DE-FENSE!

I’ve participated in a wide variety of sports.  Water, land, individual, and team. I can’t say I excelled at all of them, or even any of them (I was so awful at basketball that I sometimes just pretend that never happened), but I’ve mostly stuck to playing defense when I played team sports. I played libero on my volleyball team, sweeper on my youth soccer team, and low defense in lacrosse. I had only a vague idea of what I was supposed to be doing in water polo, but my strength was still on defense.

Playing defense isn’t always that glamorous. You’re not usually the one that is scoring goals. If it’s in a sport like basketball or water polo, where all the players play both offense and defense, or if you’re in a position that plays both, like a midfielder, most of your accomplishments are still measured in terms of your offensive successes. Just my observation from watching hours upon hours of ESPN while working at a gym. Sportscasters would much rather talk about how many points or goals a player scored than how many points they prevented the other team from scoring. There isn’t even a real way to keep track of that. Defenders must depend on interceptions and caused turnovers for their main statistics. However, these do not accurately demonstrate defense ability either- you don't have to intercept or cause a turnover frequently to be an excellent and effective defender. One of the better methods of assessing a defender’s ability, in my personal opinion, is the plus/minus goal difference used in hockey. A player is given “plus one” for every goal scored by his or her team while he or she is on the ice, and a “minus one” for every goal the opposing team scores during that time.

So why am I writing all this? Well, I would hope that next time you watch a team sport, you notice what the defenders are doing. I’m admittedly biased, but I feel that excelling at defense is much harder than doing the same on offense. When you’re on the attack, the other team (or country-it’s the same in war) is waiting for your move. They’re waiting to react to your decisions. They can try and predict what you do, but you can always change your mind. I’ll run the other way. I’ll pass the ball instead of going to goal. In this regard, the defense is always a step behind. Always at a disadvantage.  What I’ve also noticed from my own experiences is that players on offense don’t necessarily have to communicate with each other or work together to score goals or points. It only takes one athlete sprinting down the court or field (faster than everyone else, of course) to score. Any one attack player could be a threat. That is why all d-players are needed to defend a goal, hoop, etc. A player on offense may not be doing anything, but defenders must keep an eye on all offensive players because they are all potential threats. The defense on any team must work together so that an attacker does not just sneak by. Also, everyone knows defenders are way cooler. You know how people always complain about Kobe never passing the ball (which, by the way, is so definitely true)? Well, playing defense does not really give you that much of a choice. You could run all the way up the field and try to score a goal, or attempt to set yourself up for a nice spike, but that's not the most effective use of your team's abilities. What can I say, us defenders are smart, awesome, and humble too. No gloryhounds here.
I could be wrong. Like I said, I'm clearly biased. People who play offense...any thoughts? Opinions? Think I'm out of my mind? Let me know in the comments section! 

Trifecta

Highlight reel day!

Voice Post

MCBias writes a blog that is self-admittedly and blatantly biased, as are many sports blogs. However, unlike other sports blogs, the “Moderately Cerebral Bias” blog contains posts not only about major men’s sports, but women’s sports as well. The overall tone of the entire blog, including these posts about women’s sports, is unapologetic, and conversational.

Read the blog!

            In the post titled “Women’s SportsWeek: She is the Champion, My Friend”, the author begins by stating,

            Ah, so much easier to twist the work of another to make a cute title than rather thinking up our own, eh?

            This line characterizes the author’s tone throughout all of the blog’s posts. MCBias readily admits that the title lacks originality, but does not apologize for it. The posts on the blog also involve the audience with a sort of “we’re in this together” mentality:

            Usually, most of us are controversial enough without help, thanks much.

            The author also frequently uses rhetorical questions to bring up seemingly obvious evidence to support main points.

            And what happened? Ask the players themselves. Are you Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters, Anna Kournikova? Well then, you are a marketer’s dream, and you should spend more time on fashion/movies/travel/becoming and entertainment superstar than on actually improving your tennis game…On the other hand, are you Lindsay Davenport? Well then, you should prepare to be made fun of because of your looks, and have your accomplishments ignored.

            MCBias writes for an audience with a general knowledge of sports and pop culture, as seen in this passage. However, this style of writing involves the audience by putting them in the situation being used as the author’s argument. 

So in oh-so-weak retaliation (of the lack of honoring a champion for their achievements), today I am posting pictures of more obscure women champions over the years.     

          The author sees this as a way of striking back, but uses “oh-so-weak” somewhat sarcastically to imply that recognizing these athletes is powerful, not weak, and that the athletes themselves are powerful. However, others may see this as weak.

