Keeping Score

They're off ...

The WNBA playoffs are underway and I think most of the hometeam newpaper Websites are doing a good job with coverage. All of the sites, except the New York Times, have pages devoted to the teams only, with extras like stats, etc. They all have reporters covering the games - relying on the wires only for other team games. Womenshoops notes in a post the the NYTimes Liberty reporter Lena Williams is retiring. No replacement has been announced.

Detroit Free Press' Shock coverage
Hartford Courant's Sun coverage
Houston Chron's Comets coverage
Indianapolis Star's Fever coverage
LATimes' Sparks coverage
Newsday's Liberty Coverage
Sac Bee Monarchs coverage
Seattle Times' Storm Coverage

Steve at Shesgotgame has this post today about the state of the WNBA ...

 

"The WNBA deserves more fans. It deserves better attention, better acceptance and a better — and broader — fan base. More than anything, it deserves to be treated by its leaders and the NBA powers like a professional sport, rather than a girl's sport, which is how this league has gotten into the trouble it is in.Too many in the NBA and WNBA offices are afraid to make the kind of bold, important decisions that need to be made." (Posted 8/31/05, shesgotgame.com)

I would add that the media also needs to do a better job at treating it like a professional sport - putting more resources behind the coverage of the regular season, not just the playoffs.

Women tennis players and their fashion, looks, bodies, etc.

I noticed this column by Selena Roberts the other day  -"A Rivalry of the Fierce and Fashionable"  - about a fashion/popularity contest between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. I like Roberts' stuff but I wasn't sure about this piece and what it meant. It's unclear whether there is solid substance to this or if this is just a perceived rivalry that the media hypes up because there also needs to be some kind of catty duel in women sports, doesn't there?  

Then I was perusing womenshoops this morning and I noticed their posting about a new blog on Sports Illustrated by tennis player Justin Gimelstop - in his first posting he took on the women players on the WTA tour -  "Nobody's safe "Sharing tennis facilities with women is full of drama".   Gimelstop is also competing in the U.S. Open. His major complaint is the fighting that goes on about practice courts ...

"As dysfunctional as the men's tour is, the women's tour blows it away. For example, it's impossible for there to be enough practice courts for men and women to share without some kind of bickering. This is probably because of the fact that women have a bizarre refusal to practice with their fellow competitors. It's insane -- they literally would prefer to hit four on a court with their coach than two on a court with another player. They live in Bizarro World."

This sounds like a legitimate complaint and he's calling it like he sees it here. But then he goes off into this territory ...

"However, one of the benefits of having the women around is the ever-increasing desire for each and every young sassy player trying to outdo -- or in this case, under-dress -- the next.

My prediction? Pretty soon the WTA practice courts, and maybe even the match courts, will resemble a women's volleyball court, with g-strings and bikinis being the only logical next step. Not that I'm complaining, or even think that wouldn't be a valuable marketing tool. But I'd like to recommend to players both female and male, and even coaches out on the practice courts: If you resemble a beached whale, keep your gear on!"

Granted, he is not a sports journalist, but I think he gives insight to the atmosphere women athletes deal with - although there is an argument here that some women athletes create this environment by marketing/branding their sexuality. Hmm, it's complicated and I don't want to get bogged down in that right now.

The thing with blogs is that you are not writing in a bubble. Lindsay Davenport reacted to Gimelstob's posting  - here's ESPN's story  - "Davenport fires back at Gimelstob for blog comments" . She said ...

"I'm always curious what the fascination is about men having to judge women constantly. What they look like. What they wear. Who they hang out with. ... And men have this endless fascination with, and Justin especially, about just depicting and picking on everything about the body. And so his column was, I thought, a waste of time." (ESPN News Services)

Womenshoops also links to this blog OffWingOpinion, (another blog to add to my list!) which comments on the above.

Women vs. Men continued ...

An interesting piece today by Marcia Smith at the Orange County Register (reprinted here on the San Jose Mercury News Website) about women competing in men's competitions -  "Sports world seems to only care about women when they face men"  - and she touches on what I'm particulary interested in - why can't women's professional sports "make it?"

It's showtime

Back from a little vacation - didn't touch a computer for five days. The public library was closed for renovations, and after initial panic I realized it was a good thing. Now I'm gearing up for the fall semester, which kicks in right after Labor Day. Lots to catch up on here on the blog also. There's a lot going on the next few weeks in women's sports with the WNBA playoffs, the U.S. Open, etc. 

WNBA - playoffs start tomorrow. It's Storm vs. Comets and Sun vs. Shock. If you need to bring yourself up to speed, like I did, ESPN's WNBA page has everthing you need. There are also a few individual articles to point out from the local newspapers of these four teams -  "Swoopes gets game face on" in the Houston Chronicle, "She Sets The Screen :Sun Forward Finds Motivation"  in the Hartford Courant, "Laimbeer says Shock will play tough vs. Sun" in the Detroit Free Press, "Storm finishes season in style with cozy win" in the Seattle Times. I'm going to follow the hometeam coverage in these four papers.

