It was a modern-day Cinderella story: a tax accountant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, turned Olympic gold medalist. Gwen Jorgensen was made for prime time, and Olympic commentators at the 2016 Rio Games breathlessly recounted how a random phone call changed the course of her life.
“Have you ever considered triathlon?” asked the voice on the other end. Barb Lindquist’s job was to identify single-sport athletes who showed Olympic potential in triathlon. Jorgensen, a former collegiate swimmer and runner at the University of Wisconsin, was at the top of her list.
At first, Jorgensen laughed. She firmly believed her athletic days were behind her after graduation. Though she won a handful of 3,000 and 5,000 meter races in her collegiate career, her times were hardly competitive in an Olympic context. Also, she didn’t know how to ride a bike—and wasn’t that a prerequisite for a sport that combined swim, bike and run?
Lindquist acknowledged that the odds were stacked against Jorgensen, but there was something there. “We think you’d be quite good at it,” said Lindquist. “Just give it a try.”
When Angelique Kerber hired Wim Fissette at the end of 2017, she was “curious” as to what they could achieve together.
Seven months later and any questions she had have been answered. Kerber is a Wimbledon champion. The German, who won two Grand Slam titles in 2016, dropped out of the top 20 last year. But she was not content to led the slide linger. Kerber and coach Fissette sat down to discuss her goals.
“Last year when I started with Angie, I looked at all her stats from the year before, and I saw she was serving 75 percent to the backhand,” the Fissette told ESPN.com at Wimbledon.
“So I told her, that is something that needs to change, the percentage going to the forehand needs to be much higher. After the first month, she played in Australia, we saw the stats and we saw immediately how much she improved.”
… Lee vividly remembers her friend’s motionless body strewn like a napkin across the floor. She remembers getting rushed into the locker room, her heart thumping, her hands and feet trembling with fear.
Lindsay-Noel was paralyzed with a broken spine.
It was Lee’s first exposure to serious injury, and it made the back pain she soon felt even more of a concern. She couldn’t stoop to pick up a pencil she dropped in math class. Using the bathroom felt like her back was being branded. She cried when she sneezed.
“You’re 14 years old,” her father told her. “You shouldn’t be like this.”
A specialist found that her spine was unstable, a condition that left unaddressed could lead to paralysis. She was advised to take a year away from gymnastics, with no running or physical strain of any kind.
… When Whalen—the winningest player in league history, on its greatest dynasty—thought about retiring in March, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve asked her to stay on. After four hours of conversation, Whalen told Reeve yes, she’d keep playing. Two weeks later Gophers coach Marlene Stollings left for Texas Tech and Whalen discussed that job offer with her husband, Ben Greve, who says, “Our conversation was, ‘How do you say no to that?’”
Does Whalen ever say no to anything? “Because of the way we were raised, I want to be nice,” says Whalen, the eldest of five children reared in Hutchinson, an hour west of the Twin Cities. “I’m not good at saying no. I need to get better.” And yet, when this reporter asked Whalen if he could tag along on her Journey to No, she failed the very first test, texting in reply: “Yes, of course!”
Although soccer is predominately an endurance sport, high velocity movements may be an important indicator of athletic success. The purpose of this investigation was to establish whether squat jumps (SJs) can differentiate starters from nonstarters with a female collegiate division I soccer team. Eighteen female division I soccer athletes were separated into 2 groups: 9 starters (age: 19.5 ± 1.0; mass = 64.8 ± 11.5 kg; height = 167.5 ± 7.7 cm; games started = 18.2 ± 4.7; and minutes played = 1633.8 ± 478.2 minutes) and 9 nonstarters (age: 19.4 ± 1.4 years; mass = 63.3 ± 4.2 kg; height = 164.7 ± 6.8 cm; games started 0.7 ± 1.3; and minutes played 158.2 ± 269.3 minutes). Each athlete performed 3 maximal SJs at a starting knee angle of 110° without arm swing. Each participant’s SJ height, mean power (MP), peak power (PP), mean velocity (MV), and peak velocity (PV) were measured during each attempt by a linear position transducer. No statistically significant differences (p ≥ 0.05) in MP and PP between the starters and nonstarters were observed. However, starters performed significantly better than nonstarters in SJ height (p = 0.002), MV (p = 0.025), and PV (p = 0.015). In addition, SJ height was strongly correlated with MV (r = 0.628) and PV (r = 0.647). These findings suggest that SJ height, MV, and PV may be important variables for discriminating differences between starters and nonstarters in division I female soccer athletes and a strong indicator of explosive performance.
