Earlier this month I was watching Sports Center and I noticed that there was some actual coverage of a women’s sporting event that wasn’t basketball, golf, or tennis. The short segment showed the University of New Mexico’s logo, a picture of a lady soccer player, and a soccer ball. I was interested to see why they were giving women’s soccer coverage, as it is not a sport they cover very often, women’s or men’s, unless it is a team winning a championship and I knew it wasn’t playoff time in soccer. I can’t say I was surprised when footage of a U of NM defender, Elizabeth Lambert, was shown ripping an opponent down by her pony-tail, sliding hard into another, and finally looked like she kicked an opponent while she was on the ground. I wasn’t surprised because I’ve been watching ESPN long enough to know that the only way they would show a regular season women’s soccer game is if something extremely negative happened during the game. My first instinct was to blog about this but initially I wasn’t sure what to write about it. When I saw that Professor Kauer put up an article about the same subject a little while after (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/sports/soccer/11violence.html), my interest was piqued again and I decided I would write about it. I shared my opinions on ESPN and their lack of women’s coverage in my last blog and basically, like most other people, I agree that there really should be a larger part of their programming on women in sport. My feelings regarding this isolated incident are if they aren’t showing the positives in women sport, why are they showing the negatives? All this does is shine an extremely negative light on women’s sport, a light that started off dim, and now anyone watching the program could very easily think along the lines that that is all women’s sport is about. There is no way ESPN could show equal coverage between women’s and men’s sport that is just unrealistic, but they can definitely show more women’s sporting events and when they do make sure they are positive or at the very least show an equal amount of negative and positive stories to allow the viewer to come up with their own opinions.
Danny Welsh
KIN338i.s06
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Elizabeth Lambert is a junior at the University of New Mexico, and plays for their soccer team the Lobos originally from California (too bad for California). So, this loser knows they are going in to a game that they will most likely lose and since they do not have the talent to score they resort to this kind of play, it has very minor thought to it than let’s say passisng the ball through your opponents defense and scoring a goal.
The other issue is the where were the referees, were they all older white men with their tongues out, enamored and unable to call the game objectively (this game had so many penalties that did not get called), I mean what are they getting paid to do. Who has paid these guys off? Do we have to change the game where only women referees can call women games. After watching the video someone was paid off, that is my conclusion.
And Lizzy, watch you back and please stay out of soccer (you real should be banned, the game does not need people like you in it), so many will be gunning for you now. Who knows maybe you were just drumming up business for your “Occupational Therapy practice”, yah good luck with that, I doubt your bed side manner is any different from your sportsmanship.
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