What Meadors is Holding

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10 LC 94 2410
House Resolution 1594
By: Representatives Drenner of the 86th, Abrams of the 84th, Benfield of the 85th, and Henson of the 87th

A RESOLUTION


Recognizing and commending Coach Marynell Meadors on being named the 2009 WNBA Coach of the Year and inviting her to be recognized by the House of Representatives; and for other purposes.

WHEREAS, Coach Marynell Meadors has long been recognized for her amazing ability to bring out the best performances from her players and her commitment to promoting the work of female athletes; and

WHEREAS, she has diligently and conscientiously devoted her time, talents, and energy for the past 35 years to challenging athletes as a coach and currently serves as general manager and head coach of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream; and

WHEREAS, Coach Meadors earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Middle Tennessee State University and began her prestigious coaching career at Tennessee Tech University as the first head coach of the women's basketball program; and

WHEREAS, she dedicated 20 years to the Golden Eagles, posting a school record winning percentage of .723, earning two Ohio Valley Conference Coach of the Year awards and a Metro Conference Coach of the Year award, and steering her team to four conference championships and two Metro Conference titles; and

WHEREAS, Coach Meadors also served as head coach at Florida State University, where she transformed the Seminoles into a winning program and led them to a Metro Conference Championship and the second round of the NCAA Tournament; and

WHEREAS, this year, Coach Meadors enters her second season with the WNBA's Atlanta Dream, her fourth with the WNBA family, and was recently honored as the 2009 WNBA Coach of the Year; and

WHEREAS, during her tenure in the WNBA, Coach Meadors has inspired fans and players of the Atlanta Dream, the Charlotte Sting, the Miami Sol, and the Washington Mystics, helping lead the Stings and Mystics to playoff appearances; and

WHEREAS, in recognition of her contributions to the field of sports and her excellent basketball coaching abilities, it is abundantly fitting and proper for this body to honor the extraordinary commitment and accomplishments of this outstanding individual.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that the members of this body commend Coach Marynell Meadors on her impressive coaching career, congratulate her on being honored as the 2009 WNBA Coach of the Year, and invite her to be recognized by the House of Representatives at a date and time to be designated by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Clerk of the House of Representatives is authorized and directed to transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to Coach Marynell Meadors.

My Girls Syndrome

During the Maggie Dixon Classic, head coach Pat Summitt of the Tennessee Lady Volunteers and head coach C. Vivian Stringer of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights were asked their opinions regarding the troubles of the WNBA.
What you got were two very different answers.

First, Summitt:

"It's disturbing and hopefully we're not going to lose our league. I think we have to rally for the cause and...it really bothered me when I heard it and it still does. I think that's why all of us in the women's game need a voice."

Then, Stringer:

"There was a time that we played for the love of the game. I am actually going to give you two answers on this. One is, I think that maybe parents will back off, and maybe kids will begin to play the game for the right reason. I say that because you also notice, coincidentally, during this time that we have had the WNBA success that there has been a whole lot of transferring. There is whole lot of kids that are coming in here thinking that they are all that, always looking for the program that allows them to have the mat and to let them do their thing. The one thing that has always been true about women's athletics is that it was always for the love of the game. You played and gave everything you possibly can just because you enjoyed playing team basketball together. And then it gets to the point that its "Where's mine?" because I got to make sure that I am in the draft, so you begin to lose this team thing and you begin to wonder what are you looking at? So, I am sad in a way because we need a lot of opportunities for young women....So if we are smart, the athlete will realize that at the end of the day you had better focus on academics, that's what it was always about before. And then I think the by-product is if you happen get an opportunity to play on the professional level, that's good, but the other side is what athletes in college don't realize is that there is two full teams of outstanding athletes that are floundering somewhere in the States because they don't have a job ...You shouldn't be in school to play this sport as a professional. I think that is the biggest mistake you can make. It should be for the reasons that we used to tell athletes all the time, but you begin to change your conversations, and you begin to say what everyone else says-you may have a chance to play in the WNBA."

I don't quite know what to make of Stringer's answer. Part of Stringer's complaint was her bemoaning that women's college basketball is no longer as "pure" as it supposedly was.

Of course, women's college basketball is still much purer than its male counterpart, in the sense that big-time men's basketball seems to be more about moving product and making cash for its participants than it does about honoring the student-athlete or glorifying the goal of the liberal arts to create a well-rounded enlightened person. Women's college basketball doesn't have the popularity to attract the big money. When it does, women's college basketball will lose its "purity" the same way that other college sports like college football lost their purity. (I think college football lost its purity so long ago that it doesn't even remember what purity is anymore. A team of honest student-athletes would be seen as something quaint, belonging perhaps to Division III.)

The only other definition of purity of sport comes (maybe) from second-wave feminism, which didn't want to ape patriarchal institutions if parallel female institutions would create the same kind of jerks that the male-dominated institutions created. Sport - at least as it existed in the 1970s - was highly suspect. Amateur, non-competitive communal sports were the ideal of second-wave feminism.

I don't think that C. Vivian Stringer is talking about this kind of purity - I believe that C. Vivian Stringer is about as competitive as you could possibly be, and if she could make Rutgers the #1 basketball school in the country she'll be just as nasty as Woody Hayes if she has to do it. (The same goes for Summitt - big-level women's basketball coaching is a dog-eat-dog world, where the mice nibble holes in iron.) Stringer can claim that the primary goal of the women's athletic program at Rutgers is to change her charges into enlightenment women, but repeating it doesn't make it so. If Stringer can't win games, she'll face the fate of every college coach. Winning might - and should not be - the number one priority of the players, but for coaches winning takes a much higher priority.

