Um, earth to FairGameNews.com readers! Did no one read Laura’s post on Monday? (Actually our tracker shows they did). Then, why no comments to tell her she was talking crazy? C’mom — you’ve got to keep us on our toes!

I read it and nearly came through my computer screen. This is one of the issues on which Laura and I (respectfully, of course) disagree.

Personally, I couldn’t believe that this White House basketball thing made front page news. I saw it, read half of it, and became so disgusted by how PC we’ve all become that I didn’t even make it to the end.

I mean – really? At what point did it become the President of the United States’ (or, as Laura and other have so eloquently put it, the POTUS’) job to ensure gender equality on a pick-up basketball court?

Healthcare, social security, our ongoing wars in the Middle East… these are all things that demand his time and attention. Rallying the women of the White House to the b-ball court? Not his job.

I have a difficult time believing that any female White House staffer who showed up dressed to play ball would be turned away by the President.  He’s a husband who continues to date, adore, and showcase his ‘buff’ wife and a father to two burgeoning female athletes. Oh, and by the way, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bridging divided groups. There is simply no reason to suspect he’s being prohibitive when it comes to women in any kind sports – informal or otherwise.

So if we don’t get to blame the President for the lack of women in b-ball, who can we blame? Hate to say it ladies, but it’s no one but ourselves. As long as we women wait for a special invitation, we’ll be missing the action. If the reality is that deals and decisions get made out there, then we better start working on our finger rolls and jump shots.

Let Danica Patrick, Michelle Wie, and Brittany Ryan serve as a lesson to us all: sports are no longer exclusive – unless we, as women, continue to play the part of the excluded.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, a former three-time college All-American selection, and and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

Pink is nice, but how about baby blue?

If the NFL wants to leverage the resources of Monday Night Football (and Sunday day and night football, too) on a public health issue — and do it in a gender-coded manner — how about a prostate cancer campaign?

Why not speckle the player’s arms, coaches hats and referees shirts with a bit of baby blue?  Prostate is the number one cancer among U.S. men (breast cancer is #2 among women – behind lung) and messaging about prostate cancer screenings could reach more than 8 million men.

Or, could the NFL draw attention to testicular cancer, known to strike young men aged 20-34? Sounds like prime viewership of NFL football to me.

Sadly, the men watching this testosterone-charged sport hear strikingly little about prostate or testicular cancer when compared with the flood of breast cancer awareness messages women receive.

Absolutely: Breast cancer awareness is an incredibly important cause, but it is already heavily lobbied by a variety of non-governmental organizations and businesses. (Last year, the National Cancer Institute spent more than $572 million on breast cancer research, nearly twice as much as on prostate cancer. Even though they have about he same number of new cases each year, the mortality rates for prostate cancer are slightly higher overall — and significantly higher among African American men, according to a 2008 American Cancer Society report – see p. 44).

Breast cancer is an almost entirely female disease, and the messaging that was most clearly delivered last night by the announcers (get mammograms!) is aimed at women over 40. One has only to consider the viewership to see that the NFL message hit a relatively small “target” audience. (The NFL audience is 66% men, with an average age of 45 — hence all the ads for beer and erectile dysfunction drugs.)

My point is not that the breast cancer campaign is worthless — or even bad. No doubt, the NFL effort contributes to breast cancer awareness and helps to keep this burdensome disease center stage.

But just think what the NFL could achieve were it more strategic with the health messaging it chooses to endorse rather than simply jumping on the breast cancer bandwagon.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, former three-time college All-American, and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, professors emerita at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College and co-authors of a book on Title IX, have collected data on women’s roles on – and off – the field in college athletics since 1977.  They have chaired departments, taught pre-med courses, coached men’s and women’s college teams, and been a force in the governance of athletics for decades. Acosta played varsity basketball, field hockey, volleyball, tennis, softball and badminton for Brigham Young University during her college days; Carpenter was on BYU’s basketball, volleyball, softball, swimming, and gymnastics teams (“The seasons were short” back then, notes Acosta)

Today, Carpenter enjoys waterskiing, golf, and badminton. The day before her 70th birthday in July, Acosta won gold and silver medals in badminton at the Connecticut Senior Games. She also enjoys golf. We spoke with Acosta and Carpenter at their lakeside home last month.

