My shots weren’t falling. It felt like there was a lid on the basket. Defensively, I wasn’t doing what I normally do. I didn’t feel nervous, but maybe that’s why I played so badly. Chris Dailey (UConn associate head coach) told me before I left, “Don’t let anything come to you, go get it.” I think in the preseason games I was waiting for things to come to me. Preseason was kind of to get all of that out of the way.
Tina Charles gave me some advice after a preseason game. She said, “Focus on doing one thing really well and then just kind of build off that each day.” Our first game I was really focused on rebounding and then when I got rhythm with that I focused on cutting hard and on my defense. I think that if I keep building onto that then my rhythm will come a lot easier.
Abby Smith vividly remembers the date, reciting it from memory with ease.
It was May 16, 2016, just under a week after suffering a season-ending knee injury, that she went under the knife to repair her anterior cruciate ligament and patellar tendon during her rookie season with the Boston Breakers.
At the time, the Breakers’ medical staff told her it would take around two years to fully recover from the traumatic injury, which she suffered on a non-contact play in the 29th minute of a 1-0 loss to the Chicago Red Stars.
It was anything but an an easy recovery; Smith had platelet-rich plasma injections to the same knee in June of the following year because of complications in her recovery, causing her to miss much of the 2017 season.
But when the Breakers folded and the expansion club Utah Royals FC had the chance to bring Smith to the Wasatch Front with the No. 5 pick of the 2018 NWSL dispersal draft, they couldn’t resist — even with the injury question marks.
Very few players can claim to have had a 2018 quite like Nikita Parris. The flying Manchester City winger scored 11 goals from January on in all competitions for her club while her record of eight goals in 22 appearances for her country is impressive to say the least.
Despite her brilliance and continuous improvement on the pitch, questions and criticisms over her temperament and antics on the pitch have circled over the 24-year-old since she hit the big-time.
But Parris says she has “matured” as a player and adds her passion comes from a sheer will to win football matches.
“I think I’ve grown as a player and a person,” said the Liverpool-born winger. “I’d say I’ve matured. On the odd occasion you might still find me shouting or screaming at a referee because I do get increasingly frustrated but I have tried to control my temper.
At 15, I’d collected a dozen pen pals around the country. They were women and men in their 40s and 50s, and they all wanted something from me. They wrote to me often, hoping to convince me that my life could change because of them—and they were right. They were Division I volleyball coaches who’d spotted an inkling of potential in me.
The NCAA recently reported college recruiting generally happens sooner for girls than boys. Over 37 percent of female volleyball players on Division I teams were contacted during their freshman year of high school, which means we were courted by college coaches before we went to our first homecoming dance. First came the letters and emails. They sent team photos around the holidays with 20 girls standing tall in tight jerseys with cherry-red Santa hats photoshopped over their ponytails. Handwritten notes of encouragement scrawled across university letterhead arrived in the mail every month: “The jump serve is looking good, keep up the nice work.” “Saw you play in Dallas, sorry about the loss. Your passing looked consistent though!” Other times, they sent simple postcards of the team celebrating a big win, players frozen mid-blockjump or mid-cheer in a photograph, with statistics about the season printed on the back and a rushed signature from the coach at the bottom.
The burgeoning careers of Madison Keys and Sloane Stephens have often run parallel.
The two friends made breakthrough runs to Australian Open semifinals just before their 20th birthdays. Both reached their first Grand Slam final at last year’s United States Open, which Stephens won in straight sets.
On Sunday at Roland Garros, each reached the quarterfinals of the French Open for the first time to complete a quartet of sorts. For Keys, 23, and Stephens, 25, the milestone meant that they had both advanced to the quarterfinals or better at all four Grand Slam events.
“Super cool,” Stephens said, grinning broadly at mention of the feat. “Isn’t that exciting?”
This year’s Boston Marathon was a race many runners were happy to put behind them, but for several women who unexpectedly finished at the top of the women’s field, April 16, 2018 was one of the greatest days in their running careers.
These off-the-radar runners were suddenly thrust into the spotlight, as people clamored to learn more about the amazing women who fought through epic weather to beat some of the world’s best marathoners.
“It’s been pretty crazy with all the interviews and all the attention, but it’s been a great experience,” says Jessica Chichester, a 31-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y. who finished in fifth place.
