Foudy Induction Speech Video

It's excerpts filmed by someone who was there, with a little clip at the end of Mia Hamm being introduced onto the field as a sub during the Hall of Fame Game.

hat tip to USA Women's Soccer

2007 Soccer Hall of Fame Inductions

National Soccer Hall of Fame and Museum, Oneonta, New York


National Soccer Hall of Fame Induction 2007 Julie Foudy Highlights Video

National Soccer Hall of Fame Induction 2007 Mia Hamm Highlights Video



Coach Mom & I got to see the induction of Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy to the Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York on Sunday. We got there about 11:00 a.m. for the noon time ceremony and the Hall of Fame was mobbed. In 2004 we attended Michelle Akers induction(the greatest player in the history of women's soccer -- Mia Hamm described her as the best ever in her speech), and got there at the same time & sat in the front row of the lobby where it was held then.

This year it was held outdoors on the grounds. We brought chairs and set up in the 10th row amid a bunch of grumbling people who were standing behind the last row of chairs. I wasn't going to set Coach Mom's chair behind a bunch of people standing up! One woman behind us asked, who's that other woman being inducted with Mia? Julie something? So I didn't feel bad about encroaching on their space.

Unlike Akers, who was inducted first in her class, the Hall of Fame did it right and inducted Foudy & Hamm last. Former National Team head coach Tony DiCicco & retired National Team captain Carla Overbeck inducted Julie Foudy, who then gave a great speech. Anson Dorrance inducted Mia Hamm, and they were both very inspiring. Julie Foudy talked about her daughter Izzy and the cameras panned over her while the crowd oohed. Mia Hamm thanked her husband Nomar Garciaparra and talked about their two daughters, Eva (Ava?) and Grace, but the cameras did not show them. I don't think those kids have ever been photographed and apparently Mia intends to keep it that way. Good for her.

But as usual it was a disorganized mess from an event planning perspective. The Hall of Fame was blocked off during and before the ceremony for the VIPs. You could get into the gift shop, but there was a long line. And they weren't selling Foudy and Hamm shirts. Or if they were, they ran out early. Morons. They should have had a stand up OUTSIDE and they would have sold at least 1000. They were selling David Beckham's Galaxy jersey and many girls appeared from the gift shop wearing those. But what a missed opportunity. Thousands of people there, soccer in their hearts, money in their pockets, and kids tugging on their sleeves. (The crowd was estimated at 5,000.)

The game was supposed to start half an hour after the ceremonies ended. I walked back to the car to dump off our chairs. We walked towards the field. Now it is after 2:00 and Coach Mom has to eat. But there are only two food concessions open. Two ines total. I got in the shorter line (the one that didn't sell french fries). After waiting 45 minutes in line (and missing the entire first half of the Hall of Fame game, when Hamm and Foudy played) they ran out of everything but nachos. So I got Coach Mom a plate of nachos, cheese crackers and a candy bar (so she wouldn't keel over) and told them they had to let me cut the line when they got real food. Luckily an old friend of ours spotted us as we got into line & I sent Mom to talk to her while I waited. Again, event planning 101, if you expect a crowd of thousands, more than half kids, you'd better have plenty of food concessions. The line I was in was being serviced by 6 women using an extra large home sized grill. A dozen burgers and a dozen hotdogs at a time. To feed thousands of people. Planning, people, planning!

So, we saw part of the second half of the Hall of Fame game, saw Christie Welsh score two goals, but missed Hamm, Foudy, Overbeck, & Tiffany Roberts play though. We saw a few more of Coach Mom's former players and students. Coach Mom won the Oneonta Soccer Club raffle and got a big basket of soccer shirts and ephemera. We left the game with 20 minutes left & went to Brooks's BBQ where we just got our takeout chicken before the hordes from the game descended.

Oneonta Daily Star: 5,000 greet soccer greats

Oneonta Daily Star: All eyes on Hamm and Foudy

Hall of Fame Magazine.com: Soccer Hall of Fame Induction Has Record Attendance

NYTimes: Hamm and Foudy Join Hall

Sports Roundup, Saturday, August 4, 2007

Chad Finn loves loves loves Kevin Garnett:

I guess it's still just surreal that perhaps the most likable NBA superstar of the last decade is on the Celtics, and I'm still savoring the whole thing, four days after the trade. It's funny, I've been trying to explain how significant this is to the lapsed Celtics fans I know, and I just keep coming back to the same point: Kevin Garnett will restore Celtic Pride. I guarantee it. He is the perfect player in the perfect place at the perfect time. He's a superstar who plays with the hunger and desperation of a 12th man. He's maniacal about winning.

