Last night at the gym, I noticed a women’s soccer game was being covered on the evening newscast on ABC. Shocked and surprised because women’s sports, especially college sports hardly gets any coverage on ESPN let alone ABC, I looked up and saw that they were showing highlights of unsportspersonlike conduct of one player- Elizabeth Lambert -- of New Mexico during a playoff game.
This woman plays hard. But you know what, girls play hard. Way back in the day when I played I came home every weekend all banged up. We want our girls to play hard to compete. But there is a line and clearly she crossed it with the ponytail pulldown. All the other infractions shown just gear you up for the ponytail pulldown.
See for yourself.
The reason why this concerns me is how excited people are getting by this behavior. Here’s a piece of a post from Women’s Sports Blog:
Perhaps even more outrageous than Elizabeth Lambert’s behavior in the New Mexico/BYU game, and it’s the worst I’ve ever seen in women’s sports (and obviously this is not meant to be a commentary on how women should be held to different standards, but rather it’s still not as bad as some things I’ve seen in men’s sports), is the reaction of some men who rave about how ‘hot’ it is.
This video has gone viral (I just saw it on MSNBC again and different version on you tube have viewers in the millions) but seriously, is this what people really think that women’s sports is? Why is it the media only focuses on the bad behavior in women’s sports? Why is it only the catfights and outbursts like from Serena Williams at the US Open become the news? What about all the great plays that happen every day all across the country. How come this amazing article from a dad about watching his daughter play baseball didn’t go viral, but the pony tail pulldown is everywhere.
I’m not trying to excuse Lambert’s behavior. She has been suspended and who knows what will happen for her senior season. There are people calling for her to not only be kicked off the team but also kicked out of school. Let’s remember there is also about a young woman’s education. She probably gets a scholarship since it is a Division 1 team and she has one more year of school.
The point is that 35 plus years into Title IX we have young women across the country competing at incredibly high levels. They sometime lose their tempers and need to get some help to deal with their issues which probably are not just on the field. But to vilify this young woman or to think that violence on the field is “hot” is just fu**ed up. We have so much work to do with how we deal with women and sports and this is a perfect opportunity for parents to talk about sports and violence and this can be a lesson to educate all of us on acceptable sports behavior for both boys and girls.
Patronizing Women’s Violence (Women’s Sports Blog)
Title IX Dad (The American Prospect)
HBO will premiere the documentary Kick Like a Girl directed by Jenny Mackenzie today at 6pm EST. It is part of an evening of docs about girls that will air tonight. It starts at 5:30 with Beginning Filmmaking and ends with Hard Times for an American Girl. I am setting the TIVO right now. (H/T to Cynthia Fuchs at 
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