It was a star spangled weekend for sports

Locally, the weather was great, the fireworks displays in the various locales were heavily attended and sports were on a lot of peoples minds in a variety of venues.

In professional baseball, the major's best team, the St. Louis Cardinals, won both their weekend games, 2-1 and 3-1 over San Diego to lower their pitching staff's league leading ERA (earned run average) to an astounding 2.59. The best team so far in the American League is the Cards cross state rival Kansas City Royals who lead the AL with a 3.52 pitching average. It would seem especially in 2015 that good pitching trumps good hitting.

While being a big baseball town, it would seem St. Louis is also known as the city that demonstrates the most support for women's soccer. Cardinal Village is a collection of bars, restaurants, shops, etc., adjacent to Busch Stadium in St. Louis and all their TV sets (having been there I can attest to their great multitude) and the place was packed Sunday evening with fans cheering on the U.S. women's soccer team World Cup finals match with Japan up in Canada. The highest TV ratings for the event were recorded in the St. Louis area.

Though I am interested in a number of sports, soccer hasn't been one of them. I grew up in a time where soccer was a game played in PE intramurals and no where else. Kyle Rote was a very good American soccer player in the 1960s who probably could have played professionally in other sports, but who decided to try mightily to popularize the sport in the U.S. Bit by bit, soccer has risen in popularity over the years but in pales in comparison to the sports of football, basketball and baseball in America.

Locally, the Daisy Corporation hosted their annual National BB Gun Competition with shooting teams from all over America in town for the event. Though I have never been to a competition, I am glad they put this event on along with the other programs they sponsor to help promote gun safety through knowledge and experience.

Down south in Black Springs, a town of 114 people off Arkansas Highway 8, an athletic event took place that made headlines all over the United States among track and field and field fans. Lexi Weeks of Cabot set the national high school outdoor pole vault record for girls by clearing 14'7.5".

Weeks set the indoor national record at the same spot last February, clearing 14'3.25". With her records, though, she did not win the National High School Nationals sponsored by Nike last month, as she came in second, behind twin sister Tori.

Tori and Lexi Weeks are identical twins, as identical as I have ever seen or heard about, and graduated this year from Cabot High School. They both made all As in high school, both scored 30 on their ACT, and are both incoming Razorbacks as they plan to both become pharmacists at the University of Arkansas.

Both girls have a page on the IAAF web page. The IAAF is the world governing body of track and field and the twins are seen as potential participants in the 2016 Summer Olympics after their freshman season at Arkansas.

Lexi Weeks broke the outdoor national record of 14' 3.25" set by Desi Freier of Texas in 2014. Freier went on to claim second in World Junior competition in 2014. Freier is now with the Razorbacks so the Hogs will have the best three young pole vaulters in the nation in 2016.

Why aren't the men as good as the women?

A story that was oft-mentioned on television broadcasts last week was the question "Why don't the men's soccer teams do as well as the women's?"

No one seemed to have a good answer outside of "well, it must have something to do with Title IX," the federal mandate requiring equal access to sports to women back in 1981. That's relevant in that women's and girls sports programs exploded after that law went into the books. Soccer was one of the sports that grew quickly among female participants when schools began adding sporting programs for girls to even the playing field with the boys.

That would explain to a large degree how the women of the US have become more athletic, but it doesn't explain why the men's team isn't even remotely as successful as the women's. The answer is money.

First of all, I think the United States has unquestionably the greatest number of athletically trained and talented men in the world. The huge majority of them don't play soccer.

Athletes wishing to parlay their skills into big money will concentrate on football, basketball and baseball and to a lesser extent, track and field. The University of Arkansas has produced a quite lengthy list of former students who went on to make millions in professional sports. None of them are soccer players.

The lowest pro annual salary of a major league baseball player allowed in 2015 is $507,00, the same as the minimum contract for National Basketball Association players. Pro hockey has the highest minimum league player salary at $525,000 a year with the minimum National Football League contract set at $420,000 per season. In contrast, the minimum salary for a professional league soccer player in the United States is $33,000 a year. The best hitters in major league baseball get more than that amount for every time they go to the plate.

Women, on the other hand, don't have those avenues to gain the riches their male counterparts have. There is professional women's basketball but it is not self sustaining. The men's league underwrites the WNBA and if they didn't, there would even be a pro women's league. As a matter of fact, the highest paid player in the WNBA doesn't make as much as the women who serve as cheerleaders for NFL football games.

Even though U.S. women's soccer has been very successful (three world titles, three seconds and never ever finishing lower than third in world competition) the average salary for a pro player is $15,000. U.S. team members get income from corporate sponsors and money from U.S. Soccer which itself is underwritten by corporate sponsors.

The women soccer players are good because they want to be and there are no real avenues available that would allow them to make a fortune in team sports in any thing else.

If a woman athlete wants to become wealthy through a career in athletics and it not be tied to endorsements or corporate sponsorships, then professional golf or tennis is the way to go. Many American women have become millionaires through these two sports and in tennis, tournaments pay the men and women the same in prize money.

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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He 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 on 07/08/2015