After Atalanta

I have had many moments of frustration playing USTA league tennis over the years, from head case partners who enjoy hitting opponents as an intimidation technique to snippy opponents who don't remember the score and so you have to go all the way back and replay the third set to dealing with stacked line-ups. But today was a refreshing change--and not just because I won and not just because I won by one point! Though that did feel nice. But my doubles partner and I played against a very nice team. Not overly sweet nice where they try to talk to you all the time--'cause that's annoying too. But fair. They never questioned any call and there were some close ones. (We were playing fair too, though; but that's not the way it always happens.) It was a really close match and no one lost it or got snippy or slammed a racket (not even me!). And we ended up having to play a tie break to decide the third and final set (we had ten minutes left). At 5-5 in the breaker (first to 7 b...

Well I am. I played last night for the time in a couple of weeks. Not too badly considering. But according to a recent article in The Boston Globe , women over 30 are taking up in the game. Women, apparently, who are looking for a way to combat the ennui of stay-at-home momdom?? The article certainly makes that implication by highlighting a woman who took up the game decades ago when her kids went to school and her husband was at work. The heteronormativity just keeps on flowing throughout the whole thing. Writer Matt Porter does address though that not every woman playing tennis is a wife and mother who stays at home. He discusses working women's leagues. Of course the way he puts working women in quotation marks certainly has multiple connotations. Because it seems like women who work are always going to just a little less...something (moral, nice, sweet, feminine--pick an adjective) than women who stay at home meeting the needs of others without getting paid for it. What's ...

I have my second tennis match of the summer season tonight. (I won the first one, thanks for asking. But it was ugly, ugly tennis. I am hoping tonight's match looks a little more like real tennis.) Last time we were the away team. Tonight we are the home team. That means that we bring the snacks. I am an excellent snack bringer. Besides my wicked backhand return, I think my team keeps me around because I bake. And I never bring the same thing twice. (Though I did make excellent peanut butter fudge oatmeal bars last season that I may bring back for a repeat performance at some point.) But as I thought ahead to buying jam for oatmeal raspberry bars, I came across some information about women's sports--their origins and some of the continued practices. I was reading Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sport --because yes, I finally got past page 20.* And I read about how in the early days of competition in women's sports--mostly at women's colleges, the hom...

1. A new study in Britain by the Women's Sports and Fitness Foundation has found that more women need to get active--now! In the US we like to talk about "progress" and the numbers of women participating in sports and other physical activities; especially using 1972 (the passage of Title IX) as a reference point (even though women did engage in sport before then--sometimes we forget that). But there is no Title IX in Britain and now it seems that more and more women are not engaged in any physical activity. The study estimates that if the current trend on non-activity continues, there will be 1.25 million fewer women engaging in the recommended amount of exercise just one decade from now. One of the obstacles: image. Apparently being sporty is not sexy and though women want to be thin, they do not want to be athletic-looking. Having an athletic body (well a cetain type of athletic body) is not as much a problem in the US and certainly athletic is not equivalent to un-sexi...

A few days ago I mentioned the Slapshot and Shop women's hockey tournament to take place in Woodstock, VT in November. I emailed the contact name provided on the website to express my displeasure with the marketing of the tournament--particularly the logo that has a hockey stick with a pink purse dangling off it and the website which features what I called a "vampy avatar" who says "shopping is a sport." I got a short but not at all unpleasant reply that said my comments would be passed on to the women's team hosting the event who had designed the logo themselves . This information was intended to silence my complaints apparently. As if, upon learning this marketing strategy was devised by women and not men, I should have slapped my hand to my forehead and proclaimed, "Well, golly gee; if women created it then it must be just fine." There seems to be a very big misconception about feminism out there: because there exists in some forms of feminism a...

I was vacationing in NH a couple of weeks ago and visited with a friend who bemoaned the lack of sport opportunities for adult women. She did mention the Wolfeboro She-Wolves, a local hockey team for adult women at any level of play. I found and have added the website to the side bar. It looks like a strong program with 75 women participating. This also gave me renewed sense of purpose to find and list such opportunities. And if you leave in Eugene, Oregon you are in luck. It looks like there are a few options for adults who want to participate in rec sports according to the community notices posted in yesterday's Register-Guard . There's women's volleyball (no age restrictions listed, both co-ed and women-only), flag football, ice hockey and ice skating (no ages mentioned), bowling, and rugby. As always email or post in the comments any opportunities you know about. UPDATE: It looks like the rugby club in Eugene is men only. But I found the Eugene Rec Department offers soc...