… The success women are having in Olympic lifting has taken one group of people by surprise more than any other: sports scientists. There’s an oddly empty database of stats relating to women and strength, and even less research related to female Olympic lifters. Many trainers end up effectively making it up as they go along when it comes to coaching their female athletes. “There’s almost no science on Olympic lifting in general, besides what Russia did in the ’80s,” says Andy Galpin, a professor at California State University Fullerton and the co-director of its Center for Sport Performance. “And if you want to look at females specifically, the number is zero – nothing exists.”
Galpin works with everyone from NFL players to UFC fighters, but lifting is of particular interest to him. He’s a lifter himself, runs a weightlifting club, and began working with King about six months ago. Frustrated at the lack of research, but also excited by the prospect of pioneering a new area of exercise physiology, Galpin and his team at Fullerton have decided to launch their own study. They’ve wrapped up phase one, in which they collected leg biopsies of 15 elite female weightlifters, including King, in order to better understand their muscles. Galpin says the study will take two to five years, but he’s already seen some surprising results.
“One thing we’re looking at is muscle-fibre types, what percentage is fast-twitch and slow-twitch,” he says. (Fast-twitch muscle generates quick bursts of movement.) “For a long time, many have presumed that females have more slow-twitch muscle fibres. We’re actually seeing the opposite. In some cases, we’re seeing almost entirely fast-twitch, which is unheard of. The beauty of this to me is that we may actually discover that women are just as well suited for this sport as men.”
… Asked before the opening game in Tournament of Nations about the general pros and cons of players venturing abroad or staying close to home in domestic leagues, U.S. coach Jill Ellis said it often came down to the quality of the league in question. The implicit takeaway was the NWSL offers a sufficiently high level of play to keep players close to home. But it also comes with a shorter season than many European teams, especially those top-end teams that play deep into the Champions League — the Lyon team already playing preseason games in the United States finished its most recent season by beating PSG in the French Cup barely 50 days ago.
Those dead months when American players are often on their own to train is a frequent source of concern, cited by Morgan, among others, as one of the reasons she ventured abroad. Australia offers an alternative — maybe not over and over again but for a season or two.
… We already know that athletes have persistent weakness and asymmetry at 1 year post-op and even beyond. I recently had one of my collegiate soccer players re-tear while helping out with a youth soccer camp. She had not yet done hop testing with me or been cleared for full soccer, but as she was 1 year out she did not think it would be an issue playing with 12 year-old girls. It only took 20 minutes before she suffered a non-contact re-injury and lateral meniscus tear.
During a media webcast, sports medicine experts from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine discussed sex-based differences in five common sports injuries.
“Sexual dimorphism is common in sports medicine, and we see difference between female and male athletes all the time,” Cordelia W. Carter, MD, said during her presentation. “Recognizing and being aware of this is key in order for to us to effectively prevent injuries in all of our athletes, as well as to customize management so that we may achieve better outcomes. Ultimately, a young athlete’s sex effects his or her outcomes, so understanding difference amongst patients can help us improve care for all.”
… The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has recognized the significance of mental
health in an athletic setting. However, many athletic programs continue to disregard the findings
of the NCAA Sports Science Institute. Universities can no longer deprive their female athletes of
their full athletic potential by minimizing the importance of the athlete as a whole. The research
and evidence provides endless proof that mental illness is real and present within the female
student-athlete community. Things will only continue to deteriorate if administrators, coaches, and
athletic trainers do not address this issue head on.
