Ever heard the addage about the elephant in the room? You know the idiom that refers to the elephant comouflaged because it is the same color as the wallpaper in the room so no one sees this huge animal that weighs thousands of pounds. Pardon the overexplained metaphor but the "elephant in the room" on my mind is a question. Do people take female sports seriously?
I know what boys say. I know what I say and before you guess what that is, keep in mind that I am a girls coach for a high school basketball team. Honestly, I kind of coach them like boys so far. We play a style of offense and defense that my boys' teams played. We're sportsmanlike but viscious diving on the floor, being physical and the like. But echo the question. Do people (men) take girl athletes seriously? If so, when did it start? If not why not?
Is being different synonymous with weakness? You should hear how my girls team members responded to last night's Laker championship coronation. They coined this wit: "The Lakers turned off the Jazz, blew up the Rockets and ate some Nuggets and now they've made the Magic disappear..." They actually texted me that after the game and it was definitely a girl thing - guys are less poetic as a rule. But are the girls any less competitive? This afternoon they weren't cute. They were diving on the floor for loose balls and colliding with the opposition...literally. Bruises, headaches with a healthy mix of killer instinct. But are girls taken seriously? Better question. How does it feel to not be taken seriously? I could answer my own questions on any given day. The blog is for me to shut up and listen to others weigh in. So again I ask, "DO PEOPLE TAKE WOMEN'S ATHLETICS SERIOUSLY?" How you answer will undoubtedly reflect something noteworthy about society. So Man Up and speak the truth.
2 comments:
Where I get my answer comes from a soccer tournament that I was in a couple of weekends ago. After one of our games there was a player from one of the girls teams who said something to the effect of "its a lot faster than our games are". Things like this could be the reason some people dont take female sports as seriously. I'm not saying all sports are played fasted on the mens side of things, but that is what the stereotype is and in todays world things have to be quick and to the point to be given any notice. Because people think of womens sports as 'slower' they dont think that it will be as entertaining. Dont get me wrong though, I like watching sports no matter who is playing and there are just as many hustle plays in womens games as in mens, but the biggest problem in my oppinion is that people dont even give it a chance. They want to be in the 'cool' crowd and they cant be if they like to watch female sports. I'm not trying to sound like a jerk, and I do support the girls teams and come out to as many of their games as I can, but this is just the way I see it.
That's a good honest assessment. Sometimes it seems like men made these rules in society that favored....men and then people turned off their brains and accepted them. I was one of those people and it's only now that I see sports for its value as something that serves us. It's one of the greatest teachers and recreational outlets I've ever known but we love comparing things so we say it's got be "Man Fast" and "Man brutal". What if the animal kingdom had invented sprinting. Would Cheetahs laugh at humans slow poking down a 100-meter stretch in 9.5 seconds when they can do it in 6?
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