressure on their bones from landing. Hello? Gymnastics? Figure skating? But the women ski jumpers have not backed down and recently filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in an attempt to force the International Olympic Committee to add women's ski jumping to the program in Vancouver in 2010. Because the Olympics are funded, in part, by Canadian federal monies, the jumpers contend that excluding the sport amounts to gender discrimination which is illegal, of course, in Canada. It is an interesting strategy but it reads like what it truly is: a last-ditch effort. The CHRC seemingly has little actual power; it is only a "quasi-judicial body" and though it might voice a strong objection to the exclusion or pass the complaint on to some other federal body, it is difficult to imagine the IOC backing down--especially given that they have already sa...

Last month I took issue with TENNIS magazine's issue on "American" tennis. This month, in the Jan/Feb issue it got worse. Jon Levey decided to take issue with Martina Hingis's romantic life. Levey apparently sees a pattern: after someone gets together with Hingis, he (or she--they talk about Kournikova's doubles partnership with Hingis) gets injured with a consequent career downturn. The piece is called "The Black Widow" and begins like this: There's nothing wrong with a young lady going out and being social. And Martina Hingis has developed a healthy reputation for enjoying her time with the gents, particularly those with athletic prowess. [emphasis mine] Translation: Martina Hingis is a slut and she is hurting the careers of young, innocent men (and one blond Russian who has not appeared to suffer all that much). The black widow--one of the few well-known examples of a powerful female in nature--trope is trotted out so frequently that we know thi...

I really need to unsubscribe from Nike's email list. I got a notice today called "Nike Love" that invited me to watch three short films about love and sports--specifically youth sports. It seemed to be a "support youth sports programs" kind of message. The first was animated and featured a desolate boy of color (tattered clothes, unkempt hair)seemingly from some non-US place. He is kicking along a can in the street, very bored. He comes across a lantern which he rubs and of course pops up the genie offering three wishes which can include anything like a car or money. But the boy wishes for a basketball which the genie gives him. The boy runs off to play with his basketball forgoing his other two wishes much to the genie's puzzlement. The boy's race and apparent class status are unavoidable markers in this "film." It plays into the belief that the only way boys of color can get out of poverty is through sport and that it is a noble way--evidenc...

It seems interesting that in the wake of the NY Times article about female college athletes and their weight that I have found several articles about athletes who pose for various publications and endorsers as a way to make up in money what they cannot earn--because they are women--by simply being good athletes. None of the articles mention the NYT piece or Courtney Paris--who became the focus of its attention. But it is hard not to see the connection. A fair amount of discussion arose from the article which discussed that ways in which female athletes--specifically basketball players--are defying stereotypes by being successful larger athletes at over 6' and over 200 pounds. The stereotypes they are breaking though of what a fit athlete really is. And I wonder how radical a notion it is considering there have been large male athletes around since--well forever. Some sports require larger bodies. But that has always been recognized in men's sports. What the article does not ack...

Listening to the radio in the morning can be a dangerous thing. Bad news and offensive commercials can easily put me in a foul mood. Not a good way to start the day. Usually I listen to NPR but my (somewhat) local affiliate is running a rather obnoxious fund drive so I had on my local alternative radio station which I find a good compromise between public radio and commercial radio. And the commercial I heard this warm almost made me tear up a little. It talks about a man who is a baseball fan and former player and general lover of the game and now his daughter is memorizing stats, and learning history. But she wants more. She wants to know the best stance for hitting it out of the park and other techniques. Well, the ad says--sign her up for the new local Cal Ripken League. The league is open to boys and girls ages 8-12. I know, of course, that they let girls play baseball and have since Little League got sued in the 1970s. But girls have always been the exception in youth baseball--e...

OK it was yesterday. I knew it was coming but I have been seeing articles about NGWSD for over a week now so I hadn't really pinned down the date. This year's theme: Throw Like a Girl--Lead Like a Champion. I am still wary about the "reclaiming" of the "throw like a girl." I at least hope there was some discussion about its meaning when the theme was being decided upon. Here are some links to articles about how people are celebrating and why we still need a special day: Because it's still hard to sell people on the value of women's sports Some background on the day from the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. From the YWCA which also includes (I guess for next year at this point) suggestions for planning your own celebration . What the WNBA team the Minnesota Lynx were planning The essay contest announced yesterday in honor of the day by the Seattle Storm (deadline not until April 16 if you know any interested 4th...

I found out about this incident recently (though it occurred January 20) in which approximately 15 Guilford College football players attacked three Palestinian students, two from Guilford and one who attends NC State, assaulting them physically and calling them names such as sand n***** and other racist names. Note the irony that Guilford College is a Quaker college--the are called, in fact, The Quakers. And the school, located in Greensboro, NC has " a national reputation for its emphasis on social justice and nonviolence. " But only 3 of the 15 students have been charged and they are all out on bail and ATTENDING CLASSES. School administrators are calling the incident an altercation, with no mention of what it really was: a hate crime. A letter from representatives of two groups, Greensboro Justice Fund and Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, would like concerned peoples to contact college administrators and encourage them to take the following actions: Kent Ch...

Just when you think you're the only person complaining about things like the lack of funding, Title IX backlash, and disparate media coverage of women's sports, you find a kindred spirit--at least regarding media coverage. A UNC fan, Tom Jensen , wrote into his local paper, The News and Observer, complaining that the paper thought an AP wire story constituted proper coverage of one of the biggest games in women's college basketball this year, UNC versus Maryland in a rematch of last year's NCAA Championship Game. Mr. Jensen wrote a concise but articulate letter that included this: "It's hard to even pretend you care about women's sports when one of the biggest women's sports events of the year in North Carolina doesn't even merit sending a reporter." Well said.

I think there is a general awareness that individuals with physical disabilities play sports. The Paralympics happen in the same venues as the Olympics every four years directly following the Games. A few years ago Murderball about wheelchair rugby was a popular documentary. Though, admittedly, most of us who are able-bodied think very rarely about sport and disability. And because we see it so rarely it seems like an anomaly. And it is not a far stretch to think about access to sport, if one is differently abled, as a privilege, rather than a right. A story such as this one about the availability of varsity sports at the collegiate level for student-athletes with physical disabilities highlights the Othering of disability and sport. Only 11 universities offer varsity sports for disabled athletes. And most of those have to raise money to keep their programs going. Can you imagine the increase in access to sport if persons with disabilities had something similar to Title IX? The legal ...

If anyone is interested in hearing what went on at the annual meeting of the Knight Commission last week, which I wrote about briefly here , you can get the podcasts. The podcasts let you listen to the whole thing (all the panels) or just pick and choose among all the panels. I have only listened to about half of the gender equity panel but Dr. Christine Grant's testimony is first and it is very good. The links are as follows: from the Knight COmmission website: www.knightcommission.org/students/item/knight_commission_meeting_january_22nd_2007 or from iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=213983339

This editorial by a sports journalist in Virginia whose job basically mandates he cover women's high school sports has an odd tone. He confesses to being raised in an era when women's sports were so second class he never even bothered to pay much attention. But surprise!--he has been excited to see the progress in women's sports since his school days. He credits Title IX--though spreads some misinformation about how a school achieves compliance. (He has the three prongs but implies that all three need to be met for compliance.) But overall he portrays women's sports as so bad before that there is the implication of "nowhere to go but up." He also measures progress using hegemonic sport as a model. For example, girls' sports must be better because girls are now practicing their sport year-round. He also recognizes the high level of coaching in both girls' and boys' athletics. But he fails to note that after the passage of Title IX the number of wom...