FGN: Your data shows that just 42.8 percent of women’s college teams have female coaches, down from over 90 percent when Title IX was passed in 1972. Why does this matter?

LJC: It is important for female coaches to be around because [playing college sports] is a very intense part of your life and to ave female role models in an intense part of your life is particularly valuable. Guys have role models everywhere – politics, business – they are tripping over male role models.

FGN: But you hear some women saying they prefer male coaches…

RVA: Today if you ask women if they would prefer to have a male or female coach, most would say “male” because that is what they know. I would like to see more females coaching both males and females [only 2 percent of men’s team have female head coaches]. They need to see women as capable leaders, as capable of making decisions.

LJC: The studies [suggesting women prefer male coaches] are flawed. Your feelings for your coach are often related to whether it was a good season for you, if you liked the people you were with. I wouldn’t want to play for Pat Summitt because I am someone who needs to be nurtured. But the door shouldn’t be closed in one direction; it should swing both ways.

FGN: Despite whistleblower laws and other protections, it remains rare for women at colleges and universities to raise concerns of inequities in athletics – and for them to be in danger of losing their job if they do.

RVA: If their goal is to keep their position and they have no allies on campus, they [female coaches] have only one choice: that is to be quiet. If they are not quiet, they are pegged as “troublemakers.”

LJC: And there is no trouble getting rid of them — you just don’t renew their contracts. We get so many calls from coaches and administrators when things are not going well. I ask, “Who across campus can you go to for informal information?” and they don’t even know a name. You need to be respected across campus and that only happens when you spend time on committees. I find myself when I am speaking with coaches telling them that a multi-year contract is more valuable than a raise.

FGN: Is coaching harder today?

RVA: The pressure on coaches for performance is huge. It is a 24/7 job. They don’t have lives. When I see my athletic friends coaching I ask, ‘How did it get to this point? When did athletics become so darned important on campus?”

FGN: But don’t you think sports are important?

LJC: It depends on what your goals are. Where athletics wags the tail of the institution, athletics needs to be downsized. Athletic directors should not make multiples of what presidents make.

RVA: Or coaches.

LJC: If you believe the data – and its hard not to believe the data – what is this about a money-making business? I don’t think athletic directors deserve to be on campus because they are making money. The question is: How do they contribute to the life of the campus? It is not about making money; [athletic departments] launder money!

FGN: So what does this mean in terms of institutional support for men’s and women’s sports teams?

LJC: There is no reason why, for example, the women’s basketball games should always be the warm up games for the men – or that the banquet at the end of the year be humongous for the guys and lunch at McDonald’s for the gals. If you are always the “Lady Knights” [while the men are “the Knights”] it will always be subtly less valued. If you are having an institution support a program – if the band goes to the men’s game and the head athletic trainer goes to the men’s game, the head athletic trainer needs to go to the same number of women’s games and the same with the band. And that is so easy to accomplish.

FGN: You have watched the development of women’s sports for 32 years. What has surprised you?

RVA: What has surprised both of us is soccer. When we started, it was almost non-existent. Now it is a huge sport – and becoming more and more popular.

LJC: The face of athletics changes, sports become popular and unpopular. They wax and wane. Gymnastics for men and women is a contracting sport. Same with wrestling. To the wrestler on the team, it is the only thing that exists. In the world, wrestling is waning. It is not waning because of Title IX, but because of poor administrative decisions.

FGN: How long will you continue to track the data?

RVA: We were going to stop after 25 years and colleagues said, “You can’t do that!” People trust us. That level of trust has developed because we always keep our word.

