Shrinking and Pinking: Chic and Unique Female Athletes

I must confess that when I started reading this month's Vogue I did not expect to read about a motocross racer.  Maybe in Sports Illustrated-- but Vogue? Just goes to show that female athletes are everywhere these days, showing excellence in various sports and reaching wider audiences than ever before. 21-year-old Ashley Fiolek is the motocross racer featured in Vogue (and, yes, you should say its name with all the reverence of Carrie Bradshaw).

What's remarkable about Fiolek is not just that she has won the Women's Motocross Championship three times in four years, but that she has done it as a deaf competitor (especially in a sport like motocross, where most riders use sound to judge when they should shift gears, as the article explains). Let the record show that she also knows how to model a dress in boots.

Another woman who rocks is Katherine Legge.  Legge just finished 22nd at the Indianapolis 500-- she's only the ninth female ever to qualify to race at Indy. What really helps her speed away as a shrinking and pinking maverick is that she is the first driver to ever bring an all-female squad with her.  Clearly women do know how to change tires.

Ariel Hsing and Reed Kessler are two teenagers striving to make their own historic mark on sport.  At 16 and 17 respectively look to see them on your television screens in a few months during the London Olympics.  Hsing recently qualified for the Olympics in table tennis.  But note that she still managed to attend her prom (even if her dress shopping was a bit rushed, as she details on her entertaining blog over at ESPNw).  Kessler is still working to be named to the Olympic team. If she does she'll make history as the youngest rider in Olympic show-jumping history. Kessler's competition includes women more than twice her age, along with Bruce Springsteen's daughter. I suppose if they both make it "Born in the USA" takes on a new meaning.

I love that female athletes in such varied sports are getting media attention, which can help motivate and inspire younger girls to find a sport and passionately pursue a dream.  Who knows, they may even end up in the Vogue shoe closet someday (hopefully without an older man in boxers).

Shrinking and Pinking: Playing like a Girl Follow-Ups

It was 40 years ago this week that a woman first ran in the Boston Marathon. In 1972 Kathrine Switzer was an athletic pioneer, running among the men-- even when a man tried to stop her.

The picture is much different 40 years on thanks to Title IX and changing societal attitudes. Women are bona fide sports stars. By the end of the NCAA tournament the names Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner were well known. Boys now lobby to play with girls and not the other way around (as I've written about before, co-ed high school swimming in Massachusetts has stirred great debate-- though they have finally decided to have separate male and female tournaments each fall).

Of course, problems remain.  A huge pay differential still exists between male and female athletes, and male and female coaches. While some felt it was offensive when Notre Dame's female head coach said of Griner, "She's like a guy playing with women," I thought this showed how far we have come.  Yes it is terrible that some taunt Griner for her voice and physique, and that should not happen. At the same time it's seen as a huge insult to say to a man that he "plays like a girl." Now a woman is insulted for being told she plays like a man. Eventually everyone will hopefully just be complimented for skills and great playing on its own.

And things are not nearly as rosy in the rest of the world. Last month I wrote how wonderful it was that it seemed as if all nations would send a female athlete  to this summer's Olympics.  Now, unfortunately, Saudi Arabia has decided not to put forward any female competitors.

We can only hope that someday a female sports star in the Middle East will be told she plays as well as a man.

Shrinking and Pinking: It's All Greek to Me

It's a good time to be a female athlete. As the NCAA women's basketball tournament winds down, we are left with the stories and legacies of serious athletic stars like Elena Delle Donne (with her interesting and brave back story) and Stanford's Ogwumike sisters. Notre Dame's Skylar Diggins has emerged as a star who transcends the impressive boundaries of her sport.

Just as basketball concludes Olympic athletes in various fields gear up. For the first time ever it appears that every nation participating in the 2012 Games will send at least one female athlete to London. That includes Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar. This is a significant development to be celebrated-- as is the fact that certain sports are loosening restrictions on female athletic attire.  To the applause (and, I suppose, disappointment to some) women's beach volleyball players no longer have to compete in bikinis. Given how much grief we give beauty pageants for the swimsuit portion of the competition, it's amazing this rule change took so long and hasn't previously met with more resistance.

Just because women won't be playing in bikinis and skirts doesn't mean that they are any less tough-- or less girly for that matter. I absolutely loved this article on 22-year-old weight lifter Holley Mangold. Mangold, a 374-pound weightlifter (and brother to NFL star Nick Mangold), just qualified to represent the US at the Olympics this summer. While at the Trials earlier this month she rocked a "girly" hair-do and painted her nails using OPI color "It's All Greek to Me."

