I had the thrilling opportunity to watch the World Cup Final at the Soweto Fan Park in South Africa on Monday. Yes, the vuvuzela howls are deafening, but I still cheered alongside 10,000 South Africans as Spain kicked in the winning goal against the Netherlands (my friend Robin from San Fransisco was rooting for the Netherlands — see photo).

It is not that I – or my South African hosts – are huge Spanish soccer fans. In fact, most of the South Africans I spoke with had little knowledge of the individual teams, but agreed that World Cup fever had swept their country. Everywhere you look, soccer images line the streets. From soda cans to billboards, you cannot escape FIFA’s domination.

Certainly, the World Cup has brought together a divided nation and given the rest of the globe a fresh lens through which to view what I am finding to be an inspiring country.

But one thing has struck me: This lens – and FIFA in particular — has filtered out and excluded (sometimes ridiculously so) the female athletic experience. This was an opportunity for all athletes to celebrate this sport. But we only saw half the picture.

Nowhere in the city do you see ads with little girls playing soccer and nowhere do you hear the voice of a female commentator. Does FIFA mean to suggest that the World Cup only inspires little boys? Are the sports networks telling us no women are qualified to provide commentary or reportage?

And in what would be a natural plug for it’s next major event, FIFA was stunningly silent about the fact that next year’s Women’s World Cup is in Germany. Disturbingly, the only fact my South African and American peers could recall about the Women’s World Cup when I asked them was “that one time that women took her shirt off.”

Do we need a woman in a sports bra – Brandi Chastain – to bring attention to women’s soccer? Without engaging yet another debate on sexy athletes, let’s instead pose the fair question: Is the World Cup truly a celebration of the beautiful game – or just the celebration of men who play it?

Rachael roots for Spain while her friend Robin (obviously) pulls for Netherlands

World Cup crowds on Monday night

Boston Breakers Co-Captain Kristine Lilly with teammates after practice on the Harvard fields.

By Lindsay Rico

Soccer is — if you look at the rosters of Women’s Professional Soccer — a sport played by 20-somethings. When #13 Kristine Lilly takes the field for the Boston Breakers’ home opener against the Philadelphia Independence on Sunday she will be, at 38, by far the oldest player on the team and one of the oldest in the league. Many of her U.S. Team colleagues who won the world cup in 1999 — players like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain — have retired.

And yet, on the official media day last week, as players finished practice, showered and grabbed bag lunches in the Murr Center Lounge at Harvard Stadium, word filtered out that she was also the fittest. Yep, the athlete who in pre-season conditioning had come out on top. “She is Superwoman to me,” says Leslie Osborne, who with Lilly is co-captain of the team.

The point is that Lilly is not merely hanging in (understandable given her impressive resume, two-time World Cup and Olympic champion, second leader goal scorer in the world…). She is today a key playmaker and scorer on her team. She was named to the WPS All-Star team last season. Last month she was called up to play for the U.S. National Team against Mexico (US won 1-0 on a snow-covered! field), bringing Lilly’s world cap total to 344 (she was already the world’s all time leader in caps, man or woman).

Sure, her life is more complicated (married with a 20-month-old daughter will do that), but defender Stephanie Cox, formerly of the now-defunct L.A. Sol, says Lilly may be older, but that’s not necessarily a negative. “I’m almost jealous because she has had so long to figure out her body and she’s knows herself really well,” says Cox, 24. “She is probably the fittest she’s ever been.”

Age does matter. But it’s not the whole picture. FGN spoke with Lilly about how she gets the most from her body — and her experience.

FGN: What do you differently fitness-wise now than when you did years ago?

KL: The biggest difference for me now is an extra day off here and there. It’s not about over-doing it and doing extra, extra, extra. I’m more efficient with my time and I make sure to get rest. We practice five days a week, have a game on Saturday, and Sunday is for recovering. I might do a lighter session or take an extra day off here or there. Fitness has always been the backbone of my game. So I make sure I’m fit.

