Who's In?

This press release made me just about want to work for the State Department. At least it made me hopeful that our country may be undertaking outreach other than the kind with weapons in hand.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) SportsUnited office, in partnership with Global Sports Partners/Sport4Peace, the University of Tennessee and the National Basketball Association, is hosting a delegation of basketball-playing girls and their coaches from Iraq. They are visiting Washington, DC and Knoxville, Tennessee from June 3-18 to experience women's basketball in the United States. The ten girls, ages 14-16, and two female coaches are from Sulaymaniya, Erbil, and Baghdad.

This Sports Visitor program is designed to teach the girls new basketball skills and introduce them to sports in America, through visits and clinics at high schools, clubs, and universities. In addition, the program will provide guidance about nutrition, strength and conditioning, and team building. The girls will have the opportunity to learn about the development of women’s sports, including Title IX. In Washington they will attend a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) game, the Washington Mystics vs. the Atlanta Dream, featuring the best women basketball players from America and around the world. Basketball is the fastest growing sport in the Middle East, and this group is committed to learning more about the game and taking that knowledge back to their teammates in Iraq.

After their time in Washington, the girls and their coaches will visit the basketball camps of the all-time winningest basketball coach in NCAA history, Pat Summitt, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. They will have the opportunity to interact with girls their own age, learn about basketball, and experience life in Tennessee, including hiking in the Smoky Mountains.

I wanna go myself! It's hard to tell how long SportsUnited has been around, but the ECA bureau dates back to 1961. I have to think, however, that the State Department career page's tagline that says, "I will show the world a side of America it has never seen" is a post-January 21, 2009, edit (cool Papyrus font and all).

Here's a shout out to the many mothers who model strength, determination, discipline, joy in life, self respect, and healthy habits for their daughters and sons by not giving up their athletic life or pursuits when they have children.

I think either there are more mothers competing at the Olympics in 2008, or else it's they're more public about it. On the American team alone there are 20 or so moms. You can read about them in lots of places--here's one collection of mini-bios.

We've all heard of Dara Torres, a five-time Olympian and now mother of a two-year old at age 41. The American swam to three silver medals in Beijing. 

But I was also impressed with the less well-know (and photographed) Stepanka Hilgertova, another five-time Olympian from the Czech Republic, competing in white water kayak. She too is 41 and has a child. Only he is 20 years old, and also competes on the Czech national kayak team! Hilgertova came in 9th out of 21 in Beijing; she already has two gold medals from previous Olympics at home.

I love the span of choices these women illustrate. Have a child at 20, have a child at 39 ... you can still succeed at other passions alongside mothering. 

 

 

Fun hoops piece in the LA Times Sunday (true, I am rooting for the Celtics in the Boston-LA matchup now ongoing, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the opponents' local paper). It’s about women playing pickup basketball with guys, a situation I have a lot of experience with. So has the author, Melissa Rohlin. She describes the phenomenon perfectly, particularly the “male dilemma.”

Say you’re the guy matched up with the one female player: Do you play hard and risk looking like a jerk, or do you back off and get beat and consequently embarrassed? I’ve felt this dynamic at play myself. I'm usually the smallest player out there; I'm not necessarily the worst. I try to match up with the person closest in size (that’s gonna be a smaller guy, who may have unresolved issues there anyway), or someone who doesn’t love to live in the post. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re stupid not to use that in playing against me. If somebody’s bigger and stronger than me, they’re an asshole to use that in trying to hurt me, shove me around, or discourage me from playing. I’ve run into both those kinds of stupidity, and just as much straight-up play, thankfully. One big guy swatted a shot attempt of mine halfway across the gym, and then said, “Sorry,” kind of sheepishly. That’s at least a happier medium … acknowledging the awkwardness but not letting it affect the play. We could both laugh about it.

Rohlin talks about the issue of even getting into the game, sometimes. I haven’t run into that so much, but haven’t tried to join in many new games where I don’t already know somebody. One place where I did, I got a distinct feeling that some of the guys feared a feminization of the game. (It's a run where supposedly Doug Flutie plays sometimes, but not that day.) There was one other woman there, a college player. Size and skill-wise, it didn’t make real sense for me to be guarding her, but we were both female so it was a foregone conclusion. At some point in the game I stepped on the back of her heel and pulled her shoe off. I said, “Oop, sorry,” while continuing to play. Some guy nearby barked, “Hey! We don’t say 'sorry' here!”

