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Archive for the ‘The Athletes’ Category

Did Japan just out-US the US?

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

By Laura Pappano In case we thought that dig-deeper, push-harder, find-another-gear quality was American-made, we just discovered a made-in-Japan version every bit as awe-inspiring as the one we’ve seen from Team USA throughout this tournament. It hurts to lose in PK’s, but give the Japanese team it’s due. I know Abby wanted ...

Team USA: Reasons to believe (and do we need TV review in soccer?)

Monday, July 11th, 2011

By Laura Pappano Suddenly, the story lines need tweaking. Admit it: We had resigned ourselves to remembrances of the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Who didn’t watch grainy video highlights and years-later interviews with players and wonder if the Dawn of US women’s soccer and its Golden Age were one and the same? There ...

No boast: Women’s squash in trouble

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

  By Sarah Odell Women’s squash is at a crossroads. I have written in this blog about huge strides that we have made with women’s doubles in the last year, but the women’s game as a whole -- singles and doubles, professionals and amateurs -- is in crisis. Women are being denied ...

Fresh take on Billie Jean King, ’70s feminism, sports — and Title IX

Monday, May 16th, 2011

By Laura Pappano In the new May/June issue of The Women's Review of Books, I wrote about Susan Ware's new book, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports (UNC, 2011). You can read the view here. The book is timely, given mounting evidence that Title IX is ...

Required to cheer for your assailant? Whose rights count?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

By Susan McGee Bailey The U.S. Supreme Court last week remained silent in the case of a Texas cheerleader, but the message was alarmingly loud: It may be 2011, but high school girls don’t have the same rights as high school guys. The Court declined to hear an appeal from a Texas ...

Hitting the wall: Why have women’s marathon times stalled?

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

By Laura Pappano Whether or not the IAAF decides to recognize as a new world record Geoffrey Mutai’s win in the Boston Marathon, crossing in 2:03:02 – 57 seconds faster than Haile Gebreselassie’s 2008 record of 2:03:59 – is, in some ways, immaterial. He was fast. He was so thrillingly fast (and ...

Woman on men’s college tennis team wins conference rookie-of-the-week honors. Remind me: Why isn’t D3 tennis co-ed?

Friday, April 15th, 2011

By Laura Pappano Last week after Wheelock College freshman Claire O'Donoghue, a member of the Men's Tennis Team (yes, you read that correctly), earned a 6-1, 6-0 victory in singles and an 8-6 win in doubles with her male partner (plus narrowly lost another match in the third set), she was ...

Breaking it Down: March Madness, Maya Moore – and Me ( a college basketball player)

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

By Ashleigh Sargent What a week of hoops! As a college player and fan, my observations about the tournament mixed strong emotions (one of the stars of women’s basketball ends her college career with a 72-63 loss) with excitement for the way the final game unfolded. It is meaningful to see ...

Women’s NCAA: From March Mandate to real March Madness!

Monday, April 4th, 2011

By Laura Pappano When Stanford went down 63-62 last night to Texas A & M, it took several minutes to sink in. And when TV cameras showed the UConn Huskies in the stands, well, you felt that they had been forewarned: Watch out, things can happen. It didn’t matter. Notre Dame didn’t ...

Perspiration drives inspiration: Sports can make you happy (and more successful)

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

    By Laura Pappano Just in time to save us from seasonal affective disorder, writer and blogger Mina Samuels has published Run Like a Girl, a relentlessly optimistic book (doesn’t mean there aren’t trials) about the transformative power of sports. Yes, sports can make you happy. (And more successful. too!) In her part-memoir, part-girlfriend/life ...