Week 7 - Are Helmets a Bad Thing?

Article 7

Very similar to last week's post, this week deals with the use of helmets in women's lacrosse.  Although in men's lacrosse of all stages players are required to wear a helmet, for women it is the exact opposite.  Players, besides goalies, have been banned from wearing helmets and face guards to deter from more physical play.  While it is a proven fact that helmets seem to foster more aggressive behavior, it is hard to see why players aren't allowed to wear helmets at all.  I feel like this should be changed in some way.  If we can do anything to prevent concussive blows in sports like lacrosse and hockey, I think we should.  
Violence and deviance in sport is something that had always been taken in stride, depending on the sport itself.  With things like hockey, rugby, football, and lacrosse, it is expected that players are tough and can take hard shots.  Where do we draw the line?  Just recently, direct contact with the head in football has been banned, but it's still allowed on the ice.  What makes these two things different when both can cause serious brain damage?  In my opinion, nothing.  When there are players dying and receiving serious injuries from checks and hard hits, I think we should be doing everything we can to prevent it, even if that means we let girls wear helmets.

Week 6 - Protecting NHL Players

Article 6

In class, we discussed the consequences of professional leagues rules for hard hits and things of that nature.  In my KIN 140 class we also discussed the consequences of concussions and how many NHL and NFL players are severely brain damaged because of direct hits.  This article from ESPNw discusses how the NHL should better protect its players from head injury and brain damage.  In 1968, pro hockey player Bill Masterson was killed by a check, and it took the NHL 11 years to require helmets to be worn on the ice.  This year alone, 98 players were confirmed with concussions, and that doesn't count all the head injuries that went undiagnosed.  I just hope that it doesn't take another death for the NHL to see that they should ban head shots altogether. 
In class, we discussed things like violence in sports and deviance.  In sports like hockey it seems as if head shots and hard checks are just a part of the game, but in reality, they are serious infractions, and can get an athlete into a lot of trouble.  Sometimes coaches and owners turn a blind eye to such deviant behavior because it is what makes the fans happy, but that really needs to stop. Even when a player is required to wear helmets and excessive padding, they are still at risk of serious injury, which should 

Week 5 - I Won't Wrestle a Girl

Article 5

In the Iowa state wrestling meet, wrestler Joel Northrup decided to default instead of wrestling female opponent Cassy Herkleman, one of only two females who qualified for the state tournament.  Joel issued a statement saying that "As a matter of conscience and my faith I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner. It is unfortunate that I have been placed in a situation not seen in most other high school sports in Iowa."  This article makes me sad and angry all at the same time.  I understand and see that some people's religions have strict rules about how to treat women, but I don't agree.  Cassy earned to right to be in the state meet and was obviously good enough to compete.  Instead she moved ahead in the competition by default and didn't get to prove to herself and everyone else that she was good enough.  Cassy released a statement saying that she respected Joel for sticking to his beliefs, something that she said would be hard for a 15- or 16-year old boy to do.  Still, even after her acceptance of his default, I can't seem to kick the feeling that Cassy was hurt by his refusal to wrestle her.  I know I would've been.  It denial makes it as if the female gender is weaker and needs protecting, something I fully disagree with.

Week 4 - Hot Broadcasting Babes

Article 4

It took me a while to find an article for this week.  While browsing SportsFixChicago.com, I decided to pick the first article that I found dedicated to women in sports.  Needless to say, I had to browse all the way back to November of 2010 to find anything remotely dedicated to women, and the article that I did find was only about the Top 10 Hottest Female Broadcasters of All-Time.  Of course.   No where did I find anything about the talents of female athletes, only pictures of Erin Andrews and Colleen Dominguez, #2 and #1 respectively on this list.  Once again, this article shows how completely demeaning that men can be in relation to women in sports. complete with pictures and demeaning descriptions of the women who were lucky enough to make such a list.  Websites like SFC just show that men are the athletes and women are supposed to be feminine and pretty all the time.  Not once while scrolling through hundreds of articles on this website did I find anything dedicated to celebrating the talents or obstacles of female athletes today, and this clearly proves many things that we discussed in class to be true.   Don't fret, SFC also published a list of Top Ten Hottest Female Athletes of All Time.  That counts as print time for women athletes...doesn't it?

Week 3 - UCONN Women at #1

Article 3

Not surprisingly, the UCONN women's basketball team is back at #1.  Head coach Gene Auriemma said it best when he discussed the issue of his record breaking women's team: ""If we were breaking a women's record, everybody would go, "Aren't those girls nice, let's give them two paragraphs in USA Today, you know, give them one line on the bottom of ESPN and then let's send them back where they belong, in the kitchen'...the reason everybody is having a heart attack...is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men's record, and everybody is all up in arms about it."   Well said, Gene.  The truth behind this statement reigns clear when we see the kind of coverage that women's sports get on channels like ESPN and in major newspapers.  What I found interesting wasn't so much the content of the article, but the fact that this was the only ESPN headliner on this particular day that had to do with women.  The article discusses the UCONN women's team and how they managed to maintain their #1 ranking in the Associated Press poll, just above Stanford.  In class, we discussed the amount of women's sports in the media and how, even though women's participation in sports has increased, the amount of air and print time that females recieve has actually decreased.  The fact that this was the only article on ESPN dealing with women clearly shows that.

Week 2- Justine Siegal

Article Two

This week we started discussing gender roles and how the big three sports are dominated by men.  From the beginnings of sport, athletes have been seen as masculine beings and women's entrance into sports was always frowned upon.  Comparing the abilities of men and women was a threat to man's superiority.   On February 21, 2011, Justine Siegal broke an MLB barrier when she became the first woman to pitch batting practice in a major league spring training camp.  This article states that Siegal has broken barriers in baseball prior to her training camp experiences, including coaching first base in men's professional baseball for the Brockton Rox in 2009.  She spent three years as the only female college baseball coach in the country, when she was an assistant at Springfield College from 2007-2010.  Manager Manny Acta, whom also pitches for the Cleveland Indians, even went as far as saying that she made him look bad.  This is just one step in one sport closer to what pro sports should be in the future.