Posts

Posted on

Title IX Turns 37!

Title IX is a federal law passed in 1972 that requires gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that receives federal funding. Many argue it is one of the most influential laws in recent history. In the realm of sport it has resulted in an explosion of sport participation for girls at all levels including youth interscholastic, and intercollegiate. In 1972 1 in 27 girls played high school sport, today that number is around 1 in 2.5! The Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Mary Jo Kane, is often quoted, “In one generation we’ve gone from girls hoping there was a team, to girls hoping they’d make the team.”

On June 23, 2009 as Title IX turns 37, we can celebrate the many gains made in all educational contexts for girls but we all need to commit to ensuring the law remains viable for the next 37 years and more!

Here are two of my favorite websites I turn to for information on Title IX:
Title IX
The National Women’s Law Center

Posted on

The Role of Fathers in the Lives of Youth Athletes

DAd & Son golfers_iStock_000004230306XSmallA great deal of research outlines how important father’s are in the lives of their child athletes. Here is a quick summary five positive findings (there are many more of course!):

1. Fathers typically take on the direct and active roles in sport-i.e. “the coach”. Fathers are the majority of coaches in youth sport and by most recent estimates, fathers comprise 80% of more of all youth sport coaches.
2. Fathers can be important active role models for their children. Active dads increase the likelihood of active kids.
3. Fathers’ values, beliefs, & expectations greatly influence the actives lives of their children. For example, children’s perceptions of their father’s beliefs in their sport ability can predict the child’s belief in their own abilities. This is important because children who feel competent and perceive they are good at sport, are more likely to keep playing!
4. When fathers focus on the learning and enjoyment inherent in (most) youth sport, children are more likely to stay in sport, demonstrate better sportsmanship, worry less, and have more fun.
5. Most of all sport provides a meaningful opportunity for fathers to spend quality time with their children in a context most children love and enjoy!

For some great information about the role of fathers in the lives of their children, check out The Dad Man-a.k.a Joe Kelly-who also writes a blog called Dads & Daughters. TCRR-Cover-cover

For a summary of research on the influence of sport parents in the lives of girls, including fathers, you can download a free copy of The 2007 Tucker Center Research Report: Developing Physically Active Girls (see pages 26-28).

Happy Father’s Day and thanks to all the dads who positively influence their own and other people’s children in youth sport contexts.

Posted on

A Sign of Things to Come?: Recent Departures in Women’s Basketball

I’ve read about three recent occurrences that have me thinking. While two may be related, all three may be a sign of things to come. departuresI’m talking about the recent departures of two male WNBA Head Coaches “to pursue possibilities in the NBA” and the second-ever early departure of Rutger’s Epiphanny Prince to “play basketball professionally in Europe before entering the 2010 W.N.B.A. draft” (Schuye LaRue was the first-ever woman to leave early from Virginia after her sophomore year in 2001 to go play abroad before getting drafted in the second round by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2003…thanks @hoopfeed!)

Successful Bill Laimbeer left the Detroit Shock after three games, and the not so successful Don Zierden left the Minnesota Lynx three days before their home opener to return to coaching in the NBA. While WNBA league officials and the departing coaches were assuring fans their departures were not a sign of trouble for the league, I’m not so convinced. I hope I’m wrong. What it does signal is that despite your success as a male coach in the WNBA, you can still get “called up” or return to the NBA. Would a successful—or better yet an unsuccessful—female coach ever get the same call? (maybe if your name is Pat Summitt, but I’m pretty sure that one’s gender is not a predictor of effective coaching so in theory many women should get said call)

As for Prince forgoing her senior year of ball at Rutgers to play professionally…One one hand, why not go and start making money immediately?—males have been doing it for years as has been pointed out. Prince states she “plans to buy her mother a house and support an A.A.U. team in Brooklyn”, so the move seems to be primarily financially motivated. On the other hand now that the seal is broken, will droves of other young women follow suit maybe never to return to finish their degrees? (and I’m not saying Prince won’t finish, but highlighting the possibility). Is this a trend we want female athletes to perpetuate? In essence, Prince’s move is no different than those of Laimbeer or Zierden….all three are leaving one basketball team, to pursue what is perceived as a better, bigger, and more lucrative opportunity with another team.

I’m not sure if this collective trend signals a sign of the times or is a sign of things to come….or both. And if it is of things to come….what “things” are we really talking about?

Update: To read more about various perspectives about Laimbeer click here or here.

To read more about what Gina Auriemma says about Prince’s departure, click here or read Altavilla’s blog. The NY Times also weighs in with an article titled “She’s Turning Pro, but Is It Progress?”

