me (a woman) and sports
I grew up with two athletic parents. My dad played basketball and, for a time, coached youth teams. My mom, who's 5'1" at most, also played basketball, and if I'm remembering the stories they told me correctly, she had a bit of a reputation as someone who was overlooked because of her size, but who definitely had all the Heart and Grit you could ask for.
I think my parents would have loved it if I showed interest in sports as a kid. My dad would take me out to a basketball court; I was pretty good at dribbling but shooting was beyond my skill or interest level. I think we tried badminton in the yard once and I'm pretty sure I hated it. My parents enrolled me in swimming lessons, but once it came time to dive headfirst into the pool -- just from the side, in the shallow end, not even from the diving board -- I noped out pretty quickly. I tried tap dancing once. I don't know that I ever made it past the first lesson.
I was more interested in books and music, writing and drawing, and slowly those took up the space where sports could have gone.
*
My relationship with my parents is complicated. But sports were the one thing my dad and I could always find common ground on.
As a kid, I loved baseball. Somewhere in my parents' house is a probably a box full of late 80s/early 90s baseball cards, and an autograph book with signatures from members of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I liked being a fan of something, even if I couldn't catch a ball to save my life.
I watched wrestling. I loved the colors, the drama, the storytelling.
I watched hockey. I grew up under the reign of Lemieux and Jagr. I wrote a letter to Mario Lemieux when he announced he had cancer. (He never wrote back.) I didn't understand the game, but I liked the way they moved on ice. (I didn't like how loud the goal horn was, up in the cheap seats in the Civic Arena.)
Eventually, money got tighter. And I got older, stopped wanting to spend so much time with my dad. So that ended, too.
*
I was taller for my age, and hit my growth spurt early. People said I should be a runner, said I should play basketball, but I wasn't interested. My parents, to their credit, never pushed me. Eventually, everyone else caught up to me in height, and then everyone else got taller. I stopped standing out, and people stopped telling me I should try sports.
*
I tried out for the volleyball team in middle school once. I thought I was at least as good as some of the other girls, but I didn't get picked. The popular girls -- the tall ones, the pretty ones, the ones who were all friends already -- they made the team. I didn't. So that ended, too.
*
The only sport in all of high school gym that I ever loved was floor hockey. We didn't have a floor hockey team. There wasn't anything to do with my interest in it after that semester. So that ended, too.
*
By a certain age, I seemed to have gotten the message that sports weren't a thing for me. You could either be artsy -- be the kid staying after school for honors art club, for orchestra practices -- or you could be athletic, but you couldn't be both. I chose early, and it never even occurred to me to try to have both. You couldn't do both. I couldn't do both. That's just not how it worked.
*
I don't know that I ever actually felt comfortable in my body until college. I took a semester of fencing and even though I was terrible, it was the coolest thing I'd ever done.
I took one ballet class at the urging of dancer friends, and, shockingly, fell in love with it. Again -- and this is a theme in my life -- I wasn't any good at it, but I liked it a lot. I contemplated completing a dance minor in college. I performed in friends' senior choreography projects. I tried out for the community dance group. Modern dance made my body finally make sense to me. It was weird, after a lifetime of not really being able to get my limbs to work together all at once.
*
It is 2010. I watch the Chicago Blackhawks Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final as I walk home from the train. People in the highly college-aged neighborhood have dragged TVs out onto their small lawns, are watching hockey outside in the sticky June heat. I slow down and watch their TVs as I go past. The stretch of Lincoln from Fullerton to where I used to live in Chicago is mostly bars, so I walk on my tip toes to peer in through their windows at the TV screens. I walk faster with each cheer, each groan.
I get home and turn the TV on. This is odd. I almost never watch TV, and certainly never turn it to sports when I do. My now-ex asks what I'm doing.
"Something important is happening," I tell him.
I watch a puck go towards the net and disappear. The Blackhawks win.
*
In 2013, I am divorced. I live by myself. I have two cats. I have just moved into my new condo.
I watch a little bit of the playoffs.
