The abrupt end of the Boston Breakers brought out a range of emotions among players, including sadness and anger. But mostly there was an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty.
“It was definitely sad because I built such good relationships there. So coming to the realization that it wasn’t going to be a team anymore and I wasn’t going to be seeing those people on a daily basis was really sad,” said former Boston midfielder Rose Lavelle, now with the Washington Spirit. “But then I was worried, because nobody really knew how it was going to work out for us.”
The Breakers were disbanded with a dispersal draft, with most players landing on other National Women’s Soccer League teams. The team has now started giving refunds to season tickets holders. And, seven weeks into the league’s season, the displaced players are acclimating to their post-Boston careers.
It was a sad end to one of the pioneering teams in women’s professional soccer.
Sitting in a soundstage dressing room chair surrounded by a stylist, makeup artist and camera crew, Caroline Wozniacki chats amiably as her long hair is ironed flat. She’s driven herself to a photo shoot and television appearance dressed in Adidas workout gear, the faintest whiff of sweat leaching from her zip-up. Sharp tan lines circle where her tennis socks hit her legs, 4 inches above the ankle, cheeks still red from her customary two-hour court workout, followed by gym time with her trainer.
Wozniacki smiles when she talks. An effortless, perfect beam. Not too big, no hint of wolfishness or desperation or phoniness or cheese. Just white teeth, pink gums, a walking Colgate ad. The smile of someone who realized long ago the disarming power of approachability.
It is because of the smile that Wozniacki, 27, looks more like a guileless teenager than a 2018 Grand Slam titleholder and current No. 2 singles player on the WTA tour. Her swagger masked by sanguinity and packaged in standard Danish beauty (blonde, lean, unfussy). Her default manner is open, unbothered. The kind of celebrity pro people remark upon as being unexpectedly funny, or “so chill.” (Her nickname among her peers: “Sunshine.”)
There’s a reason Seattle sports fan love Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe. The women are fierce competitors who have reached the pinnacles of their respective sports through hard work and sacrifice with the Seattle Storm and Seattle Reign.
Bird is arguably the best point guard in WNBA history and has two national championships, two WNBA titles and FOUR Olympic gold medals under her belt. As for Rapinoe, she’s an international star who led the U.S. to a 2015 Women’s World Cup title and gold at the 2012 London Olympics.
But off the basketball court and soccer field, Bird and Rapinoe share a lot more than just a love for sports. Refined met up with the couple and got a chance to talk food, fame and future at Ethan Stowell’s restaurant How to Cook a Wolf (which Bird picked because she said the food was bomb). Spoiler Alert: she was right.
The 21-year-old swam the 1,500 in 15:20.48, almost 50 seconds faster than the second-place finisher. Equally as impressive is setting the record in May of a non-Olympic or world championship year.
… One person absent from the touchline and the celebrations, yet overwhelmingly responsible for the team’s success, was Emma Hayes. Rather than shouting and leaping from her seat in the dugout, as is often the case, the Chelsea manager watched her team clinch their second double – her double double if you like – from her sofa at home, with an altogether different double on her mind: the imminent arrival of twins. Hayes is 35 weeks pregnant and this season she has juggled Chelsea’s phenomenal campaign with the emotional and physical demands of pregnancy.
It is an incredible feat and has put the 41-year-old in a bigger spotlight. Yet her management, recruitment and development of players deserve the spotlight on their own.
Hayes joined Chelsea in 2012, replacing Matt Beard, who moved to Liverpool. She had gained managerial experience in the US, having been assistant manager at a then all-conquering Arsenal, and she swiftly set about building the team she wanted to lead.
… In a landscape of underfunded, underappreciated, and–let’s be honest–drama-filled women’s professional leagues, the Whitecaps have survived. Up until now, the team has carried a roster of up 37 players looking for a place to play. With no home ice or salaries to speak of, Olympians of the past, present and future have competed for the Whitecaps. Opponents vary from season to season, and have included Team South Korea, the New York Riveters and Boston Pride of the NWHL, and Minnesota prep schools after winning the 2010 Clarkson Cup in the CWHL.
Now, for the first time in Whitecaps history, players will be (modestly) paid. Additionally, the Whitecaps can now play for a chance to be an Isobel Cup Champion. The Whitecaps have been playing for fun and pride for the last 18 years.
… On May 15, the Johnson Governors won their ninth Minnesota state team title, capping off an undefeated season. On May 17, they completed the triple crown, winning the state individual singles and doubles titles. Badminton is by far the winningest athletic program in the school’s 121-year history.
The sustained dominance isn’t the only thing that sticks out about Johnson’s badminton program. Twenty out of 20 girls that make up the current varsity and JV squads are Asian—most are Hmong—as were the vast majority of all the school’s badminton teams since the late 1970s. That’s a heavily skewed demographic, even considering the school’s 54-percent Asian American population.
