This is seriously so fricken' awesome. Little things like this give me faith in humanity again.

more.joy:
In complete agreement. I wish too we could get more media coverage of women's sports in general, not just in stories like this one.

now that's what I call great sports(wo)manship!
Gotta LOVE it!

Wow, that is just simply wonderful sportsmanship! This has just brightened my day a little.

I love this.

I bet that the players of the other team would have hated winning (if that was the eventual outcome) because they were "lucky" that the best play of the game ended in an injury for that player. I'd take an honest loss over a win built on someone's unlucky turn any day of the week.

That's so awesome!

Thanks for the smile.
-aec

This is a sweet story, but I'm not really clear on what it has to do with feminism or why Fox deserves to get congratulated about it. It's a lifestyle story just like all the other heart warming quasi news that Fox puts out. Why wouldn't Fox like it, it portrays women as caring and emotional. Just like Fox usually does.

It was a great story, and even better was that ESPN ran it, as part of different features, for days.

It was a great story, and even better was that ESPN ran it, as part of different features, for days.

It was a great story, and even better was that ESPN ran it, as part of different features, for days.

yay for happy sports stories! it feels like they're so hard to come by sometimes.

I've been teaching on the college level for (mumble mumble) years now, and I've found that for women student-athletes, sports do exactly what we're always told they do: instill discipline and teamwork and other positive qualities. I love having women student-athletes in my classes. I'm not sure why the same tends not to be true of the men, but there's a lesson in there somewhere.

lucretia- this story has to do with feminism because 1) they are female athletes and 2) they are doing something pretty much considered "unthinkable" on the sportsfield (way too often considered a place for men and not for women). And I agree with the other posters- this is sportsWOMANship at its absolute best :)

This makes me so proud to be a women's sports fan! Nice jobs ladies!!!

Maybe those of us who are fans of women's team sports (esp soccer in my case) can hope for some competent coverage in 3 months from Beijing. There was precious little competent coverage of the US Women in the Women's World Cup last September (including on this blog), with the notable exception of the goalkeeper fiasco prior to the US' semifinal game.

Now THAT is eroticizing equality ...Gloria Steinem would be proud. :)

Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but I tend to agree with Lucretia. While I think what the softball players did was quite admirable, I can easily see this being twisted into another brick in the "see, women aren't good at competition, because they're naturally too kind and emotional and cooperative" wall. (When in fact, as ellestar suggests, there are many other ways to frame and interpret their actions.)

Which is of course not a reason to refrain from celebrating what they did. I'm just wary of how this is being reported, and why.

A more detailed article on the story from the NY Times, which teases out some gender implications:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/sports/baseball/30vecsey.html?ex=1210305600&en=5af0d6acc89025b2&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Is there something intrinsic to women’s sports that caused this generosity? Holtman, nearly 23, did not think so. “Not many people are ever in that position,� she said. “I would hope that our baseball players would do it.�

Knox, the Western Oregon coach, said the act “came from character.�

“They’re playing for a coach who instills it,� she said.

Knox said she absolutely would not say this demonstrated some major difference between women’s and men’s sports: “As coaches, we are so competitive, we forget this stuff. By God, I would hope I would have done the same thing.�

Would the Oakland A’s have carried a sore-legged Kirk Gibson around the bases to complete his two-run homer that gave the Dodgers a 5-4 comeback victory in the opening game of the 1988 World Series? My guess is that if Gibson had crumpled in the dirt, Tony La Russa (or Billy Martin or Leo Durocher or Earl Weaver or just about any manager) would have said, “Let him lie there.�

Here's ESPN's take on it:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/columns/story?columnist=hays_graham&id=3372631

"When in fact, as ellestar suggests, there are many other ways to frame and interpret their actions."

Like clever rules lawyering. The rules said she couldn't stay in play if she was carried by her teammate, and someone noticed that only applied to teammates on her own team. ;)

I agree with Ian in OH, let's see some coverage of women in sports this summer from the Olympics. The USA Softball team is absolutely amazing and have kicked some serious butt in the past. Unfortunately, they won't get to complete in the London Olympics in 2012 because softball got kicked out of the games. Hopefully we'll get some good coverage of their success this summer!

What a great story! At first, I, like many commentators, also worried that a story like this might make the average reader think that women are too kind-hearted to be competitive in sports, but then I thought about it more, and decided against that. I think that many of the most lauded sports stories are ones where individual players put aside their ambitions to do what was right for the team or for man(and woman)kind in general.

I never even thought about the competitiveness (sp?) when I sent this in. I was really thinking about the women who embraced a fellow woman and helped her. In the end we need to help and support other women regardless of whether they're on the other team (white vs. WoC, hetero vs. GLBTQ, wealthy vs. poor, etc).

I was thinking about the character it took to help her. I never thought those women were weaker for "giving" up their spot in the championship. In my mind they already won.

Big special report on gender disparities in ACL injuries in sports on the Times website today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?hp

Haven't read all the way through, but if I know my Times, it probably unintentionally employs some common gender stereotpyes but makes some interesting observations along the way.

"Would the Oakland A’s have carried a sore-legged Kirk Gibson around the bases to complete his two-run homer that gave the Dodgers a 5-4 comeback victory in the opening game of the 1988 World Series? My guess is that if Gibson had crumpled in the dirt, Tony La Russa (or Billy Martin or Leo Durocher or Earl Weaver or just about any manager) would have said, “Let him lie there.� ::: this is an excellent point. I'm a female athlete and I can certainly vouch for this: we play for the LOVE of the game and our team. Of course professional baseball players would never act so selflessly- they play for their own benefit and thats about it. These girls aren't playing for million dollar contracts, world fame or the adoring fans. They play because they love the game. THAT is the big difference.

