… Having been a part of Mexico’s program, participating with their U20 team, and playing in the 2012 U20 World Cup, she worked her way onto a much bigger international stage with the senior Mexican Women’s National Team for the 2015 World Cup.
That opportunity dropped in her lap right as she was finishing up her college career at the University Of Michigan. Like most young girls with footballing talent, Murillo had dreams of playing professionally someday.
“I don’t think a lot of people will believe me when I say it, but playing professionally in the United States was a dream I had before even playing in the World Cup,” said Murillo.
“It’s been okay,” is Fara Williams’ best way of summing up Reading’s stop-start season so far. Three leagues game have seen the Royals comfortably beat Yeovil before a draw against West Ham was followed by defeat to Birmingham City last weekend.
Fortunes have been mixed in the Continental Cup too with a victory over Manchester United backed up only by defeat to Everton.
“We’d have probably wanted a better result against Birmingham but it was through no fault but our own,” said England’s most capped footballer. “Our performance wasn’t good enough; on another day with what we have in our team we could beat them but we’ve had two tough games so we can’t complain too much with four points from three games.”
Williams, 34, laments the injuries that have hampered Reading’s season, including an operation the midfielder herself underwent during preseason.
… The triathlon and running worlds immediately began armchair analyzing everything from collegiate stats to her body type to decide which sport was right for her. Jorgensen ignored it all. “I just wasn’t motivated to do the same thing again,” she says. “My heart wasn’t in it.” Lemieux puts it more bluntly: “It’s no secret that triathlon found Gwen. She was never super in love with it.”
Her husband is right. But pursuing triathlon glory transformed Jorgensen from a conservative accountant into a risk-taking, unbreakable champion. It gave her the confidence to risk giving up everything from sponsorships to prize money and follow a different path. And if she could win gold in a sport she merely liked, what could she achieve in one she truly loves?
… When I think of the most valuable coach, I definitely think of a coach like Geno Auriemma, and the things I learned from him that stick out in my mind are his passion for the game, competing at all the little things and doing it at a high level. He’d always take time at some point during practice to read us some type of life lesson there or to help us see the bigger picture of why we were doing what we were doing. He was an excellent vision caster. He would motivate us and show us that we could be better. He would inspire us to and tell us that it was our team and it was our experience. As a young person growing up and learning that lesson to focus not on the outcome but working toward, it was invaluable. It will help me when I start the coaching process for these top coaches, I’ll be a part of them, judging the final three.
… It was a series of stress fractures that led Jewett to pick up swimming and biking for cross-training. “For me, it was a gradual transition to doing triathlons,” says Jewett. “I got a foot injury that lingered for well over a year. During that time, I was pool running and it was getting boring.” Being a U of T student, she had seen the school’s triathlon club around and decided to join in on the swim sessions. Following another foot injury, her boyfriend encouraged her to add in some cycling to her cross-training regime. Little did she know she was developing the tools to become a triathlete.
Last year, Jewett did a few swim-bike races. This year, she tagged on the running and competed in her first full season of triathlons.
Before the 2018 season, Jewett wasn’t thinking of making the switch to triathlons. Instead, it was a way to keep her running mileage down. “Now, I’m running less, three to four days a week and getting my other training through swimming and biking,” says Jewett. The approach seems to have worked. Not just by the results, but being injury-free, “It’s something that hasn’t happened in a while – to go a full season without injuries.” Jewett thinks that this is likely due to not as much intensity and pounding on the track. “I feel the volume in training for the half triathlon distance is much better on my body than the intensity on the track.”
Joan Benoit Samuelson, the 1985 Chicago Marathon champion and one of the most revered American women distance runners in history, is set to compete in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
True to her unflagging competitive spirit, the 61-year-old will attempt to become the world’s first woman in her 60s to run a marathon in under three hours.
Dawn Staley knows the pressure that comes with coaching USA Basketball. It’s gold medal or bust.
She experienced it first as a player with the U.S., then as an assistant and now as the team’s head coach. She’s been successful in each position, helping the Americans win gold.
“Dawn’s demeanor is so calm and confident I think that helped us,” said four-time World Cup gold medalist Sue Bird after the U.S. beat Australia to win a third straight World Cup title. “I think that helped us. … Dawn, the entire time, was saying you know what, we’re worried about guarding them, but they had to worry about guarding us, too. It put it into a nice perspective and allowed us to be calm and that’s what we needed.”
