Month: June 2013

soccer

Washington Spirit vs. Western New York: Is it luck?

Posted on by Beau Dure

“My socks and shoes always match. Is it luck?” – Primus

Let’s start by giving credit where it’s due. Saturday night at the Plex, the Western New York Flash dominated the first half and defended well in the second half. Outstanding young goalkeeper Adrianna Franch was alert when she needed to be, particularly in poking the ball away from Stephanie Ochs outside the box on a breakaway.

And if we’re going to talk about luck and injuries, the Flash could certainly say, “Did you see Sarah Huffman out there? Oh, that’s right — she was home watching her team and the U.S. national team on two streams.”

If the Spirit had gotten a couple of breaks, the game might have been 1-1. And if it had been 1-1 in the 60th minute, the game may well have played out a bit differently from that point.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the reasons soccer karma owes the Spirit more than a few favors:

1. The central defense conundrum. In the allocation process, the Spirit got Alina Garciamendez, the Stanford All-American who surely would have been a top draft pick had she not been allocated. But she went to Frankfurt instead.

The Spirit’s biggest free agent signing was Candace Chapman, longtime Canadian international and two-time WPS champion. She played 45 minutes a few weeks ago, but the team saw that she was not yet fit to play more than that. They tried her again on Saturday, and she spent most of the first half grimacing.

One thing that went right for the Spirit: Toni Pressley was cleared to play, an important piece of good timing given Robyn Gayle’s engagement with the Canadian national team. So after one practice, she was tossed into the mix alongside Chapman. Individually, Pressley was fine, showing a few flashes that justified the Spirit’s hype. And in the second half, when she was paired with former Florida State teammate Tori Huster, the defense wasn’t bad at all.

But in the first half, having a hobbled backline leader with a newcomer is far from ideal.

Which leads to …

2. What the heck was that first goal? Looks like it hit Ashlyn Harris’ glove, then the FRONT of the post, then spun in. I know we’re near Washington, but that’s a lot of spin.

3. What made Tori Huster go flying on this corner kick?

We might trust the ref a bit more if he hadn’t somehow failed to notice a couple of Flash players with socks around their ankles and no evident shin guards. (Ironically, the Spirit Reserves’ Alex Doll was sent to the sidelines in the first game of the doubleheader so that she could produce the mandatory protective equipment.)

The Spirit can take a couple of positives in the sense that they were creative in the second half, and Pressley settled in nicely. Conny Pohlers is on the way. But it’s getting a little late in the season for moral victories and a general notion that the team is improving. I think the Spirit would be a dangerous team in the playoffs, but the math dictates that it’ll be a difficult climb to get there.

I might have a heightened sense of empathy for unlucky soccer teams after coaching an All-Star team over the weekend in which we had one ref who let our opponents knock us all over the field, then another ref who would arrest people for driving 66 mph in a 65 zone. (Nothing like two PKs and a direct free kick just outside the box to rattle a 9-year-old goalkeeper.) The team made great progress in a short time, and while they weren’t going to earn a trophy, the final score of their last game really wasn’t fair.

And so when you look at the Spirit — and sure, my sense of empathy may be heightened by being around the team all the time — you see an organization doing a lot of things right. They have the best playing surface in the league. They’re committed to an attractive style of play. They’re selling tickets. And they’ve yet to win a home game.

These things even out at some point, don’t they?

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college sports, sports culture

When the sports police lose the plot …

Posted on by Beau Dure

ESPN and Sports Illustrated surely didn’t coordinate their stories on the NCAA and other investigations in sports. But taken together, the pieces show troubling issues for those who try to keep sports fair.

The main Sports Illustrated piece isn’t available online as far as I know, at least not yet. It’s an investigation about an investigation, in which Pete Thamel and Alexander Wolff show how the NCAA’s probe into the University of Miami went horribly awry. Thamel followed up online with a look at turnover on the enforcement staff and general NCAA dysfunction. Wolff goes a different direction and reports on Nevin Shapiro, the Miami whistleblower. (He apparently made a lot of money betting that the Hurricanes wouldn’t cover the spread against Duke. I’m tempted to take that as flattery, but I probably can’t.)