Posted on

To Grunt or Not To Grunt: A Question of Gender Discrimination?

tennis ballDuring the 2009 French Open Tennis Tournament Portuguese teen tennis star Michelle Larcher de Brito made a stir with her elongated “shrieks” when she strikes the ball. Wimbledon officials are now considering making a rule banning loud grunting for female players. While she claims it is just “part of the game” opponents and fans say otherwise.

As a former collegiate tennis player and coach, I get the distracting and annoying nature of loud grunting by an opponent. That is one side of the issue. Another side of this issue is the problematic and gendered nature of this discussion and pending rule.

First, male players on tour also grunt upon impact, therefore a rule should be equally applied to both men and women. However, there has been no parallel discussion of a rule application to the men’s tournament (although Connors, and Agassi were criticized for their noises). Second, the way Larcher de Brito’s grunts are being constructed in the media as “shrieks”,”screams”, and “annoying squeals”… it appears that males players grunts are expected. Third, this isn’t the first time the discussion of a “grunt/shriek rule” for female tennis players has surfaced. If you recall, in the ’90’s Monica Seles was the original purveyor of loud grunting on impact…and while there was much grumbling then, no rules were enacted. Maria Sharapova was also criticized early on for her grunting, but that seemed to subside as she took over the Kournikova mantle as the “poster girl” of the WTA.

Many scholars have documented how female athletes have to constantly negotiate the tension between the movements, noises, muscles, and bodies that are needed to perform optimally and adhering to a narrow ideal of femininity. Clearly, loud shrieking is NOT feminine and therefore is troubling and must be regulated (i.e., “make the offending women act more ladylike so we can enjoy the match!).

Update to post: June 24, 2009: NPR weighs in on issue “Tennis, The Grunting Game?” in which sports journalist Christine Brennan gives her take, and another commentary by Frank Deford “It’s Time For Tennis Players To Make Some Noise”. You can also read Pat Griffin’s take on her blog.

Posted on

New Twitter research: Help in marketing women’s sport?

A new study from Harvard provides information to those banking on Twitter to help market, promote, and sustain women’s sports. Here are some snippets if you don’t want to read the entire article or the post on Harvard Business Publishing:
1. “Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content”…superchirpthese people are called “super users”. Super Users can now make money through a just launched service called Super Chirp

2. “…very, very few people tweet and the Nielsen data says very, very few people listen consistently.”

3. “Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one”

and my favorite bit….Tweet bird

4. “…an average man was almost twice as likely to follow another man than a woman, despite the reverse being true on other social networks. The sort of content that drives men to look at women on other social networks does not exist on Twitter,” said Mr. Heil (one of the researchers). “By that I mean pictures, extended articles and biographical information.”

Twitter may be reaching a certain audience, but probably not males who don’t opt in and follow women’s sport.

Take home message for female athletes and women’s professional sport leagues: Use sexy pictures you download onto TwitPic to garner millions of followers (given the stack of research on how female athletes are sexualized in the sport media, such a picture shouldn’t be hard to find), then start charging your followers money to follow your Tweets. Voila!...instant revenue!

Given Heil’s findings, this may unfortunately lend some credence to the “sex sells” women’s sport debate (for more on this debate click here and here). But… I still contend that sex sells sex, not women’s sport.

Posted on

3 females prevail in male sport domain

3 cheersI have a trifecta of GOOD and exciting news pertaining to girls and women in sports.

1. Justine Siegal became the first female coach in pro baseball

2. Hannah Berner has won nearly every high school tennis match she has played…all against boys.

3. In April, Mackenzie Brown was the first girl in Bayonne Little League history to throw a perfect game. She retired all 18 boys. Read a blog she wrote about the experience.

Perhaps just as noteworthy is the fact major news outlets traditionally reserved for the sporting endeavors of men, have given coverage to these stories (Boston Herald, NYT, MLB.com).

Posted on

What if the athletes were boys, not girls?

question_mark_3dIn a previous blog, I wrote about a male soccer coach in Minnesota who had his U12 elite girls’ team throw a game to the U13 girls’ team in the same club (Minnesota Thunder Academy).

A great MN female youth soccer coach I emailed with has a great point about this scenario. She writes,

“Could you imagine if a coach had told a team of highly competitive boys to purposely throw a semi-final game to get an invitation to go on to a regional tournament? I believe people would be outraged – I definitely don’t think the sentiment would be “ Let’s move on, we have learned from the mistake.” This team he asked to purposely lose is a hand picked, highly skilled, immensely competitive group of girls and he asked them to bow out of a game – and most people seem to be okay with it! I can pretty much guarantee this would have NEVER happened if this was a boys team. I am not even touching on the fact that this was against any and all spoken/unspoken rules regarding coaching ethics. I am very concerned that a coach of his caliber would have his girls team lose on purpose because it was the “classy thing to do” – I ask myself would he have done this if he was coaching boys? That question hasn’t even come up in the communities because, I am saddened to say, I think most people still look at girls sports on a different level than boys. The playing field definitely does not seem to be level.”