Women account for nearly half of the NFL’s fan base, yet they make up just a third of league employees, according to CBS News. The league continues to be overwhelmingly male-dominated — there has never been a woman head coach or general manager of an NFL team.
But there are a few women working hard to break the sport’s glass ceiling. In fact, at an NFL forum held earlier this year for women in sports, Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera encouraged those women to keep pushing to make their football goals reality.
“There are jobs for women involved in the NFL and they’re not on the outside, they’re on the inside,” CBS News reports him saying. “They’re making decisions.”
The NWSL, Utah Royals FC and U.S. Soccer announced Thursday that NWSL players will be taking part in a cost-free 10-week coaching course at Zions Bank Real Academy Training Center in Herriman, Utah. The course will begin September 30, and 21 NWSL players are taking part in the program, the first of its kind available to the league.
Objectives: This study aims to develop generic velocity thresholds for the analysis of external load data collected in international women’s football matches.
Methods: Doppler-derived recordings of instantaneous velocity and acceleration were collected (10 Hz GPS) from 27 international female football players during 52 international matches between 2012 and 2015. Data were examined with k-means, Gaussian mixture model (GMM), and Spectral Clustering methods to identify four velocity zones, in each completed half of match-play (277 observations). Spectral Clustering was also performed with 4 different smoothing parameters ( values of 0, 0.001, 0.01, and 0.1). Linear-mixed modelling was used to determine generic squad thresholds, accounting for the within-subject variation.
Results: k-means and GMM generated low transition velocities, which had limited logical validity and deemed not fit for purpose. Spectral Clustering with a value of 0.1 derived thresholds that differed from the various methods adopted in existing literature and industry practice, yet providing a rigorous, acceptable, and feasible determination of velocity thresholds.
Conclusion: Velocities of 3.46 (12.5 km h−1), 5.29 (19.0 km h−1), and 6.26 m s−1 (22.5 km h−1) are recommended as entry criteria into high, very-high velocity, and sprinting locomotor categories, respectively, for the purpose of external load assessments in elite women’s football.
Knee joint coordination during jump landing in different directions is an important consideration for injury prevention. The aim of the current study was to investigate knee and hip kinematics on the non-dominant and dominant limbs during landing. A total of 19 female volleyball athletes performed single-leg jump-landing tests in four directions; forward (0°), diagonal (30° and 60°) and lateral (90°) directions. Kinematic and ground reaction force data were collected using a 10-camera Vicon system and an AMTI force plate. Knee and hip joint angles, and knee angular velocities were calculated using a lower extremity model in Visual3D. A two factor repeated measures ANOVA was performed to explore limb dominance and jump direction. Significant differences were seen between the jump directions for; angular velocity at initial contact (p < 0.001), angular velocity at peak vertical ground reaction force (p < 0.001), and knee flexion excursion (p = 0.016). Knee coordination was observed to be poorer in the early phase of velocity-angle plot during landing in lateral direction compared to forward and diagonal directions. The non-dominant limb seemed to have better coordination than the dominant limb during multi-direction jump landing. Therefore, dominant limbs appear to be at a higher injury risk than non-dominant limbs.
Professional mentorships used to be the workplace norm, but today they’re hard to find, even though they matter more than ever. Here’s how to find one, and how to get the most from it.
… For Stanford University women’s volleyball, our in-season training philosophy is simple: We believe in continual growth and development during the competitive slate. Our training schedule maximizes each session, and we emphasize load management so players aren’t overworked. By the end of the season, we hope to be one of the strongest teams in the country and, more importantly, have 100 percent athlete availability.
Though simple, this philosophy has been incredibly effective. In the 2017 season, we made the program’s 21st national semifinal appearance, which was preceded by our seventh NCAA Division I championship in 2016.
… Recently, I tested out a 3D body scanner by Naked Labs ($1,395). The scanner comes as two main parts. The first part is a full-length smart mirror with 3D depth sensors, an Intel x86 processor, and 4 GB DDR4 RAM. The second part is a spinning scale with motion and weight detection. Together, they capture 4 million different data points and create a 3D model of your body. They also measure each main part of your body within 5 mm accuracy and provide insights on your physical fitness.
Knowing my body looks nothing like the fit models you typically see in advertisements for scales and fitness devices, I was nervous to try out the product and get an honest assessment of my physical fitness. I decided to go for it anyway and try out the device.
