Let's talk about women's sports.
Stop laughing, I'm serious.
Having recently wrapped up the season with a local women's soccer team, I'm reflecting over all my years playing sports that predominantly feature women (and I used the term "all my years" because my birthday is approaching and I'm in the middle of my mid-mid-life crisis. So nostalgic.). I've figure skated, played softball, volleyball, golf and most recently, women's soccer. These sports have had me dealing with mostly women or girls throughout my entire athletic career. And while I have had more positive, wonderful experiences than I can ever hope to remember, I've had a lot of really brutal ones, and they all seem to have one common message: women take everything so personally.
But anyway, I'm not the only one who has found herself in the middle of an athletic battle with triumph and victory only minutes away, and have had only the goal of knocking down the jerk who elbowed me kind of hard last week. I haven't forgotten, I'm just biding my time. And when I sneak attack, you'll know why too, because you haven't forgotten last week either.
Everything is so ridiculously personal. I have a bunch of theories, of course, as to why every single comment on the golf course can be taken with the seriousness of a knife wound, but I'm not a psychologist. I may believe that my 100-level psychology class makes me qualified to perform all sorts of personality analyses on people, but realistically, it doesn't.
From my own experience, I think we're all so sensitive because we're conditioned to be so. This may not apply to everyone, of course, and it may not apply consistently, but I think we're taught to expect other women to be evil and mean in competition. It's always the soccer moms, or the dance moms, who are horrible to one another and their daughters on television shows and movies. Ever seen Ice Princess? The semi-evil female coach buys the helpless new girl a brand new pair of skates in the middle of competition, because the coach fears the new girl is talented enough to beat the coach's daughter. Of course the new skates aren't broken in and cause the skater all kinds of pain and to eventually lose the competition. Moral for young skaters: we women are evil and we treat one another like crap. Also, never accept free skates.
I remember coming into the women's soccer league in town and being told by several people that everyone who plays is, well, isn't very nice. Coming in with that attitude, it wasn't tough for me to see what they were talking about. It would be stupid to say that there aren't unnecessary words thrown around, or maybe a bit of shoving when the ref isn't looking. But are we rude because we're all just mean, nasty people, or because we expect one another to be cruel? Are we hateful because of current problems and heat-of-the-moment anger, or because of years-long grudges and because we're been told to "watch out for the ___ team, they're a bunch of hags" when we join the league?
Clearly I would have quit athletics years ago had all of the feuding been too much. Sure, I've gone home ragging and cursing more times than I'm going to admit, and I'm sure people have complained about me and my attitude before (but only like, once or twice).
I just think it would be nice to enter a sport and not immediately get told who to watch out for. I'm going to make my own enemies from now on, and I think women in every sport should be given that chance as well.