Tennis - Both men's and women's matches start today at the U.S. Open in New York. Here are some preview pieces: "Chase for women's title wide Open" in USA Today; and EPSN's U.S. Open page.

A few pieces on all the injuries to women players this summer -  "Feel our pain" in the New York Times and "Women limping to U.S. Open" But even for healthy Clijsters, the rigors are taking their toll" an Assocatiated Press piece - posted here on the Rocky Mountain News. Which leads to a piece today in the Washington Post by Liz Clarke about how the top women players are playing in less tournaments, only showing up for the major ones. "In Women's Tennis, Less Is More: Top-Ranked Stars Playing in Fewer Events"  The San Diego Union-Tribune rehashes the Sharapova marketing/glamour phenom in "Sharapova in spotlight at U.S. Open"

A little downtime ...

I'm going down to Cape Cod for a few days of R&R (well, sort of - I'm bringing my 2 1/2 year old daughter!) before the fall semester starts. Will try to post from a public library, but will see how it goes!

Tennis history and Margaret Court

New York Times sports columnist Selena Roberts has just come out with a book “A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game.”  Yesterday's New York Times ran an excerpt of an interesting chapter of this famous match-up - the duel that preceded it  - between tennis-great Margaret Court and Bobby Riggs - "Tennis's Other 'Battle of the Sexes,' Before King-Riggs" Court lost this match-up, King was in the audience and knew that the loss meant she would have to play Riggs herself to right the situation.

Here is the New York Times review of Roberts' book - the reviewer wasn't a big fan. But I would read the excerpt linked above and draw your own conclusions.

Basketball's Shay Doron

The New York Times has a piece on Shay Doron, a native Israeli who plays college ball here in the States (U Maryland) and ended up playing on the U.S. team vs. Israel in the World Maccabiah Games (which I had never heard of until this article).   "Two Countries to Serve and a Champion in Both"  - I like the lead where Harvey Araton writes ...

"Today, we take a much-needed respite from the trailing of Terrell Owens, the baiting of the Boss, student-athletes running afoul of the law, steroid users, glory seekers and mega-money players." (Araton, NYTimes, 8/19/05)

I sometimes find these pieces on lesser or unknown athletes to be more inspiring and interesting than most of the sports blather out there today.

Hope for softball?

Speaking of John Powers at the Boston Globe (see post below), he seems to be the only one reporting that the women's softball federation is fighting back the IOC's decision to cut the sport from the Olympics. In "Softball federation wants another pitch" Powers writes,

• "Now that it appears that more than a few Lords of the Rings didn't know that softball and baseball are different sports, the softball federation wants the International Olympic Committee to reconsider last month's vote that dropped both from the 2012 program for London. Though IOC president Jacques Rogge insists the vote was final, the softball people (backed by the US Olympic Committee) want the results of the secret ballot revealed. If the vote was close, the federation has a better case, since a number of IOC members later said that they thought softball was simply women's baseball and might vote otherwise now. As it was, the program vote was bizarre, with the members going through seven rounds of balloting to select two replacement sports (karate and squash), which they then turned down by 2-1 ratios." (John Powers, Boston Globe, 8/16/05)

A quick search of newspapers and wires on Lexis-Nexis is showing no mention of this story (besides Powers' piece). In a previous post I mentioned how softball suffered this fate due to the IOC's desire to get rid of baseball. Most sports media didn't seem to care about this because Major League Baseball doesn't have much to do with Olympic baseball. But where is the outrage in the sports media about what happened to women's softball? Especially American sportswriters  - we have the top players in the world here - a big venue for their sport has been taken away from them and there is a barely a peep.

Lots of gold medals but not much coverage

The U.S. track team - both men and women - have been raking in the gold medals at the world champsionships, but many Americans, including some media outlets, don't seem to care. Although when sprinter Lauryn Williams won the 100M last week, she did make the front page of a few sports sections. Track & Field is one sport where I think you see lack of coverage/exposure on television for both men and women equally - except when it's the Olypmics. The New York Times addresses this in the lead of "The U.S. Sets a Record by Winning 14 Golds" Christopher Clarey writes ...

"So much for a post-Olympic lull. With a vast majority of Americans paying no attention and with no live television coverage of these track and field world championships at home, the United States team responded with a record of 14 gold medals between the raindrops and baton drops in the Olympic stadium." (NYT, 8/15/05)

In Boston, we are lucky to have sports journalist John Powers - who covers Olympic sports like Track & Field, Gymastics, Skating - on a year round basis for the Boston Globe. He does so much more than write round-up pieces on events. He writes in-depth articles - sometimes profiles of athletes who are not household names - covering both men and women equally.  Here is his latest piece from the Track & Field World Championship.

San Antonio

I'm in San Antonio for the AEJMC convention. (Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication - whew!) This is a great little city - my first time here. Just went for a walk on the riverwalk and after, as I drank my coffee I checked out the San Antonio Express-News sports pages. They had good coverage of the WNBA game last night between the hometeam Silver Stars and Indiana Fever (Fever won 57-50). Many readers here had commented a while back that when it comes to WNBA coverage, the local media with WNBA teams tend to do a pretty decent job with covering home games. And that seems to be true here in San Antonio.