For a variety of reasons (like cost and location, but including that benighted attitude), I didn’t go back there.

In the LA Times article, Rohlin quotes another ball-playing friend of hers, which sums up the inclusion issue and the whole scenario, really:

Guys who are good at basketball, she said, are inclusive and encourage women to join. Guys who are insecure about their basketball skills, well, they are insecure, period.

Marion Jones in more innocent times, 1994. (Getty)

Marion Jones said she was sorry. And that she had behaved stupidly and was ashamed. I almost like her even more now.

It is more than so many others in her shoes have done.

I really didn’t want to believe that she had artificial help in achieving her amazing athletic goals. I loved her apparent joy in the process and like everyone, her apparently genuinely nice persona. She was beautiful to watch compete and you knew, drugs or not, she trained wicked hard. Plus she had braces as an adult at the same time I did.

The waste of her career, and her genuine efforts, that came from that little extra edge she got from outside rather than inside herself, is tragic in the classical sense: Hero brought low by one fatal flaw.

Marion Jones in the spring prior to the contentious Olympics. (Sports Illustrated)

She takes full accountability herself, which I admire. But you can’t overlook the pressures on her. Not only from her coach or whomever, but from all of us as well, wanting her to win, wanting a superchampion, and the corporate world rewarding that mightily with cash.

There’s a tunnel-visioned aspect of elite competition which gives it a certain beauty but also a potentially inaccurate accounting of reality. I remember it from years striving toward world championships on the U.S. rowing team. I believe American rowing, at least back in the day, was clean. The most unspoken-of drug I ever witnessed any U.S. rowers take was Ex-Lax. But we had the single-mindedness of purpose, the deep desire, and a sense of the self’s virtue that comes with incredibly hard work toward a respected goal. If “supplements” had been dangled in front of any of us (and if (a big hypothetical if) there had been any significant money to be made by winning rowing competitions), would we have remained so pure, albeit irregular? You can always make an exception for yourself, it seems. I suspect these little things (and I would posit that given all the issues across the globe, these are little things) don’t seem a crime when up close and personal.

An unrelated radio story today on All Things Considered discussed a very similar tale in the world of business. It was much shadier to begin with, a guy making millions off of inflated stock trading. But the key thing was that the guy, Jordan Belfort, who spent 22 months in prison on fraudulent trading charges, said that in the thick of his greed being positively reinforced, he stopped seeing certain actions as wrong or criminal. Actions which now, and well before his trading days, he would have thought were completely unacceptable. He too, like Jones, is contrite.

We inheritors of the Puritan tradition love contrition, I think. It makes a good story (which Scorcese has optioned the rights to, incidentally, in Belfort‘s case). And good stories often contain redemption.

The redemption in Jones’s case will come from her acquiescence to be brought so low. Ron Rappaport wrote in the L.A. Times (good article; he wrote a book about her) that she has thrown out her chance to go on to be a respected spokesperson or even announcer for her sport or advocate for women’s sports generally. I disagree. Puritan proclivities aside, I think we (as in We, the People) are pretty good at forgiving in some cases. (Or am I just being cynical about the seriousness with which the country views doping, all lamentations about disappointing role models to the contrary? (Though ESPN’s Jemele Hill might say gullible rather than cynical.)) Especially in cases where a personally appealing individual is truly remorseful, we want to forgive. (I’m not sure people would re-embrace a fallen Barry Bonds as enthusiastically, for example.) I hope Marion does not disappear after her expected six month prison sentence, though about now I bet she would like to. I think she could still have a lot to offer. I am still rooting for her.

Just glossing over the silent gaps here, as usual, I wanted to bring attention to a nice blog I like to read.

It's called  Mile Markers, and seems to be affiliated with Runner's World. I don't know what that affiliation represents; it is very much a personal blog, as the tagline says, "Sharing the road with Kristin Armstrong."  