In late June, I turn on my TV and watch the Blackhawks score two goals in seventeen seconds.
My windows are open. I can hear my whole neighborhood celebrating.
I am pretty sure I cry, just a little bit.
*
And suddenly, just like that, I am a sports fan again.
*
In 2014, a friend and I get into sports superstition. We eat the same meal from the same restaurant for every playoff game. It works, right up until it doesn't, and a shot from Alec Martinez flutters off of Nick Leddy and into the Blackhawks' net.
"Fuck," I say, and collapse back onto the couch.
*
Days later, I go onto Tumblr and start complaining. I spend ages poking around on ExtraSkater, looking at Joel Quenneville's line usage in the closing minutes of that game. I write a post, forget about it. My Tumblr is mostly for posting pictures of cute cats and fan art and pretty people.
It is not for sports.
Sports analysis is not for me, I think.
*
The first woman whose hockey writing I remember seeing on Twitter is Jen Lute-Costella.
I grew up being told that women could do anything, and I believed it, but all of the sports voices in my life were men. Men on Twitter, men on TV, men writing in the newspapers.
When a Blackhawks blog -- on a site run by a woman, with a majority of women writers across the network -- needed another writer, I hesitated to reach out.
Who am I to have serious thoughts on sports? Who am I, who have never played the game, who didn't delve into serious fandom until recently? Who am I? Isn't that a spot better taken by someone else (a man)? Someone more knowledgeable (a man)? Someone who's been a fan for longer (a man)?
But I did it, because I have a voice, and I have opinions, and I may be terrible on skates, but I know how to wield words.
And so I write.
*
Representation in media comes up a lot. People want to see themselves represented in the media they consume.
That goes for more than just fiction, though.
Rey and Poe and Finn mean a lot. Wonder Woman means a lot.
But Jessica Mendoza means a lot. Kathryn Tappen and Helene Elliott and Isabelle Khurshudyan mean a lot.
All of the women writing for blogs and hosting podcasts and going on radio and TV and carving out their place in this sports landscape mean a lot.
Maybe if I'd known all of this was possible when I was nine and calling strikes and walks with my dad; or when I was fifteen, doggedly chasing down a ball in floor hockey; or when I was twenty and finally understanding that I too had a body that could be strong and powerful -- maybe if I knew all of this then, maybe something would be different now.
*
My corner of sportswriting is small. I have a platform, I try to use it responsibly. I keep my bad puns to a minimum.
I write, and I take photographs, and sometimes people consume the media that I put out. I've been on television and on the radio, talking about sports. Being a woman with an opinion.
Mostly, no one shits on me for that. I know that I am lucky, that the worst I've dealt with is a few mansplainers in my Twitter mentions.
Sports aren't my job. Maybe it could be, but my cushy non-sports corporate job comes with a nice paycheck and more job stability than is in the journalism biz. (I mean, if someone from Kings Insider calls me up tomorrow and says "we need a new team member", I'm not going to hang up. But you all know what I mean.) (Call me, Kings Insider.)
I don't think it's too sweeping of a statement to say that for many women, they don't go into sports because we're told it's not for us. Even when we grow up with families who would let it be for us if we wanted -- it's still not for us.
Even now -- sportswriting for free on niche blogs? Okay, girls, you can have that. But you want a bigger platform than that? Sorry, no. The bigger platforms are white guys hiring other white guys that they've worked with before. So sports still aren't for us. Go back to your blog and your Twitter and your kitchen, ladies.
*
There are brilliant, creative, talented women out there writing about sports. There are so, so many of us.
(At first, I wrote them. Why don't I include myself? Are sports still not for me?)
A teenager should be able to look at the masthead of a sports site, the byline of an article, and have a chance of seeing herself reflected back.
How do you get more women sportswriters?
You give them a chance. You seek them out, and you give them opportunities.
Journalism is changing. The world is changing. White dude hires white dude he knows, instead of fielding applications for qualified candidates needs to change.
We aren't hard to find, if you know where to look.
