Texas Covenant team forfeits 100-0 win in apology

Now I’ve seen it all….

Officials from a private Christian school in Dallas, The Covenant School, forfeited a 100-0 win against their opponent, Dallas Academy.

Apparently,  their forfeit is intended to  apologize for their margin of victory.

I agree that running the score up 100 points is wrong (and this is the coaches’ fault) but I’m not so sure I agree with the forfeit attempt to apologize. The girls earned their points – and the coach allowed them to get greedy.

Apparently, the Covenant team was draining 3 pointers the whole game (up 59 at half time), and the coaches and spectators cheered louder and louder as they approached 100.

Success should not be considered “wrong” if the means to achieve it was not wrong. It doesn’t seem like they cheated – they didn’t break any rules. So this is NOT something they should have to apologize or feel bad for.

“I think the bad judgment was in the full-court press and the 3-point shots,” said Renee Peloza, whose daughter plays for Dallas Academy. “At some point, they should have backed off.”

Absolutely, but let’s take a look at Dallas Academy’s record…

Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It is winless over the last four seasons.

“On a personal note, I told the coach of the losing team how much I admire their girls for continuing to compete against all odds,” Burleson (the director of the league) said. “They showed much more character than the coach that allowed that score to get out of hand. It’s up to the coach to control the outcome.”

Yes, they’re showing character, but they’re also being humiliated… badly. This is not how you build character and self-esteem in young athletes. You must invest in them and show them that they have potential.

Dallas Academy eeds to spend some money (for once), recruit an “outsider” coach with some experience, hold summer camps, and begin to organically build a winning program, over time. If this doesn’t happen, girls could go through the rest of their lives thinking they’ll never be able to compete.

All this news does is highlight that some privately-owned schools don’t value its female athletes.

As someone who played basketball my whole life, this completely and totally disgusts me.

[1/27] CORRECTION: I must take back my prevoius comments on this post. I did not realize that Dallas Academy is a school for children with disabilities, as a commenter has pointed out to me. If this is the case, The Covenant School has no right playing them in the first place.

Coaching, athletic programs and budget issues…Yikes!

Talk about a difficult task. With the economy basically falling apart and with the daily reports saying the end is nowhere to be seen, everyone in this country has to be feeling some effects. I myself, am one of those people feeling the pinch.

As a Division III basketball coach with a fairly small budget to start with, the imploding economy is really no help! Our recruiting budget was slashed to nearly ziltch, travel plans/funds were drastically cut, and the overall morale of my school has been declining for months. It’s tough to recruit in such times, but even more difficult to recruit with no budget.

I can imagine I am not alone in my feelings of angst and frustration with money contraints, so what are the smaller colleges and universities to do? Why are the extracurricular activities the first to go? How about cutting out those university 101 courses that allow all freshmen to hate life and learning about their school?

That should provide some much-needed funds towards athletics. Or, how about cutting the salaries of the over-paid professors that never darken their classroom’s doorway so their TA’s can teach? Such a world will never exist…

NCAA’s “On Her Game” is right on point

If you’re a female athlete and you only read one industry publication  this month, check out NCAA’s feature, On Her Game – an excellently written editorial about modern female involvement in collegiate athletics.

Author Michelle Brutlag Hosick does a great job of explaining how female student-athletes are distinguishable in 2008.

Brutlag says,

They are female student-athletes in 2008.

They are radically different from the female student-athletes who charted new ground when Title IX created previously unimagined opportunities in 1972.

They respect their forebears, but they stop short of reverence. They want women to have coaching opportunities, but they want the best coaching they can get for themselves, regardless of which gender provides it. They are comfortable in defining what constitutes a quality athletics experience – and then making it happen.

They are, in many ways, a break from the past.

Brutlag goes on to discuss outside competition, comparisons to male athletes, and team integration. There’s a great video to accompany this, as well, located here.

This piece is an excellent read for those who may be unfamiliar with new movements of modern female athletic culture. Great job, Michelle!

Viral videos to increase awareness for basketball, Gonzaga Coach Kelly Graves leads with “Inspired Season”

Viral video campaigns could be the much-needed answer to bringing deserved attention to women’s baketball.