I’m not a parent. I don’t know what it’s like to be on the sidelines watching your child compete — and feeling powerless. But I am a Gen-Y athlete who saw friends’ parents embarrass themselves in the stands of lacrosse, field hockey, and soccer games.

Heading into the Fall sports season, I want to give second life to something I read in the New York Times Magazine. An article about the Bryan brothers of tennis fame quotes their father saying something so quintessentially perfect, I couldn’t let it go without responding. In talking about a parent’s role in the aftermath of a game, match, or meet, he says:

“…win or lose, the script is the same: First question: Do you want water or Gatorade? Second question: Where do you want to get something to eat? Third question, if the child is 16 or older: Do you want to drive or should I? “It’s really that simple,” he observes. “If the child wants to talk about the match, you listen. But don’t critique. . . . Your role is to minimize pressure, not create it.”

Hallelujah!

Parents at all levels of organized sport need a serious reality check. You’re not the coach. You’re not the ref. And you’re not the SportsCenter analyst. It doesn’t matter if you played the game your kid is now playing for the past 50 years, none of that applies to your job as Mom or Dad.

Your role (as Wayne Bryan points out) is to be a pressure minimizer. The Bryan brothers’ success is a testament to this parenting style (in addition to a serious dose of God-given talent). My experience provides a similar lesson:

My father was the best sports-dad ever. He drove, he brought water, he watched quietly — and he hugged when it was all over. He never tried to create a ‘fire in my belly’ as I suspect other parents did, nor did he recreate circumstances from the game to tell me what I should have done. He let me be competitive on my own terms. In doing that, he preserved my absolutely authentic love of the game.

When I played well, yeah, we replayed the whole thing on the car ride home and over dinner. When I played poorly, we moved on to the next topic of the day. He was interested, but not overly invested. That was all I ever wanted, and it was all he ever did. Thanks, Dad.

      

Photo Credit: Sam Rubin, Yale Sports Information

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, former three-time college All-American, and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

When I take a moment to think critically about sports — and youth sports in particular – it seems bizarre to consider how passionate we all are. In concrete terms, after all, the grass field has no meaning without us on it. The rules of the game are worthless unless we believe the score reflects some form of superiority. As athletes, we charge the game with meaning.

But why? Why is it important — and why do we play?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask the laxers I coach. In my small consulting business, I get to work with players on an individual basis and it never takes long for this issue to surface.

Typically, when I first ask the question, I get puzzled looks. The girls suspect I’m some nutty Yale-educated existentialist. After the shrugging, fidgeting and squirming, however, words emerge. The first round of spoken answers are something like “Well, because it’s fun” or “Because my friends do it.” To many young players, this may be all there is to the question. In some cases, I may leave it at that.

But for most of my high school players, I push further. “OK, but what else?”

This gets the wheels turning. From here, conversations embark in unique directions. Some girls talk about wanting to make Dad proud; others describe feeling a sense of identity as an athlete; and still others reference the bonding among teammates that comes with long bus rides and pre-game rituals.

When I think back to why I played, I know my motivations ebbed and flowed over time. I was a ten-year-old who liked to get dirty – and was loud and aggressive. At 14, I was awkward everywhere but on the lacrosse field. As a 17-year-old, I needed sports to balance the chaos of an AP-heavy academic schedule.

Now, as a coach, I am struck by what you can learn about a player by asking an open-ended question and shutting up. Each conversation helps me to identify the value systems on which a particular player bases her decisions. I become better informed about root causes of success, struggle and failure. In short, I become a more effective coach.

An example: A young player who tells me she plays because she wants Dad to be proud will not respond to my yelling at her during a game because as I yell, Dad watches, and instead of listening to me, this player thinks about what Dad hears from his seat in the bleachers. Her play suffers. Inevitably, there’s a breaking point beyond which she reasons there’s no way of making him proud today – might as well pack up and go home.