I don't know Kristin, but feel like I'd like to. She would fit well in my roster of sporty women I admire so much and am lucky to call friends. Another adult mom jock who needs to give her sport (in this case running) some time in her life to stay sane.

I was talking about this dynamic recently with my colleague Diann, also a runner. How we feel a bit crazy if deprived of exercise for awhile. It's not like a day without it is so bad but... it's like brushing your teeth. Sure, you can survive a day, a couple of days... a week without brushing your teeth. You're unlikely to die because of it. But you'll feel pretty crummy. And be unpleasant to be around! 

Anyway, nothing eye-opening in Mile Markers, no secrets to new road speed or racewinning techniques. Just another experience in the world related by someone who is funloving, spiritual (not overbearingly), dedicated and hard-working, open to the world and humble in her way of sharing it. It's just satisfying to read. Like drinking a really good cup of coffee or something--entirely pleasant, a pause for thought, fills a gap. In the process you feel you get to know the writer, though in truth I don't know much... she has kids, maybe three? Divorced it seems like? Lives in Austin maybe? Maybe Oregon? Works doing something where she travels and has a varied schedule...? Isn't it funny? But I like her. Maybe you will too. Why not visit?

Last weekend I had the honor of meeting Emily and Joita and a whole bunch of other kids who came to play at a multi-sport clinic that World T.E.A.M. Sports put on at Agganis Arena in Boston.

What’s World T.E.A.M.? I had to ask, too. The T.E.A.M. part stands for the exceptional athlete matters. It’s an organization that seems to live to put on sporting events that combine conventional athletes (i.e., those with all their limbs and senses) and unconventional ones in shared endeavors. For adults it may be a trek up Kilimanjaro; for adults or families maybe a two-day 110-mile bike ride; for kids a free sports clinic. My pal Mary is on their board of directors and invited me to volunteer at just such a clinic. Sounded good, so I did.

The organization’s official goals are these:

• Increase and promote inclusive sports opportunities for all people, especially reaching out to disabled people.
• Organize and host innovative and challenging sporting events that encourage all individuals, especially those with disabilities, to participate in lifetime sports.
• Promote diversity and increase awareness, acceptance and integration of those with disabilities.

But back to Emily and Joita. They were just two among the 20 or so kids who were on my team as we spent half an hour in clinics for golf, soccer, basketball and rock climbing. (Agganis Arena is a very nice facility.) Most of the kids were unremarkable looking, if it’s fair to say that about any individual, and were aged from just under eight to just about 14. They came from city and suburb and all kinds of gene pools and language groups. And a handful had challenges that were visible and some likely had some that weren’t. Emily, age 10ish, had a left arm that ends at the elbow. Joita, almost 8, had legs that don’t particularly cooperate. Don’t know and didn’t ask if it were muscular dystrophy or MS or some other musculoskeletal/neurological thing. The cool thing was that it didn’t really matter here.

Of course it was taken into consideration, but along with so many other things. The golf pro himself had lost most of his left arm in a boating accident at age 19, so he had some good advice for everyone on how to hit a golf ball—two-handed, one-handed, or from a wheelchair. All the kids got a chance to practice their swings at tennis balls. And I got a few pointers in case the time comes I ever take up golf.

We moved on to soccer, where a coach ran drills and a little scrimmage. Emily was an old pro at soccer, having come with shin guards at the ready and everything. Joita was incredible, speeding around the court on crutches and getting in the mix at every turn she could. Kids can be cruel, but sometimes their obliviousness is a kindness. I suspect there are times when a person who often needs special attention enjoys just getting totally ordinary treatment. Everyone was caught up in the game.

Next up, basketball. In wheelchairs. A couple of wheelchair basketball players had brought a dozen or so sporty chairs for kids to try. They were light and zippy and easy to tip! Made me think back to the movie Murderball. We did relay races and a passing drill in the wheelchairs. Although this was a bit unorganized, the kids loved it! It was tough getting them out of the gym and down to our last station, the rock wall.