ESPN’s Chris Jones has a column on Georgia’s Kolton Houston, who at one point was banned for life as a repeat drug offender until the Bulldogs produced proof that his body has residual norandrolone from a doctor’s mistake in high school. Those who follow Olympic sports, particularly cases like Torri Edwards’ and Alain Baxter’s, may recognize the pitfalls of “zero tolerance” applied by people who aren’t paying attention to details.

Then we have the saddest case, indirectly involving the NCAA. College football coach Todd Hoffner lost his job through overzealous overreaction in the post-Jerry Sandusky era. Worse, he was branded a child pornographer. His mistake? His kids asked him to shoot a video, the kids (toddler/early elementary age) dropped their clothes, and he didn’t immediately erase the video. The people who prosecuted Hoffner, both within Minnesota State-Mankato and in court, would be hard pressed to say their actions were in the best interests of his children.

The Hoffner case is a classic overreaction and should be a cautionary tale. The Houston case is a reminder to all anti-doping authorities to get all the facts, not just what a lab result tells them.

Can anything be done about the NCAA? Perhaps simplifying would be better. Rather than having layers of compliance protocols that make the U.S. tax code look like the rules for the first Ultimate Fighting Championship “there are no rules!” event, maybe focus on two things:

1. Schools can’t pay athletes.

2. Student-athletes must be students in good standing.

So much else the NCAA oversees is just so much hair-splitting and bureaucracy. Do we really care if someone gave an athlete a ride home? Or if athletes in Olympic sports have sponsors? Or about any of the procedural hoops USL, NPSL and WPSL teams have to clear so they can have college athletes on their teams?

Drop a lot of the overregulation, and maybe they’ll do a better job with the actual cheating.

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olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Double-distance hurdler rules NCAAs

Posted on by Beau Dure

Stanford’s Kori Carter set an NCAA record in the women’s 400-meter hurdles (video) with a time of 53.21, also the fastest in the world this year. By a large margin. The second-best time of the year was set six days earlier on the same track in Eugene, Ore., by the Czech Republic’s Zuzana Hejnova — 53.70.

That alone would put Carter in consideration for the Woly Award, given to the top U.S. Olympic sports athlete of the week.

But Carter had competition from Clemson’s Brianna Rollins, who also set a meet record and world leader in the 100 hurdles at 12.39.

What set Carter apart? Check out who finished second in the 100 hurdles. That’s right — Kori Carter.

That’s 18 points of Stanford’s 33 points in the NCAA meet, and it’s enough to give Carter the Woly Award for the week.

Meet Carter at FloTrack, where she talks a bit about her 400-meter performance and the audacity of running both events.

Other top performances from the NCAA meet:

Women’s 100: English Gardner, Oregon, 10.96, third fastest runner in 2013.

Men’s 400: Bryshon Nellum, USC, 44.73, fourth in 2013.

Women’s 400: Ashley Spencer, Illinois, 50.28, fifth in 2013.

Then at the Golden Gala in Rome, the latest Diamond League stop:

Men’s 100 hurdles: Justin Gatlin (9.94) beat Usain Bolt (9.95). Yes, THAT Usain Bolt.

Men’s 400 hurdles: Johnny Dutch (48.31) held off Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson (48.36) and now owns the top two times of 2013.

Women’s long jump: Another good duel between Brittney Reese (6.99) and Janay Deloach Soukup (6.97).

Also in track and field, last week’s Woly winner, Mary Cain, … stop me if you’re heard this before … broke a U.S. high school track and field record, this time in the 5,000 meters. Time is 15:45.46. That’s three high school outdoor records this spring.