To keep more athletes on the field, we must first acknowledge the individual rather than just
the athlete. Young athletes today are more impressionable than ever before. It is important that
during a critical time in their life they are supported and understood by an athletic program that
will stand behind them through victory and defeat.
The following pieces were tailored specifically to the mental health challenges female athletes
are experiencing today. These articles illustrate the struggles and triumphs of student-athletes as
well as the best ways to support them. Firsthand accounts from researchers, sports
psychologists, coaches, and even athletes themselves highlight the most effective approaches to
care for athletes struggling with mental illness. [pdf]
Change-of-direction maneuvers (e.g., side-step cutting) are an important aspect of performance in multi-directional sports, but these maneuvers are also associated with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Despite this, the impact of biomechanics on ACL injury risk and performance is often examined in isolation. The purpose of this review was to examine the alignment between biomechanical recommendations for ACL injury prevention and performance with regard to change-of-direction maneuvers. Several studies linking change-of-direction biomechanics to both ACL injury risk and performance were examined. A degree of overlap was identified between biomechanical strategies that could both reduce ACL injury risk and enhance performance during change-of-direction maneuvers. A fore-foot footfall pattern along with trunk rotation and lateral flexion in the intended cutting direction were identified as biomechanical strategies that could both reduce potentially hazardous knee joint moments and enhance change-of-direction speed. Minimizing knee valgus during change-of-direction maneuvers may also reduce ACL injury risk, with this biomechanical strategy found to have no impact on performance. Certain biomechanical strategies proposed to reduce ACL injury risk were linked to reduced change-of-direction performance. A narrow foot placement and “soft” landings with greater knee flexion were identified as ACL injury prevention strategies that could have a negative impact on performance. The findings of this review emphasize the need to consider both ACL injury risk and performance when examining the biomechanics of change-of-direction maneuvers.
Sometimes sexism operates in such subtle ways that the experience leaves me wondering whether sexism even occurred at all. When a stranger grabs my ass, sure, I know what’s wrong with that situation. But my experience on my co-ed soccer team never felt like an obvious assault on my personhood. Instead, I gradually became aware of a slow, systemic wearing-away.
It started as a mystery. Why aren’t women playing adult co-ed sports? And why, once they start, do they so often drop out? The mystery actually started as a question to myself, but it was a different question: Am I crazy?, I texted a friend after a particularly frustrating Friday night soccer game a couple of years ago with my co-ed team. Wondering if I’m crazy is part of the experience of being a woman that I have come to accept, and when it came to playing soccer it was no different. As I stalked off the field in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I couldn’t tell if I was making a big deal out of nothing. Was I looking for something to be mad at? Were the guys really not passing to me, or was I just not as open to receive a pass as I thought I had been? Was it just me, or did they really only want the minimum number of women on the field, even though we had plenty of women subs? And why didn’t any of the other women there seem to be angry?
Figures from one multi-sport league show that its nationwide enrollment breakdown is almost exactly two-thirds male and one-third female, but that tells us nothing about actual participation, and, anecdotally, why women are less likely to come to games, and more likely to leave the league altogether.
Last August, the NCAA published a statistic indicating that Utah has the highest percentage of girls high school soccer players who get recruited by a Division I program of any state in America.
Three months later, Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen revealed at a press conference that he had purchased the FC Kansas City franchise of the National Women’s Soccer League and was moving it to the Beehive State. Speaking that day last November, Hansen cited the high numbers of participation in girls soccer here and the fact that the state’s collegiate programs are successful as reasons his new club could prosper.
While it remains to be seen how Utah Royals FC does both on the field and from a business perspective as the years go on, youth, high school and collegiate programs here are certainly benefiting the NWSL. This season alone, six of the league’s nine teams have had a player who either grew up or played collegiately in Utah, with a few having done both.