Soccer Hall of Fame gets smart, will have two women's teams in the Hall of Fame Game on August 26th when Hamm & Foudy are inducted. Hamm, Foudy and Carla Overbeck will all play in the game.

Washington Post with an article about and interview with Freddy Adu who is now in Portugal training with Benfica; Grant Wahl of SI also interviewed Freddy.

Former Boston College striker and New Hampshire native Charlie Davies happy in Sweden.

Welcome to Boston, Eric Gagne. We'll go Ga-Ga for you.

This Makes Me Sad

Bill Feig/Associated Press

Pokey Chatman resigned over suspected inappropriate conduct with a former player.
Pokey Chatman has resigned as coach of the LSU women's basketball team, reportedly because she had what has been termed an "inappropriate relationship" with a former player.

What all does that mean? Obviously, it means she's gay. In Louisiana, just having a gay relationship is enough to get fired and land in jail. But if the relationship began while the player was still in college, it's just wrong. There are power dynamics involved when a coach begins a relationship with a player. The coach has power, and the player doesn't; therefore, the coach must say no.

Interestingly, most often these player/coach relationships involve women players. Male players are almost never found to have been involved in a relationship with a coach. Why is this? Because jobs coaching men aren't available to women. Once Title IX forced colleges and universities to pay men's and women's coaches on a more equivalent basis, those women's jobs became desirable. But women have never been hired to coach men on more than a token basis. So at this point 75% of all coaching jobs are available to men (100% of jobs coaching men's teams, 50% of jobs coaching women) and 25% are available to women. So it's rare to find a female coach charged with an inappropriate relationship; when the coach is female, it usually involves a lesbian relationship.

We see many women involved with or married to former male coaches. Prominent examples: Jackie Joyner Kersee, married her coach Al Joyner, who she met while he was her track coach at UCLA; Julie Foudy is married to Ian Sawyers, who was a coach in her development league when she was 18; Brandi Chastain is married to her former coach at Santa Clara. Foudy and Chastain's marriages were discussed in the excellent Sports Illustrated article on this issue, "Passion Plays", by Grant Wahl. There's no official copy of the article on the web, but if you go to this link and scroll down to Feb 11th, 2003, 06:49 PM, it's reproduced there.

As an attorney, I look at this from an employment discrimination perspective. A coach should never be in a relationship with a player while they are coaching them, because that is an abuse of the coach's power over the player, and makes all the decisions the coach makes about that player suspect. Why did she get so much playing time, etc.? On the other hand, coaches and players do fall in love, and if they happen to pursue that relationship after graduation, there's no problem. The problem is those years while attraction exists in the midst of the coach/player relationship. The coach, the older, more experienced person, is expected by society to be the bigger person and hold off until the coach/player relationship is no more. If Pokey Chatman was involved with a player while she was on the team, Chatman had to go. But we don't know that yet. If she began a relationship with a player after that player left the team, then she's being discriminated against for being gay.

As a sideline, the LSU AD, Skip Bertman, is a real moron. Here's his quote in the initial round of stories about Chatman's resignation:

"The girl did what she did and LSU had no control over that," Bertman said, referring to Chatman.

The girl? Chatman is 37 years old and has coached for LSU for 15 years. Give me a break.

ESPN: Sources: Chatman quit amid sexual misconduct claims

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Chatman to leave LSU immediately
INAPPROPRIATE ACTIONS MAY HAVE LED TO RESIGNATION

NYTIMES: L.S.U.’s Chatman Won’t Coach in N.C.A.A.

Hamm, Foudy Elected to Soccer Hall of Fame; Fawcett Inexplicably Falls Short (Updated)

As in this picture, Hamm, Foudy & Fawcett should be going in to the Hall together
Hall of Fame Magazine: Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy Elected To National Soccer Hall Of Fame
First Ever Women-Only Induction Class

Four idiots didn't even vote for Mia Hamm. Jeez. That means 23 drooling morons didn't vote for Julie Foudy, the woman who captained the team to World Cup and Olympic gold glory (no US man in the Hall can claim either). And 46 knuckle-dragging ignoramuses didn't vote for Joy Fawcett, the best defender in the history of the US national team. Sheesh.

The top ten on the 2007 Hall of Fame Players' Ballot were:

Mia Hamm 137 Votes 97.16%
Julie Foudy 118 83.69%
Joy Fawcett 95 67.38%
Marco Etcheverry 82 58.16%
Thomas Dooley 73 51.77%
Joe-Max Moore 73 48.23%
Carlos Valderrama 68 48.23%
Peter Vermes 44 31.21%
Peter Nowak 40 28.37%
Mauricio Cienfuegos 35 24.82%

Joy Fawcett is the most-capped defender in the history of US soccer (male or female) with 239 appearances in the national team shirt; she scored 27 goals, which puts her at #13 on the US women's all-time list. If she were a man her 27 goals would put her #3 on the US men's all-time scoring list.

