Equal Pay for Women Athletes

A girls high school varsity soccer team in Vermont was penalized after removing their jerseys to reveal t-shirts reading "#Equalpay." Apparently the crowd went nuts. Pay parity is a pressing issue for professional female athletes. I cannot believe this happened to girls who were making a statement about something they believed in. Way to go Burlington High School. The US Women’s National Team are our heroines. Unbelievable that they were yellow carded.

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International Women's Day March 8, 2019

Get ready for International Women's Day 2019 on March 8! Right now is a great and important time in history to do everything possible to help forge a more gender-balanced world. Women have come a long way, but there's still more to be achieved.

The International Women's Day 2019 campaign theme of #BalanceforBetter is a call-to-action for driving gender balance across the world. How will you help make a difference?

www.internationalwomensday.com

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National Girls & Women in Sports Day. Sports Teach us so much.

Today is National Girls & Women in Sport Day.

I'm attaching the link to a short piece written by Positive Coaching Alliance staff member Courtney Pollack. She writes: "Sports have been an omnipresent part of my life for as long as I can remember. As I think about what has made me the person I am today and where I learned the lessons that shaped me, it’s hard not to attribute almost all of it, at least in part, to my time spent in sports. Discipline, resilience, disappointment, effort, leadership, failure, compromise, success, joy, dedication, confidence, time management... the list goes on and on. Sports also taught me, as a girl, that I could do anything the boys did."

Thank you for this inspiring reminder Courtney!

https://positivecoach.org/the-pca-blog/i-can-do-anything-the-boys-do-from-pca-staff-member-courtney-pollack/

Courtney Pollack with her Little League team.

Courtney Pollack with her Little League team.

Kathryn Smith - first full-time coach in the NFL

I’m excerpting this exciting story from CNN Money:

Kathryn Smith is no braggart. She's focused on her work and shuns the spotlight. In fact, she's hesitant to acknowledge the history she has made and the proverbial glass ceiling she has shattered.

But at just 32 years old, she has already broken through in the male-dominated National Football League, becoming the first woman to become a full-time assistant coach for the league.

"It's crazy. It really is," Smith says in CNN's latest Boss Files with Poppy Harlow podcast. "You don't set out to be a trailblazer, and I didn't know that that's where my path was going to lead me."

During the 2016-2017 season, she served as Special Teams Quality Control Coach for the Buffalo Bills, preparing game plans and playbooks for the team. Often the only woman in the room during coach or player meetings, Smith notes, "It's interesting because with the players there wasn't a lot of focus... on gender at all."

As a kid, Smith helped her father on the sidelines as he coached high school football.

"The sky is the limit. She's pretty tough. She's always going forward, never going backward," her father Robert Smith, told The Fordham Observer during an August 2016 interview about his daughter's work ethic. Smith was brought to tears hearing her father's words read to her. "I didn't know he said that... I'm really close with my dad, and he was just always so supportive."

Both her parents told her and her brother they could accomplish the same things, equally, regardless of their gender. And that's exactly how Smith says her fellow coaches and players treated her -- as an equal.

Smith may have been the first to join the ranks of full-time female NFL coaches -- but she has since been joined by Katie Sowers of the San Francisco 49ers, who became the second woman to be hired as a full-time assistant coach in August 2017. In 2015, Jen Welter coached with the Arizona Cardinals' inside linebackers during training camp and the preseason. That same year, Sarah Thomas became the NFL's first female official and she became a line judge that season.

"I hope it's leading to, honestly, to it not being a conversation," Smith says. "I hope that it just becomes, 'This is the next coach of this team,' but that's the announcement, not that 'It's a female coach.'"

Smith says it's important to remind people that she's not the only woman working in the league.

"I think externally, people don't realize I'm not the only woman that these players came in contact with on a daily basis," Smith tells Harlow. "There's a lot of women that do a lot of different jobs. So it's not as odd among teams as I think people that aren't as familiar with the teams and the league, perhaps, realize."

It took years of hard work for Smith to get to this point. She started with the NFL as an intern for the New York Jets while in college studying sports management, and was later hired full-time as a player personal assistant.

Her rise has been meteoric by any measure -- but her ego has not inflated one ounce on the way up. Her coaching career in the NFL, she maintains, has only begun. As next season approaches, Smith is laser focused on landing at another NFL team doing what she knows, and loves, best. Coaching. Perhaps as a head coach one day. "That would be amazing," Smith says.

Amazing, and history-making.

Smith on the field with the Bills.

Smith on the field with the Bills.

The Great Penny Marshall

I was really sad to hear about the passing of the director Penny Marshall on December 17, 2018. In my opinion, as a girl who plays the great game of baseball, I consider her to have directed the best sports movie ever in A League of Their Own. Aside from being a wonderful film, it educated so many that there was a time when women actually got to play baseball professionally.

My heart goes out to Tracy Reiner, Marshall’s daughter who played left field/relief pitcher Betty “Spaghetti” Horn in the movie.

On set directing her movie A League of Their Own.

On set directing her movie A League of Their Own.

Female Surfers make strides in Equal Pay

Women big wave surfers will get equal pay in competitions, including at the famous Mavericks competition near Half Moon Bay, CA. This is a big victory for the Committee for Equality in Women’s Surfing (CEWS). 

Read the full article: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Pro-Surfing-League-to-Pay-Women-Competitors-the-Same-as-Men-492570881.html

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An Open Letter About Female Coaches

Thanks Pau Gasol. Becky Hammon is definitely qualified to be a Head Coach in the NBA.

"I've played under two of the sharpest minds in the history of sports, in Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich. And I’m telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period."

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https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/pau-gasol-becky-hammon

Go Aussie women playing Australian Rules Football!

Women are playing Australian rules football professionally for the first time in 2017, drawing sell-out crowds and getting amazing TV ratings.

As a dual citizen, (I'm American and Australian), I am SO proud to read about this! Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi !!

Women playing Australian Rules Football

Women playing Australian Rules Football

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39111312

 

Chloe Kim makes the cover of Sports Illustrated this week

A while back I wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated protesting their annual swimsuit issue. It bothered me that they feature women because of their looks and the way their bodies look, instead of celebrating real athletes. I was so happy to see Chloe Kim featured on the cover this week for her athletic accomplishments. Congratulations to Chloe and to all the amazing female Olympians in Pyeongchang!

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National Girls and Women in Sports Day - February 7

This year marks the 32nd anniversary of annual National Girls & Women in Sports Day, “a national observance celebrating the extraordinary achievements of women and girls in sports.”
I’m thinking about the amazing coaches of all the teams I've played on who have encouraged me and made working hard and competing so fun. Lately because of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, I've been thinking of our visit to Korea back in 2015 playing baseball for the women's Team USA. We competed against incredible international women's teams and it is one of my most treasured memories.

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Baseball’s earliest female trailblazers bring the heat to young talent

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/humankind/2018/01/26/baseballs-earliest-female-trailblazers-bring-heat-young-talent/1068775001/

Proud to have met these groundbreaking women. They are an inspiration.

Two players from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Maybelle Blair (left), who pitched for the Peoria Red Wings and Shirley Burkovich, who played for the Rockford Peaches.

Two players from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Maybelle Blair (left), who pitched for the Peoria Red Wings and Shirley Burkovich, who played for the Rockford Peaches.