Ridger Sports | Can women’s sports stand alone?

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Anyone who reads the sports news in the newspapers or keeps up with sports via the Internet, couldn’t help but be aware of the University of Connecticuts’ womens basketball team’s current basketball winning streak.

A lot of hype and furor has broken out over the UConn women “breaking” the all time record of consecutive games won that has been held by the UCLA men’s team when they were coached by the legendary John Wooden. The UCLA Bruins won 88 straight games back in the 1960s and the UConn Lady Huskies recently won their 89th straight game and will more than likely win a lot more before their current streak is over.

For the record, the UConn women has already held the NCAA Division I women’s record for some time. However, at the time they broke that record, there was nothing made of it in the press, at least not to my knowledge.

This season, they did surpass the overall women’s NCAA collegiate winning streak record which was 81 straight, owned by the Division III Washington University team of St. Louis but, again, I read nothing of that in the sports news. I had to look it up.

I’ve read a lot of posts and blogs of fans who hoped that the UConn ladies would lose before breaking the “sacred” mark set by coach Wooden. I also read remarks by fans of the ladies who thought that UConns’ breaking of the men’s record would mean that women’s basketball would no longerhave to take a back seat to the men. A lot of sports writers and columnists have taken up the “cause” of one side or another in this sports controversy.

Huh!?!?!

First of all, the UConn women’s basketball team is perhaps as good a women’s team that there has ever been. They certainly don’t need the ghost of a long ago men’s team to justify their existence.

Call me strange, but I happen think that men’s records can only be broken by men and that women’s records can only be broken by women. In fact, I don’t know of any sport that uses men’s and women’s results together when compiling records. When I was in high school, I ran the 400 meters in 50.2 and that ranked me second in the state of Missouri on the 3A level. In 1971, 50.2 was a faster time thanall the women in the world had achieved that year, but there were no headlines or interviews with me to make folks aware of my lofty achievement. You might compare apples to oranges and proclaim one better than the other, but the fact remains that they are not the same.

I have been involved in sports in some capacity or another for 48 years.

Over the past 20 years or so, I have seen youth boys’ baseball or basketball teamshave on their squads at times girl players. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that on its face, but in some cases, the female athlete had forsaken the role of a star athlete playing on a girl’s team in order to play the part of a good or an average player on the boy’s team. I would hear the Dads brag, “my girl is as good as a boy!” as if this was something shocking or profound. To me that’s kind of sad in that it might possibly be that the dad was disappointed that the child in question hadn’t been born a boy.

As far as this stuff about who is being relegated to the back seat, I am of the opinion that men’s and women’s sports are in different cars. For people who are truly sports purists, there is a lot to be said that perhaps women’s basketball is the better venue for exhibiting the best traditions of the sport of basketball. There are no hulking 7-0 tall, 300-pound women who can just stand there, turn around and stuff it in the basket with just a hop. In my observance of youth and high school basketball games over the years, (some even in college) I have seen a lot of what I call “hot dogs,” male players who were talented but who put their desires and needs over the team welfare. I have seen very few instances of that happening with the girl athletes.

There is one obvious similarity when you compare the Wooden coached teams of the 1960s and the Geno Auriemma coached UConn teams of today. Both squads displayed a remarkable reliance on teamwork to win their games. Any player who wouldn’t or won’t subordinate their wishes or desires for the good of the team didn’t get to play as much or at all whether it was for Wood or Ariemma.

The essence of sports is to do your best and to be your best in whatever venue you are pursuing. To be truly sporting, sports need to have a level playing field for those who wish to participate. I am not talking about level results, because there are reasons why there are winners and why there are losers in sports relating to games won or lost. However, everyone who is a part of a sporting program can be a winner regardless of the score or the statistics.

I think perhaps the real reason some who support women’s athletics think they sit in the back of the bus is the way the public supports women’s teams. Forexample, for the past few years, Arkansas has had a relatively poor performing men’s basketball team but they still command 14,000 fans or more at home games. The Razorback women are ranked 25th in the nation and are undefeated at 11-0 with a game last night in Fayetteville. If the game last night was like last week’s game, there might have been less than 400 in attendance. If the men were 11-0 and ranked nationally, they would be having sell-outs.

A fact of life, human nature, but there it is.

What does this mean? It means that generally speaking, women’s athletics draw less fans that do the men.

It does not mean that the men’s sports are more important or that the women are less important. It has to do with culture, business, marketing and perhaps a lot of other things but it doesn’t add to or take away from anything that athletes accomplish on the field or in the arena.

Now, to the question of which streak (UCLA’s or UConn’s) is more impressive, I would have to go with the women. When UCLA was tearing it up in the ’60s, the men’s basketball national talent pool was considerably smaller. There were few foreign athletes, there was no huge AAU program turning out thousands of recruits for colleges, and there was no where near the parity of collegiate teams that exists today. Back then, UCLA always had the pick of the talent to a large degree and that helped them immensely. UConn is winning in a tougher environment than did UCLA, but there you go - apples and oranges.

By the way, for the record, the actual longest basketball winning streak for a women’s team is really owned by Wayland Baptist University. They had a mark of 131 straight victories in the 1950s. However, these games did not “count” as they were before the NCAA recognized women’s basketball. Also some of the games won by Wayland Baptist were over AAU club teams that they had to play in order to have a full season so the powers that be don’t think they should count. Actually, a lot of men’s college teams played AAU teams in the early years and for some reason, the NCAA allows these games to be included in a teams all time won/lost record.

Women’s sports are a fine thing in the same way that men’s sports are a fine thing. Success in one does not take away from success in the other. In the things that are most important, women’s sporting programs are standing tall.

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Editor’s note: John McGee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].

Sports, Pages 8 on 12/29/2010