FGN: How do you approach the game differently now than when you started playing professionally?

KL: When you step on that field there’s a competitiveness. You want to win. It’s all the same. For me, the difference is my life off the field.

FGN: What does experience count for?

KL: Sometimes young players are still worried about everything. If you are out there, focus on two things you can do and do that well. Don’t try to solve the world’s problems in one practice. You see the eagerness in [young players'] eyes. It’s great to see that. You want that passion. But realize that everyone makes mistakes.

FGN: After the ponytail pull last fall in the college playoff game, there has been talk about how physical women’s soccer has become. Is it rougher?

KL: It’s physical. It’s been physical since I played in high school. Players today are better and stronger. But there is not a moment when you are not having some bodily contact. And it can teeter on the line of foul or no foul. That is just part of it.

FGN: How long do you plan to play? Any plans to retire?

KL: No! We’re just playing it by ear. I’m taking care of my body. I’ll know when it’s time.

FGN: Do younger players ever tease you about your age?

KL: Yeah, there are some comments out there, but it’s all in good fun. I just make sure to give it right back to them!

NM soccer player Elizabeth Lambert’s hair yanking, punching, and nasty behavior have gone viral. She’s being labeled the “dirtiest player” in women’s soccer and – depending on who’s writing or talking – all of women’s sports.

What makes Lambert’s behavior so outrageous (aside from being captured on video) is that girls are supposed to play nice.

The image of female athletes as more than skilled players – as good, wholesome people – is a centerpiece of women’s sports and a staple of marketing, promotion, and ticket-selling, particularly in basketball and soccer.

This has been both a benefit and a limitation that has helped shape women’s sports as “gentler” fare.

Of course, Lambert is not the first athlete to get in trouble for hair pulling. Last month, Oakland Raider’s defensive tackle Richard Seymour was reportedly fined $7,500 for pulling Broncos tackle Ryan Clady’s hair (also caught on tape). In August, Semi Tadulala, a Fijian rugby player, faced a one match suspension after pulling the ponytail of Eorl Crabtree during play between the Bradford Bulls and Hudderfield Giants.

Hairpulling, like grabbing opponents’ privates in the football pile-up or purposely seeking to injure another player, is blatant dirty play. Unfortunately, nasty play is more common than you’d think, though less so among female athletes.

A study on sportsmanship by the Josephson Institute asked male and female high school athlete about questionable scenarios (test your own sportsmanship here). They found:

–    29 percent of males felt it was all right to “attack” a pre-existing injury of a top scorer on the opposing team (another 22 percent were unsure). Among female athletes, 66 percent knew such behavior was improper.
–  69 percent of males and 55 percent of females felt it was all right for a hockey coach to put a player on the ice specifically to intimidate opponents and protect the team’s players.
–   43 percent of males and 22 percent of females believed it was okay for a basketball coach to teach young players how to illegally push and hold in ways that were difficult for referees to detect.

A family-friendly, role-model-for-kids image hardly holds up with someone like Lambert on the field. On the other hand, this is likely the first time SportsCenter, the NFL pre-game show on Fox (from Afghanistan no less!), and thousands of sports talk radio shows across the country gave air time to women’s college soccer.

This is where men’s sports (and the broadcasters whose definition of “hockey highlights” are on-ice brawls) could use a little self-reflection. As a society and fans who value fair play, we should spend some airtime and outrage on bad on-field behavior among male athletes, too. The integrity of players — male and female — is what makes sports bigger than the game.

It doesn’t matter to me where you play soccer — grass, dirt, turf, parking lot, or gym floor. I have trained girls on each surface who have found their passion for the game.

And yet, there is a serious opportunity gap that bothers me: Inner city and poor girls face obstacles that make their participation drastically lower than boys and their suburban female counterparts.

We know millions of children are registered in youth soccer leagues (3.1 million with U.S. Youth Soccer alone).  But whether soccer or other sports, more are white, male, and affluent.

