No More "Plays Like A Girl" Insults

I can barely remember watching women's soccer aside from the World Cup but in the last sixteen hours, Elizabeth Lambert of New Mexico has been everywhere except on Bill O'Reilly (maybe; I don't watch him so I can't really be sure) and TruTV.

Elizabeth's a young person, early twenties I'd assume, works hard; enrolled in a good university and has been successful as a starter on a highly regarded NC Double A varsity sports program. She probably has parents who love her a lot, drives a socially responsible earth friendly hybrid and likes tofu and granola. And she put on quite an exhibition of thuggery against what seems to have been most of the starting line up of BYU.

I'll give her this, having watched the highlights (lowlights?) a number of times-she's about a mover. There's no let up and no half measures. Nice trip, good punch in the face, nice kick to the head and the pony-tail take down, beyond words. All of which netted her a yellow card (warning-not sure if that meant 'don't do it again' or 'don't get caught'. Failed in either case.) Julie Foudy's comment, "there's some jostling...and hair pulling in the women's game." Classic understatement.

Earlier in the week there'd been some sports guy chatter about the University of Florida player who tried to gouge an opponent in the eye (and failed) and the subsequent 'half game suspension' that eventually became more than that (but only just) but not without some arched eyebrows and head shaking. I wondered if in locker rooms across the country there isn't a menu posted of offenses and punishments: punching a guy, as a kid did early in the season to an opponent who was beating his team netted a full-season suspension.

Hurling racial epithets gets people shown to the locker room-chanting quadratic equations at the opponent's placekicker to freeze him gets you fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. I have to assume starting a fight or even a bench clearing brawl could result in serious jail time but then I come back to the (attempted) eye-gouge and only half a game. I'm thinking maybe Mike Tyson got hosed. But Elizabeth made all of us change the channel.

Hers was violence that transcended gender-malevolence that had nothing to do with the sex of the offender or the victim. The apology was, to me, even worse than the acts requiring it and yet another new American confessional. I got caught so I'll restate the obvious and by so doing conceal the fact that I never actually apologized for commission of my heinous act but trivialized it through language that described it in such neutral terms we could have been talking about anything at anytime.

Elizabeth's emotions, she explained, got out of hand, though not the other player's ponytail. She had a fistful of that, didn't she? The NCAA, the development branch of all US professional sports franchises, has a commercial on how 99 point some percentage of all student athletes 'go pro in something other than their college sport'. I guess that could make the soccer pitch one of the safest places on earth for women in two years' time.
-bill kenny