Vindicated:
"The bigger barrier, though, may be political. Advocates for women’s sports have had to keep a laser focus on one thing: making sure they have equal access to high-school and college sports. It’s hard to fight for equal rights while also broadcasting alarm about injuries that might suggest women are too delicate to play certain games or to play them at a high level of intensity. There are parallels in the workplace, where sex differences can easily be perceived as weakness. A woman must have maternity leave. She may ask for a quiet room to nurse her baby or pump breast milk and is the one more likely to press for on-site child care. In high-powered settings like law firms, she may be less likely, over time, to be willing to work 80 hours a week. She does not always conform to the model of the default employee: a man."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?hp

lucretia, elise...

I understand that OTHERS may interpret this as women being nurturing and emotional, and not competitive. but that doesnt change the fact that what they did was right, deserves to be rewarded... regardless of what you want to call it. do you suggest they shouldnt have done it? of course not. are you suggesting that we shouldnt be praising them for it? i dont see why we shouldnt be.
If anyone has read "female chauvinist pigs" or is at least familiar with the topics it discusses... it talks about how more and more women are appropriating the misogynistic/patriarchal mindset & attitude in order to be seen as "one of the guys." I know several girls/women in sports who behave obnoxiously misogynstic in an attempt to act like "one of the guys" ... and personally, its refreshing to see girls on a sports team who clearly DO know how to compete, but who also know when to provide human compassion... a trait that we should all have.

like someone else suggested... if they had ignored the girl's injury and taken the win for their own team.. it would've seemed really backhanded... a false win, in my mind.

Who the hell injures one's own leg while jogging the bases following a home run? What a dork!

I have to comment again because I don't think this is getting as much press as it is because it's women doing something stereotypically female. (If that was the case, why report about it?)

This is a game that speaks to the beauty of sport and competition at its purest level.

Much like combat, struggling together as a unit builds cohesiveness. Men in combat talk about "brotherhood" and speak of it as though women couldn't possibly understand the bonds built. You don't often hear about "sisterhood" outside of sororities (which is associated with cattiness and snobbery).

The same "you just wouldn't understand" message was there in sports, especially before Title IX. Coming together as a team, fully loving and understanding sport goes hand-in-hand with the value of sportsmanship. And now, after Title IX, women have the opportunity to play and to see those lessons first hand.

I often had male athletes struggle to explain why the movie Rudy is so important. Then I would show them my video collection, with Rudy front and center. Girls get why sports are cool. We get the love and spirituality of the games. We understand what true sportsmanship is.

It took the example above to really prove it, though. (And I bet it will be forgotten before too long so that some men can again convince themselves that "girls don't get sports.")

jro, I completely agree with you. There are some professional athletes that feel the love and pure joy of the game. But it's such a different dynamic when playing sports makes life easier in terms of popularity, societal expectations, money, and fame (as is what happens with males as they excel in sport) rather than when playing sports makes life harder in most of those respects (as is what happens with females).

It probably has to do with when you have to really struggle for something, you appreciate it more.

that is a really great story. i'm proud of those women--the western oregon coach was right, it's character.

as far as comparison to male athletes, i'm not sure it would have gone down the same way, but i don't want to say it wouldn't. a comparison to professional male athletes in inapt--those guys have serious money on the line whereas these college women don't.

crshark...Have you ever hit a homerun, she didnt know at the time that it was over the fence so she was running as fast as she could..plus it was her first homerun in her life, all 21 of them.

she's not a dork, she's a passioniate young women who was excited as anyone would be!

Reminds me of some of those stories about the Civil War and other wars- how on Christmas day, all the soldiers would sit around, both sides, and play cards and smoke together. The next day, of course, they would go back to killing each other.

What a wonderful story, though!

“Would the Oakland A’s have carried a sore-legged Kirk Gibson around the bases to complete his two-run homer that gave the Dodgers a 5-4 comeback victory in the opening game of the 1988 World Series?� – Daniel

I doubt it. The last major league players to be caught throwing a World Series game (1919 White Sox) were permanently thrown out of professional baseball.

I play soccer on several teams in recreational leagues and I find my women's team to be as competitive if not more so than my co-ed teams. I can't even imagine something like this happening in soccer. The greatest courtesy that the other team will do is to throw the ball out of bounds so we have a pause to carry our player off the field (and sometimes they'll help with the carrying). Once off the field, players for both teams will band together to help with first aid and what not but that's totally separate from the game. The mentality is usually "Get her off the field so we can play!" So the incident at hand seems indeed to be exceptional.

I think it's demeaning to say that because we're chicks we have more noble ideas about sportsmanship and we don't really mind losing as long as we've played nice. And, while we tend to focus on the fights and pissing contests, many men do show excellent sportsmanship. I play because I love the game and I love my teams, but I want to be taken seriously too.

That all being said, I still think those women were pretty cool. I just don't think we should be using this isolated incident in order to make generalizations about women athlete's attitudes and motivations in sports.

woot woot! i am an alumna of this university! imagine my surprise at seeing the name of my alma mater (does the second word mean "mom"?) on my newest favorite blog, which diane ("the wonder hippie"), a sister alumna of CWU, introduced me to. i'm sitting here 2600 miles away from CWU in buffalo, NY and feeling waves of homesickness and even a tinge of school spirit, whatever the eff that is. i guess this is where i'm supposed to yell "go wildcats," but i never yelled it once in four years. probably should've caught a softball game...sounds like these women are a little more considerate than the short-lived, ass-pounding women's rugby team my sophomore year. (though i'll give them a belated "go wildcats" too.)