A 2008 Women’s Sports Foundation study, for example, showed that by age 6, 53 percent of white girls and 68 percent of white boys are involved with sports, compared with just 29 percent of African American girls and 51 percent of African American boys (it’s 32 percent and 44 percent for Hispanic girls and boys). A NY Times story also pointed out the discrepancies.
To me, just as troubling as the low entry rate is the high drop out rate from sports (18 percent for poor kids). How can we get girls from all backgrounds to continue to play soccer — as well as other sports?

Many people focus on the hurdles to access, including funding, transportation, cultural mores. I believe it’s equally critical is to understand WHY certain girls choose to play high school sports.

Recently, I surveyed 75 female high school athletes (60 who participated in the SportsChallenge Leadership and Education Alliance‘s Summer Academy) and 15 from a U19 soccer team I coach in San Francisco). (SportsChallenge brings a wide spectrum of student-athletes together from around the country to train as athletes and leaders). Here’s what they had to say about why they play (in no particular order):

I play sports because I can …

* Be myself (without worrying what others think)
* Escape from all the other stresses of my life
* Control my destiny – set goals, make my dreams come true and ultimately lead others to success
* Make myself a better person – stronger and more confident in all aspect of my life
* Keep out of trouble and stay motivated for school, especially to get good grades
* Open doors to attend college
* Have a safe space where I can learn from others
* Stay fit and active
* Make an impact on the history of my sport

And, on the majority of lists… “Because I love the game!”

By addressing both sides of the equation – the hurdles and the incentives – I believe we can create a lasting pipeline of young girls who continue to play into their teens and beyond.

Molly Hellerman is executive director of the non-profit SportsChallenge Leadership and Education Alliance, based in Washington, D.C.

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.

By Laura Pappano

Let’s get over the woe-is-us tone that shrouds women’s professional soccer. Yesterday’s NY Times story captured the uncertainty league bigwigs feel around the (admittedly) very challenging task of filling soccer stadiums, and getting enough sponsor and ad dollars to give WPS staying power – and in a recession.

What’s troubling, however, is that WPS seems to want something it doesn’t have: raucous, beer-swilling, MLB and NFL fans (read: real fans). You know, the guys sports radio hosts describe as living in their mother’s basements and existing solely to follow every move of their beloved team and call in to talk about it?

It explains the origin of “fan” – that is “fanatic.”

In the Times story, Boston Breakers director of business development Andy Crossley says, “We need to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for girls.”

The quote was in the context of wanting to reach the men (again, read: real fans) who are taking the pony-tailed, soccer-playing daughters to games.

I dare say there’s not an exec in Major League Baseball who wants to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for boys.  (The stress, rather, comes because the jerseys of certain poor-role-model players suddenly become unmarketable.)

Why are young male fans courted and prized while young female fans are considered a sign of failure?

How will we cultivate a generation of season-ticket-buying female fans if we don’t value them as kids? (I suppose it’s a good thing Disney and Hannah Montana don’t discount the economic power of girls).

This is where WPS can learn from NASCAR.  A few observations:

1.    NASCAR has been all about serving the fans’ interest, creating the Sprint Cup Series to stir play-off-style excitement throughout the season, and this year mid-season changing the format of re-starts to increase the drama for fans. (Lesson: Don’t be afraid of altering the format).

2.    Drivers talk about the value of fan support and fans are known for shelling out and covering themselves in fan gear and buying sponsor’s products (Lesson: As a result, who wouldn’t want to sponsor NASCAR?)