Given her Olympic-sized goal this seems a most appropriate choice. Holley, who describes herself as "extremely manly," says she can also be girly, which she chooses to demonstrate through small fashion choices like her hairstyle and nails (not dissimilar to Skylar Diggins' approach to her hair).

Female athletes clearly have some sartorial flexibility to demonstrate a range of femininities. But it seems that they may also have more flexibility to demonstrate a range of athletic skills as well.  This article on superstar two-sport athlete Melanie Baskind-- who plays on and co-captains both the varsity lacrosse and soccer teams at Harvard-- mentions that: "There may be a nascent drift at Harvard toward two-letter women. Four of Baskind’s lacrosse teammates also play field hockey, and a soccer cohort swims for the water-polo squad. Ivy League rules, which limit practices and off-season play days, make dual citizenship more manageable."  This at a time when two-letter men are becoming less common.  Is this a good or a bad thing for women? The cross-training would seem to be helpful in preventing burn-out in a particular sport (note that Elena Delle Donne, mentioned above, briefly gave up basketball to play college volleyball-- though never at the same time), along with injuries.  Or perhaps as more and more female athletes rise up through the ranks two-sport collegiate females will go the way of two-sport collegiate males?

One school where collegiate female athletes haven't made a big enough dent is Texas A&M. Would you believe that they have never had a female cheerleader?  It's true-- though their definition of cheerleader is a bit different. "Yell leaders" are all men who cheer from the sidelines (and, yes, Rick Perry was one as an undergraduate). They are voted on by the student body, so junior Samantha Ketcham waged a very public, vocal campaign, which received a lot of press.  Despite her loud voice, she didn't win. Perhaps next year there will be even more candidates... rocking some OPI red nail polish.

Shrinking and Pinking: Co-Ed Underwear

I love the Olympics. I love watching all the events. I love watching the "fluff" (background pieces/sob stories about the athletes). And I love seeing amazing athletes who participate in sports that don't often get a lot of attention (like synchronized swimming and fencing, for example). And then there's shooting.

Over the weekend six shooters were selected for the US Olympic Team.  One of them, Sarah Scherer, was featured in a thought-provoking and informative Wall Street Journal article last week. Scherer is a junior at Texas Christian University on an all-female team that won the NCAA Championship last year. That would be the rifle championship for men and women. Shooting is one sport where women are now consistently beating men.  As the WSJ piece explains this is not possible in other sports due to physiological differences between men and women (in shooting women in fact may have the physical advantage, with a lower center of gravity and better balance). Despite this there are separate competitions for men and women in the Olympics, as there are for many other events (exceptions include sailing and the equestrian events).  Interestingly, until 1976 women and men did compete against one another in shooting, but that changed after pressure from Eastern Europe to segregate the sport (I assume for more medal opportunities, but the article wasn't clear on this point).  Giving more people more opportunities to win Olympic medals is okay with me, but I hope it's not because of implicit sexism that this is true.

Co-ed sports competitions bring their own problems, of course.  As I've written about before, here in Massachusetts there have been controversies over boys playing on girls' field hockey teams and swim teams.  The swim team issue is especially thorny because boys can now break girls' swim records.  Early last month the state's high school athletic association formed a subcommittee to investigate the issue and they will issue a report in early April, which I'll write about here in the spring.  From the coverage I've read it seems people want separate male and female records, which makes sense. I just hope they don't go the way of the IAAF and decide that women's records only apply in women's-only events (if men push women to race faster then so be it).

Records are also at issue in downhill skiing, where a rather interesting controversy erupted last month over underwear.  Slovenian ski racer Tina Maze was accused of wearing illegal underwear.  Yes, you read that properly.  The Swiss Federation complained that her undergarments had too much plastic, giving her an unfair advantage (just how they saw her drawers was not revealed).  Maze had no problem revealing her own skivvies on the Internet, posting this picture on her Facebook page:

In skiing, as in swimming, plastic garments give athletes an edge by making them more aerodynamic. In skiing that means less wind resistance.  While Maze's unmentionables were cleared by the International Ski Federation (FIS), FIS took the opportunity to say that plastic underwear may be harmful to skiers' health. (To me skiing down icy slopes at breakneck speeds is far more hazardous to one's health than wearing plastic underwear, but clearly I'm not a skier!) I can only hope that the comments applied to male and female skiers equally and that the Federation wasn't more concerned about women's underwear than men's...