In that scenario, I’ve lost her for the rest of the game — and I may not even know it. That is, unless we’ve discussed her motivations for playing. If we have, then I can use her value system to my team’s advantage – leveraging the fact that Dad is there to privately encourage her to dare to be great today. I can even use her language: “I bet Dad would be really proud if he saw you running as hard as you can after every loose ball.”

This may be a single (and common) example. But I believe it matters at virtually every level of sports competition. Sure, coaching at higher levels you can be more selective about choosing players who are driven to play for one reason or another.

A college coach can seek recruits whose their internal drive is in line with the program and team values. But at youth and even high school levels, attaining such homogeneity almost never happens. Youth coaches, on the other hand, would be wise to accept – and even embrace – their players’ motivational diversity.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, a former three-time college All-American selection, and and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

It is the quiet story behind the high-profile victories of women’s athletics:  After thirty years of Title IX, after the superstardom of Mia Hamm, Michelle Wie, and Venus Williams, even after the advocacy of groups like the Women’s Sports Foundation, girls – especially in urban communities – are playing sports in lower numbers than boys.

There are many reasons for this and we heard about some in the Sunday New York Times and, more poignantly, in a short video on the NYT website.

As an athlete and a recent Yale School of Public Health graduate who just completed a research project in which I focused on this very issue, I can tell you it’s frustrating and disappointing. Why do so many sit on the sidelines – or in public health terms, why do so many girls express feelings of low self-efficacy towards sports?  The problem is particularly prevalent in urban and African American communities where residents have below average health, are low-income, and come from less educated households.

What do girls in just about every research study say? “I am self-conscious about my looks when I exercise” or “I am not motivated to be active.” Such feelings reflect a youth sports culture in which girls join later, play less, and quit sooner than their male counterparts.

So what has been done about it?

For years there has been a focus on trying to get girls to change the way they perceive their place in relation to sports. (In my world of lacrosse, sticks, gloves and goggles aimed at girls are ubiquitously pink). Some populations of girls have responded (When Title IX was enacted in 1972, 1 in 27 girls in high school played sports, now it’s one in three!). But other groups remain obstinately unchanged. This is, to some extent, unsurprising in a market saturated with images and messages aimed at bolstering female sexuality. (See FGN post)

Rather than try — and fail — to change girls’ attitudes, some of the newest interventions side-step the low self-efficacy issue all together. Instead, new strategies promote non-sports physical activity to prevent these children from becoming disinterested in or unable to participate in exercise all together.

The first of its kind, the Stanford Dance for Health intervention, for example, substituted dance classes for traditional physical activity classes three times a week in a mostly low-income middle school population.   In a randomized control trial, girls who had been assigned to the dance intervention significantly improved their fitness and reduced their BMI gain compared to girls in the control group.

Hip Hop to Health Jr. is a 5-year randomized intervention conducted in 24 Head Start programs where each site is randomized to either a 14-week dietary/physical activity intervention or a general health intervention. These approaches capture the attention (and it seems, enthusiasm) of an audience that will seem (at the moment, at least) unlikely to be captured by classic youth sports such as gym class dodgeball or Saturday morning soccer.

The big question remains, though: Do these programs miss the point that girls need to participate in sports? How you answer may depend on what you think sports do for a child (there is much more, many might suggest, than fitness to be gained).

On the other hand, might dance-based interventions give these girls safe time and space that might otherwise be lacking?  And if young girl gets that body confidence first in dance, whose to say it can’t be guided onto the field, court – or into the pool?

Lauren Taylor, assistant coach of Women’s Lacrosse at Yale, graduated from the Yale School of Public Health earlier this month, and is now working for the Yale Global Health Initiative.

By Lauren Taylor

Let’s get it out up front: No other team has put out a strong enough showing during the NCAA DI Tournament (or season) to make me doubt that the “purple haze” we’ve fallen into won’t continue.

I’d like to see another team besides Northwestern come out on top, (better for the game), but that’s personal wish – not professional opinion.