Of the sports-related viral videos that I’ve seen, Gonzaga takes the lead – by far – with their newly-launched Inspired Season campaign to sell season tickets.

Stay with me here, this is fun.

By definition, a viral video is a video clip that gains popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs or other media sharing websites. [Think funny YouTube videos such as The Evolution of Dance or "I Got a Crush... on Obama."]

As you can imagine, my attention was caught when I came across a viral video for women’s basketball. After reading a posting by Adrants (a site that evaluates advertisiments) which said Gonzaga’s efforts to sell season tickets were “well-executed,” I was thrilled – and very, very eager to check it out.

Essentially, Gonzaga University created a microsite (a URL that is separate from the University) called Inspired Season, which is dedicated toward a goal of selling season tickets for only $75. The main feature of this site is its viral video which is interactive through Web AND mobile technology.

The video features Gonzaga’s coach, Kelly Graves, who motivates you to buy tickets and inspires his team to take the court.

Adrants blogger Angela Natividad said,

“To sell tickets for its women’s basketball games, Gonzaga University produced a well-executed online campaign that makes your attendance feel vital.”

This campaign is so good – in fact – that Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick, claims he wanted to buy a pack after engaging the campaign, even though he’s, like, 2,600 miles from Spokane.

It’s important to note that coach Graves, 20 years ago, left a job with a finance company to commit his future to coaching women’s basketball. In 2007, he told Spokesmanreview that he “loved” coaching women’s basketball and never was entised to take a men’s job.

So here he is, leading Gonzaga’s program into his eighth season as the school’s winningest coach and leading women’s basketball into a new age of interactive video awareness campaigns.

To see the campaign, visit Inspired Season.

Did it make you want to buy season tickets? $75 is pretty cheap!

Viral videos to increase awareness for basketball, Gonzaga Coach Kelly Graves leads with “Inspired Season”

Viral video campaigns could be the much-needed answer to bringing deserved attention to women’s baketball.

Of the sports-related viral videos that I’ve seen, Gonzaga takes the lead – by far – with their newly-launched Inspired Season campaign to sell season tickets.

Stay with me here, this is fun.

By definition, a viral video is a video clip that gains popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs or other media sharing websites. [Think funny YouTube videos such as The Evolution of Dance or "I Got a Crush... on Obama."]

As you can imagine, my attention was caught when I came across a viral video for women’s basketball. After reading a posting by Adrants (a site that evaluates advertisiments) which said Gonzaga’s efforts to sell season tickets were “well-executed,” I was thrilled – and very, very eager to check it out.

Essentially, Gonzaga University created a microsite (a URL that is separate from the University) called Inspired Season, which is dedicated toward a goal of selling season tickets for only $75. The main feature of this site is its viral video which is interactive through Web AND mobile technology.

The video features Gonzaga’s coach, Kelly Graves, who motivates you to buy tickets and inspires his team to take the court.

Adrants blogger Angela Natividad said,

“To sell tickets for its women’s basketball games, Gonzaga University produced a well-executed online campaign that makes your attendance feel vital.”

This campaign is so good – in fact – that Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick, claims he wanted to buy a pack after engaging the campaign, even though he’s, like, 2,600 miles from Spokane.

It’s important to note that coach Graves, 20 years ago, left a job with a finance company to commit his future to coaching women’s basketball. In 2007, he told Spokesmanreview that he “loved” coaching women’s basketball and never was entised to take a men’s job.

So here he is, leading Gonzaga’s program into his eighth season as the school’s winningest coach and leading women’s basketball into a new age of interactive video awareness campaigns.

To see the campaign, visit Inspired Season.

Did it make you want to buy season tickets? $75 is pretty cheap!

USA Today, female athletes, milestones and progress

In today’s issue of USA Today, we earned an entire section of the paper. Its title: “Women in Sports.”

I almost jumped out of my chair when I started reading. Seven complete pages of content and photos of women who have completed milestones in sport.

The cover article is particularly interesting.