And the other nominees this week:

WATER POLO: Betsey Armstrong made eight important saves as the U.S. women clinched bronze at the World League Super Final.

TENNIS: Serena Williams and the Bryan brothers won French Open titles. Not enough room here to talk about their career accomplishments.

The rest of the Oly week is at TeamUSA.org as always.

Sports to watch this week:

– Archery, World Cup
– Beach volleyball, Grand Slam
– Volleyball, World League, Tulsa
– Water polo, men’s World League Super Final
– Track and field, Diamond League ExxonMobil Bislett Games, Oslo
– Mountain bike, World Cup
– Judo, Grand Prix Miami

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soccer

Drawing a line in the stands: Leroux, Day 2

Posted on by Beau Dure

Yesterday’s Sydney Leroux saga had a few predictable outcomes. Late in the day, we heard Leroux wasn’t specifically talking about the game in Toronto on Sunday — in fact, she says the atmosphere there was great! “A positive step forward for women’s soccer,” even.

Of course, by then, it was too late for the Toronto crowd. Many of the mainstream media stories on the web have been updated with Leroux’s clarification — she was talking about an older game in Vancouver, plus Twitter — but a lot of headlines still reflect what her tweet implied: The crowd in Toronto was using racist chants against her.

To respond to one of yesterday’s comments — I don’t see such accusations as “minutiae.” I’d rather be called a bleepity-bleep whatever than a racist. I’ve been called a racist before. It hurts. It cuts to your soul. It is not an accusation to be tossed around lightly and then say, “Oh, I meant those OTHER guys.”

So that’s one lesson learned, and it’s one of many excellent points in Richard Whittall’s column, “Some lessons from the Leroux saga.”

Another lesson is aimed squarely at Canadian fans, in response to attitudes like this:

I’m not going to walk around asking Canadian players what they think of their fans tossing out the c-word and b-word. They shouldn’t have to confront this themselves. Those of us with Y chromosomes should simply know better.

As Whittall put it:

That the rest of the world has set a low bar in acceptable bounds of player abuse isn’t a great reason for Canadian or American fans of womens soccer to do the same.

I’m also still befuddled by people trotting out the notion that this sort of thing happens in men’s soccer all the time, so there’s some sort of double-standard in place. “Balotelli does it” is one of those arguments. Yes, and Balotelli is one the most controversial, if not the most reviled, soccer players in the world.

Europe offers plenty of soccer traditions to emulate. Balotelli’s behavior and fans hurling sexist epithets aren’t among them. Or maybe one day we’ll end borrowing another European tradition — forcing teams to play in empty stadiums.

So, moving forward, we can hope Leroux will quit throwing gasoline on the fire with poorly chosen celebrations and poorly focused accusations. She has made plenty of enemies of non-racist, non-abusive Canadian fans who may have defended her in the past.

But as fans, we all need to take a step back and think about the limits of our fan passions. The Voyageurs immediately spoke out against racism, and that’s terrific. It’s not, however, the end of the conversation about what’s acceptable in the stands.

13
olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Mary Cain, class of 1:59.51

Posted on by Beau Dure

What were you doing with your weekends when you were in high school?

Mary Cain uses hers to break U.S. track and field records. She took down a few indoor and junior records in the indoor season, and she’s doing it again outdoors. In May, she ran the 1,500 in 4:04.62, smashing Suzy Favor Hamilton’s junior record of 4:09.10 and her own high school record.

Saturday at the Prefontaine Classic, Cain took advantage of a rare opportunity to break not just a record but a round number. No U.S. high school woman had ever run the 800 meters in two minutes.

Cain’s time: 1:59.51.

And she’s a little excited about it:

The flower is from U.S. champion Alysia Montano, who barely held off Cain for fourth place in the race. Montano then hugged Cain and transplanted the distinctive red flower from her own hair to Cain’s.