Here’s what they’ve got: Every player in a Northwestern jersey can run and gun, throw and catch and understand the game thanks to Kelly Amonte Hiller. She’s crafted a team whose balance is its greatest asset, and, ultimately, that’s what makes them unbeatable.

There’s not one girl to face guard; there are seven. There’s not one lock-off defender; there are seven. They are a team with players who take turns leading by example, and that quality — perhaps more than any other — has made them the dynasty they have become.

Northwestern may be a runaway favorite, but there is a lot to see when they take the field.

Five stats to watch for:

1.   How many goals does Northwestern manage to run up on Penn?

( In their game against Princeton, the Wildcats established a new program record with 373 goals scored this season.  That’s already 12 more than the championship team of two seasons ago).

2.  How many passes does Penn drop?

(My guess is will be under 10 in 60 minutes. Unreal. So consistent).

3.  How many aggressive double teams does Northwestern throw at its opponents?

(I bet more than 10 in 60 minutes. Also unreal. So high energy.)

4.   How many draw control does Penn’s Emma Spiro comes up with?

(She had 46 through the end of the regular season, dominating the Ivy League in that stat. But how does she fare against the Wildcats, also know for their aggression in the circle?)

5.    How many turnovers do North Carolina and Maryland commit?

(My prediction: It will be high on both ends, because of the hyper-aggressive run and gun game. Compare that state with Penn and you’ll be shocked these three teams have made it to the same point in the tournament.)

Lauren Taylor, who will receive her Master’s in Public Health from Yale on Monday, is assistant coach for the Yale Women’s Lacrosse team. As a player for Yale, she earned three All-America selections and was a four-time first team All-Ivy League selection.

Round one of the women’s NCAA Division 1 lacrosse tournament offered zero upsets, but expect excitement this weekend when top teams meet in the quarterfinals (championships next weekend at Towson University in Maryland).

This is college sports — and anything can happen.

Breaking it down:

Number one seed Northwestern wants to repeat (they’re national champs four years running).  Under Kelly Amonte Hiller, the Wildcats get credit for revolutionizing the women’s game. Coach Hiller recruits pure athletes and molds them into cogs in the well-oiled machine that is her Northwestern dynasty.  Every year the Cats lose seemingly irreplaceable leaders, but young guns step up and file seamlessly into the lineup. Do note, though, highly-touted player Hannah Nielsen suffered a knee injury a few weeks ago. Bottom line: The balance of this team is tough to beat.

Northwestern will face perennial power, Princeton. Princeton, which long sat atop the Ivy League, is lately coming in second behind rival Penn.  The difference between the two programs? Princeton plays a more emotional, flow-state game. They’ll go up, they’ll go down, but it’s always interesting. Holly McGarvie (Sr., Midfield) is the team’s heart and soul, and her intensity serves as a barometer for the play of the entire Princeton squad.

Conversely, the Penn Quakers play a more deliberate and methodical game. Nothing about them is particularly special, but everything is rock solid. Penn dropped a surprise game to Stanford towards the end of the regular season, but that may have been the loss they needed to refocus for the NCAA Tournament. Their first round game with MAAC Champs Fairfield was closer than most expected (10-8), but a win is a win — and they got it. This is a team that has grown accustomed to winning, and that’s provided a real mental advantage.

Duke, North Carolina and Maryland are the three ACC teams still standing. No surprises there: these are classic women’s lacrosse powerhouses.  All three programs are built on the backs of blue chip recruits and long-tenured coaches. The three all play some variation on a “run and gun” game. They’ll push fast breaks, take a lot of shots, make a lot of mistakes, but hopefully win on the merit of players’ speed, stick work, and natural intuition. There’s little pre-conceived about game plans, so they live and die by the decision-making on the field. Sometimes that leadership comes through and they win big. Other times they fold unexpectedly under pressure.