Well said Coach!

Posted on

Tweets during sport events: A sport psychology perspective

Carolyn Bivens,the LPGA Tour Commissioner recently stated in an interview, “I’d love it if players Twittered during the middle of a round,” and “encourages” players to use hand held devices to post content on social-media Web sites such as Twitter or Facebook during tournaments, even if it runs counter to golf etiquette. The LPGA is not the first professional women’s sport to enter the world of social media. The WPS has dabbled with tweets during games, and many female athletes, leagues, and coaches have Twitter pages (To see them all visit the Twitter Lounge at Women Talk Sports). sport psychology image 2While the effectiveness of Twitter in marketing and promoting women’s sport is still rages, I’d like to offer a sport psychology perspective on tweeting during competition.

Psychological skills in sport include (but are not limited to) managing energy and anxiety, self-talk, visualization, goal setting, and attentional control. Perhaps tweeting between holes, during halftime or between periods, or if a player is on the bench, might be a good idea but even that is stretching it. If an athlete is tweeting (to interact with fans, give fans what they want, make athletes accessible, make the sport more appealing…or for whatever purpose it is supposed to accomplish), even on the bench, she is not paying attention to relevant information in the game that she might need when called upon. I can see it now…

basketballCoach: “Why did you miss that defensive coverage? She has been doing that same move all night long? I sent you in there for your defense, you’re our stopper!!!”
Athlete:“Sorry Coach, I’ve been busy tweeting while on the bench so that more fans will come watch our games and the league is ‘encouraging’ us do it”
Coach: “No one will come if we are losing games because players off the bench have no clue what is going on!…give me that IPhone!”

In golf, a player must maintain mental focus the entire round. One errant shot, wrong club, mis-read can be the difference between making the cut and making travel plans to the next tournament. Some athletes do have the ability to refocus attention quickly, but some do not. Why take the chance?

golf puttCoach: “What happened on the back nine? All you had to do was to make par all the way in to make the cut!”
Athlete: “On hole 14 I stopped to tweet how I was doing to my tweeples, and then I was rushed for my shot and had to go through my ritual quickly. I lost focus and before I knew it, my second shot was in the water which made me so mad because I knew it was because I had lost focus, which made me more unfocused and angry at myself and it spiraled from there.”

Athletes that are mentally tough (the ability to perform on command regardless of the situation), have developed psychological skills which include highly detailed and systematic rituals that are practiced. These rituals increase the likelihood of optimal performance. Will competitive rituals now include tweeting?

Athlete:(golfer through pre-shot routine) Assess yardage, wind direction and lie. Pick club, take practice swings, repeat cue words, address ball, take a deep breath, see self hitting ball perfectly, see ball flying on right trajectory, exhale, relax shoulders, loosen grip on the club, hit it. Pick up phone to tweet result. Repeat.

Tweeting during competition has nothing to do with optimal performance. Energy and attention focus are limited quantities. The more energy and focus that goes into tweets, the less the athlete has for performing well. If I saw an opponent tweeting during a competition, I would be elated! The excitement around Twitter during games seems to driven by “what the fans want” rather than “what is best for the athletes”. After all, professional athletes are there to compete and perform the best they can on any given day–anything that distracts them from doing so is a bad idea.

Posted on

From sports, to horse racing, to movies, to politics….sexism abounds

I’m going to jump contexts for this blog as I can see a trend unfolding. That trend would be overt and covert sexism against women in positions of power. It was present when Hillary Clinton ran for President (read here, here and here), it was present when Pat Summitt got her 1,000th win this winter, it occurred when Rachel Alexandra won the Preakness, it is present in the new Star Trek blockbuster movie, and it is starting up with President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. For example, today in the New York Times, in an article titled Sotomayor’s Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament the reporter wrote “Ms. Sotomayer’s sharp-tongued and occasionally combative manner — some lawyers describe her as “difficult” and “nasty” — raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen.” Would a reporter write the same verbiage to describe a male Justice? I have never heard a man have “a sharp tongue”, this is sexist language at its finest. I know I’m not the only one who has noticed this emerging trend (read here, here, and here). Keep an eye out for continued sexism surrounding Sotomayor’s nomination and confirmation hearings….all the way through the summer!