After Atalanta

 Last weekend, BYU fans directed racial slurs against several Black women on the Duke volleyball team. It seems that Rachel Richardson experienced the brunt of it including a threat from a white man in which she was told to "watch her back" on her way to the bus. She is the athlete who has spoken up about the violence.  BYU responded late and poorly, but this was an all-around failure by all coaches and officials.  It has been pointed out t hat BYU's response reflects their ignorance. Others have thrown up their hands in a "it's BYU--what do you expect?" kind of way.  ALL institutions should already be doing this work. That Heather Olmstead, BYU coach, said that after talking to Richardson (and others) that she now "understand(s) areas where we can do better" is offensive. Stop asking Black people to educate you about racism. AND ALSO how do you not understand that yelling racial slurs is a problem? This is not an area to be worked on--this is an ...

The news you most likely know: Kobe Bryant called a ref a f&^%ot last week. He got fined $100,000. (Which some thought was too much--including Bryant who is appealing the fine.) He offered the standard not-apology, and talked about how the word isn't really discriminatory because it isn't connected to homosexuals anymore. Yep, f*&^$t has nothing to do with gay people anymore. I guess bitch has nothing to do with women either. Geesh. The (as far as I know) only openly gay man (now, not when he was a player) to ever play in the NBA, John Amaechi, wrote a piece in the NYT about the incident: "...he is telling boys, men and anyone watching that when you are frustrated, when you are as angry as can be, the best way to demean and denigrate a person, even one in a position of power, is to make it clear that you think he is not a real man, but something less." And that, of course, is very connected to the stereotypes of gay men. As for the apology, Amaechi said: ...

Glam Gal over at A Glam Slam has posted about the controversy over Venus Williams's Australian Open dress which apparently is not quite a dress. I haven't seen all that much of the Open yet this year what with the odd hours of television coverage and the fact that I'm not all that excited about watching men's five setters. So I haven't seen Venus's attire. I'm generally not a fan of her outfits, but that just means we don't share the same fashion sense. Neither here nor there. But the commentators love to talk about them and whether they are inappropriate and/or ill-fitting. Glam Gal posted the commentators' discussion: John McEnroe: "I think that dress has distracted [Venus]." Dick Enberg: "It’s distracting you." McEnroe: "That’s a fair point." Enberg: "It sounds like it might be a distraction to her opponent." McEnroe: "Well, she’s tugging at it. She’s uncomfortable with it." Mary Carillo: "Sh...

Right, so what I ran out of energy to say yesterday and decided that I couldn't really fold so neatly into the context of that post... I noticed that the coaches of all four semifinalist teams in the NCAA DI women's volleyball championship are men. Before you scream "femi-nazi" let me note that I don't think men are inherently evil or malicious* and thus not qualified to coach women. I think that various systemic impediments, though, make it easier for men to coach women and these issues are not being well addressed. And really? All four of the best teams in the nation have male coaches? Volleyball, by the way, is the second most popular women's intercollegiate sport (behind basketball). Women currently comprise just under 56 percent of the head coaches of women's volleyball (across all divisions). This is almost the lowest percentage since the late 1970s. (All data is from Carpenter and Acosta's longitudinal study of women's intercollegiate athlet...

Just finished watching the Penn State volleyball team win their fourth consecutive NCAA championship. I only caught the last set. The second one looked close and interesting. Sports Center came on right afterwards. The story has yet to be mentioned and we're over a half hour in to the show. A team just won its fourth championship and no word--let alone analysis and highlights. I did find out about the latest trades in the NBA though and the football game between Wisconsin-Whitewater and Mount Union. Good thing we have ESPNW to click over to... Oh wait, ESPNW is only a website right now. Guess no one told ESPNN (normative) that they can't completely ghettoize women's sports--yet. Congrats, anyway, Penn State. Don't worry. The print coverage will be better.

Greg Schultz has this column up at ESPN.com in anticipation of his interview with former b-baller, current University of Delaware volleyballer Elena Delle Donne. The interview airs tomorrow at 9am (EST) on ESPN. [Note to self: record that.] I find it so hard to believe that people find it so hard to believe that Delle Donne left a sport in which she was a superstar to play something else; that she doesn't miss basketball; that she likes volleyball; that she does not long for the spotlight and adoration playing b-ball would have brought her. And mostly I am talking to you, Geno Auriemma, who says: "I don't know how you can play that much basketball and be that good at it and say, 'I hate it since the time I was 13.' To me, those two things don't go together … that you would be that good at something and not enjoy any of it. It's hard for me to come to grips with. "I'm still not able to see how that makes any sense. I didn't understand it and hav...