Noteworthy – The Journal Blog, Jennifer Mankoff from
… uncovering negative stories is a fundamental way we learn about structural inequalities that impact the very topic of his article — why some women choose not to code. I want to emphasize that the personal vignettes I share below are, for the most part, not egregious or unusual. Unlike other colleagues who have bravely spoken out, I have not faced sexual harassment at work, thanks to a combination of luck and having had great colleagues and mentors throughout my career. But my anecdotes illustrate the structural inequalities that women face, even in environments that are supportive and awake to the risks and importance of supporting women.
To evaluate the diagnostic validity of the Kerlan-Jobe orthopedic clinic shoulder and elbow score (KJOC) and the Closed kinetic upper extremity stability test (CKCUEST) to assess functional impairments associated with shoulder injury in overhead female athletic populations. DESIGN:
Cross-sectional design. METHODS:
Thirty-four synchronized swimming and team handball female athletes completed the KJOC and the CKCUEST during their respective team selection trials. Unsupervised learning using k-means algorithm was used on collected data to perform group clustering and classify athletes as Injured or Not Injured. Odds ratios, likelihood ratios, sensitivity and specificity were computed based on the self-reported presence of shoulder injury at the time of testing or during the previous year. RESULTS:
Seven of the 34 athletes were injured or had suffered a time-loss injury in the previous year, representing a 20.5% prevalence rate. Clustering method using KJOC data resulted in a sensitivity of 86%, a specificity of 100% and a 229.67 diagnostic odds ratio. Clustering method using CKCUEST data resulted in a sensitivity of 86%, a specificity of 37% and a 3.53 diagnostic odds ratio. CONCLUSIONS:
KJOC had good diagnostic validity to assess shoulder function and differentiate between injured and non-injured elite synchronized swimming and team handball female athletes. The CKCUEST seemed to be a poor screening test but may be an interesting test to evaluate functional upper extremity strength and plyometric capacity. Unsupervised learning methods allow to make decisions based on numerous variables which is an advantage when considering the usually substantial overlap in screening test scores between high- and low-risk athletes.
Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy journal from
PURPOSE:
To determine if female football players who had longer durations of rehabilitation, measured in months, after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction would have lower tuck jump scores (fewer technique flaws) and smaller asymmetries during drop vertical jump landing. METHODS:
One-hundred-and-seventeen female football players, aged 16-25 years, after primary unilateral ACL reconstruction (median 16 months, range 6-39) were included. Athletes reported the duration of rehabilitation they performed after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Athletes also performed the tuck jump and drop vertical jump tests. Outcome variables were: tuck jump score, frontal plane knee motion and probability of peak knee abduction moment during drop vertical jump landing. RESULTS:
There was no difference in tuck jump score based on duration of rehabilitation (n.s.). No interaction (n.s.), difference between limbs (n.s.), or duration of rehabilitation (n.s.) was found for peak knee abduction moment during drop vertical jump landing. No interaction (n.s.) or difference between limbs (n.s.) was found for frontal plane knee motion, but there was a difference based on duration of rehabilitation (P = 0.01). Athletes with > 9 months of rehabilitation had more frontal plane knee motion (medial knee displacement) than athletes with < 6 months (P = 0.01) or 6-9 months (P = 0.03).
CONCLUSION:
As there was no difference in tuck jump score or peak knee abduction moment based on duration of rehabilitation, the results of this study press upon clinicians the importance of using objective measures to progress rehabilitation and clear athletes for return to sport, rather than time alone.
American gold-medal ice hockey player Angela Ruggiero said she hopes her pledge to donate her brain to concussion research would encourage other female athletes to do the same so scientists could gain a fuller picture of the problem.
… In Canada, unintentional injuries are the leading cause of disability in youth. One in three youth seek medical attention for a sport or recreational injury each year and four young people are hospitalized for an injury every day. Lower extremity injuries comprise more than 60 per cent of these injuries.
“Injuries are not accidents; they are predictable and preventable,” says Dr. Carolyn Emery, PT, PhD, chair of the Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary. “The best treatment for youth sport and recreational injury is prevention.”
Last week, ahead of the NWSL Championship between the North Carolina Courage and the Portland Thorns, the managing director of the National Women’s Soccer League, Amanda Duffy, addressed the media and discussed a wide variety of issues.
One of the biggest pieces of news to drop from the media availability regarded the league’s streaming services for the 2019 season. While the league has not yet made a formal announcement, Duffy told reporters that next year’s non-televised games will be streamed via Yahoo! Sports. The arrangement will work similar to the last two season on go90 meaning the games will be streamed free to users in the United States who register. International viewers will continue to have access to the matches direct from the league website. Vista will continue to produce the streams.