            In the more recent post, “FortyYears after Title IX, Women Remain Amateurs”, the author concludes that Title IX has “miserably failed in jump-starting a larger interest in women as athletes or creating an equal playing field”. Much like in the first post, the author quickly establishes a strong point of view and states it matter-of-factly at the beginning of the entry. The author then proposes multiple possible solutions in garnering interest in women’s sports, using rhetorical questions along the way and writing in a thinking-out-loud, stream of consciousness type of style, using phrases such as “I was impressed by…”, “I also quite frankly wonder…”, and “It won’t be easy…” to reflect his thoughts.

            Perhaps the true way to fulfill the spirit of Title IX is for a woman to one day play shortstop for the Dodgers.

            At the end of both posts, the author asks his readers to share their own opinions, encouraging more audience interaction. Also in both posts, the author uses hyperlinks to citations and references to previous posts. In all of his posts, there is a liberal use of photos and videos to support his points of view, including a video of an impressive last-second goal by Abby Wambach in an incredible display of athleticism by the USA women’s soccer team, which was still not enough to garner enough interest for a professional women’s league to succeed in the US. The video emphasized the sheer awesomeness of women's sports and MCBias helps bring out how little that is recognized.

Profile Post

                “The Roots of The Game: A Syracuse Lacrosse Memoir” is pretty much what it sounds like. It is a blog written by Frederick Douglass Opie, a former member of the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team in the early 80s. Frederick (I’m going to call him Freddy for short- Freddy, if you’re reading this and would prefer to be called something else, let me know) writes about memories of his participation in lacrosse and comments on the state of lacrosse “back in the day” as well as what the lacrosse is like nowadays.  He also occasionally interviews or uploads guest posts from his former lacrosse buddies.

Freddy in the #7. Photo borrowed from his blog and all credits go to Freddy!

                If you read my blogs (mom and those robot spam advertisers, I’m talking to you guys) and several of my favorite blogs listed in my blogroll over  here ------------------------------------------> you’ll notice that most of us blog in the moment, or soon after things occur. Freddy is awesome because he blogs about the past, present, and future. Yes, you may be thinking to yourself, anyone can do that. But Freddy makes me feel like I’m living in the story with him as he tells it. The real life photos of Freddy’s teams definitely add to the “memoir” feel.

                Although I definitely enjoy reading this blog, I think that judging by the comments Freddy receives, most of his readers are former men’s lacrosse players, mostly from around the time that he played lacrosse. If you can’t tell already, my focus is mostly on modern day women’s lacrosse, so although our topics are both about lacrosse, the subject matter is actually different. I would imagine that our audiences, provided that some person out there in the black hole of the internet actually reads my blog, would be more skewed by gender and age as a result. My blog? I would expect the audience to mostly be lacrosse-playing women in their teens and early twenties. And robospammers.

                Freddy discusses his life playing lacrosse growing up and in college, his personal experiences with pro lacrosse, educating his children about lacrosse, and the direction that he thinks lacrosse is currently taking. He has little sporadic miniseries of blogs on certain topics as well. Most of my favorite posts, however, are the ones where Freddy looks back on the good ol’ days where he played lacrosse in high school, college, and professionally.  Mostly because there are some sweet pictures. In one of my favorite posts, Freddy recalls a deli he and his summer lacrosse league buddies would visit after practice:

I can still taste and smell one of their hot corn muffins wrapped in that white deli paper. I would order one sliced in half and served with butter. The heat would melt the butter making the corn muffin the perfect consistency.

                I can almost taste the fresh muffins. Freddy is also a food blogger, so he oftentimes will use vivid descriptions of food to spice up old memories of lacrosse. Pretty cool right? Everyone loves food! Or at least I do….

Food and lacrosse. What's not to love?

               Other great posts to keep an eye out for are how to make money doing lacrosse-related things. It's no secret that professional lacrosse is not as widely watched as, say the NFL or the NBA. Therefore, the salaries for professional lacrosse players are minimal. However, Freddy explores other jobs related to lacrosse, such as coaching or becoming an entrepreneur. If you love lacrosse, you will find a way to keep it in your life. For Freddy, this blog is a way for him to still be connected to that world he was a part of for so long.

                In general, I found that Freddy’s tone is warm and open. Like an old friend sharing stories about lacrosse. He adds pictures or videos to almost every post to keep things interesting as well. He even does video blogs every once in a while. Definitely a blog worth checking out, if you’re at all interested in the history of lacrosse.


Hello World!

“Oh so you hit people and it’s like hockey and stuff right?” is usually the response I get when I tell people that I play lacrosse. Most of my friends and family had never seen a lacrosse game when I started playing. Just so we get this out of the way- hockey on a field is field hockey and not lacrosse. More on what lacrosse as a game is like later. 

