Hello again
So why the title for today's blog post ? Well quite frankly, I’m done with the gender bias fueled debate about the validity and quality the seemingly constant need to defend women’s sports. It’s exhausting. It’s like any disagreement where fact and opinion are used interchangeably by outsider, knowledge lacking, never participated individuals, who seem to get a sense of personal self worth from speaking what they consider a position of indisputable knowledge about a topic they really have no clue about. I always find it ironic how some individuals will refer to women's ( or girl's ) sports as some sort of watered down, lower quality version of " the real thing" but who might in the same breath try and explain how watching the Little League World Series is a great showcase for baseball. It is fascinating how even today, with expanded coverage of women's sport ( I use the term expanded loosely here but coverage of women's sports is a whole other topic which I have written about a few times), that there are still significant individuals who can demean women's sports for no other reason than they are played in by females. I have shared an anecdote in the past with a little update which I feel is both very relevant to this discussion and shows that while there is progress in interest towards women's sports, it isn't nearly where it should be. Back in the summer of 2003, my wife and I took an organized sports tour down to New York to watch a game between Manchester United and Juventus. On the way back, the organizer started playing a game of sports trivia both asking questions and soliciting questions. My wife stood and asked " Which Canadian soccer player has earned the most caps ( caps being number of times representing the country for those not soccer knowledgeable) ? The group being predominantly make started throwing out a bunch of names, of course all male and all of them being wrong answers. After much consternation but these so called soccer experts who were convinced that they had the right answer and of course it being before the era of smart phones where info could be quickly verified, my wife gave the correct answer as being " Charmaine Hooper", at the time the most decorated female player. A few of the males were quick to point out that " that's women's soccer, it doesn't really count". The fact I had to hold my wife back from climbing over the seat to strangle someone adds an amusing twist to the story but not really relevant. So now fast forward to summer of 2018 and via twitter, I tried the same experiment by asking the exact same question. Sure enough, the answers started coming back as all male players, finally someone clicked and gave "Christine Sinclair". So here's a little sign of progress, no one came forward to somehow discredit her achievement as being less significant because she was a female player, but yet, in the face of a non gender specific question, the assumption remains to first think of the male game. Every Women’s World Cup ( just the fact we have to specify women's but not men's says something ) , every NCAA women’s finals, every Olympics, women’s sports again go on a media trial about how those winner or champions might stack up against the male equivalent. Why is that even a topic for discussion. Why is determining how the winner of a Women's World Cup might stack up against a male team important ? Do we ask ourselves how the winner of the World Junior Hockey Championships might fare against an NHL team ? Of course not, because sports are or should be about who are the winner among their peers, not against every other possible form or level of competition in the same sport. However for many the discussion always comes down to why “no one cares,” or whether women’s sports are as good as men’s sports. It’s tired. It’s also way behind where people actually are and also increasingly irrelevant. While some continue to be flag bearers to the axiom that “no one cares about women's sports, many female sports like the Women’s World Cup, female Olympic events and emerging female professional pro leagues are starting to garner interest that would make many a marketer or broadcast medium leap with joy. A very small percentage of sport news broadcasts or even broadcasts on sports specialty stations are devoted to women’s sports, which when they are seem to be discussed there by anchors with the joy and flair of kids forced to “eat their vegetables," enthusiasm. Truth be told, more and more people are choosing to get their news from different sources if the current ones don’t meet their needs. It’s a distorted marketplace: one where the financial value of male professional sports like football, basketball, and baseball has never been higher, as witnessed by the huge broadcast rights contracts and player contracts announcement by the major sports leagues. However, let's be clear, this value is not a function of any sort in increase in their popularity but of the fact that these sports have become the weight bearing column that keeps the basic-cable television industry upright: the last programming in the current streaming or PVR reality that people will still endure commercials to watch. The desperation with which cable networks cling to these sports and aggressively market them under the guise bring the only mainstream sports of interest, distorts how many people demand this kind of coverage and how many are just force-fed what the commercial imperatives are of the basic cable industry. Meanwhile, as the media cling to the past and put women’s sports on trial with regularity, female athletes are raising the bar throughout the sports world. There are more and more mediums via which to access sports coverage and those that have the initiative and foresight to start to covering women's sports may field themselves with access to a market with a huge upside, people ( not just females) with an appetite to have access to high caliber women's sports and not just every 4 years during the Olympics. So I’m done “defending” women’s sports. Frankly, it’s insulting to the athletes involved to even conceive of it as if they need defending. It’s time to go on offense. It’s time to write more about women’s sports and be part of the grassroots struggle to do what the sports networks and sports-radio outlets won’t do, and that’s tell the stories of what is happening in women’s sports. I am not an apologist for women's sports but someone who is truly a fan. Whatever led me to this point, or caused me at some point to see my involvement in coaching as something more than about wins and losses but about advocating so that my athletes, my female athletes get the recognition and support they deserve, will continue on even as my active involvement in coaching has come to an end. If you like something, why limit yourself. Good soccer is good soccer whether played by male pros, female pros, youth players, or anything in between. Let's stop comparing sports by gender and just take them at face value for what they are. different forms of the same great sports. If you wish to revisit some of my prior posts on women's sports, you can do so via these links womens-soccer-is-mainstream.html investing-in-womens-sports-a-smart-move.html discrimination-and-bias-in-womens-sports-still-happening.html differences-for-womens-soccer-and-sports-in-general-that-many-dont-realize-or-want-to-acknowledge-maybe.html my-struggle-to-grow-womens-soccer.html
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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