That is where I was stunned. With little to no instruction, but on belay with certified rock climbing guides, kids scrambled and scraped up the different faces of the wall. Some got only a few handholds in. Some didn’t like to slip or to cling while deciding what to do next, and rappelled down shortly. A few made it to the top. A lot preferred the small bouldering walls they could use without ropes. But most impressive were Emily, who gutted through several slips and muscle-quivering hesitations to power to the top using her elbow to grip and leverage on the left; and Joita, who left her crutches earthbound and would not give up. With a tiny bit of help, mainly because she was tiny and couldn’t make the reaches between a few holds, she traversed the rock upward of three-quarters of the way to the top. We on the ground cheered. Such achievement! Such elevation above their ordinary. It was thrilling. We all have it in us to outdo ourselves, I suppose, but sometimes need the example of an 8 or 10 year old.

I recently finished reading Barak Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, written in 1995. I’m prone to like the guy anyway, and the fact that he can string a few sentences together gracefully and tell a really good story endears him to me even more. As does knowing he’s a fellow hoops enthusiast, who says he played (like me) “with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent.”

Here’s what he says about what he found in the game, besides friends, a self-defining attitude, and respect:

…A way of being together when the game was tight and the sweat broke and the best players stopped worrying about their points and the worst players got swept up in the moment and the score only mattered because that’s how you sustained the trance. In the middle of which you might make a move or a pass that surprised even you, so that even the guy guarding you had to smile, as if to say, “Damn…”

Every sport has its sublime moments, which share something in common, but all are shaped differently. There’s the fun of it.

(Obama only devotes two pages of his 442-page book to basketball; don’t want to give anyone the impression they should read it if they are looking for insights on the game. You should read it though, for a candid and compelling family history and surprisingly uncomfortable look at race today.)

I don’t really care for golf, but I like Michelle Wie. I don’t dislike golf; I appreciate the skill and strength and mental toughness it takes, but the game has just never called out to me. Maybe that’s a stage of life that lies ahead somewhere. In any case, I happened upon an interview with Michelle Wie that really made me admire the 17 year-old professional.

She was being asked about her plans for the year ahead. And replied with some specifics about winning some events and planning better, also saying that, “Whatever happens, happens,” and that she was thinking about process more than outcome.

Then she gets asked the inevitable dumb questions, like, what do you say to people who think you shouldn’t try to “challenge traditions,” in other words, play against men?

Her excellent answer: “It’s ridiculously mean for people to say you shouldn’t even try. Because, you know, that’s just what life is: You fail, you succeed. And if you don’t try you don’t even know. Even if I do fail, I know at least I tried.”

“Whatever people say, they say.”

And then she gets this nonsensical poser: “Would you rather be the best female player or the 20th player overall?”

She graciously didn’t point out that that was just retarded and she could be both. She said, “I just want, after my career is over with, to have no regrets.”

Good for her.

My brother-in-law once removed (my brother’s wife’s brother) wrote an op-ed that was published in the Gainesville Sun recently. He makes the interesting observation that we often suspend the criminal code inside the confines of an athletic competition, and maybe that's not good. In short, if hotheads (or dimwits) brawl on the basketball court, perhaps they should be charged with assault and battery and treated like you or I would if we did such a thing on the street, and not just given a six-week vacation in which to work on their abs and celebrity endorsements. Maybe that would set an example that would make them chill. Not a bad point. I suppose some of the tolerance for the violence comes out of western sports’ gladiatorial past. There is some unspoken suspension of real world for the special rules of the ring. But, indeed, there are children watching, and what they’re learning isn’t, “It’s all right to punch someone who bumps into you,” but, “It’s all right to punch someone if you’re a valuable celebrity.” I’m glad Bobby wrote the piece; it’s easy for bad sportsmanship to become ho-hum, and it shouldn’t. He didn’t say in the article, and maybe it goes without saying, but he’s a lawyer himself.

