She’s being called a unicorn, the next Maya Moore, the girl who can shoot with Stephen Curry, the player every college coach wants. And she’s only 16. If you don’t know Azzi Fudd yet, you will soon.
After years of success in races from the 5K to half marathon, elite runner Emily Sisson is ready for her next big challenge: 26.2. “I’m excited to try the marathon,” says the 27-year-old, who is sponsored by New Balance and currently lives in Scottsdale, AZ. “It’s so different than any other distance.”
If Sisson performs well in her marathon debut this spring—she won’t reveal yet which race she plans to run—she will consider competing at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta next February. Given the depth of talent among American women distance runners these days, the gritty fight for the top three spots for the Tokyo Olympics won’t be easy. “I know how strong it is in the marathon,” she says. “It’s pretty exciting, and it’s making everyone up their game and bringing out the best in everyone.”
… The team have been in transition but it seems things are starting to click at the right time. “Usually you find in many teams before a big tournament it comes together and clicks,” says Ertz. “Cycles happen; after the Olympics we had retirements, we had to bring some people in. The really cool part is we’ve had some really tough opponents in the past three years.
“We definitely feel it – that we’re all coming together as a full unit, coaches and team as well, so we’re really excited for 2019.”
After the euphoria of the Super Bowl Ertz’s season took a hit as a knee injury at the SheBelieves Cup sidelined her. But fearing for her World Cup place was not on the cards. “I wasn’t really thinking about anything like that till October and qualifying. When I knew it was a two-to-three-month injury I definitely took a sigh of relief.”
The New York Times; Lovia Gyarkye, Flo Ngala, Eve Lyons from
Picture a figure skater. Who comes to mind?
Maybe it’s Nancy Kerrigan spinning gracefully. Or it’s Michelle Kwan skating with confidence and ease.
It’s possible that it is Surya Bonaly or Starr Andrews — black women whose presence on the ice remains as daring as their performances — but professional figure skaters of color make up only a fraction of the field.
It’s a reality that feels far from mind at Riverbank State Park in Harlem, where twice a week, year-round, little black and brown girls glide and twirl across the ice.
… “The stakes are just a lot higher on small things,” [Blair Braverman] said. “Any time you’re alone in the wilderness the stakes are higher. If you sprain your ankle, you’re on your own. And it’s very cold, so there’s no room for error. And once you have more than six dogs, you can’t physically control them. I can ask them to do something, but at a certain point, there is nothing you can make your dog team do.”
Maori Davenport sat in her principal’s office in silence for 45 minutes, trying to make sense of the news.
Moments earlier, she was prepping for her pregame meal. It was Nov. 30, and the star 6-foot-4 forward/center was getting ready for the fifth game of her final basketball season at Charles Henderson High School in Troy, Alabama. That’s when she got the summons to Brock Kelley’s office.
“I don’t know what this is,” Davenport remembers thinking, “but it’s probably not good.”
Tipoff was hours away. Then it wasn’t.
Kelley and coach Dyneshia Jones told Davenport that she had been ruled ineligible for the rest of her senior season. At issue was a stipend check for $857.20 sent to Davenport by USA Basketball. Davenport had led Team USA in rebounding and blocks en route to a gold medal in Mexico City at the FIBA Americas U18 Championship in August.
Scientists have identified a group of genes that induces differences in the developing brains of male and female roundworms and triggers the initiation of puberty, a genetic pathway that may have the same function in controlling the timing of sexual maturation in humans.
The study, led by Columbia University researchers, offers new scientific evidence for direct genetic effects in sex-based differences in neural development and provides a foundation to attempt to understand how men’s and women’s brains are wired and how they work.