3.    NASCAR’s fans base is changing – and that’s OK. An ESPN Sports Poll, for example, shows that today 60% of fans live outside of the South, 41% are female, and since 2000, the percentage of fans making $100,000 or more has doubled from 7% to 16% — and with that an increase in college grads (now one in four). (Lesson: You can grow beyond your original fan base)

4.    Still, the shifting fan base presents a challenge. In response to rising prices, drivers give away tickets to followers who feel priced out – even as execs think about what fans want. As one report quotes Richard Petty, seven-time champion and team owner: “We have to play the game a little bit different than what we did 15 or 20 years ago because society is dictating they want to see something different. It makes it really tough from NASCAR’s standpoint (of) what is the fan really looking for?” (Lesson: Be nimble and listen to your fans)

5.    Driver Jeff Burton actually likes kids among NASCAR fans: “There are a lot more families today, a lot more kid-friendly environments. Last week we went out to do hospitality on Sunday morning and there was a kid’s playground area with inflatable toys and all kinds of slides and all kinds of things. There’s been a huge effort to try to get children involved, which I think is a great thing.” (Lesson: Kid fans are not a negative; they are your future. Just ask the MLB and the NFL)

If pony-tailed girls are the core fan base of women’s professional soccer, work with that. There are other groups at games, too, including a report on the opening day of the L.A. Sol’s season describing the excitement among eight nuns from the order of the Eucharistic Franciscan Missionary Sisters (coincidentally dressed in heavy blue and white habits — the team’s colors), clutching T-shirts they’d won.

Guys who live in their mom’s basements may never buy a ticket to a WPS game. But who cares? Twenty years from now, that pony-tailed girl will want a luxury box.

By Laura Pappano

School districts are sweating. Budgets are tight and they are cutting in the same old places, including middle and high school sports. (A recent American Association of School Administrators survey shows the proportion of school districts cutting extracurricular activities, including sports, will triple from 10 to 28 percent from this academic year to next.)

There is also recycled talk about “pay to play” – not in the political-access- Rod-Blagojevich sense of the phrase, of course – but in the fee to participate. The downside: If the fee is too high some kids get left out. It does cost money to play sports and there may be a place for a nominal charge (say you buy your own uniform…or provide your own equipment). But one budget balancing option to consider: Pay to watch. And not just football.

Of course folks are used to paying $8 or $10 to attend high school football and, as a result, there is obvious focus these days on those revenues. The question is: Why do we pay this and what does it mean now, when budgets are tight – and later when this fiscal calamity has passed?

There is obvious attention these days on high school football revenues. The Tennessee Secondary School Association is fretting because dollars from post-season football play have been falling steadily since 2005, from $830,667 to $610,090 this past season. The Board of Control’s solution? They raised ticket prices for next year’s playoffs from $10 to $12.

They are leaning on the fact that people are used to paying to see high school football. At Gainesville High School in Florida, for example, the football team brought in $83,589 of the school’s $132,667 in sports ticket sales – plus about $105,000 through a booster’s club (including $60,000 for ads in the football program).

The high school’s athletic director, Wayne Vickery, told the Gainesville Times that football money is key: “Other coaches don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry, football is a driving force,” Vickery said. “But that’s the way it is in the South. … Whether people like it or not, football pays the bills.”

The problem with this reality is the underlying presumption: Football (and maybe men’s basketball) are the only sports “worth” paying to see (or buy programs for, or support through booster fundraising).  It’s part of a familiar hierarchy in which football games are scheduled as Friday night community entertainment (or say Thanksgiving).

This budget crisis is an opportunity to insert some equity into the revenue-respect equation. It’s time to re-evaluate the paternalistic attention-sucking power structure that is high school football and share some of the wealth – and responsibility – with other athletic teams. Yes, I said, “responsibility.” It’s time for supporters of other teams to realize that athletics cost money and that it’s also worth dollars to watch soccer, cross country, gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, swimming…

What would happen if a school district took turns featuring key athletic match-ups on Friday nights (and promoting and charging for them)? Track under the lights? Field hockey? Softball? Lacrosse? In the process, maybe school districts could expand their base of support beyond the football boosters to an audience (and pool of funders) that is largely untapped.

Sure, officials in Tennessee attributed their falling football playoff revenues on things beyond their control: poor weather and unexciting match-ups. But maybe we’re giving too much to and expecting too much from high school football.