The Washington Post has a very good feature on what former hoopster Elene Delle Donne is doing now. After leaving UConn at the start of the summer and then turning down her scholarship in August, Delle Donne went to Delaware where she is nowing playing volleyball. And it sounds like she is having a really great time. Not surprising. I mean she gets to play a sport that she seemingly likes, for a female coach who is happy to have to her, at a school not stuck in the middle of nowhere and where she can actually mingle with other students as a regular student-athlete. Makes sense to me. I hope this article and Delle Donne's story reaches parents and other young athletes. Specialization is not a good thing. Delle Donne said she was burnt out on basketball by age 14 or 15. And her parents weren't even pushing her into the sport. Perhaps that is why she was able to walk away. And she may walk back some day. But at least it will be on her terms.

1. Some, um, unusual I would say searches of late, such as "Wimbledon braless." What exactly does this mean? That Wimbledon is in need of support? That the searcher is wondering whether Wimbledon will enforce a bra policy alongside its predominantly white rule? Hard to say what the searcher was looking for, but I doubt any answers were found here. Another answer not to be found here and frankly I can't believe even the asking the question "why naive has two dots in it?" even brought someone here. 2. Ana Ivanovic is in the semis at the Australian Open and has a good shot at making it to the finals. [ UPDATE : She made it by rallying from 0-6, 0-2 down against Daniela Hantuchova.] That means searches for her have picked up. Still getting the very odd "Ivanovic armpits" but also searches that seem to want a little more than just the armpit shot. Some searchers are getting lazy though. "Ivanovic body," for example is not going to get you very far...

ESPN columnist Dave Reed has a very thorough piece on women's volleyball which has grown exponentially at the junior level. This has had a great effect on the collegiate game which, according to those involved, has achieved that magic word in women's sports: parity. Parity is the nice way of saying: generally, you don't suck anymore. It's not that I don't appreciate parity--no one like to see a game where one team or player dominates endlessly. But I dislike that frequently the term is used with no explanation. The people who use it often fail to provide a thorough explanation of the historical, cultural, and economic circumstances that impeded parity for decades. Reed, thankfully, does not do this. His column explains the ways in which the women's game has grown and how that has been helped by more development programs, more money into the sport generally and specifically the attention paid to it by colleges and universities who are intent on turning it into a ...

I have been very American-centric lately so I thought I would round up some news from across the globe Check out Women Who Serve for coverage of the Pan-American Games where Milagros Sequera from Venezuela and ranked 50 on the WTA tour won the gold. Also regarding the Pan-American Games, I was watching ESPN2 on Sunday waiting for some tennis when I caught a bit of the women's beach volleyball final between Cuba and Brazil. And it was in Spanish. I know ESPN has a Spanish-language channel but I was surprised to see them import that coverage to ESPN2. I don't speak Spanish but it was pretty easy to get the gist of what they were saying; "Fantastico!!" is not that hard to translate. So kudos to ESPN for doing a Spanish-language broadcast on a "regular" (the apostrophes are there to indicate the problematics with associating regular and normal with English-speaking) channel. In Dubai, the Al Ahli sports club that sponsors football (aka soccer) has formed a commi...

As I mentioned below, I caught some of the women's AVP final at Manahattan Beach this weekend where Kerri Walsh and Misty May won something like their 7th title of the year. Congrats are in order of course. But I just wouldn't be my analytical/critical self if I didn't find something about gender/cultural norms that arose to blog about. There seems to be some confusion about what Misty's name is. She did get married and is apparently going by May Treanor. The commentators called her Misty May and the graphics lacked consistency showing her as May Treanor as well as just May. I could go on and on (and on) about women changing their names when they marry and the huge problems with that practice but that's not really what this blog about. So instead I will just focus on the huge problems I have when famous female athletes change their names. Sure there's the cultural reasons all marrying women face but because these athletes have already established themselves in t...