I suspect that a large part of Stringer's complaint comes from sour grapes. Epipphany Prince abandoned her senior year at Rutgers in hopes of making money for her impoverished family by playing in Europe - and perhaps, with an eye to making herself more viable as a WNBA propect. If the WNBA didn't exist, then Prince might have stuck around a bit longer in New Jersey. Stringer would like to have athletes that didn't have one foot out the door, so to speak, and that didn't make unspoken demands on her program because they needed enough minutes and enough playing time to satisfy WNBA scouts. Quite understandable.

(There are some who say that what Stringer was saying was that players should keep in mind that a professional career might not actually pan out and that they should spend more time seeking a degree. In which case, my response is "then she should have said that instead of what she actually did end up saying.")

My question: why wouldn't Stringer think that players wouldn't go to college for the primary goal of playing professsionally? (*) If a person - male or female - has skill in playing basketball, if a person loves playing this game more than doing anything else, and the opportunity comes for that player to be paid for that sport - then why wouldn't you expect getting paid to become a player's ultimate goal? Why wouldn't you expect players to seek careers playing the sport they loved? It sounds almost as if Stringer is asking her players to exchange power for purity, which has historically been a bad deal all around.

Part of this might be what Bob Corwin and others call "My Girls Syndrome". Girls' and women's basketball is not so much a continuum of sport as it seems to be a collection of fiefdoms, each one fiercely protective of its territorial prerogatives. "You can support pro basketball, but not if college basketball has to give something up." "You can support college basketball, but not if high school basketball has to give something up." "You can support high school basketball, but not if the AAU has to give something up." And so on, and so forth, forever. It's why it's called "My Girls Syndrome" - emphasis on 'MY'.

My belief is that there is only one thing that is going to kill My Girls Syndrome - greater mobility between the various levels of women's basketball. Most of the mobility goes in one direction - towards college basketball coaching. WNBA coaches and players want to be college coaches, but college coaches don't want to coach in the W - why give up job security and a nice, fat paycheck? Until the WNBA really starts to pay off, expect college basketball - and its coaches - to exert pressure to keep the college women's basketball pure...of any interference from competing interests.

_________

(*) Insert rant about how there is no minor league system for basketball, about the paternalistic excuses used to tie the NCAA to professional sports, etc.

Mystery Dream Players Work With Toles

Dan Fleser over at Go Vols Extra reports something interesting about Tennessee freshman guard Morgan Toles:

One of the prime examples is a freshman: guard Morgan Toles. She's the daughter of former Tennessee linebacker Alvin Toles. She's worked out regularly with members of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream.

I wonder who is working with her.

A Letter

To: Sports Editor, The Daily Beacon, University of Tennessee

Dear Mr. O'Daniel,

Sadly, there are a lot of sports editors across the country who know nothing about women's basketball. If you had told me that the sports editor of the student newspaper at the University of Tennesee didn't know anything about women's basketball...I would have been astonished, to say the least.

Looking at his past archive or articles, it seems that Mr. Merritt has given little thought to the success of the women's basketball program at the University of Tennessee. In his article of October 30th, "UT shifting focus to hardwood", we get the bizarre comment:

"Vol fans have helped Bruce Pearl make the impossible, possible — turning Tennessee into a basketball school."

Odd, I thought eight NCAA National Championships would cement Tennessee's reputation as a basketball school.

However, the comment in his recent article, "Reaching for the Summitt" takes the cake:

"Without this great rivalry the college game may have gone the way of the WNBA."

I suppose Mr. Merritt is unaware of Candace Parker. He might have heard of her. She was the MVP and Rookie of the Year for the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA, an organization that still exists. And last time I checked, Ms. Parker was playing - guess where? - in Tennessee, on the team that won Pat Summitt's eighth National Championship for the Vols.

Mr. Merritt might have been speaking tongue in cheek. If his goal was to make a humorous putdown at the WNBA's expense, he should have telegraphed his punch more clearly - without it, he simply comes off as clueless.

I'm not asking that Mr. Merritt become a women's basketball fan if he isn't one. What I'm asking is that maybe, someone who actually knows something about women's basketball write the laudatory articles.

It's bad enough that Coach Pearl has only been four years at Tennessee and is paid more than twice as much as Coach Summitt, despite the fact that the closest he's come to a national championship in his sport is in buying a ticket or turning on the television. If Mr. Merritt wants to remain ignorant about women's basketball, that's his choice, but please don't let his stupidity permeate your newspaper. Keep him in his cloistered world, and don't let him comment on things that he obviously knows nothing about.

Yours,

Pet

Sky Sign Ty'esha Fluker

From Our Sports Central:

Fluker, a 6'5" center, was selected by the Charlotte Sting in the first round (10th overall) of the 2006 WNBA Draft. She averaged 2.5 points and 2.1 rebounds in 31 games played and ranked fourth among rookies in blocks per game. In 2007, Fluker played in 9 games for the Seattle Storm before being waived on July 2, 2007. She was picked up by Los Angeles on July 5 and appeared in 12 games for the Sparks in the 2007 season, averaging 3.3 points and 1.6 rebounds per game. During 2008 training camp, Fluker played in all three pre-season games for the Sparks, scoring 2 points and grabbing 3 rebounds in 14 minutes of play on May 8 against the Sky at Sears Centre Arena. A 2006 graduate of Tennessee, Fluker finished her senior year averaging 9.3 points and 4.9 rebounds per game, shooting .532 from the floor. She was named to the SEC All-Academic Team for three consecutive years, and helped lead the Lady Vols to three Final Four appearances, two regular season SEC titles, and two SEC tournament crowns.

With Sylvia Fowles injured, I suspect the Sky are going to try to take up it the middle against the Dream. I also hope that like the Lynx, they're going to find it lot tougher going than they thought.

I also know that if I find Tennessee fans wearing more orange jerseys at Philips, I'm going to flip.