Reactive strength index-modified (RSImod) is a measure of lower body explosiveness calculated by dividing jump height by time to takeoff. RSImod is different between stronger and weaker athletes and between males and females. The purpose of this study was to evaluate differences in RSImod between males and females while controlling for maximal strength and lower body explosiveness. Forty-three female and fifty-eight male Division-I athletes performed countermovement jumps on a force plate during unloaded (0kg) and loaded (20kg) conditions. We used an ANCOVA to test whether RSImod is different between sexes conditioning on relative maximum strength (PFa) and average RFD 0-200ms (RFD200) measured during the isometric mid- thigh pull (IMTP). Differences of 0.087 (95% CI: 0.040-0.134; p = 0.0005) and 0.075 (95% CI: 0.040-0.109, p < 0.0001) were observed for RSImod between sexes in unloaded and loaded conditions, respectively. A male with PFa of 186 (grand mean of the sample) and RFD200 of 6602 N/s (grand mean of the sample) is predicted to have 28% greater RSImod than a female of similar PFa and RFD200. Maximum strength development should be a primary aim of training in female athletes, in addition to other trainable factors, such as stiffness and RFD.
“Finding ways to be successful against European teams in Europe is something every team in the World Cup will have to do to advance deep into the tournament. So this is an essential trip in our prep for the summer,” Ellis said.
The teams the U.S. will play on its 17-day trip are among those that have improved the most since the last World Cup. France has reached at least the quarterfinals of the last seven major tournaments in which it has played. Spain, meanwhile, played in a World Cup for the first time four years ago and didn’t win a game but made it to the quarterfinals of the 2017 Euros. And Spain’s U-17 team won its World Cup last month.
“They’re a team that’s really come on. That’s why we tried to get them on our schedule in January,” Ellis said of Spain.
Online “WiDS Datathon 2019 will last from mid-to-late-January until February 28, 2019. Join the WiDS mailing list to be notified when the WiDS Datathon launches in January. Winners will be announced at the WiDS Conference at Stanford University on March 4, 2019.”
Both genders benefit from taking in a reasonable amount of sodium and possibly a small amount of carbohydrate with drinks during activity lasting multiple hours. This is especially true in hotter conditions, where sweat losses can be very high and the body needs to maintain high levels of blood plasma volume to allow the blood to transport heat to the skin and shuttle fuel and waste products to and from working muscles.
Athletes should achieve event-specific physiological requirements through careful periodization of training, underpinned by individualized and targeted nutrition strategies. However, evidence of whether, and how, elite endurance athletes periodize nutrition is scarce. Accordingly, elite international female (n = 67) and male (n = 37) middle/long-distance athletes (IAAF score: 1129 ± 54, corresponds to 13:22.49 [males] and 15:17.93 [females] in the 5000 m) completed an online survey (February–May 2018) examining self-reported practices of dietary periodization for micro (within/between-days), meso (weeks/months) and macro (across the year) contexts. Data are shown as the percentage of all athletes practicing a given strategy followed by the % of athletes reporting various beliefs or practices within this strategy. Differences according to sex, event (middle-distance [800 m/1500 m] vs. track-distance [3000 m-10000 m] vs. road-distance [marathon/race walks]), caliber (high [major championship qualifier] vs. lower), and training volume (low/moderate/high male and female tertiles) were analyzed using Chi-square test or Kruskal–Wallis Test and indicated statistically different when p ≤ 0.05. Most athletes reported eating more on hard training days (92%) and focusing on nutrition before (84%; carbohydrate intake [63%] and timing [58%]) and after (95%; protein goals [59%], timing [55%], carbohydrate goals [50%]) key sessions. Road-distance were the most (62 and 57%), and middle-distance the least (30 and 30%) likely to train fasted (p = 0.037) or restrict carbohydrates periodically (p = 0.050), respectively. Carbohydrate intake during training (58% of total) was more common in males (79%; p = 0.004) and road-distance (90%; p < 0.001) than females (53%) or middle/track-distance (48 and 37%). Most athletes (83%) reported following a specific diet before and during race day, with half of the athletes focusing on carbohydrates. Nearly all (97%) road-distance athletes reported following a during-race nutrition plan (carbohydrates/fluids:89%). Only 32% reported taking advice from a dietitian/nutritionist. Based on our analysis: (1) Road-distance athletes periodize carbohydrate availability while track/middle-distance avoid low carbohydrate availability; (2) Middle-distance runners emphasize physique goals to guide their nutrition strategies; (3) Females seem to be more cautious of increasing energy/carbohydrate intake; (4) Among all athletes, nutrition strategies are chosen primarily to improve performance, followed by reasons related to physique, adaptation and health outcomes. Overall, these athletes appear to possess good knowledge of nutrition for supporting training and competition performance.
