UNH scores
My undergrad alma mater UNH is #1 in women's hockey. You can listen to NH public radio piece on the winning team here or read a rough transcript
My undergrad alma mater UNH is #1 in women's hockey. You can listen to NH public radio piece on the winning team here or read a rough transcript
One bonus of the Olympics is it's the one time of year some sports columnists write about women's sports. Not that they are all great columns. Today there was a good one by Bob Ryan at the Boston Globe on how the U.S. women's hockey loss to Sweden (which put them in contention for the bronze) is a Catch-22 sign of progress in the sport. It can't be Canada and the U.S. teams forever - as other countries improve, it means their women's ice hockey programs are growing. A good sign for the sport.
In a big upset, the U.S.Women's ice hockey team lost to Sweden today. They will play for the bronze against whichever team wins the Canada vs. Finland match up.
The women's Beanpot final was played last night. This is a Boston sporting event, where the hockey teams from BC, BU, Northeastern, and Harvard compete. I griped about the semi-final coverage in the Boston Globe here. Today was a bit of an improvement - the game coverage made page 2 of the regular sports section (Olympic coverage makes up a front special section). This time there was a black and white photo of the victors. The day before the men's final got front page with color photos.
In case you haven't noticed, the U.S.Women's Hockey team has been quietly kicking butt. They play Finland today.
And in another world of skating, I watched the silver-medal Chinese figure skating pair skate, fall and then skate again last night. This sport sometimes gets a bad rap in the sprots media for not really being a sport b/c it's judged. But watching skater Zhang Dan crash to the ice at the very beginning of their program, limp over to her coach, cry for two seconds, and then decide to somehow suck it up and find the will to skate through the whole program on a bum knee , landing all of her jumps, was pretty amazing. I'm glad I stayed up for it.
John Powers at the Boston Globe has a piece today on four women ice hockey veterans (all played in Nagano and Salt Lake) who are on this year's U.S. team -- Katie King, Angela Ruggiero, Tricia Dunn-Luoma, Jenny Potter. This piece led off the bottom front of the sports page today, which is great.
On the other hand, the Globe buried coverage of the women's ice hockey Beanpot tournament. Yesterday, we had full, front page stories on the men's semi-final games with full color photographs. They did run a great preview piece on Women's Beanpot by Barbara Matson (we're not related) on an inside page that same day. My one quibble with this is this headline "It's ladies' night out tonight." Can we please stop these cliches?????
I thought this piece might be leading up to big coverage on the semi-final games. But no. Today the coverage was buried on page 6. The main front page story was wind issues regarding development around Fenway park (don't ask). Yes, the Men's Beanpot tournament has been around longer, has more tradition, blah, blah. But the women's has been around since 1979. This year was the first time in a while when all four teams were on relatively equaly footing, promising some good competition. (For those unfamiliar, the Beanpot is a 4-way tournament between BC, BU, Northeastern and Harvard. And Harvard has been stacked with some Olympians the past few years, giving them a huge advantage. At one time, Northeastern was the dominating team.) That's my gripe for the day.
The USA Women's hockey game dropped a game against a boy's highschool team in Minnesota - losing 2-1. The ESPN didn't give too much background to this - not sure it this is a one time thing or if there are more female vs. male match-ups in the pipeline.
Mike Sullivan, a columnist for the Portsmouth Herald in New Hampshire has a nice piece on the women's basketball and ice hockey teams at my undergrad alma mater UNH and he also makes a point about the lack of attention and respect in women's sports.
Today, the Boston Globe had a front page sports profile on Sarah Parson, the youngest player on the U.S. women's hockey team.
Eric Mcerlain who writes the OffWingOpinion hockey blog got permission to sit in the Washington Capitals owner's box as a blogger to do an interview during a game. Here's his account. I think it's great he got access for so many reasons. One, he was able to get by that barrier of not being an "official" sports journalist. Not that everyone is a fan, but ESPN's Bill Simmons (Sports Guy) has created this mini-movement of sports bloggers (who have other jobs to pay the bills) who have found or are finding their voices online writing about a sport they love - many write in a more personal, everyday person kind of style not found in the mainstream press. They also follow and link to numerous sports news Websites and act as an excellent resource for finding stories on their sport/team.
Sometimes I think that the future of women's sports media coverage is in online coverage of the sports - whether it's blogs, or a news site built around a specific sport. Even ESPN's WNBA/college ball section on their Website beats any major newspaper's coverage of the sport. Fans who are fed up with lack of in-depth coverage can start a blog or a Website and take it from there. Womenshoops blog is an excellent example of two people who love women's basketball, follow and link to any mainstream press available while also commenting, ranting, praising, etc. It's a great resource for fans and pulls together all the scattered and inconsistent coverage of women's basketball. I'm looking for other blogs/sites that cover other women's sports - basketball seems to have quite a few - if they're out there, let me know.
