Thanks to Donald Trump, finding this one on TV will be harder than keeping Katie George away from the net during a volleyball match. We've heard it is on the Reelz channel tonight. Still looking, still searching for Reelz. We all hope Katie wins. At least here in Louisville. IF she doesn't win...I'd be OK with this girl winning:
One of the women in the spotlight will be Anea Garcia from Rhode Island.
Garcia was raised by her grandmother who emigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. When Garcia was 13, her grandmother lost her job. Over the next seven years, they were homeless off and on, often sleeping in their car in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
"There were times where I couldn't shower, or we'd wake up hungry and go to sleep really hungry, but I would go to school early to eat and pack some snacks in my backpack to bring for my grandmother and I," she said. "I definitely had to grow up faster."
She eventually earned a full scholarship to an all-girl Catholic school which also gave her a place to wash up and eat in addition to getting a good education. She said she and her grandmother still struggle to pay bills and rent, but the 20-year-old has a scholarship to Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. where she's double-majoring in legal studies and philosophy. Roger Williams U. I didn't know that Louisville Baseball's pitching coach had his own school...
We here at Cardinal Couple obviously don't hide our disdain for people who dismiss women's sports out of hand. You would think this isn't an issue that we would need to raise very often...certainly no one would be crass enough to flat reject all women's sports without any subtlety, and yet, it happens...on a regular basis.
I could probably write my Cardinal Couple contribution every week by pointing out examples of this, but ultimately, to advance our mission to share the joy and excitement of UofL Women's Sports, we can't merely point out when people express rampant, overt sexism in dealing with women athletes. We have to show what's great about the sports as played by amazing athletes.
Occasionally, however, I feel we need to circle back to revisit just how disgusting the overt sexism towards women's athletics can be.
About a week ago, Mark Mravic tweeted a short video of a great goal in one of England's Women's World Cup games.
As you can see, he alluded to the belief of another sportswriter, Andy Benoit who apparently is on record as saying that women's soccer isn't worth watching.
Benoit tweeted, in response, in a tweet that has since been deleted, "Not women's soccer......women's sports in general not worth watching."
Benoit later apologized in a series of tweets, but not before Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler put together this throwback to their Saturday Night Live days on Late Night with Seth Meyer's. (This is from a post prime-time show, so some minor language is used.)
Why do so many people, particularly sports fans, feel the need to so vehemently put down women's athletics? The usual arguments are hypocritical at best, and completely nonsensical at worst.
"It's not athletic enough." - Then you should be watching track and field, not football.
"It's not exciting enough." - But you'll sit through hours of talking heads for the NBA and NFL drafts, not to mention the many talking head sports news shows that are on daily.
Gimme a break.
I'm gonna call it, if you can see your way to react as Andy Benoit did, even if you got "carried away" (insert epic side-eye here), then you're sexist. If you can dismiss all women's athletics with a single tweet, then you're not even giving it a real thought, and I have to question how much stock I should put into anything you say. Is it offered with the same vapidity that your tweet casting aspersions on all women's athletics was? Did you put just as much depth of thought into your NFL analysis that you did the Women's World Cup?
Of course, as I alluded to in the title, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, here. If you're here, reading this on Cardinal Couple, you've already gone far above and beyond the level of a typical college sports fan to learn about and support your UofL women's athletics teams. We here at Cardinal Couple thank you for that, and while I can't speak for the UofL athletic department formally, I think we can be pretty sure they appreciate it as well.
Keep up the good work. Go out there and share the joy and excitement of UofL women's athletics, and bring a friend to a game/match/meet/round/race/regatta and let them see, first hand, what the excitement is all about.
Miss USA TV in Limbo
Well, The Don has gone and done it again.
No, not Don Paulie, Donald Trump.
During his announcement for candidacy for the Republic nomination for the office of President of the United States, Donald Trump made some comments that were considered hostile towards Mexicans and Latinos in general. The fallout of those comments caused Univision to refuse to air the Miss USA pageant, and several days later, Miss USA co-owner NBC Universal, has followed suit.
On the Cardinal Couple Radio Hour the past couple of weeks, I was unsure of television coverage, and posited that it might be on Fox. I suppose there is a possibility that it still could be. With NBC Universal not showing it, where it will be shown on TV in the US, and even if it will be on TV is in some doubt at this point.
Of course, our own Katie George of the UofL Volleyball team is Kentucky's entrant into the pageant, so this is of more than a little interest to many UofL women's athletics fans, including myself. We'll update as this story unfolds.
"There were times where I couldn't shower, or we'd wake up hungry and go to sleep really hungry, but I would go to school early to eat and pack some snacks in my backpack to bring for my grandmother and I," she said. "I definitely had to grow up faster."