wolvrine32

May 11th, 2012 at 11:38 AM ^

I clicked through just because I didn't quite believe the concept.  But it's even worse than you'd think.  She probably knows that there's no crying in baseball, but I think this other team doesn't realize that.

UofM-StL

May 11th, 2012 at 11:39 AM ^

I think the most ridiculous thing about this story is that her own team made her sit out in 2 previous games against this school out of "respect for their beliefs."

Bullshit.

If you and your precious backward moral code can't stand being on the same field as a girl, you can forfeit all the games you want, but I would NOT sit my own player becase you're not comfortable looking at her.

CRex

May 11th, 2012 at 11:46 AM ^

Yeah, that part pissed me off.  I'd fire that coach for sitting her.  I coach youth hockey and had a religious school complain because I had two female players on my team.  At the end of the second period it was 12-0 my team and the other coach asked me to call the dogs off.  My response was "Sorry I posted that email you sent me about the girls in the locker room and promised the team free pizza and milkshakes if they put up 20 on you."  Small annoying religious groups shouldn't field hockey teams in a public league and expect us to sit the female players...

JeepinBen

May 11th, 2012 at 12:01 PM ^

to bow to the oppressive religious beliefs of others?

/might be towing the no politics/relgion line here, but I think that CRex was in the right somewhat. If the other team's players/parents didn't want them playing against girls, either don't play or try to get the league to exclude girls. Then you'll have a whole additional issue.

coldnjl

May 11th, 2012 at 1:34 PM ^

So who are you really getting back at with that onslaught? ...the beliefs of those kids parents and community or the kids who are still developing their own ideas politically and socially. Only recently in my own life have I started to formulate my own ideas on complex ideas independently of my family. But if coach felt good about breaking those kids hearts and teaching his players that there are instinces in sports where it is ok to break the neck of the opposing team, all is good...right?

Cope

May 11th, 2012 at 5:54 PM ^

He assumed you'd actually told your kids that. I agree; it would be a bad lesson for kids to teach them to scoff at other peoples beliefs, even if they seem silly. Better to explain the situation and teach them how to handle themselves more maturely than their opponents. But I assume you did that while telling the coach to stuff it.

chitown.victor

May 11th, 2012 at 12:49 PM ^

...Paige opted to sit out because the games were on Our Lady of Sorrow's homefield and she was respecting their beliefs.  Link to article with local news video:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/lady-sorrows-ariz-baseball-team-forfeits-state-title-041333504.html

EDIT: Changed wording from previously "volunteered" to "opted" for accuracy, and changed link because the initial was FAIL.  Hope this one is good.

UofM-StL

May 11th, 2012 at 12:50 PM ^

But I did find another that confirms your claim:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/11/baseball-final-forfeited-because-of-girl-at-second-base/

The money quote is toward the end of the article:

Mesa Prep and Our Lady of Sorrows played twice during the regular season, but Sultzbach sat out, as they were away games for her team.

“It was on their field, and I felt the need to respect their rules,” she told KTVK.

The final would have been on a neutral field, and Sultzbach wanted to play.

While I think this makes the situation better, it's still not OK. Basically, the choice never should have reached her. No coach or parent should have let this get to the point where they were asking this girl if she was willing to sit out. The coach should have made the decision before Paige even heard about it, and that decision should have been "No."

Skapanza

May 11th, 2012 at 12:39 PM ^

Agreed. I'd be furious if I was a parent and the coach only stood up for my kid in the final game, after forcing her to sit during the first two. If the other team didn't want to play against her, they should have packed up and left before game one.

 

Even if she made the choice out of respect for the opponents beliefs, I'd be telling her that her right to play supercedes the archaic lessons they were being taught about whether or not a girl's "place" was on an athletic field.

justingoblue

May 11th, 2012 at 11:47 AM ^

that this is an incredibly stupid thing to do. Why volunteer yourselves to lose? And for that matter, why the hell would a team sit a starter because of her gender? Next thing you know, that team is going to have minorities and homosexuals on it!

I will say, though, that I always disliked playing hockey, either against an all-girls team (which meant the boys had to play no check and the girls played two years down [so 86-87's v. 88-89's]) or against teams with one or two girls, which nearly always resulted in a ton of boarding penalties being called. I'm not saying there aren't women who could play, just that my personal experiences weren't good.