Also looking forward to next year, Duffy said that roster sizes will increase as a “growth step” in adding more players into the league. In addition, she said the NWSL will again be looking at increasing salaries and housing allowances to continue to improve the environment for the players.
… Marta taking home the award for a sixth time has caused bafflement within the women’s game given the other more obvious candidates for the honour, such as Pernille Harder, who has had two very strong seasons, notably leading Denmark to the European Championship finals and scoring in the 2018 Champions League final for Wolfsburg. Harder was named Uefa’s women’s player of the year but didn’t even make the top three for Fifa’s award. Also Australia’s Sam Kerr, who finished as top scorer in the National Women’s Soccer League in the US for a second year running, a league widely regarded as one of the strongest in women’s football.
Then there is my old Chelsea teammate Fran Kirby, who is coming off the back of an outstanding season, winning multiple individual accolades, including the Football Writers’ player of the year, as well as helping Chelsea secure the double and scoring a crucial Champions League away goal at Bayern Munich. Yet, like Harder, Fran didn’t even make Fifa’s top 10.
… While the result may not have been surprising to most observers, the selection of Most Valuable Player certainly raised a few eyebrows, particularly in Australia. Liz Cambage was overlooked for MVP in favour of the USA’s Breanna Stewart. Stewart certainly enjoyed an outstanding tournament, yet general consensus among the media, even in the US, seemed to be that the award was destined for Cambage who finished with averages of 23.8 points and 10.5 rebounds per game and generally dominated throughout the competition. As consolation, Cambage was named to a slightly front court-heavy All-Star Five that featured fellow big’s Stewart, Astou Ndour of Spain, and Belgium’s Emma Meesseman alongside the lone guard of Taurasi.
The James Madison women’s soccer team has won four straight matches via shutout as the Dukes embrace the use of analytics in 2018.
To monitor movement and energy levels, players are wearing GPS and heart rate units during matches. Information from the technology is helping the coaching staff make decisions on substitutions and player usage.
“I think right now our players are working at a really, really high level and it’s awesome that we can look at it on the bench and see what they are doing and make decisions about the game and give the girls the feedback,” said head coach Joshua Walters, Sr. ” ‘Hey listen for you to perform well in the second half and get the high intensity sprints that we want, we have to sub you at the 25th minute’ and our kids have bought into it. They look at it, they see the science and they are like “Alright, I believe in this, let’s go”.”
In a four month spell between March and July this year, three new MLS attendance records were set – each of them for an Atlanta United game. In fact, all five of MLS’s record attendances have been for Atlanta United games. But their impact on North American football cannot be quantified in numbers alone.
In just two years, Atlanta United have changed the landscape in MLS. There’s a good chance you’ve seen the scenes. They bounce around social media every so often: the Tifos, the flags, the Icelandic Thunderclap which has been adopted by the club’s supporters. But on the field, too, Atlanta United have set a precedent. That is down, in no small part, to the work of Lucy Rushton.
She is the head of technical recruitment and analysis who has helped to pull together the most dynamic, exciting and entertaining team in MLS. In Josef Martinez, Atlanta United boast the league top goalscorer. In Miguel Almiron, they have the league’s most creative playmaker. And in Tata Martino, they are coached by a former Argentina and Barcelona manager.
A woman will win the most prestigious individual trophy in soccer for the first time this year.
Awarded every year by France Football magazine since Stanley Matthews won it in 1956, the Ballon d’Or for the best player of the year will be given to both a woman and a man on Dec. 3 in Paris.
Pascal Ferre, the magazine’s editor in chief, told The Associated Press women’s soccer has grown so much in recent years it was a logical step to create the new award.
The world’s top female bobsledders had long worked for a second Olympic medal event in their sport.
Progress toward gender equality in bobsled is an uphill climb, however, and has proven to move in inches rather than miles.
In July, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that in an attempt to balance gender participation in the Winter Games, a second women’s bobsled event, the monobob, would be added to the program for 2022. It was a bittersweet moment for many of the top women bobsledders. On one hand, they would finally have a chance for multiple medals in a single Olympics – a privilege that their male counterparts have had since 1932 when men’s two-man was included alongside four-man for the first time. On the other hand, many athletes, including three-time Olympic medalist and Women’s Sports Foundation President-elect Elana Meyers Taylor, could not help feeling deflated.