Pittsburgh Director of Athletics Heather Lyke sits down with CollegeAD’s Jonathan Yates to discuss a number of topics including Lyke’s first year on campus as well as the upcoming football matchup with Penn State. We’ve earmarked and highlighted several different topics and points throughout the interview that might be of most intrest to you. Yates and Lyke dive in on hiring, leadership, preperation, her plans for Pitt, and much more. [video, 33:22]
Kiwi coaching roles are dominated by men and a professor who specialises in sport and leadership says it needs to change.
While female participation rates in sports are on the rise the same cannot be said for female representation in coaching, which is completely underwhelming, Massey University Professor Sarah Leberman has found through her research.
At international level the only premier team sports to have female coaches were the Silver Ferns and White Ferns. This could be detrimental to the growth of women’s sport, or at the very least women in leadership roles, said Leberman, who is a co-founder of Women in Sport Aotearoa.
The incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures is 2 to 4 times higher in female athletes as compared with their male counterparts. As a result, a number of recent studies have addressed the hypothesis that female and male patients sustain ACL injuries via different mechanisms. The efficacy of prevention programs may be improved by a better understanding of whether there are differences in the injury mechanism between sexes. Hypothesis/Purpose:
To compare knee positions at the time of a noncontact ACL injury between sexes. It was hypothesized that there would be no differences in the position of injury. Study Design:
Controlled laboratory study. Methods:
Clinical T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from 30 participants (15 male and 15 female) with a noncontact ACL rupture were reviewed retrospectively. MRI scans were obtained within 1 month of injury. Participants had contusions associated with an ACL injury on both the medial and lateral articular surfaces of the femur and tibia. Three-dimensional models of the femur, tibia, and associated bone bruises were created via segmentation on MRI. The femur was positioned relative to the tibia to maximize bone bruise overlap, thereby predicting the bone positions near the time of the injury. Flexion, valgus, internal tibial rotation, and anterior tibial translation were measured in the predicted position of injury. Results:
No statistically significant differences between male and female patients were detected in the position of injury with regard to knee flexion (P = .66), valgus (P = .87), internal tibial rotation (P = .26), or anterior tibial translation (P = .18). Conclusion:
These findings suggest that a similar mechanism results in an ACL rupture in both male and female athletes with this pattern of bone bruising. Clinical Relevance:
This study provides a novel comparison of male and female knee positions at the time of an ACL injury that may offer information to improve injury prevention strategies.
Multiple factors are likely associated with an adolescent athlete’s ability to return to play after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction (ACLR). OBJECTIVE:
To investigate the relationship between self-reported and functional outcome measures on return-to-play timing in an adolescent population, in athletes who returned and those who did not return to sport, and to identify a cutoff value for isometric quadriceps strength that could serve as a clinical target for maximizing the odds of returning to play after ACLR. DESIGN:
Cross-sectional study. SETTING:
Outpatient clinic. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS:
Adolescent athletes who underwent ACLR and completed clinical measures at their 3- and 6-month follow-up appointments were included. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS:
Clinical measures included functional outcomes of isometric and isokinetic strength and the pediatric version of the International Knee Documentation Committee subjective form and the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Return to Sport After Injury scale. Physician clearance dates for return to play were obtained from patient records. RESULTS:
Higher strength measures were associated with better scores on the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Return to Sport After Injury and the pediatric version of the International Knee Documentation Committee instruments at each follow-up. Differences were found in isometric extension strength ( P = .001) and isokinetic extension strength at 180°/s ( P = .03) and 300°/s ( P = .002) between patients who returned to sports and those who did not. A 6-month isometric extension deficit (mean Limb Symmetry Index = 85.48 ± 23.15) displayed high accuracy (area under the curve = 0.82, 95% confidence interval = 0.68, 0.95) for identifying patients who returned to play after ACLR. CONCLUSIONS:
Higher strength measures at both 3 and 6 months after ACLR were associated with greater self-reported knee function and greater readiness to return to functional activities at 6 months and ultimately earlier return to sport in adolescent athletes. These results provide evidence that self-reported outcome scores should be used as an additional screening tool in conjunction with quadriceps strength testing to help provide realistic recovery timeframes for adolescent patients.
