After Atalanta

How long have you been covering women's basketball?  The weirdness around Azzi Fudd being drafted to the Wings and thus rejoining her girlfriend, Paige Bueckers, is perplexing. The commentators at the draft and the press room afterwards did not mention the relationship, rather they asked Fudd about being back with her teammate.  How was this not discussed beforehand? Was Fudd prepped? It is clear Dallas was not prepped. A team rep at the press conference with Fudd, who was asked about her romantic relationship with Bueckers, shut down that questioning, leaving Fudd with an odd expression on her face. Hope folks figure this out soon--it is not as if they haven't had over a year to prepare.  Also, we should remember that these are 20-somethings.  The Coach of UConn Speaking of the past year...UConn had a stellar season before losing to South Carolina in the tournament semifinals. Will the season be remembered or will it be the loss--which was marked by atrocious behavi...

 My N of one today is yesterday's ECAC quarterfinal game between Cornell and Union. It was game 2 and a must-win for Union who lost Friday night to the Big Red.  That was a very testy meet-up with (near?) fights. Certainly the most physical-after-the-whistle game I had seen all year. (I missed previous Union/Cornell games earlier in the season but knew they had been close.) At Friday's game I thought the refs had let things escalate. Chances when they could have given matching roughing penalties they let go. I assume "warnings" were given but even if they were, there were no discernible follow-ups on those. One linesperson from the Friday night game was back on Saturday afternoon and the two new refs and one new lines person joined her; it was an all-women crew. (Friday night had been two women and two men who issued 3 penalties against Cornell and two against Union--much to the dismay of the crowd.) I assumed that whomever comprised the four-person team would have kn...

Oh hey--here's the post I never finished about former Harvard women's ice hockey coach Katey Stone. I had basically abandoned it as irrelevant/old news.  But Stone has made it relevant! Thanks, Katey.  The former coach is set to make an announcement and tell her side of the story (it seems?) tomorrow! (So I better get this done today!) She will be accompanied by her lawyer and three former players from different eras of her tenure at Harvard.  I really have no idea what she will say so I am just going to throw out some predictions (I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about the Emmys so I am in that mode). she will largely deny the allegations against her (more on those below) and sue Harvard for wrongful termination (or something like that since she technically retired) she will use the presence of the three former players to bolster those claims she will "apologize" to those who misconstrued her behavior as racist or her coaching style as violent and abusiv...

 I have many thoughts on the news that the Harvard women's ice hockey team was a space of abuse, intimidation, humiliation, bullying, and general badness. I am having trouble organizing them and figuring out where to begin. There is so very much to say. My organizational strategy is to create multiple posts. This first one is about my interest in this particular case and a little bit on Katey Stone, the Harvard head coach who unapologetically created this toxic culture and women as ice hockey coaches more generally.  There is a lot to say about every revelation of dysfunctional and destructive team cultures. They exist far more widely than most people likely believe--at all levels of sports, and they are all multi-faceted (i.e., emotional and physical abuse, racism, other forms of discrimination and violence). This one for me, though, was especially provoking because I did my master's thesis on coaches in DI women's ice hockey in the early 2000s. I interviewed players from...