PLOS One; Yixiong Cui, Miguel-Ángel Gómez, Bruno Gonçalves, Jaime Sampaio from
Introduction
The aim of the study was to (i) analyze the match performance of professional female tennis players in different Grand Slams; (ii) model the relationships between match performance variables and relative quality; and (iii) build typical performance profiles for those players in Grand Slams. Method
Data of a total of 1369 matches were collected within 2014–2017 four Grand Slams (Australian Open: n = 499; Roland Garros: n = 249; Wimbledon: n = 249 and US Open, n = 372). Correlations between 37 performance variables and relative quality (difference of expected rounds between two competing players of given ranking) were determined and automatically classified into two groups of magnitudes via two-step cluster analysis. Higher-correlated variables were used to build players’ typical performance profiles via regression-based technique to give percentage evaluation scores (%ES), which means the percentage of matches where a performance variable value would be expected to be lower than the observed value considering the RQ of two competing players. Results
Players had more service winners, double faults, return winners and return unforced errors in the Australian Open and US Open, implying a “fast-fast” serve strategy, and higher dominance ratio and better serving performance in Wimbledon. While receiving players had better chances to break opponents’ service game in Roland Garros. Distance covered became similar in all Grand Slams. All studied variables showed obvious correlation with RQ expect for those of physical performance. Conclusions
The findings (i) indicate that female game in Grand Slams remained to be a contest over baseline, although players had good efficiency at net; (ii) demonstrate the influence of relative quality on serve and return, break point, net point and efficiency performance; and (iii) evidence the usefulness of applying %ES to evaluate performance of individual player.
University of Michigan, Michigan Institute for Data Science, MIDAS from
Ann Arbor, MI November 12. “This day-long symposium will highlight women data science researchers at U-M, provide resources and support for women pursuing careers in data science, a poster session, lunch time round table discussions, a faculty panel, and ample time for networking.” [Registration required]
Sapna Cheryan has spent much of her career researching the stereotypes that contribute to male-dominated science and technology fields.
She’s traced those ideas to childhood, to the toys boys and girls play with and to the beliefs they form about who programs a computer and who feels at home in a lab.
So when Mattel in the spring asked Cheryan, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington, to advise on its most iconic toy—the Barbie doll—it felt, somewhat ironically, like an opportunity.
Nature, Scientific Reports; Fariba Karimi, Mathieu Génois, Claudia Wagner, Philipp Singer & Markus Strohmaier from
Homophily can put minority groups at a disadvantage by restricting their ability to establish links with a majority group or to access novel information. Here, we show how this phenomenon can influence the ranking of minorities in examples of real-world networks with various levels of heterophily and homophily ranging from sexual contacts, dating contacts, scientific collaborations, and scientific citations. We devise a social network model with tunable homophily and group sizes, and demonstrate how the degree ranking of nodes from the minority group in a network is a function of (i) relative group sizes and (ii) the presence or absence of homophilic behaviour. We provide analytical insights on how the ranking of the minority can be improved to ensure the representativeness of the group and correct for potential biases. Our work presents a foundation for assessing the impact of homophilic and heterophilic behaviour on minorities in social networks.
Rock Health, Kathryn Messina and Rosie Belpasso from
In 2013, women’s voices were largely missing from healthcare conferences. By 2014, not much had changed. So we built a public database of leading women speakers to help get more talented women on stage.
Five years later, it’s clear healthcare industry conferences still have a long way to go to achieve inclusion of men and women at industry events. Of the ten healthcare technology conferences we reviewed, only three had equal representation of men and women speakers. We can do better—and we hope conference organizers will join us in committing to create more inclusive (and thus higher quality) conference experiences.
As the sun set on another day at the N.B.A. Summer League this month, a group of 60-odd power brokers gathered at an upscale restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip. They were among the league’s elite: executives who help engineer blockbuster trades, salary-cap gurus who devise contracts and scouts who identify prospects.
They sipped wine, nibbled hors d’oeuvres and made conversation; perhaps an unremarkable scene except for one thing: They were all women.
“This is the first time, to our knowledge, that this has ever happened,” said Liliahn Majeed, the N.B.A.’s vice president for diversity and inclusion.
Long known for its progressive approach toward social issues, the N.B.A. has emerged as an industry leader among men’s professional sports leagues when it comes to hiring and promoting women.