A New Team Bringing Noise to the WNBA League

For the WNBA 2008 season, there will be a new team in town. The new basketball team is known as the Atlanta Dream, whose coach is Marynell Meadors. One of their main players is Ivory Latta, the point guard, and she came from the team, Detroit Shock. At first, the team was worried about how many viewers would come to watch and cheer the female athletes, but there was a good turn out for their exhibition game. The number does not compare to the amount of spectators for male’s professional basketball, but beats the average amount for females. Their coach explained that there will be no problem in this area if they win, since the public mainly love to cheer for winners and watch excellent teams. Amount of viewers matter because the fans are what help keep a team pursuing. The article said that since the female professional basketball league has started two teams have folded and two teams ended up moving to another location. According to the league and players, the WNBA is still trying to receive acceptance in the public. This is probably due to the social norms of female and male athletes. This article connects to this course because it displays how women sports are not as widely viewed or appreciated as male sports. Today, female sports have progress, but this does prove that there are still issues about females being athletes. One would think that people, especially females, would start to watch women sports because now, many females play all sorts of sports. There are many reasons why most do not watch women professional athletic games, but I believe the main reason is that people do not like change. Everyone is so used to watching male athletic games, that they probably feel that the women competitions will not be as great. Also, I think that the public still carry the ideals of the woman being dainty, sweet, motherly, caring, and well groomed. No matter how hard females advance in sports, the stereotypes of females and males will probably always affect our culture.

Nicole B. KIN338I SEC. 3 WED: 7-9:45