What’s your state’s best female athlete ever?

Yesterday, in celebration of National Girls and Women in Sport Day, Sports Illustrated did something really cool – they featured the best female athletes from each state (totaling 51, of course).

Special thanks to @LegacyDirect for tweeting about this.

The time frame of this feature goes back to the 1920′s. As an athlete, it’s really neat to learn about women who excelled back in the day.

As a native of New Jersey, it was interesting for me to learn about distance runner Mary Decker Slaney, someone who I had previously never heard of (probably because she was successful in 1984, the year before I was born).

Here are some details about her:

She set American records in every middle and long distance event on the books — the 800, 1,500, mile, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000. She won the 1983 World Distance Championships in the 1,500 and 3,000. After qualifying for her first Olympics at 21, she went on to qualify for three more teams. She is perhaps best known for her failures on the Olympic stage, including a fall at the ’84 Games that sent her onto the infield writhing in pain during the 3,000-meter race she was heavily favored to win.

Currently a resident of Washington, DC, it’s also interesting for me to learn about backstroker Melissa Betole Ripley.

Here are some details about her:

Sixteen at the 1972 Games in Munich, Ripley won three golds (100- and 200-meter backstroke, one with the relay team), setting a world record in the 200 and an Olympic record in the 100.

Who’s the best female athlete in your state? Check it out, here.

GoGameface.com: Female Fans Watching Male Athletes

Read an article about Erica Boeke, a female sports fan who created GoGameFace.com, an interactive guide to sports, for women.

Erica has also written the book, Go Gameface : The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Love Pro Sports.

Her mission, according to Sports Illustrated:

“To start a conversation that is pointed at people like her, and to make a guide to sports for women — full of her favorite stories from the numerous events she’s attended, complete with funny anecdotes about players, fans and the games. She thinks women prefer to remember what happened at the game the previous night, rather than the numbers spouted at them by a bunch of talking heads.”

Personally, I don’t think this is anything new. Women have been following men’s sports for decades. Following athletes’ and their girlfriends isn’t anything new, either.

In my opinion, the title of Erica’s book is incorrect. They’re not women who watch “pro sports,” they’re women who watch “men play pro sports.” Erica should be writing about WOMEN’S sports, since she is, of course, a woman (and probably one who used to play herself).

By encouraging women to “watch” men’s sports, we’re not empowering them to “do” anything. But, I realize there are different “types” of sports fans out there, and I don’t want to ostracize anyone.

What is new, and innovative, however, is that Erica highlights and leverages the fact that women communicate about sports differently than men. And this points to a larger, societal issue.

Ex-female athletes (for the most part) do not sit and scream at the television when a professional women’s basketball game is on. Most of them don’t even watch it.

Instead, those who choose to follow men’s sports do so on their own will, yet need a slightly more logical (and humanized) way of organizing, communicating and promoting information.

Recognizing that fact is what got her on Sports Illustrated. In the end, it’s a step forward. Good job, Erica.

Women’s Sports Magazines = Dying

Girls, seriously?

How about we put down the fashion magazines for just a second. We’re selling ourselves short in sports journalism, and if we don’t start coverage of our best moments on the athletic fields will disappear altogether.

I recently posted on how disappointed I was to learn that Sports Illustrated for Women was a flop. So, it was by coincidence that I came across the Sports Media and Society blog where author Marie Hardin posted that Golf for Women magazine has joined the ranks of womens sports magazines that have been discontinued.

But what she said about readership is particularly interesting.

“Golf for Women and Women’s Sports & Fitness both had respectable circulations — around 600,000, the same rate base as that of The Sporting News.“

Hardin concurs with the thoughts that I originally expressed in my previous post: advertising and identity are driving this trend of lack of material. Money and power reflect what’s important in our culture, and for some reason, our sports are not deemed an important enough to invest.

She linked to HerSports Magazine, which is interesting to me. I will be following the publication closely (particularly their new blog). But on the surface, I don’t see how they can draw the readers we need and deserve, because it’s not strong enough.

I think that we need to start getting opinionated about sports, sports coverage and sports news. I’m a firm believer that we as women can find the answer to the lack of sports journalism on the Web, where there’s unlimited space, and identity can be created and crafted as we choose. Should this work, we’ll prove that advertising is not necessary for the initial (and most important) stages of information share, and the news will literally go viral.