Today, as part of the final R16 lineup at the French Open, Serena Williams will have the opportunity to bring her near-perfect record over Maria Sharapova to a staggering 20 to 2. Many have wondered how much Williams’ dominance over the ‘Unstoppable’ author is fuelled by more than pure ability. In this post, we attempt to understand the inexplicable part of their head-to-head.
Although many were skeptical of their chances of advancing to the fourth round, all eyes will nonetheless be on Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams when they battle for a spot in the 2018 French Open quarterfinals. Still, they may say little about the quality we can expect from their match, as much of the interest in the rivalry has more to do with the drama of their polar personas and than the competitiveness of their matches.
StatsBomb releasing its industry-leading data for free is the culmination of two important advancements in the football industry.
First is the momentum and development in Women’s Football. Following UEFA’s #weplaystrong in 2017, initiatives such as the current #whatif campaign from Women in Football, and many others, attention to the Women’s game is increasing from grassroots through to media channels, football associations and corporate sponsorship on a global scale.
As noted at our May 9 Global Data Launch, StatsBomb are fully behind this. Not only do we believe that analysis of the Women’s game deserves equal attention as the Men’s game, we know that by doing this better, we will improve the overall understanding of the game. We also want to encourage more Women to enter into Analytics, Technology and R&D and have been racking our brains trying to work out how we can best do this ever since we officially formed our company in January 2017.
Alongside the developments in Women’s Football, StatsBomb have had a phenomenal response to the launch of StatsBomb Data – from the Media, Football clubs and Associations and also from aspiring analysts. There is an abundance of educated, dedicated football fans seeking quality data for use in personal research and University projects as well as those who produce content for various media sites and publications worldwide.
Combining the global need for free quality data, and our desire to propel the overall knowledge of the Women’s game, the solution is obvious.
… In 2016, Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev carried out one of the biggest studies of what works in diversity and inclusion in the US, called Why diversity programs fail. Their analysis found that what actually works is not always what we might guess. In particular, they found that mandatory diversity training, such as unconscious bias training and specialised grievance systems, tended to backfire, actually reducing diversity on average across the 829 US firms they monitored. Instead, the authors found that self-managed teams, targeted university recruitment and mentoring had a positive effect on diversity.
This echoes conclusions from other areas, like financial education, where classroom-based or online training has been found to have little to no long term effect on behaviour. Mandatory training and specialised grievance systems also run the risk of alienating those who don’t think their behaviour needs to be ‘corrected’ and see this as implicit criticism of who they are. This means there is considerable scope for alternative approaches to be explored.
If motherhood is a career killer, it is no surprise women remain so under-represented in sport, a sector that has been surprisingly slow to embrace the benefits of equality
… Among the most important capacities that you take with you today is your curiosity. You must guard it, for curiosity is the beginning of empathy. When others say that someone is evil or crazy, or even a hero or an angel, they are usually trying to shut off curiosity. Don’t let them. We are all capable of heroic and of evil things. No one and nothing that you encounter in your life and career will be simply heroic or evil. Virtue is a capacity. It can always be lost or gained. That potential is why all of our lives are of equal worth.
In the first of a two-part series, Jessica Piasecki sheds light on the female athlete triad – osteoporosis, disordered eating and amenorrhea
There has been extensive media coverage of female athletes’ menstrual cycles and the new term RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport). However, there seems to be some confusion as to the correct term – has RED-S replaced triad? And why is the menstrual cycle impacting the physiological processes so much?
For most women, one of the most stressful parts of giving birth is not knowing when it’s going to happen. Roughly 15 million pregnant women face life-threatening spontaneous preterm birth every year. And doctors don’t really understand why some pregnancies — nearly 10 percent of all U.S. births — end suddenly, weeks or even months before they should.
Now, a pilot study from researchers at Stanford University suggests that it may soon be possible to use a blood test to improve predictions of both healthy and too-early due dates. Such predictions could also help better explain why some births begin in crisis.
“It’s really hard to understate the potential of what these folks are proposing,” said Dr. Thomas McElrath, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The potential for how that may feed into care and into research and into furthering not just maternal but neonatal outcomes is huge. We’re just probably beginning to get a sense of what that may involve.”