On the men's side, Cobi Jones leads all players with 164 appearances; Fawcett has 75 more AND SHE HAD THREE CHILDREN DURING HER CAREER, which certainly lowered her appearance total. Jeff Agoos leads defenders in caps with 134; he scored 4 goals. Marcelo Balboa comes after Agoos on the all-time men's list with 128 appearances and 13 goals. And here's the fact that proves my point. Marcelo Balboa, 128/13, was elected to the Soccer Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

Joy Fawcett isn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer with 239 appearances and 27 goals? A man gets in on the first ballot with less than half the goals? With almost half the appearances? And the woman who has twice as many is excluded? Sexism rules the Hall voters, clearly.

Hey, even ESPN (which hates soccer) agrees with me:

Andrea Canales, ESPN: Fawcett's exclusion a mistake

Although Fawcett usually maintained a low profile, her importance to the U.S. team during her playing days was obvious in one startling statistic -- she played every minute of every U.S. match in the last three World Cups and the last three Olympics.

Although in many ways Fawcett was an anchor to the squad, she also pulled off a regular disappearing act, leaving the squad regularly to have children. At a time when many female players put off having a family, fearful that the return to top form would be too difficult given the time off and the physical transformation involved, Fawcett gave birth to three girls, Katelyn Rose, Carli Jean and Madilyn Rae.

After each child, she fought her way back into the lineup by regaining her fitness through tough training, even when it meant her babies logged numerous miles in racing strollers.

If not for the time off involved with her pregnancies and recovery, Fawcett would no doubt be higher on the list of all-time caps for the U.S. women's team. As it is, she sits in fourth place with 239, behind only Kristine Lilly, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy.

Fawcett also remains one of the squad's most accomplished two-way players, a defender with great ball control who could contribute to the attack. Her 27 goals and 23 assists in her career attest to her productivity at putting the ball in the net for her team rather than just keeping the ball out against opponents.

ESPN: Hamm and Foudy to be inducted into Hall of Fame

Orange County Register: Foudy named to soccer hall of fame

Monsters & Critics (uk): Hamm, Foudy voted into National Soccer Hall of Fame

Update: More articles

WaPo: Hamm and Foudy Have A Hall Pass Waiting

NYTimes: For Two Pioneers, Journey Ends at the Hall of Fame

LATimes: Hamm, Foudy join select group
Former stars of U.S. women's national team will be inducted Aug. 26

Gender Equity in Sports: Still a Goal, Not Yet Reality

First, let's celebrate one of our sports foremothers: Billie Jean King. On the heels of the rousing success of their documentary on the US Women's Soccer team, "Dare to Dream", HBO just released a film on the story of Billie Jean King,

The Woman Who Transformed Tennis (WaPo)

As an athlete, she set a Wimbledon record by winning 20 titles (since tied by Navratilova) and held the No. 1 ranking five times. She was also relentless -- and remains so -- in her efforts to gain equal rights for women in her sport. Just last week, King, 62, pushed anew for equal prize money for men and women at Wimbledon.That's just one of many battles she's fought. In the 1970s, King was a catalyst for the formation of a women's professional tour (sponsored by Virginia Slims) and led the drive to organize her fellow players into what would become the Women's Tennis Association. She testified before Congress in support of Title IX, legislation that provided equal athletic opportunities for young women and girls at school. She stood next to Gloria Steinem at rallies for women's rights. And, after a past lover filed a palimony suit against her in 1981, essentially outing her as a lesbian, she eventually became a public advocate for gay rights.

No one can forget how King created worldwide headlines when she won the "Battle of the Sexes" singles match, beating self-declared male chauvinist Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in 1973. Greenburg and Bernstein do an excellent job of capturing both the event's circuslike atmosphere and its cultural significance.

Did King change the world? According to "Portrait of a Pioneer," yes. As Deford puts it: "She and Jackie Robinson are the two figures in sports who stand out in the culture. She should be honored for what she did."

Amusing to see the quote from Frank DeFord, an old sportwriter who was virulently against women in sports until he had the radicalizing experience of fathering a daughter. Now he's a convert.

See, also, Alessandra Stanley in the Times: The Legacy of Billie Jean King, an Athlete Who Demanded Equal Play

The thrill of seeing Billie Jean's story on HBO is tempered by today's news that Wimbledon will continue to discriminate against women tennis players in pay:

WaPo: Wimbledon Will Still Pay the Men More

WIMBLEDON, England, April 25 -- Wimbledon remains the only Grand Slam tournament that pays the men's champion more than the women's winner.