I think that if enough of us get together in the blogosphere and start talking sports, traditional media will follow, because advertisers would want to reach our audience. Anyone with me on this? Blogs are the perfect outlet for expressing our opinions.

Regardless, when someone finally hits this one home, it should really take off. Because, as Hardin says,

“Finding the formula that will attract the ad dollar has so far proven elusive for many women’s sports titles.

What Happened to Sports Illustrated (for Women)?

When I was younger, I was an avid reader of Sports Illustrated for Women. To my recent surprise, I visited the SI for Women Web site and was shocked at what I found. This message from the editor:

“It is with especially deep sadness that we tell you the bad news: The December 2002 issue will be Sports Illustrated Women’s last. These are tough times for a new magazine, and sometimes even loyal readers aren’t enough to make the numbers add up.”

This really saddens me. The magazine only lasted two years, running from March 2000-Nevember 2002. Its primary audience, according to Wikipedia, was women, 18-34 years old, with “a passion for sports.”

What’s even more interesting to me, is that in 2002, Cleary Simpson the then-publisher for SI Women claimed that the lack of readership (and eventual failure of the magazine) is largely due to the fact that, “women are more interested in sports as participants than fans, unlike men.”

Another problem, they claim, is that women’s interest is “fragmented” across a wide variety of sports (such as soccer, tennis or running), with little to bind them as a shared audience.

Personally, I would go as far as to say it’s our cultural values that prevent magazines and publications (as well as some women’s sports) to receive the type of attention they deserve. The primary problem: men aren’t interested (unless the girls are pretty).

It all has to do with advertising, which has everything to do with money, which relates back to what we, as members of a society, deem important enough to invest in.

While our culture values the aggressive, intense competition (and fighting) in sports by men, other values such as sound fundamentals, pure technique and fluid movement (present in women’s sports) are undervalued and deemed less important. In terms of fans, we as women are incredibly left behind.

Think about it: when do you see the top female athletes? Many times, it’s in advertisements, such as models for athletic apparel.

Take for instance Dara Torres, who, while incredibly performing in the Olympic Trials at the age if 41,is also known for her swimsuit modeling on the side. Why? Think: money. Torres is often singled out for her beauty, as she was the first female athlete to appear in the Sports Illustrated (for men) Swimsuit Issue.

Another example is Lisa Leslie of the LA Sparks. When was the last time you saw her perform on TV? When was the last time you saw her in a Got Milk ad, or on a billboard somewhere? Most likely you’d suggest the latter, as she is widely known as the “face” of women’s basketball as a Wilhemina model. But what about her being the most dominant player in the WNBA? Where did that news go?

Leslie (and Torres) make their bucks as a models, not as a top performers, and this (again) relates back to what we as a society value more in a woman: athleticism or beauty? At the end of the day, we’re still a society who’d rather have our girls look good than perform great on the playing field.

Yes, as I said in my post about Title IX, there are (thank God) more opportunities for women to play, and we have come along way in almost 40 years, but we’re still not there.

We can’t even get a Sports Illustrated magazine to be successful. And part of it is our fault. I mean, to be honest, we don’t really have time to sit around and be fans of our sports. Instead, we’re out there trying to make it in corporate America, or we’re spending our free time trying to look good. Some of us are trying to raise families, make dinner, and get the kids back and forth from their sports. A lot of us spend our free time working out in the gym to stay in shape. Few of us have time to be fans of our sports. And that’s another huge reason as to why we can’t get SI for Women to be successful. And my fear is we never will have that time. That is, unless, our culture starts shifting its values.

As someone who now falls into the age category of what would be the readership for SI for women, I say it’s time we call the magazine and request its reappearance, at least on the Web. (These days print magazines aren’t generating the readership revenue they had in the past, largely due to blogs such as mine.) We need more coverage of women’s sports. I mean, seriously, if a 10-year-old girl loves women’s sports, where do we tell them to go read about it? There is a lack here. We need to know what’s being accomplished, and how great our girls are doing on the playing fields of America (and the world).

Until then, girls, we’ll continue to balk at the yearly Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated (for men) — that is, unless one of our stellar athletes is pretty enough to make it on the cover.