PatrickBateman

May 11th, 2012 at 4:40 PM ^

It does present some quandries, I remember playing soccer at a relatively competetive level and playing against rural teams with a girl or two from rural areas who, presumably, couldn't field a girls team.  I definitely did not slide tackle / check the girls as hard as the guys, even if the girls were just as aggressive, it's just something you are taught all your life not to do.  Granted, baseball requires almost no physical contact, so that wouldn't have been an issue.  I do feel for guys when they play girls, for instance I remember a guy in my high school who had to wrestle a girl... there was no "good" outcome for him.  If he won, he was "beating up on a girl" (yes, I know she was agreeing to the contact, but don't try to explain that to 17 year old guys) or if he lost, he lost to a girl.

Darker Blue

May 11th, 2012 at 11:50 AM ^

I guess I understand. The only sport I will play with a grown woman is hide the soap. Its a competitive fierce sporting event. I'm currently in first place in the wankers division.

JHendo

May 11th, 2012 at 11:54 AM ^

I personally think this is ridiculous.  Especially in a sport like baseball where skill is infintely more important than physicality, going up against a girl should be a non-issue.  Heck, in pee-wee football there was one gamewhere we went up against a team with a girl, and she was just another player who deserved to get hit if they got in the way.  No one went easy on her, and she most certainly did not go easy on us.

However, the school has a no co-ed sports policy, and they followed that.  Because it wasn't something that was done on a whim, but based off of rules that were put in place, I think that in of itself is a enough of a reason for this not to be news.  Stupid, somewhat outdated rule? Absolutely.   Completely insane, utterly illogical rule? Not really, but it should probably be something that is modified in the near future.

Hardware Sushi

May 11th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^

Without getting too much into debating religion or politics, I will say that I'm OK with this.

While I personally think it's dumb, Our Lady has every right to play games within their belief system, similarly to BYU's refusal to play sports on Sundays. They're a private school run on those beliefs. While some may call it unfair, it's completely within their rights to forfeit and, viewed from a different perspective, is an example of why America should protect freedoms of choice for it's citizens.

Just because the majority doesn't agree (and most of us think it's dumb) doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to defend their beliefs.

Erik_in_Dayton

May 11th, 2012 at 1:10 PM ^

I think this is acceptable, though, b/c the school wanted another school to sit one of its players.  They crossed a line at that point from regulating their own behavior to trying to regulate someone else's, which is pretty rare in sports AFAIK.  BYU follows its own code of conduct, for example, but I'm not aware of them refusing to play Hawaii for not following that same code. 

Erik_in_Dayton

May 11th, 2012 at 12:25 PM ^

Here's a recent article about a boy who was kicked off of a field hockey team for being too good.  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57429015/n.y-boy-kicked-off-girls-field-hockey-team-for-superior-play/ 

I don't think you'd see a boy allowed to play softball unless there was no baseball team.  The lack of an equivalent sport is usually (in practice) what allows a boy/girl to play with a girls/boys team...It will be interesting to see how the situation in the link works out.  It seems to me that the boy is being discriminated against unlawfully, but I'm not Title IX expert, and no one should take my advice on the issue. 

 

Erik_in_Dayton

May 11th, 2012 at 1:17 PM ^

Let's say for the sake of argument that it is.  I don't have a problem with a girl playing baseball b/c it's a different sport, really, from softball.  I also don't, in the abstract, have a problem with a boy playing softball.  I think that the boy in the article that I linked to should be allowed to play field hockey...Where it gets difficult, I think, is when you imagine both the softball and baseball teams being dominated by boys (perhaps a sexist assumption but one widely shared) so that girls don't have any sports to play.  I don't know that there's a great way to handle it. 

justingoblue

May 11th, 2012 at 1:31 PM ^

It's just a fact. Look at Usain Bolt's 100m record (9.58s) compared to Florence Griffith-Joyner's record (10.49). When men played high level fastpitch, pitches could reach >100mph, while the top women in the world are maxing out speed in the high seventies, if that (Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman and Monica Abbot max in the low seventies and are probably the three most accomplished pitchers in NCAA/US international play).

Simply put, if men could play women's sports there would be no (or very little) female participation in those sports. It's not sexist, it's a biological fact; I'll never give birth, and Joyner will never catch Bolt.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

May 11th, 2012 at 1:46 PM ^

I don't know if it's true in this case.  I do know that it's true that I lost a lot of playing time in HS baseball to a girl who could barely hit, because she wanted to play baseball and not softball.  And the coach was in a tough place because her being on the team got a lot of publicity - much of which focused around her not liking softball - and he felt like he couldn't not play her.

I hesitate to say this because I know some will take it as "oh he's just bitter."  But the point I'm trying to make is that I don't like the idea of "well, boys can play if there's no equivalent sport" but girls can apparently move freely back and forth.