The All England club announced Tuesday that the men's winner this year will receive $1.170 million and the women's champion $1.117 million, a difference of $53,000. It's a 4 percent increase in British currency.

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"In the 21st century, it is morally indefensible that women competitors in a Grand Slam tournament should be receiving considerably less prize money than their male counterparts," WTA Tour chief executive Larry Scott said in a statement.

He accused Wimbledon of taking a "Victorian-era view" on pay.

And Title IX is still under attack from within, from the Bush Administration. Although their attempt to dismantle Title IX by commission in 2002 failed (thank you thank you thank you, Julie Foudy!!!), their latest attempt to attack the law is by letting schools continue to offer less scholarships and participation opportunities to girls, by giving a survey to female undergrads. If the girls don't respond to the survey, they're assumed to have no interest in sports. Like you've never deleted a survey from your email, or hung up on a survey company. The Bushies rule would actually allow the schools to count girls who didn't respond as not interested. (Obviously, there's no category for 'busy'). Besides, that's not really the group you should be surveying anyway. Why not survey high school varsity athletes? They're the ones most likely to play sports in college. Why not them? Because the purpose is to gut the law, not to maintain its goal of equal opportunity for women athletes.

Personally, I would just abolish the Office of Civil Rights regulations at this point. They were passed 30 years ago just to give schools some time to get into compliance with Title IX. It gave them ways to be in compliance while they worked toward the goal of equity. It's time for equity. 30 years is enough. No more half measures. No surveys, no analysis, no bullshit. You have 56% female undergrads (that's the national average)? Then you spend 56% of your money and offer 56% of the athletic opportunities to women. That's it. No more half measures. If you don't give out money in your sports program equally, you lose your federal funds.

Do you know that the Office of Civil Rights has never actually stripped any educational institution of federal funds? How can you enforce a law when you never enact the penalty? You can't, and they haven't. Instead, as of 2003 when 55% of female undergraduates were female, only 42% of college athletes were women. That means that the 45% of male undergraduates got 58% of the participation opportunities. That's after 34 years of Title IX "enforcement."

My kind of change to Title IX law and enforcement will require the election of a Democrat, and probably a woman. Run, Julie Foudy, run!


Southern Maryland Online: Mikulski Calls for Title IX Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) has joined a group of her Senate colleagues in calling on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) to hold a hearing on the Department of Education's enforcement of Title IX under the "Additional Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy."

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For over thirty years, Title IX has opened doors by giving women and girls an equal opportunity to participate in student sports, we're concerned that the Department's proposal could unfairly reduce their opportunities for participation in the future. Under the Department's new guidance, colleges that provide fewer sports opportunities to women can be considered to have accommodated female students and complied with Title IX, based solely on the results of a student survey. If female students do not reply to a survey emailed to them, the Department will assume that they are not interested in additional sports activities. But a survey alone cannot reliably measure students' interest in sports. Many students may not respond to, or even open, email surveys. In fact, in a report to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Department highlighted the low response rates of surveys and the importance of monitoring by the Office of Civil Rights.

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day!

Today, February 1, 2006, is the 20th annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

NGWSD began in 1987 as a day to remember Olympic volleyball player Flo Hyman for her athletic achievements and her work to assure equality for women's sports. Hyman died of Marfan's Syndrome in 1986 while competing in a volleyball tournament in Japan. Since that time, NGWSD has evolved into a day to acknowledge the past and recognize current sports achievements, the positive influence of sports participation, and the continuing struggle for equality and access for women in sports.

Sports have been very important in my life. I loved playing and am a fan. When I became a lawyer, sports helped me survive the five years I spent as the only woman lawyer in my law firm. It gave me something to talk about in attorney's meetings, and there was automatic respect because I knew more about baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer than anyone else in the room. And you can tell from that last sentence that I do not lack for confidence, and I attribute some of that confidence to playing sports.

One of Bushco's early failures was their attack on Title IX in 2003:

In 2003, the administration empaneled a commission to "clarify" read "lessen" Title IX's compliance standards. A minority report issued by commissioners Julie Foudy and Donna de Varona condemning the commission's recommendations for change drew bipartisan support and the backing of women's groups across the country and compelled the Department of Education to withdraw plans to modify the standards for compliance adopted in 1979.

Not that Title IX has ever been enforced with any rigor by the Justice Department of any administration. Do you know how much in fines has been leveled by the Office of Civil Rights for Title IX violations? That would be zero, zip, nada. No educational institution has ever been fined by the federal government for violating this federal law.

We've come a long way, but there's still a ways to go. Happy NGWSD!