Syracuse and Notre Dame are the two Big East teams rounding out the quarterfinal bracket.  Each has been making noise the past few years — Syracuse under the esteemed Gary Gait and Notre Dame under Tracy Coyne.  The Syracuse-Maryland matchup will be particularly interesting because Coach Gait arrived at Syracuse after a long stint as an assistant at Maryland (under Cindy Timchal). He knows the Maryland game plan well (he helped engineer it in the 1990s and early 2000s). Think of this game as a contest of old and new Gary Gait philosophies.  Maryland has more talent, but Gait is a genius. He knows the Terrapins can be fragile under pressure and will coach his Orange to push all the right buttons.

Notre Dame’s matchup with North Carolina is the biggest question mark of the bracket. Notre Dame’s potent attack lead by Jillian Byers (Sr., Midfield) will have a tough go against a Tarheels defense lead by Amber Falcone (Sr., Defense). Byers is as good as attackers come, but Falcone has seen it all playing a tough ACC schedule for the past four years. Both are Tewaaraton Trophy (lacrosse’s Heisman) finalists, and the two will play on USA national teams (Amber, World Cup Team and Jillian, Developmental team) this summer.

My picks for the final four: Northwestern, Penn, UNC, Maryland.

Lauren Taylor, who will receive her Master’s in Public Health from Yale this month, is assistant coach for the Yale Women’s Lacrosse team. As a player for Yale, she earned three All-America selections and was a four-time first team All-Ivy League selection.

After many years of lugging around a lacrosse stick to various U.S. locales and being met with conspicuous stares and questions of “What is that?” I was thrilled to see women’s (and men’s) lacrosse being nationally televised this past weekend.

As I watched Syracuse and Notre Dame face off, I noticed something: Women’s lacrosse is looking more like men’s lacrosse. Gary Gait (one of the all time greats of the men’s game) coaches the Syracuse women, and as I watched I saw what I’ve seen elsewhere, namely the flow of people, technology and tactical concepts from the men’s game to the women’s.

For example:

1. Coaches (top men’s players are coaching college women, like Gary Gait @ Syracuse and Mike Waldvogel @ Fairfield)

2. Equipment (women are adopting an offset stick design which has more of a curve to the head – like the men; the use of protective goggles is now required – and some wonder if helmets could be next)

3. Hard Boundaries and Restraining Lines (prior to 2006, there were no boundaries in the women’s game)

4.    Tactical Concepts
a.    Draw Packages Many women’s teams are now training and using certain players in games         specifically to win possession of the ball and then quickly sub out for offensive/defensive players.
b.    Subbing “on the fly” Women’s teams are now substituting one player for another within the natural flow of the game so as to make better use of specialized skill sets, and catch defenses off guard.
c.    Goalie Tactics Women goalies are adopting a lower, more athletic stance in the cage and being significantly more active outside the cage.

d.    Defensive Sets Certain styles of defense, for instance the “Backer D” are lifted directly from the men’s game with only minor adjustments to accommodate women’s rules.

These changes are not necessarily a bad thing. Some of my greatest mentors as a player, particularly in college, were men. They offered me a perspective on the game that I hadn’t already seen or heard and as a result, I listened more closely and applied their ideas more readily. I’m nothing if not thankful for their influence on me.

That said, I have mixed feelings about whether the influx of personnel from the men’s game and adoption of male lacrosse practices is a good thing for the women’s game. On one hand, it can make the women feel like second class citizens who simply take, take, take without having anything much the men want to “borrow” from our game.

On the other hand, stealing the men’s style of play may mean the women’s game becomes faster-paced and more exciting, attracting higher rates of participation, viewership and support. So maybe we women should just take the goods (say thank you very much to the men) and run! What do you think?

Lauren Taylor, who will receive her Master’s in Public Health from Yale next month, is assistant coach for the Yale Women’s Lacrosse team. As a player for Yale, she earned three All-America selections and was a four-time first team All-Ivy League selection.