Squire Barnes Plays of the Year
Squire Barnes of Global TV Sports regaled viewers with his Plays of the Year for 2009. Exciting stuff! There are some really talented athletes out there from soccer, hockey, golf, race car driving, skiing, bike racing/jumping, divers, tennis and so much more. I am always amazed at those that go the distance to win, risk life and limb, show their true passion for the sport to which they have dedicated themselves.
What was missing in all this excitement was - WOMEN! As always despite the existence of women in sports they apparently didn’t do anything all year that would grant them a coveted spot in his montage. In fact, the only women that made the highlights were:
- Two women who may have been playing soccer though we couldn’t see because all they showed us was one girl pulling the hair of the other.
- A female gymnast who was dismounting from the uneven bars and landing flat, face down on the mats after a failed attempt by her coach to catch her.
- A female athlete on what appeared to be a track celebrating something (we don’t know what) riding the mascot’s back which ended up with them both running into something and falling over.
That was it. Surely, a highly popular sports director such as Squire is more well rounded in his yearly sports analysis, isn’t he? Hummm…one might wonder?
Despite the lack of female sports highlights, I’m sure some woman or women’s team somewhere did something note worthy. Scored a cool goal perhaps in a hockey game, finessed a unique move to dunk the basketball, had a great catch in the outfield, dove off a diving board with a clean water entry, made a crowd cheer on the golf course, skied down a hill at heart-thumping speed and maybe even wiped out, raced to the finish line with a one stride differential between runners, took advantage of an open net in soccer, and celebrated with her team winning a Gold, Silver or Bronze or trophy.
I mean, we are coming up for the Olympics here and women have to be doing something to get to that point, so how come we didn’t see it. I wonder what men would think if they watched an entire highlight from the year and didn’t see one decent representation of a guy playing, winning or celebrating anything. He would have said “What the f*** was that?” We didn’t even see women’s tennis. If anything gets noticed its that, not always due to the women’s athletic prowess but still there have been some incredible moments that have fans out of their seat every year.
There is a team and competition for almost every sport happening somewhere but the superior skills and abilities of these exceptionally driven women are for the most part off the radar. Funding for women in sports must be bad considering that some have to find some less than professional ways to sell their product. Advertising endorsement opportunities apparently are harder to come by, though maybe the top woman golfer can take the place of Tiger Woods for awhile, he’s laying low. (No, pun intended)
I’m going to give you a few highlights from professional and semi professional women’s sports, which was somewhat hard to do. The highlights were shorter in most cases for women’s sports and weren’t beefed up… but here is the challenge:
IF YOU ARE READING THIS SEND ME A LINK TO A STORY OR VIDEO THAT HIGHLIGHTS WOMEN IN SPORTS OR CHAMPIONSHIPS AND I WILL DO WHAT SQUIRE DIDN’T, I WILL SHOW IT!
How about some soccer? Check out this video it has some great highlights from games.
target="_blank">Womens Professional Soccer Highlights
Softball World Cup
target="_blank">2009 KFC World Cup of Softball
Canadian University Basketball
target="_blank">SFU winning Gold in Basketball Championships
Golf Highlights
target="_blank">Womens Golf Tournaments 2009
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Perhaps it is just one of those things, or an actual anomaly, that women seldom are attracted to team/ joint participation type events, which tend to attract mass media coverage.
Very often, I have found, that women instead, choose to participate in more singular pursuits. Some examples of these are track and field, (i.e.Paula Radcliffe, Dame Kelly Holmes)…
Tennis, (Serena Williams, Little Mo, Maureen Connolly…oops showing my age there!), too many international gymnasts to name.
Or in very recent times…Lone women round the world, yachtswomen, such as Ellen McArthur.
Many. many famous ice skaters have made it to the top. Katerina Witt, Jayne Torville, Michele Kwan and many, many modern Russians, Chinese, Canadian and Japanese skaters.
Are women more single minded and independent when it comes to sports participation?
Is it that sport is not high on the agenda, or not encouraged in high schools?
Possibly parental encouragement, or lack of it.
Personally, if I was going to venture onto the ice and attempt to do a double axel, I would appreciate a tall strong Christopher Dean to hang onto when I landed!
Sports was never something that attracted me too much, when I was growing up, although my Mother insisted on me learning tennis…UGH…Sports! You might get sweaty and someone might take a photo of you in that state!
Well, it may have been helpful to know in my post that we saw both singular atheletes and team sports. Sorry about that.
The womens hockey team not seen, basketball no slick moves, as noted above – womens ball not even in the park. Golf, tennis, race car driving, diving, track and field, basketball, hockey… you name it, not one women shown in her glory.
Singular or team it should not be hard to find a defining moment, a show of talent, the pleasure of winning and the agony of defeat in this years wrap up.
No excuses here, girls are participating in sports as I did in my youth and young adulthood. I have known many women in sports and the daughters of friends and family who were quite accomplished, resulting in even scholarships. You just don’t hear about it as much.
Watch the sports broadcasts and count over the coming months how many times you see women’s sports mentioned it will be few in comparison, don’t blink though the moment might be gone. Why? Under funded, not recognized as big advertising draws and frankly probably hard for some people to buy into.
Role models are out there and we should care that they are not being featured and if anything we should care that our Olympic hopefuls have to fight so hard to be noticed all year round.
By the way readers, the womens hockey team beat USA 3-2 this past Friday in front of the largest Canadian crowd to watch womens hockey. Probably were some good highlights there.