About the USA Women's Soccer Team Winning The World Cup
Playing Like a Girl
A user-contributed article by Rev. Rus Cooper-DowdaDuring my junior high years, I played softball in the youth league of Happy Valley, Labrador. I was the only girl in the league. Then, the worst thing the coaches could yell at me was that I was "playing like a girl!" After that critique, the coaches then never followed through with what the boys or the seals or the caribou did that was so much better.
Much later, I became friends with a young boy who, for a time, thought "GIRL HEAD!" was the worst name he could call me or anyone else interested in "Girl Stuff."
Well, now there are a lot of "Girl Heads" out there who, like Donna Lopiano, President of the Women's Sports Foundation, think that "the dinosaurs have got to understand...."
More than 90,000 Girl Heads watched the U.S. win the Women's World Soccer cup this past July 10th. More than 40 million Girl Heads watched the game on television. All total, more than 650,000 Girl Heads bought tickets to the games. These assorted Girl Heads made the Women's World Cup soccer games the most watched sporting event ever held for women.
Two such Girl Heads came to watch the U.S. women practice. Eleanor Carter, age 69, and her friend, Whitney Hill, age 70, weren't even soccer fans before this month.
Ms. Hill was explaining to a reporter that, "We are not sports observers. We don't go to sports games. But there's a fascination with this...."
At which point, Ms. Carter jumped up and interrupted her friend with, "Oh! Here they come! Here they come! Sorry, we've got to go!"
In my own home, we have had to decide how to share the 3 women's soccer posters saved from our newspapers. My favorite of these is a view of the grouped team, all bunched up after winning the game. Their backs are turned away from the camera. And, you know for sure that not a one is worried about whether her uniform shorts make her butt look too big.
The U.S. women's victory was sweet pay off for the bad ole days: like when Mia Hamm's older sisters had to quit sports because there was no where to play when they were girls; like when I couldn't swim in the pool at the local YMCA because the male board members wanted to still be able to swim in the nude and my own nudity would be too offputting since I was, yes, a girl; and like when the male high school teams got all the newest equipment and uniforms for free while we had to have constant bake sales to buy the older, reconditioned stuff meant for girls.
Julie Foudy of Team U.S.A. said in an interview that, "...I grew up watching Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, men I could never emulate. Girls need role models."
Like 14 year old Ally Jakusovas, who watched that final game in front of her tv while also wearing her Mia-Hamm jersey. Like 12 year old Leah Almodovar, who tried to keep her shrieks of delight and disappointment to a minimum. The neighbors probably heard her anyway.
Two more signs of the continental shift in women's sports last weekend: "Soccer Moms" can now mean that the MOMS are playing while the kids watch, and $110.00 World Cup tickets were being scalped for $1,000 a piece.
Our Title IX baby girls came to their full maturity by the end of that final game with China.
And what have we learned from that? Hubert Mizell in the July 10, 1999 St. Petersburg, Florida TIMES wrote that the lesson for him is, "Any hurdle is jumpable...."
Jill Lieber, of USA TODAY, wrote about her lesson from the victory: "...That if you're allowed to fully realize your potential, you CAN have it all, as world-class soccer players and as college students, Phi Beta Kappas, wives, mothers, coaches, broadcasters and teachers."
Team member Michelle Akers, who also has a hidden disability, said, "We're at the epicenter of a big rock being thrown into a huge pond. We don't know what the ripple effect will be."
I can already tell her about that effect. My local newspaper led Sunday's front page above the fold with "U.S. Women Rule World." Donna Shalala, U.S. secretary for Health and Human Services, was at the winning game. The effect she imagined was that, "Young women from Brooklyn to Stockholm will now go to sleep at night with their soccer balls."
Play like girls? You betcha!
A user-contributed article by Rev. Rus Cooper-Dowda