I’m relatively new to the world of lacrosse. I’ve only been playing for about 4 years, first on my high school team, and now on a club travel team. No schools had men’s or women’s lacrosse programs where I grew up in California. I didn’t have any idea what it was; I probably knew more about curling at that point. Eventually, a group of local high schools decided that they were going to start both men’s and women’s lacrosse teams at the same time so that teams in our league could play each other so I decided to join the team my senior year and had absolutely no idea what I was doing half the time. I had been a competitive swimmer since age 6, and had also done track and field, water polo, and volleyball, but no field sports. The programs in that league are now almost 5 years old and expanding so quickly that my high school team had over 50 girls try out for 32 spots. When I tried out, anyone who wanted to be on the team made the team! In fact, I made the varsity team with the instructions: “run fast and chase after whoever has the ball” going into my first few games.

Although I’m still learning as I go, I’ve discovered that the typical perception of lacrosse is that it is a predominantly East Coast/ Midwest Prep School sport. My Californian friends know as much about lacrosse as my New York friends know about water polo (my New York friends after I explained water polo to them: “oh yeah, we don’t do that in New York”). But, in the very short amount of time I’ve played lacrosse, that’s begun to change. More and more West Coast high schools and universities are adding lacrosse programs, such as USC, and schools like Johns Hopkins and Northwestern are gaining national prominence as lacrosse powerhouses. Lacrosse is now the fastest growing sport in the United States and more and more people are at least able to recognize what a lacrosse stick looks like, even if they don’t understand the game.

The amount of media attention lacrosse is now getting is impressive; I even saw a poster for athletic clothing at Target featuring a woman carrying a lacrosse stick. She was holding a men’s stick so the picture was inaccurate, but that’s another blog post entirely. At the very least, Target ads reach tons of households nationwide. Considering the largest Target-shopping contingency is that of families, perhaps this will encourage more parents to enroll their children in a local lacrosse program. 

Lacrosse is a sport that is older than basketball, but it’s only now starting to really spread across the country. Hopefully I can continue to track the growth of lacrosse and how it can increase its prominence, especially on the West Coast. Oh and another fact no one seems to know: lacrosse is the national sport of Canada. Hockey was added later. I’m a huge hockey fan as well- I might even post about it sometime- but I promise I’m not Canadian.

 

reLAXing in Hawaii

Yes, you read that title correctly. I got to spend a weekend playing lacrosse in paradise. On a field literally a block from the beach. With this view:

Filter free on a cloudy day and it's still amazing.

 And right next to our hotel. I swear if the field weren't so close by, none of us would have made it to any of the games.

Beachfront hotel in Waikiki

We'd all be here instead:

Ok ok, I promise I'm done trying to make you jealous. Let's get back to lacrosse.

The tournament had an 18+ women's division, an 18+ men's division, a 33+ men's division, and a 44+ men's division. It was odd seeing middle-aged men all over Waikiki in too-small lacrosse pinnies clearly from their younger years. But hey, if you're going to relive your glory days you might as well do it in Hawaii with your best lax bros.

What was interesting was not only the diversity in ages of the lacrosse players (one of the women we played against even told me about her kids as we were waiting for the draw) but also the nationalities of the players.

We played three Japanese teams. THREE. I don't know about you, but I was completely unaware that lacrosse was so huge in Japan. And the teams came from different places in Japan too- one team came from Hokkaido, the large, northernmost island in Japan, and another team was from Tokyo. The third team was an Under-20 Team from all over Japan. There were also 5 or 6 Japanese men's teams.

See how far apart Tokyo and Hokkaido are?

How awesome is that? Lacrosse is spreading in Asia as well! They even have an organized National Governing Body! And the Japan Lacrosse Association happens to be celebrating its 25th anniversary. Wow. Wait what? That's longer than I've been alive.

After some further research (and my fairly scientific survey methods of Facebook messaging my lacrosse-playing friends from all over the country and one from Australia), I learned that lacrosse was brought to Japan by students who approached the American Embassy in Tokyo wanting to learn more about the sport. I also learned that most of my friends, even those who have been playing lacrosse since elementary school, were unaware of just how popular lacrosse was in Japan or how long the Japanese have been playing lacrosse. Maybe my friends just need to brush up on their lacrosse history. I know I need to. This Japan lacrosse thing blew my mind. I'm still in awe.

I guess being so separated from countries where lacrosse is more prominent (such as the US, Canada, and parts of Europe) changed their style of play in the way that Australian English evolved from British English. The Japanese teams we played were not as aggressive and did not focus as much as we did on ball control and stick skills. Instead, they utilized their speed and agility and tight mano y mano defensive marking strategy to score goals.