On a different but not-too-different topic, I heard an intriguing piece on Marketplace this evening on my way to basketball practice. It was about big money sports and so-called student athletes. Everyone decries scholarship athletes getting wined and dined and otherwise materially spoiled by boosters or whoever it is that gets cars for them or apartments for their mothers or whatever all it is. (Again, here’s a state of things that’s probably bad, but not as bad as global warming, the war in Iraq, or the absence of a walk button at the crosswalk between my two work buildings, so if we have to triage the things we get up in arms about, this one doesn’t occupy my mind all that often. But still…) This commentator, Dwayne Ballen, took a different tack: If sports is such monstrously big business that head coaches of, well, just say, college football teams playing in a “national championship” (quotes to acknowledge BCS critics) make more than $2 million per annum, shouldn’t the players who do the real work get a little something out of it? He suggests setting up trusts for them that they can’t access till they graduate. Or if they don’t graduate, until they’re 30 years old (aaaancient to a college kid). And they can get more if they get good grades. I think it’s a very good idea. Not everyone goes on to huge salaries in professional sports, though they alter their lives to pursue it. If they’re the revenue producers for these big schools, yeah, why not give them a tiny slice of the pie?

Meanwhile, climate change continues apace. Temps in the 70s in Massachusetts this past weekend. Which was January 6 and 7, if you weren't paying attention. Now, while balmy air on a jacketless day feels undeniably pleasant to one’s body, if you think about it at all, it’s quite disturbing to the mind. It makes me sad how little anyone thinks about it at all. The reliably idiotic local news was all delirious about it in a giggly way, interviewing people dining out on the street in downtown Boston. Hello? Think about the polar bears, could you? If you like this so well, move to Georgia or something. Some of us want to ski! And keep the slate-colored juncos coming back. And to quit plucking ticks off the dogs in the midst of the freaking winter.

 

It’s been just about a year now since I started this blog. I haven’t been nearly as frequent or free and easy a poster as I’d hoped or envisioned. I apologize.

 

(If you apologize in the forest, and nobody’s there to hear, did it happen? )

 

It’s a good time to think back on why I started. Self-publishing is kind of fun, of course, even while it’s also a self-imposed nagging burden…. Homework you give yourself! But I started because I had been in a state of wondering what I should do with my working life, which at the moment seems terribly stale and meaningless. And I thought, yeah, if I could do anything, without regard to reality (i.e., funding), what would I want to do, let’s see… well, I’d like to start a women’s sports magazine. One that would be half spectator rag to cover women’s sports (at high levels, but including the citizen competitor) and half “service magazine” that would include workout advice, research and product reviews (again, aimed at the adult competitor in anything). Then, once the brand was strong and we were ragingly profitable, we’d sponsor and host our own events (races, horse shows, 3 on 3 tourneys, whatever) where the proceeds would go to a foundation. The foundation would award grants to organizations worldwide doing projects involving women’s health, nutrition and sports, particularly in places where this is not traditionally done. In the end, that kind of development work would be the true mission of my fantasy organization.

 

Sigh.

 

So I can’t even manage to make a weekly post about sports on my own blog. But I am going to save the world via my delusional career strategy. Ahem. Still, nice idea, isn’t it?

 

I recall the audience I had in mind, whom I was also going to write about. And it makes me happy to think of them, though I have largely failed to write about them. Friends, a cohort that could make up our own splendid Title Nine catalog.

 

Lou: rower, mother of one, French and Spanish teacher.

Nicola: sailor, physical therapist, comedian.

Cheryl: runner, mother of two, project manager.

Evelyn: rower, personal trainer, friend.

Charlotte: swimmer, innkeeper, rowing coach, letter-writer.

Penny: basketball player, mother of two, nonprofit consultant, activist.

Barbara: competitor, grandmother of four, artist.

Felice: tennis player, mother of two, import consultant.

Ruth: equestrian and swimmer, realtor, survivor.

Melanie: outdoorswoman, translator, world citizen.

Lisa: avid surfer, mother of two, graduate student in wastewater management.

Nomi: biathlete, reluctant lawyer, chair of the Nordic Commission in Steamboat.

Saiya: rower, mother of two, psychiatrist.

Carin: mad rock climber, mother of two, part-time lawyer, high school crew coach.

Jenny: yogi, mother of one, professor.

CB: hockey player, mother of three, marketing consultant.

Kris: runner, mother of three, railroad safety engineer.

 

And that’s just a quick look—wow.