One Olympic sport where men and women seem to be getting equal top-notch attention is volleyball. I loved reading this article about Hugh McCutcheon.  You may recall from the 2008 Olympics that McCutcheon's father-in-law and wife were stabbed during the Games (his father-in-law died from his injuries).  But McCutcheon returned to coach the men's volleyball team to a gold medal, the first in 20 years. Now he's taken over as head coach of the WOMEN'S volleyball team for the 2012 Games.  I love that he sees male and female athletes as equally worthy.

Perhaps next Olympic cycle we'll get a coach switching from the female to the male side-- or is that too much to hope for?

An Olympic-Sized Achievement: Scholar-Athlete Amanda Scott (from BlogHer)

I know Amanda Scott as a fellow Gates Cambridge Scholar. But I can't run like her! A very impressive person. CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ARTICLE ON BLOGHER SPORTS!

2012 is not only a leap year, it’s an Olympic year. That means that in the next few months thousands of hopefuls are gearing up for Olympic Trials to try to secure a spot to represent their country at the summer games, to be held in London.  How many of those who have qualified to compete can say that they were also one of the top collegiate scholars in the world? Or that they managed to combine Olympic-level training with Olympic-level academics, studying for a PhD (in Chemical Engineering to boot) while logging in hundreds of training hours?

Amanda Scott can.  This 24-year-old Boulder resident will compete at the Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston this Saturday, January 14^th. Many train full-time to run at such a high level, but over the years Scott has managed to combine high-level running with high-level achievements both inside and outside the classroom.

Growing up in Virginia Beach, Scott started playing soccer around age four.  It wasn’t until her sophomore year of high school that she started running competitively, unlike many younger kids today.  But she quickly excelled and ended up pursuing cross country as a collegiate sport, instead of her childhood sport of soccer.

Scott selected Vanderbilt University for its academics, but also for its sports opportunities.  She recommends, like Jennie Finch, that girls be proactive about the college athletic and recruitment process. One specific tip is to reach out to coaches via email to establish your interest and a personal connection.A few months before graduating from Vanderbilt in 2009 with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, Scott traveled to Annapolis, MD to interview for a prestigious post-graduate fellowship at the University of Cambridge.  Even at such a stressful and crucial time in her academic and professional career, she had to make time to do a workout.  Just before her interview for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship (a program that generously supports full-time graduate study through an endowment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), she squeezed in a training run on the U.S. Naval Academy track.  This actually came up while she was being questioned by a panel of world-class scientists, showing she was more than a one-dimensional chemical engineer.  That year Scott was one of only 37 Americans selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

While in Cambridge, Scott acquired a Master’s (MPhil) in Advanced Chemical Engineering, and a newfound love and appreciation for running as a sport.  Organized, university athletics are far more social and less competitive in England than they are in the United States.  Running without any pressure actually led to more races.  Scott recalls, “I was having fun just running without any pressure from myself (or coaches or teammates).”  In this more relaxed atmosphere she decided to try a marathon as “something different and just for fun.” After completing the London Marathon that year, she was hooked.

A move the following fall to Boulder to pursue her PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder brought new academic challenges and exposure to a new, outdoor-inspired running community.  During the always difficult first year of graduate school with non-stop work she found time to run and train with friends, running another marathon. It became apparent that she might be able to make the qualifying time for Olympic Trials.

To young runners and scholars, Scott offers the following wisdom and advice based on her own experiences: “The more that I enjoy running, the better I do at it.  Whenever it becomes too stressful or too much like a job I don’t do as well.  You have to do what you are passionate about and then you’ll succeed.”  She cautions that you also have to pursue your interests for yourself, and not be too competitive, which can lead to burnout and injuries.  Scott credits her parents for being supportive, and not pushy, particularly at a young age.

Following her own advice to follow your passion and find what you enjoy, Scott decided to take a break from academics and work at Crocs.  She had previously spent a summer at Nike analyzing materials used in running shoes.  Working on performance and recovery shoes allows her to combine her two passions—running and chemical engineering.Shortly after starting her new job she traveled to Indianapolis where she ran a personal best to qualify in 172^nd to run in the Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston.  Scott knows that this will be an experience of a lifetime.  She hopes to run another personal best and meet some of her running idols, like Desiree Davila, Shalane Flanagan, and Kara Goucher.While it’s unlikely that we’ll see Scott running in the Olympics this summer, her remarkable accomplishments both inside and outside the classroom maker her an excellent role model for young girls, showing them that athletic achievements at the highest level are possible while still achieving academically at the highest level, both in the US and abroad.  And, who knows, maybe at the next summer Olympics in 2016 the next generation of elite female runners will be wearing a performance shoe designed by runner and chemical engineer Amanda Scott…