Start looking.
*
I think my parents would have loved it if I showed interest in sports as a kid. My dad would take me out to a basketball court; I was pretty good at dribbling but shooting was beyond my skill or interest level. I think we tried badminton in the yard once and I'm pretty sure I hated it. My parents enrolled me in swimming lessons, but once it came time to dive headfirst into the pool -- just from the side, in the shallow end, not even from the diving board -- I noped out pretty quickly. I tried tap dancing once. I don't know that I ever made it past the first lesson.
I was more interested in books and music, writing and drawing, and slowly those took up the space where sports could have gone.
*
My relationship with my parents is complicated. But sports were the one thing my dad and I could always find common ground on.
As a kid, I loved baseball. Somewhere in my parents' house is a probably a box full of late 80s/early 90s baseball cards, and an autograph book with signatures from members of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I liked being a fan of something, even if I couldn't catch a ball to save my life.
I watched wrestling. I loved the colors, the drama, the storytelling.
I watched hockey. I grew up under the reign of Lemieux and Jagr. I wrote a letter to Mario Lemieux when he announced he had cancer. (He never wrote back.) I didn't understand the game, but I liked the way they moved on ice. (I didn't like how loud the goal horn was, up in the cheap seats in the Civic Arena.)
Eventually, money got tighter. And I got older, stopped wanting to spend so much time with my dad. So that ended, too.
*
I was taller for my age, and hit my growth spurt early. People said I should be a runner, said I should play basketball, but I wasn't interested. My parents, to their credit, never pushed me. Eventually, everyone else caught up to me in height, and then everyone else got taller. I stopped standing out, and people stopped telling me I should try sports.
*
I tried out for the volleyball team in middle school once. I thought I was at least as good as some of the other girls, but I didn't get picked. The popular girls -- the tall ones, the pretty ones, the ones who were all friends already -- they made the team. I didn't. So that ended, too.
*
The only sport in all of high school gym that I ever loved was floor hockey. We didn't have a floor hockey team. There wasn't anything to do with my interest in it after that semester. So that ended, too.
*
By a certain age, I seemed to have gotten the message that sports weren't a thing for me. You could either be artsy -- be the kid staying after school for honors art club, for orchestra practices -- or you could be athletic, but you couldn't be both. I chose early, and it never even occurred to me to try to have both. You couldn't do both. I couldn't do both. That's just not how it worked.
*
I don't know that I ever actually felt comfortable in my body until college. I took a semester of fencing and even though I was terrible, it was the coolest thing I'd ever done.
I took one ballet class at the urging of dancer friends, and, shockingly, fell in love with it. Again -- and this is a theme in my life -- I wasn't any good at it, but I liked it a lot. I contemplated completing a dance minor in college. I performed in friends' senior choreography projects. I tried out for the community dance group. Modern dance made my body finally make sense to me. It was weird, after a lifetime of not really being able to get my limbs to work together all at once.
*
It is 2010. I watch the Chicago Blackhawks Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final as I walk home from the train. People in the highly college-aged neighborhood have dragged TVs out onto their small lawns, are watching hockey outside in the sticky June heat. I slow down and watch their TVs as I go past. The stretch of Lincoln from Fullerton to where I used to live in Chicago is mostly bars, so I walk on my tip toes to peer in through their windows at the TV screens. I walk faster with each cheer, each groan.
I get home and turn the TV on. This is odd. I almost never watch TV, and certainly never turn it to sports when I do. My now-ex asks what I'm doing.
"Something important is happening," I tell him.
I watch a puck go towards the net and disappear. The Blackhawks win.
*
In 2013, I am divorced. I live by myself. I have two cats. I have just moved into my new condo.
I watch a little bit of the playoffs.
In late June, I turn on my TV and watch the Blackhawks score two goals in seventeen seconds.
My windows are open. I can hear my whole neighborhood celebrating.
I am pretty sure I cry, just a little bit.
*
And suddenly, just like that, I am a sports fan again.
