Recently in Sports Category
Twenty-three year old Giorgia Boscolo just became the first female gondolier after nine centuries of exclusively male rowing in the canal in Venice. Boscolo had to pass a grueling six-month, 400 hour course, but told reporters that she had no fear that she couldn't handle the physicality of the job: "Childbirth is much more difficult." Boscolo is the mother of two.
Her father, also a gondolier, has doubts about her participation in this historically male tradition: "I still think being a gondolier is a man's job, but I am sure that with experience Giorgia will be able to do it easily," he said.
Damn skippy Papa Boscolo. Better get used to waving across the canal at your diesel daughter.
Thanks to Tiffany for the heads up.
An Australian 15-year-old is set on sailing around the world, and in the process, establishing herself as the youngest woman to ever do so. From her website:
Jessica Watson is setting out to become the youngest person to sail solo non-stop and unassisted around the World...Inspired in her turn by Kay Cottee, the first woman to sail solo non-stop unassisted around the world and by Jesse Martin, the youngest person to do so, Jessica Watson has set her sights on shattering Jesse's record. In the process, Jessica hopes to inspire young sailors, adventurers and everyone with a dream in their heart.
From my lil' Brooklyn apartment, this sounds like crazy talk, but I sense that Jessica has the resources to do this safely and that her family and community are behind her. Also from the site:
In her quest, to reach what is considered the absolute pinnacle of sailing Jessica will pit herself against mother nature and all she can deliver including the notorious Southern Ocean as well as the physical and psychological demands of eight months alone at sea. In doing so, Jessica wants to show that even the most gentle among us can achieve great things and with determination and the support of those around us can live our dreams. Jessica hopes that her journey can inspire others to take that first step and be all they want to be.
I'm not sure exactly how Jessica's eight month journey in a yacht around the world is going to translate as inspiration to everyday folks, but I also don't want to hate on her because it sounds like a really difficult and courageous thing to be doing. Always a little too practical for my own good, I just keep thinking: "How much is this shit going to cost?" (That info--surprise, surprise--is not featured on the website.)
Apparently she'll be blogging along the way.
Thanks to Max for the heads up.
Trigger warning.
The University of Tennessee has extended a scholarship offer to Daniel Hood, "Mr. Football" at Knoxville Catholic High School.
Hood certainly has all the athletic credentials: he led Knoxville Catholic to a 15-0 record and a class 3A state title. For his prowess, he got himself 27 scholarship offers from schools across the country. Indeed, Hood's football highlight film on Rivals.com has been watched 17,594 times.
But then schools caught wind of the horrifying details of his 2003 conviction (something they began to refer to as his "character issue"). Hood and an older friend, 17-year-old Robert Sanrico, who is currently serving 10 years in prison, raped and kidnapped a 14-year-old girl (Hood's cousin no less). Excerpts of the court transcript are here, but I warn you that they are highly disturbing.
All 27 of those scholarships disappeared once schools learned of Hood's legal record. But it appears that UT has managed to look past it. "We didn't go about this lightly," UT coach Lane Kiffin said in a statement Tuesday. "We spent a lot of time researching the issue and talking to a lot of people who are well-respected in the community. Everyone spoke very highly of Daniel. He's a very bright young man who wants to move past this incident and be a good representative for the team, the university and the community."
According to UT athletic department director of public relations, Tiffany Carpenter, the victim wrote a letter on Hood's behalf urging the university to admit him.
This is incredibly difficult for me to process. I won't judge Tiffany Carpenter's choice to forgive and even encourage her cousin to move on. I recognize that every person who experiences sexual assault has to heal in her own way. It does make me wonder what kind of support she's gotten through this whole process (this is the only time she's mentioned in the coverage).
But even more, it underscores the ways in which we still don't take sexual assault seriously in this country. I'm not a fan of criminalizing minors, but this incident is so violent and the punishment so lax (Hood went to a rehab center for a short period of time) that I can't help but feel like this kid's football talent has overshadowed any actual rehabilitation and reflection that he sorely needed and still needs to do. No one mentions if he actually got ongoing therapy, if he has gotten involved in sexual assault prevention efforts, or come to any kind of conclusions about why he committed such a dehumanizing crime against his own relative.
Were he not a football player, he would probably be stuck in a dead end job with no respect, no college scholarships, and no opportunities. (Not optimum, by the way. Just truth.) If he were a young man of color, well, we all know that his punishment would have looked far different. Instead, he's a white guy with a natural talent for throwing a pig skin, and as a result, he'll get a free college education and, quite possibly, could make millions in the NFL. All that money and glory will make the heinous sexual assault of his youth seem like a bad dream. I hate that athletic talent is valued more in this society than women's bodily integrity, therapeutic healing from violent crimes for both the perpetrator and the victim, or sexual assault prevention.
Fuck football.
Email Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek at chancellor@utk.edu if you want to express your opinion about this issue.
Thanks to Christina for the heads up.
Correction: It appears that Tiffany Carpenter is the PR rep for UT Athletics, not the victim. This was misreported in one of the pieces I read. Thanks to Regann for the info.
Thought we'd give y'all a little feel good story for the end of the week. Mackenzie Brown was the first female in Bayonne, NJ Little League to throw a perfect game - and against a team of all boys, no less.