Badminton routinely draws 100 girls at the start of the season in March, making it Johnson’s most populous athletic program, even edging out football. These girls, first- and second-generation Americans from St. Paul’s gritty East side, have created more than an athletic dynasty—they’ve mastered a niche sport and built a point of community pride and a platform for their future success.
The purpose of this study was to record changes in total body mass, lean body mass (LBM), fat mass (FM), and body fat percentage (BF%) in female National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level softball athletes over a multiyear time frame using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (iDXA). Forty-two (20.36 ± 1.59 years) NCAA Division I collegiate softball athletes volunteered over 2 years. Subjects tested 3 times throughout the season (pre-season, mid-season, and post-season) in 2015-2017. Total and regional LBM, FM, and BF% were measured by the iDXA. A mixed-design analysis of variance was performed to examine LBM, FM, BF%, and player position interaction over time. Where appropriate, post hoc tests were used to determine statistically different variables (p ≤ 0.05). Lean body mass decreased significantly (p = 0.048) from mid-season (50.02 ± 0.28) to post season (49.67 ± 0.37). Fat mass and BF% decreased significantly for all playing positions over the season except for pitchers, who showed significantly (p < 0.000) higher levels of FM (26.56 ± 1.74) and BF% (31.77 ± 1.14) than all other positions. The current study revealed that all athletes decreased in LBM during the competitive season. Pitchers from this study consistently maintain a higher FM and BF% than the catchers, infielders, and outfielders. These data reveal that more emphasis of training and conditioning for optimal performance should be focused on the pitching position to maintain a healthy body composition.
Yesterday I posted on the importance of incorporating chocolate chip cookies into your diet. I promised I’d continue on this topic of energy availability. And so here we are now, diving into something a little more taboo– missing your period (due to sports/training). Lauren Fleshman and Stephanie Bruce have been vocal on social media about this issue. These women make me so happy–they’re getting the conversation (and hopefully the science) moving. But I think we all need to dive deeper into the physiological consequences of a missed period.
Why do we lose it? Yes we, I’ve been there too. Missing a period stems from the body not receiving enough energy (calories) to keep up with demands put on it. The body needs energy just to keep all the systems functioning. And when you are exercising, these energy demands are high! Essentially, if the energy taken in (calories consumed) is not as high as the energy expended (calories burned), then the body is in “negative energy balance“. If the body is not receiving enough energy, the first thing to shut down is reproduction. Goodbye period.
Sport Nutrtion and Exercise Metabolism journal from
Low energy availability (LEA), and subsequent relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S), has been observed in endurance, aesthetic, and team sport athletes, with limited data on prevalence in athletes in short-burst activities such as sprinting. We examined prevalence of signs and symptoms of LEA in elite female sprinters at the start of the training season (PRE), and at the end of a 5-month indoor training period (POST). Four of 13 female sprinters (31%) presented at PRE testing with at least one primary (amenorrhea, low BMD, low FSH, LH, or estradiol, RMR ≤ 29kcal/kg FFM, Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire (LEAF-Q) score ≥8) and one secondary indicator of LEA (fasting blood glucose < 4mmol/L, free triiodothyronine < 3.5pmol/L, ferritin < 25μg/L, LDL-cholesterol > 3.0mmol/L, fasting insulin < 20pmol/L, low insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), SBP < 90 and/or DBP < 60mm Hg). At POST, 7/13 athletes (54%) presented with at least one primary and one secondary indicator of LEA, three of whom had also presented with indicators of LEA at PRE. Five out of 13 (39%) athletes had previous stress fracture history, though this was not associated with current indicators of LEA (PRE: r = 0.52, P = 0.07; POST r = -0.07, P = 0.82). In conclusion, elite female sprinters may present with signs and symptoms of LEA, even after off-season rest. Medical and coaching staff should be aware of the signs and symptoms of LEA and RED-S and should include appropriate screening and intervention strategies when working with sprinters.
Gladys West is one of the people whose work was instrumental in developing the mathematics behind GPS.
Until now, her story has remained untold.
When Mrs West started her career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in the US state of Virginia in 1956, just one other black woman and two black men worked alongside her.
“I carried that load round, thinking that I had to be the best that I could be,” she says.
When they’re in pain, women wait longer in emergency departments and are less likely to be given effective painkillers than men. BBC Future investigates for our new series the Health Gap.