*
In 2014, a friend and I get into sports superstition. We eat the same meal from the same restaurant for every playoff game. It works, right up until it doesn't, and a shot from Alec Martinez flutters off of Nick Leddy and into the Blackhawks' net.
"Fuck," I say, and collapse back onto the couch.
*
Days later, I go onto Tumblr and start complaining. I spend ages poking around on ExtraSkater, looking at Joel Quenneville's line usage in the closing minutes of that game. I write a post, forget about it. My Tumblr is mostly for posting pictures of cute cats and fan art and pretty people.
It is not for sports.
Sports analysis is not for me, I think.
*
The first woman whose hockey writing I remember seeing on Twitter is Jen Lute-Costella.
I grew up being told that women could do anything, and I believed it, but all of the sports voices in my life were men. Men on Twitter, men on TV, men writing in the newspapers.
When a Blackhawks blog -- on a site run by a woman, with a majority of women writers across the network -- needed another writer, I hesitated to reach out.
Who am I to have serious thoughts on sports? Who am I, who have never played the game, who didn't delve into serious fandom until recently? Who am I? Isn't that a spot better taken by someone else (a man)? Someone more knowledgeable (a man)? Someone who's been a fan for longer (a man)?
But I did it, because I have a voice, and I have opinions, and I may be terrible on skates, but I know how to wield words.
And so I write.
*
Representation in media comes up a lot. People want to see themselves represented in the media they consume.
That goes for more than just fiction, though.
Rey and Poe and Finn mean a lot. Wonder Woman means a lot.
But Jessica Mendoza means a lot. Kathryn Tappen and Helene Elliott and Isabelle Khurshudyan mean a lot.
All of the women writing for blogs and hosting podcasts and going on radio and TV and carving out their place in this sports landscape mean a lot.
Maybe if I'd known all of this was possible when I was nine and calling strikes and walks with my dad; or when I was fifteen, doggedly chasing down a ball in floor hockey; or when I was twenty and finally understanding that I too had a body that could be strong and powerful -- maybe if I knew all of this then, maybe something would be different now.
*
My corner of sportswriting is small. I have a platform, I try to use it responsibly. I keep my bad puns to a minimum.
I write, and I take photographs, and sometimes people consume the media that I put out. I've been on television and on the radio, talking about sports. Being a woman with an opinion.
Mostly, no one shits on me for that. I know that I am lucky, that the worst I've dealt with is a few mansplainers in my Twitter mentions.
Sports aren't my job. Maybe it could be, but my cushy non-sports corporate job comes with a nice paycheck and more job stability than is in the journalism biz. (I mean, if someone from Kings Insider calls me up tomorrow and says "we need a new team member", I'm not going to hang up. But you all know what I mean.) (Call me, Kings Insider.)
I don't think it's too sweeping of a statement to say that for many women, they don't go into sports because we're told it's not for us. Even when we grow up with families who would let it be for us if we wanted -- it's still not for us.
Even now -- sportswriting for free on niche blogs? Okay, girls, you can have that. But you want a bigger platform than that? Sorry, no. The bigger platforms are white guys hiring other white guys that they've worked with before. So sports still aren't for us. Go back to your blog and your Twitter and your kitchen, ladies.
*
There are brilliant, creative, talented women out there writing about sports. There are so, so many of us.
(At first, I wrote them. Why don't I include myself? Are sports still not for me?)
A teenager should be able to look at the masthead of a sports site, the byline of an article, and have a chance of seeing herself reflected back.
How do you get more women sportswriters?
You give them a chance. You seek them out, and you give them opportunities.
Journalism is changing. The world is changing. White dude hires white dude he knows, instead of fielding applications for qualified candidates needs to change.
We aren't hard to find, if you know where to look.
Start looking.
*
If you appreciate my writing, here or anywhere, please feel free to throw a few dollars my way.
I'm so proud and happy to have you as a hockey co-writer. You rock.
ReplyDeleteThank you <3 I'm so glad I took the chance to reach out to you so we could go on this weird hockey journey together!
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