After Atalanta

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...

Last week the Women's Sports Foundation released its study of the effects of sports and physical activity on children and families, including who is playing (i.e. who has access and "interest"). A downloadable version of the report can be found here --this link also includes a summary of the findings. There has been a relatively decent amount of media coverage of the report (see here , here , here and here ) but I have been somewhat reluctant to talk about it. It could be, perhaps, that I was part of this research in its infancy and so the findings that, for example, girls in urban locales have significantly less access to sports than their male peers and that this is also dependent on race and class, really are not that surprising to me. I also have some hesitations because I question not necessarily the goals of the research--to bring more opportunities to girls--but the reasons behind the goals. In other words, I think we should question a little more the idea that sp...