She'll get to throw out the first pitch at Citifield (the new baseball field home to the New York Mets that all of my sports fan friends are having a complete fit over) tomorrow when the Mets play the Washington Nationals.
Awesome.
Should pole-dancing be approved as an Olympic sport? According to the Collette Kakuk, founder of the Pole Dancing Association, yes. She believes pole-dancing should not be marginalized or shamed, but brought into the light as a difficult, healthy and competitive activity that makes you fit.
I guess my question would be, would making pole-dancing an Olympic sport bring to light some of the horrible treatment of exotic dancers and give them a standard wage with some worker rights? Most of the participants in the PDA appear to be white and as the article discusses as a sport, pole-dancing generally attracts middle to upper middle class housewives.
But this is interesting. Thoughts?
(Thanks to Daffodil for the link.)
It's that time of year. Yes, the birds are starting to chirp and the crocuses are peeking their little colorful heads up through the dry, brittle grass. This, I am very excited about. But what has me even more excited at this exact moment is a different kind of spring fever--the college basketball kind. It's March Madness baby and I'm hooked.
Game after game, March Madness means watching hungry, passionate college basketball players give their absolute all to try to stay in the tournament. As if that weren't reason enough to be hooked, it seems like each and ever frickin' game manages to come down to some last minute shot or over time (or series of them). They're all heartbreaking and exhilirating at the same time. The worst is when I actually catch one of those sappy personal profiles on one of the players (like a player for Siena whose dad has MS but makes the eight hour trip to the games anyway). Then his subsequent loss can literally bring me tears.
Yeah, that's right--his. I haven't seen one women's NCAA game.
What is our responsibility as feminist consumers when it comes to women's sports? Am I an asshole for getting so excited about men's March Madness but not making an effort to watch women's games? The path of least resistance is obviously just watching the dudes' games--after all they are publicized, televised, discussed, bet on, and celebrated. But have I just been jumping on the band wagon? Can I get as excited about watching women's basketball without all the ancillary hype?
Thinking out loud here, but would obviously love your thoughts sporty gals...
Oh, and for an incredibly offensive p.o.v. on the subject, check out 670, a Chicago-based radio station. Thanks to reader Matt for the heads up.
So women finally get a national pro women's football league, and in order to participate, they have to wear their skiivies. It's called the Lingerie Football League and tryouts, unfortunately, are coming to a town near you.
As far as I can tell, this is a new project of the assholes who have been bringing us the Lingerie Bowl, a half-time spectacle during the Super Bowl, for the last few years. I wouldn't know because I'm always obsessively watching the Puppy Bowl.
Heading into Friday's Denver Dream tryouts, my main question was, "What exactly are the producers looking for: models or athletes?"It seemed like a logical question for the fledgling enterprise that boldly calls itself the Lingerie Football League and promises to present scantily clad girls in 10 cities battling it out on the gridiron. Would the emphasis be on the football or on the lingerie?
I'd attempted to get an answer from the LFL prior to tryouts but was given a response that would make any PR agency proud: "We've been fortunate to find girls who are athletic yet very beautiful."
Gross all around. This is objectification at it's most pernicious--give women an opportunity to participate in a sport that they haven't had the chance to do for pay and publicly previously, but only let them do it if they're stereotypically pretty and willing to do it in their underwear.
Thanks to Cinnamon for the heads up.
As this Wednesday, February 4th, was National Girls and Women in Sports Day, our friend Nancy Goldstein has a post up on Broadsheet about how the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) has taken a big hit from the recession; teams are being mandated to cut their rosters from 13 to 11 players. Here's a snippet:
It's terrible news whenever any organization eliminates 20 percent of its workforce and people suddenly find themselves unemployed in a weak economy. But as the WNBA struggles, and if it folds, it's taking along something else with it: the hopes of the first generation of Title IX-era female athletes who went through high school and college thinking they might someday actually be able to make a living playing a professional team sport.The WNBA currently represents the only significant women's professional team sports franchise in the U.S. (The Women's United Soccer Association failed after only three seasons, in 2003, and women's football and softball have never taken off, despite several attempts.) And its inception in 1996 changed the scene for aspiring women athletes.
"For me personally, knowing that the WNBA was there as a possibility made a difference in my goal setting as a high school student, my work ethic as a college athlete and my fulfillment as a professional athlete," says Kara Lawson, 26, who chose to pursue basketball over soccer after the WNBA's inception during her sophomore year of high school. Lawson was one of coach Pat Summit's stars at the University of Tennessee prior to being picked fifth in the 2003 WNBA draft, and is now a point guard for the 2005 WNBA championship Sacramento Monarchs, as well as an analyst for ESPN.
Lawson's comment really resonated with me. It reminded me of when I was the coordinator for a girl's basketball league in Brooklyn - after their season ended, our organization (GGE) brought the girls to see New York Liberty team play, and I've honestly never seen a group of girls look more excited and inspired. So these cutbacks are not only a threat to the very existence to the WNBA, but possibly an even bigger threat to the girls out there that aspire to achieve their best in life by watching their favorite ball players on that court.
On a more positive note for the sports fans - what female athletes inspired you growing up? (Or inspire you now?)
