For all of the advancements of Title IX with respect to the rights of women and their ability to have the opportunity to participate in equal sports on an equal level, there can be some glaring drawbacks.
One of the largest (and I've believed this for literally decades!) is the concept of girls' basketball, and what usually happens when supposed high-school "games" are actually mismatches of the first order.
I posted about this before, about a "game" in my area that ended 161-2 about 12 months ago.
Well, we have another one: Gilmour Academy 108 - Northeast Ohio College Prep 1. (Deadspin, including a Twitter photo someone wanted to have the game put on SportsCenter!!!)
And from the Deadspin article, the coach, Bob Beutel, is a real beaut himself:
“Our intent was to not run anything up, and we took steps to not disrespect our opponent,” Gilmour coach Bob Beutel said. “They went 0-for-28 from the field and 1-for-4 from the free-throw line. We let them shoot.”No, at some point, the only way not to "disrespect the opponent" is either to stop the game or not let it take place at all. Beutel claimed in a Cleveland interview that he was actually subbing JV players into the game in the first quarter. ESPECIALLY if this is true, how in the fucking Hell do you allow this to go on, as a sanctioning body, much less the schools involved???
It's clear that many schools, at all levels, only have girls' basketball to legally justify boys' basketball under Title IX. It's clear by the statement of NE Ohio College Prep (which said all the "right things") that it was pretty clear there was no point in holding this contest.
Yes, I would go so far that, if the only alternative to satisfy Federal Law is to disgrace these girls by putting them in this position simply to be legally allowed to field a boys team, disband them both!
There is ZERO educational value -- NONE! -- in 108-1 or 161-2. Coaches have been fired and suspended for putting up some of these ridiculous scores (the 161-2 coach was banned for two games as a result, but a cursory study indicated such blowouts were common for his program!).
Be interesting to see if this "championship team" can continue it's run. They have either been district champions or runners-up in their district of Ohio the last seven years running. That was actually the first round of their playoffs!
In this cockamanie system the state of Ohio has dreamed up, three teams were randomly assigned byes, and this team, the #1 seed (19-4 -- and they actually did a holiday tournament in Washington DC this year, in which they played two teams from Georgia and one from California (losing twice!) also has wins of 92-15, 73-24, 75-32. and 78-37 in just the month of December alone!
As for their opponents, it's almost clear this is a college-prep charter private school, part of an 8-school network in three states. There is nothing on this network's website which even indicates the athletic teams in the school at all! The Cleveland article states the team ended it's season at 1-12.
Really... This is on the sanctioning body: WHY WAS THIS ALLOWED TO TAKE PLACE?
No comments:
Post a Comment