Lower extremity musculoskeletal injuries—such as ACL injury—are common, and the majority of those injuries occur without external player contact. In order to prevent non-contact musculoskeletal injuries, athletes must rely on accurate sensory information (such as visual, vestibular, and somatosensory) and stabilize joints during athletic tasks. Previously, proprioception tests (the senses of joint position, movement, tension or force) have been examined using static tests. Due to the role of proprioception in achievement of joint stability, it is essential to explore the development of dynamic proprioception tests. In this current opinion, the basic background on proprioception is covered, and the research gaps and future directions are discussed.
… In both Divisions I and II, female student-athletes are more likely to pursue a degree in a science, technology, engineering or math major than women in the general student body. The difference in Division I is slight, with 16 percent of female student-athletes and 15 percent of female students seeking those degrees. The difference is more pronounced in Division II, where 17 percent of female student-athletes and 11 percent of women in the general student body are pursuing STEM degrees. Within those numbers, 18 percent of black female student-athletes in Division II are pursuing degrees in the field, compared with 8 percent of black women in the general student body.
It’s entirely possible that before we see a woman as the American president, we’ll see a woman as the head coach of a team in one of the four men’s major professional sports.
That’s not an expression of political pessimism, though I feel plenty. It’s a report on what’s actually happening in the N.B.A., where a gutsy, ebullient basketball wiz named Becky Hammon is reportedly being interviewed for the top coaching position with the Milwaukee Bucks.
She’s making cracks in a glass ceiling few people even noticed, because few could imagine a woman aspiring to — or being considered for — such a role.
Men coaching women is commonplace in college and the pros. It’s expected. But women coaching men? That’s positively exotic, especially as the stakes rise. But there’s Hammon, all 5 feet 6 inches of her, ready and able not to play with the big boys but to tell them how to play.
In an effort to attract more women to soccer data analytics jobs and increase coverage of women’s soccer, @mixedknuts and @StatsBomb will make their proprietary data on NWSL, FAWSL & women’s Champions League free of charge
Florida Atlantic University reported false numbers to the government, exaggerating how many women played for its sports teams, just a year after it ranked among the worst in the country for female representation in sports.
In 2016, women represented more than half of the Boca Raton school’s enrollment but only 31 percent of its athletes. The percentage was the lowest of all 127 schools participating in the highest level of college sports.
Just one year later, FAU claimed it had erased its female participation gap. It told the U.S. Department of Education in 2017 that 51 percent of its athletes were women.
But the 20 percentage-point increase was based on an inflated number, The Palm Beach Post has found. To arrive at the higher percentage, FAU counted dozens of women athletes who did not exist.
… in 2016, male players earned $263,320 plus bonuses if they won at least 20 exhibition matches in a season, according to a Newsweek calculation. The women got a maximum of $99,000 for doing the exact same thing. That prompted four female players to file a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A new contract has since narrowed that gap, but the complaint is not yet resolved, Bloomberg reports.
It’s galling, but it also has consequences for athletes long past their playing days, something World Cup champion and two-time gold medalist Abby Wambach highlighted in her recent commencement speech to graduates at Barnard College.
She recounted her experience receiving an ESPY Icon award in 2016 following her retirement from soccer, alongside recently retired Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. As the three stood on the stage, “I had a momentary feeling of having arrived—like we women had finally made it,” Wambach said. “Then the applause ended and it was time for the three of us to exit stage left. And as I watched those men walk off the stage, it dawned on me that the three of us were stepping into very different futures.”
In 2014, the IOC published a consensus statement entitled ‘Beyond the Female Athlete Triad: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)’. The syndrome of RED-S refers to ‘impaired physiological functioning caused by relative energy deficiency and includes, but is not limited to, impairments of metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis and cardiovascular health’. The aetiological factor of this syndrome is low energy availability (LEA).1
The publication of the RED-S consensus statement stimulated activity in the field of Female Athlete Triad science, including some initial controversy2 3 followed by numerous scientific publications addressing:
The health parameters identified in the RED-S conceptual model (figure 1).
Relative energy deficiency in male athletes.
The measurement of LEA.
The performance parameters identified in the RED-S conceptual model (figure 2).
The Conversation, Sarah Zipp and Kay Standing from
Scotland’s top football club, Celtic FC, will become the first in the UK to provide free menstrual products in its stadium this autumn. The move raises awareness of the global issue of period poverty and should prompt other clubs to follow Celtic’s lead.
Period poverty – being unable to afford menstrual products – is a worldwide problem and has become a major focus of campaigns in numerous countries. It affects one in ten women aged 14 to 21 in Britain and nearly one in five in Scotland.
Many women and girls are prevented from participating in sport both because of period poverty and lack of access to sanitary products – plus the shame and stigma associated with menstruation. A recent study found 48% of girls aged 14-21 feel embarrassed by their periods, while 71% have felt embarrassed buying products. For this reason campaigns like #freeperiod, which pushes for free menstrual products in schools, focus on stigma as well as access.