To start off its record-setting seventh season, the NWSL announced increases in its roster sizes, player compensation figures, overall salary cap, and permitted team assistance caps. The announcements came during Thursday’s league draft, which you can stream live here.
The league minimum salary will now be $16,538 – up from $15,750, the 2018 minimum. Maximum salaries saw an increase to $46,200 (up from $44,000 in 2018). With those increases, each team’s overall salary cap goes up to $421,500. That’s an increase from the $350,000 cap in 2018.
“It’s really important that we continue to grow the compensation areas and the benefits we provide to the players,” NWSL managing director Amanda Duffy said during the league’s broadcast of the draft. “They’re employees of NWSL and we want to continue to build the relationship and create the right environments, and environments that do allow them to be successful.”
At the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, in 2012, the Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asked Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg if the world would look different with greater investments in girls and women. Sandberg, who was already famous for her “lean in” philosophy, said that the world would indeed look different. She explained, “The data is pretty clear that women spend ninety per cent of their income on their children. And men, I think it’s more like forty per cent.” She turned to the former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, then the executive director of U.N. Women, who corrected her estimation. Sandberg clarified: men spend “thirty to forty per cent.”
Over the years, I came across this statistic, again and again, on the Web sites and in the policy documents of the most powerful global development organizations, including the World Bank and United Nations agencies. It is often cited as the key piece of evidence that investing in poor girls and women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America creates a high rate of return. They will supposedly marry later and delay childbearing, and, in doing so, generate economic development, limit population growth, educate their children, improve children’s and women’s health, conserve environmental resources, and control the spread of H.I.V. They will end the so-called cycle of poverty in which individuals, families, communities, and nations get caught.
Everton will spend 80% more on running their Academy this season than they did three years ago, according to CEO Denise Barrett-Baxendale.
Speaking at Everton’s annual shareholders’ meeting last night, Barrett-Baxendale said the club aims to “outperform our competitors in all football-related disciplines” and that the Academy “is one area that we can make a big impact”.
She added: “This year we have also invested £4.5m into the Academy facilities at USM Finch Farm, including new facilities for our players’ families to help drive retention.
… In the two years since the Indianapolis Star published its first article about Nassar many former gymnasts have spoken about the work they do. They’ve described training regimens defined by long hours, bad conditions, and bosses they absolutely hate and fear. Sounds like a job to me!
Simply working hard and being terrorized by an egomaniacal superior are not enough for a person to be considered an employee, though. And, in fact, the vast majority of gymnasts, male or female, would probably never be characterized as workers. Most gymnasts—well, their parents, really—would more accurately be classified as people paying a fee for a service. Gymnasts are taught the sport by coaches, in exchange for the cost of tuition. When they show up to a competition, for which they’ve paid entrance fees, the hall has been rented, the equipment transported and safely set up, and there are judges present who have been paid to evaluate their routines. Seats are set up so friends and family can cheer them on. These gymnasts, though they work hard at their sport, could not realistically be described as workers or considered as part of a potential bargaining unit.
Although the world of English football has long been considered a man’s world, women now make up a sizeable proportion of football players and fans. But despite this, the football boardroom still remains a distinctly male domain.
The Football Association (FA) released its first gender pay gap report in March 2018, revealing a 23% gender pay gap in favour of men. The FA’s explanation for this pay gap was that fewer women than men worked in senior leadership roles. The FA suggested that this disparity was the result of a “pipeline” problem, stating that they needed “a better pipeline of talented women” to fill leadership roles.
It’s a similar story across club football, with men’s professional clubs averaging a 66% gender pay gap.
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