Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Why Oh Why Don't I Follow Women's Sports?

Oh right. Because I'm a man. And because of this.

Apparently the U.S. Women's team didn't win the women's World Cup. I figured as much a few weeks ago because the headlines went like this: 1) U.S. women advance, 2) U.S. women win again, 3) U.S. women to semifinals, 4) How 'bout that NFL? I figured no news was bad news.

Well, the way they lost was even worse. The male coach benched his goalkeeper, who had won every game so far, for the backup, who had been successful against Brazil in the past. Final score: 4-0, Brazil. After the game, the benched goalkeeper ripped her coach and her replacement. Understandable, and it's happened a thousand times in men's sports.

But these are women--and no matter how athletic they are, how dedicated they are to sports, how aggressive they are, how quickly and deicisively they can expose my level of fitness for the charade it is--at the end of the day they like to curl up and act all catty and shit. Case in point:

Solo wasn't just benched after publicly criticizing Ryan. She was exiled -- banned from practice, and barred from attending the team's third-place match against Norway three days later. She took her meals alone. Ryan and several players talked of working toward "forgiveness" and "reconciliation."

It all sounded more like a slumber party gone bad than an elite team reacting to the stress of high-level competition.

The ostracism of Solo perpetuated the stereotype that women's teams put a higher premium on harmony than they do on competing. And as long as people believe that, they'll regard women's team sports as a lightweight version of the real thing.
Damn skippy. In honor of the real Xena Warrior Princess of U.S. soccer, ladies and gentleman, I give you: Hope Solo, great great great great grandaughter of that lovable scamp Han. Hope, call me, you won't be solo for long. And we have so much in common--we're the same height!

3 comments:

wagnerav said...

One problem...the person acting "all catty and shit" in this story is a man, Ryan. The keeper acted the same way any one of us would have acted.

So maybe you'd follow women sports if men weren't the coaches?

Anonymous said...

The man coach made a bad personnel decision, but the aftermath was what I was referring to: her being ostracized by her teammates. I would imagine that the coach participated in this ostracization in response to the way his players were acting towards her, rather than him initiating it. Besides, he's fired now, which is why this is in the news.

wagnerav said...

Oh, I was reading it as the Coach was the leader of the ostracization. That's not a word.