(Fourth place? Yes, this race was fast. Winner Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi won in the fastest time in the world this year and the fastest time ever on U.S. soil – 1:56.72.)

Cain takes this week’s Woly Award, given to the top U.S. athlete in Olympic sports over the weekend.

The Pre kicked up a couple of nominees, including 100-meter champion Justin Gatlin. In the men’s 400, LaShawn Merritt won a thrilling duel with Olympic champion Kirani James.

And we had a rare steeplechase skirmish.

Elsewhere:

SOCCER: You may have noticed that the U.S. men and women each won on Sunday. Clint Dempsey and Alex Morgan had two goals each.

TRIATHLON: Gwen Jorgensen finished fourth in Madrid but still leads the World Triathlon Series.

SWIMMING: Ryan Lochte and Missy Franklin are tuning up nicely for the U.S. Championships with Grand Prix wins.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL: Two runner-up finishes for the USA at the FIVB stop in Brazil: Jake Gibb-Casey Patterson and April Ross-Jennifer Kessy.

MODERN PENTATHLON: Margaux Isaksen was sixth in the World Cup final.

Full recap at TeamUSA.org

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soccer

The Leroux celebration and unwritten rules of sports

Posted on by Beau Dure

Crash Davis, Bull Durham: What are you doing? Huh? What are you doing standing here? I gave you a gift, you stand here showing up my pitcher? Run, dummy!

Sports have written rules and unwritten rules. The written rules tell you the size of the field, what to do when a ball becomes defective in the course of play, what sort of socks aren’t acceptable, etc. The unwritten rules tell us so much more:

1. Hockey fights stay on the ice. The book The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL had all sorts of amusing anecdotes, my favorite being the one in which the guy losing a fight yells, “Loser buys the pizza.” The guy who’s winning says, “Well, I think you’re buying.” Then the losing fighter yells, “Yeah, but the winner buys the beer!”

Then there’s this, in which a veteran hockey enforcer gives an opponent a chance to impress his coaches:

I’m not saying the code makes a whole lot of sense. But it exists.

2. When a soccer player is down on the field, someone will kick the ball out of play so the trainers can run on the field. Then the ball is returned to the other side. That’s not in the written rules. Players do that on their own.

If you missed yesterday’s arguments after the USA-Canada women’s soccer match in Toronto, here’s the deal: Former Canadian U20 U19* striker Sydney Leroux, who has endured all sorts of abuse on Twitter and heard it from the crowd all day yesterday, scored a garbage-time goal for the USA and celebrated by waving the USA badge at the crowd and shushing them.

Canadian commentators weren’t happy. “Classless,” said Craig Forrest on TV. At TSN’s site, Gareth Wheeler summed up the unwritten rule in this case:

An act as such is an absolute no-no in soccer.  You don’t pay homage to the badge against your former team, let alone the country of your birth.

This rule was at the heart of yesterday’s Twitter arguments. A lot of WoSo fans insisted that they’ve seen men celebrating the same way, taunting fans, etc. Two issues with that:

1. It’s rare to see players doing such things, as Wheeler says, “against your former team, let alone the country of your birth.”

2. If, say, an English-born player did while playing for Scotland against England, that just might make the news. The ensuing riot certainly would. And you’d have plenty of English commentators calling the act “classless” or worse. I couldn’t find specific examples, but I think that’s because it just isn’t done. More common is the example of Polish-born German player Lukas Podolski, who scored twice against Poland in Euro 2008 and refused to celebrate at all.

So as with a lot of Hope Solo’s controversies, the “sexist double standard” argument doesn’t hold water. (And as someone who greatly appreciates men’s AND women’s soccer, I get rather irritated with false stereotypes in either direction, and then I tweet too much and get unfollowed by a bunch of disgruntled people. Sorry about that, though I’d also suggest getting Hootsuite and making a few lists so you can tune it out when some people in your feed start a lively discussion that you’re not enjoying. In any case, I’ll wrap it up more quickly in the future so you don’t have to adjust your timelines. All that said, I found a lot of the discussion helpful as I tried to clarify the situation, so thanks to those who stuck around.)