Heather Tucker published a groudbreaking article in the world of women’s sports. She discussed the heroines of milestones of the past, heroines of the present and obstacles that lie ahead for the future of female sports. If you haven’t done so already, please go check it out here.

She discussed Billie Jean King’s defeat of Bobby Riggs in 1973 in the “Battle of the Sexes,” a day after Title IX was passed.

She said, “King, who accepted Riggs’ challenge to play a televised match at the Houston Astrodome, soundly defeated him in three sets and put a damper on critics’ voices that women could not compete with men.”

Awesome. Totally awesome. I wish I were alive for that moment. Even though I wasn’t I know that what she did affected my ability to compete and succeed in sports twenty years later.

Tucker then pointed to Candace Parker, calling her a hero of today’s image of women’s sports due to her ability to beat five male competitors in the 2004 McDonald’s All-American Game, including Josh Smith, who won the NBA dunk contest the nest year.

She also mentioned Danica Patrick’s milestone in her “breakthrough” Indy-car race in Japan in April, when she became the first woman to triumph in a national oval-track touring circuit (Indy Racing League or NASCAR).

Then, Tucker talked about perceptions, and how the above milestones have inspired and influenced young women to compete on the playing fields today.

She said, “Perceptions of what women are capable of and what they can offer have been elevated thanks in part to these stars.”

Then, she wrapped up by highlighting the challenges that lie ahead, such as coaching, managing and team ownership, areas of influence that women have yet to solidly break through in terms of a “glass ceiling” in sports.

This is an incredibly crafted article. In my opinion, it’s too short. A lot of names are missing from this list of heroines. It takes much more than three influencers to break barriers. It takes an army, and decades of time and struggle.

Hopefully one day we’ll get there. Until then, articles like these will help keep the spirit alive. Thanks USA Today.

Other stories include player profiles on Jackie Joyner Kersee, Pat Summit, Mary Lou Retton, Janet Guthrie, Anny Meyers Drysdale, Nancy Lopez, Leslie Visser, Dot Richardson, and Brandi Chastian.

A separate article discussed sports marketers and how their altering their pitches as more female fans tune into sports. That particular article along warrants another post from me. I’ll be back in just a moment with more. (so excited!)

My Decision to Save Women’s Sports

I’m just another not-so-typical-20-something just-out-of-college overly altruistic and obnoxious about it pretentious individual… who has no idea what tomorrow will bring.

I moved about a year ago – three hours from home to the beautiful greater Washington, DC metropolitan area. I came to this place of one-too-many cocktails, suits and high heels because I wanted to save the world through my professional career. What I’ve found is it takes a little more than a dream, and I have a lot of work to do.

In the mean time, I’ve realized something… by participating in sports as a kid, I was setting myself up for successful opportunities, long after I hung up my sneakers. All of that hard work, all of those years of obsessing over practices, coaches’ impressions, newspapers, rankings, everything… it has all come full circle. It’s true, what the NCAA says — most of us go professional in something other than sports.

I grew up playing A LOT of basketball. I started in about fifth grade when I played for St. Rose of Lima basketball, then gradually became a part of the Penn-Jersey Panthers AAU basketball program where I met all kinds of great girls in New Jersey. I went on to play basketball for two years at Camden Catholic High School then transferred to Haddon Heights High School and graduated in 2003. I turned down a few basketball scholarships and chose to play for The College of New Jersey Lions, and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Exercise Science and Health Communication. Right now, I work for a public relations firm in Washington, DC. On the side, I coach a Classics Basketball AAU team and play in Headfirst Sports Leagues.

Now, since I’ve hung up my sneakers, I’ve discovered is that as female athletes, there is an incredible disconnect between the billions of us who play sports and the very few who choose to follow the stars. Not only this, but we as female athletes are incredibly underrepresented in print and on the Web. So I will do what I can to bring as much as I can to the online space. I strongly believe that by simply listening (and I mean really listening) and paying attention, you’re empowering yourself beyond measure. Knowledge is very, VERY powerful. And if I can bring it to the table, I’ll always have a seat.

That is what this blog is all about.

Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

(Disclaimer: the thoughts an opinions on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect those of my current or previous employers).