I haven’t seen much reaction from Canadian players (if you see more, please leave it in the comments). But here’s Christine Sinclair:

“Maybe not the classiest of moves,” Sinclair said of Leroux’s gesture. “She scored on us and an individual can do what they like. I probably wouldn’t have done the same, but we move on.”

Did the celebration arguments overshadow the game? Well, yes. But aside from Alex Morgan’s superb goals and the solid defense of 17-year-old Canadian Kadeisha Buchanan, it wasn’t much of a game. Canada brought a lot of emotion but little else.

Cathal Kelly:

Playing for the first time since that notorious night in Manchester, Canada showed little of the jump they’d displayed there. Nearly a year ago, they’d gone straight at the best team in the world. They’d played with abandon. It was a bar brawl.

Now in front of a boisterous sell-out crowd at BMO Field on Sunday afternoon, they tried to muscle the Americans out of their rhythm. This was a planned assault, and as plodding as that sounds.

Tactically, it was smart. Aesthetically, it was turgid. Functionally, it was useless.

The atmosphere was promising. The passion many WoSo fans have yearned to see at their stadiums was finally there. I thought it was clever to hear fans counting to six, a reference to the puzzling free kick that helped the USA in that Olympic semifinal, every time U.S. goalkeeper Nicole Barnhart had the ball.

So if you want me to respond to a comment, do it here. Out of deference to those who are done talking about this, I’m not going to bring it up again on Twitter.

I think the last word on Twitter should go to Heather Mitts:

Yes, they do.

Postscript: As I was writing this post, Sydney Leroux started a tweet with “When you chant racial slurs.” Plenty of Canadians, including some I know to have been at the game, vehemently deny they heard anything of that nature. If she heard it from one person one time, of course, that’s too much. But in light of Boston Breakers fans (ironically, Leroux’s NWSL team) being unfairly smeared as racist in a fairly prominent book, I’m not about to do the same thing to Canadian fans. I think we can agree that the overwhelming majority, somewhere between 95 and 99.99 percent of people in BMO, would abhor such things.

Sure, I’ve seen the video in which one guy is recorded yelling a couple of nasty (sexist, not racist, not that one is “better” than the other) words. That’s bad. But that’s not a “chant.” A chant involves many people saying and repeating the same thing.

I can’t say Leroux heard absolutely nothing, and I’m sure she’s received all sorts of abuse from random racist morons on Twitter. I don’t mean to diminish that or excuse it. But I’m not going to give any credence to the thought that racism was widespread at BMO yesterday until someone produces evidence to the contrary.

Now back to the NWSL, where we’re still taking up a collection to pay the fines of Seattle staffers complaining about a call that was, indeed, quite wrong.

*Correction: Leroux played youth soccer for Canada before FIFA adjusted its age ranges. She was on Canada’s U19 World Championship team in 2004. Some trivia: Her teammates included Robyn Gayle, Sophie Schmidt, Emily Zurrer, Jodi-Ann Robinson and Golden Boot winner Brittany Timko. Among the U.S. players: Ashlyn Harris, Rachel Buehler, Stephanie (Lopez) Cox, Becky Sauerbrunn, Amy Rodriguez, Yael Averbuch, Nikki Krzyzik, Angie Woznuk and Megan Rapinoe. Other teams: Veronica Boquete (Spain), Simone Laudehr (Germany), Celia Okoyino da Mbabi (Germany) and Marta (Brazil).

Germany needed a late equalizer and penalties to get past Nigeria in the quarterfinals, but the high-scoring team beat the USA 3-1 in the semifinals and took the title against China 2-0. Third-place game: USA 3, Brazil 0. The highlight for Canada: Coming back from 3-0 down to draw Germany 3-3 in group play.

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