Oh yes, and there were noticeable height differences that definitely affected their game strategy. Now, I'm  a mere 5 foot 2 inches, but the girls on the teams we played were generally shorter than me. Some of my teammates are 5 foot 8 or 9 inches. Therefore, we frequently ended up literally table-topping some of the Japanese players if they ever leaned over to grab the ball or run around us because they could not shoot or pass over our tall players. Automatic penalty on our team. Pretty clever. I'm going to try that some time.

Another possible factor in their different style of play is that lacrosse was founded in Japan through the American embassy. Instead of it being a sort of macho, warrior-like sport like it is in Canada and to some extent the United States, lacrosse in Japan is a friendship tool that was used to promote understanding and cultural exchanges. One of the teams even brought us Japanese gifts! We got chopsticks, candy, caligraphy sets, etc. They were all very friendly, even if they could not understand our special dialect that I have dubbed "mouthguard English". And at the end of the games, instead of the typical, go-down-the-line-with-the-"good-game"-high-fives greeting of the other team, we lined up directly across from the Japanese players, bowed and said thank you/arrigato, and shook hands instead.

Shaking hands with the Hokkaido team

See their outfits? Full body Under Armour compression long sleeved-shirts and tights. It was 97 degrees on average (I looked it up) and massively humid. My team was sweating like crazy just trying to put our cleats on, much less running up and down a field. Major respect. Every Japanese team dressed like this too. I believe it is because in Asian cultures, women prefer to remain pale. Ironic, as most of my teammates spent a good amount of time tanning on the beach.

The women's division also included teams from Canada and the Iroquois Nation, both of whom could be considered founders of lacrosse. Good to see that the tradition is alive and well!

The men's division included multiple Canadian teams and an Israeli team.

Not quite lacrosse the universe, but definitely lACROSSe the globe!

Voice Post

                MCBias writes a blog that is self-admittedly and blatantly biased, as are many sports blogs. However, unlike other sports blogs, the “Moderately Cerebral Bias” blog contains posts not only about major men’s sports, but women’s sports as well. The overall tone of the entire blog, including these posts about women’s sports, is unapologetic, and conversational.

            In the post titled “Women’s SportsWeek: She is the Champion, My Friend”, the author begins by stating,

            Ah, so much easier to twist the work of another to make a cute title than rather thinking up our own, eh?

            This line characterizes the author’s tone throughout all of the blog’s posts. MCBias readily admits that the title lacks originality, but does not apologize for it. The posts on the blog also involve the audience with a sort of “we’re in this together” mentality:

            Usually, most of us are controversial enough without help, thanks much.

            The author also frequently uses rhetorical questions to bring up seemingly obvious evidence to support main points.

            And what happened? Ask the players themselves. Are you Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters, Anna Kournikova? Well then, you are a marketer’s dream, and you should spend more time on fashion/movies/travel/becoming and entertainment superstar than on actually improving your tennis game…On the other hand, are you Lindsay Davenport? Well then, you should prepare to be made fun of because of your looks, and have your accomplishments ignored.

            MCBias writes for an audience with a general knowledge of sports and pop culture, as seen in this passage. However, this style of writing involves the audience by putting them in the situation being used as the author’s argument. 

So in oh-so-weak retaliation (of the lack of honoring a champion for their achievements), today I am posting pictures of more obscure women champions over the years.     

          The author sees this as a way of striking back, but uses “oh-so-weak” somewhat sarcastically to imply that recognizing these athletes is powerful, not weak, and that the athletes themselves are powerful. However, others may see this as weak.

            In the more recent post, “FortyYears after Title IX, Women Remain Amateurs”, the author concludes that Title IX has “miserably failed in jump-starting a larger interest in women as athletes or creating an equal playing field”. Much like in the first post, the author quickly establishes a strong point of view and states it matter-of-factly at the beginning of the entry. The author then proposes multiple possible solutions in garnering interest in women’s sports, using rhetorical questions along the way and writing in a thinking-out-loud, stream of consciousness type of style, using phrases such as “I was impressed by…”, “I also quite frankly wonder…”, and “It won’t be easy…” to reflect his thoughts.

            Perhaps the true way to fulfill the spirit of Title IX is for a woman to one day play shortstop for the Dodgers.

            At the end of both posts, the author asks his readers to share their own opinions, encouraging more audience interaction. Also in both posts, the author uses hyperlinks to citations and references to previous posts. In all of his posts, there is a liberal use of photos and videos to support his points of view, including a video of an impressive last-second goal by Abby Wambach in an incredible display of athleticism by the USA women’s soccer team, which was still not enough to garner enough interest for a professional women’s league to succeed in the US. The video emphasized the sheer awesomeness of women's sports and MCBias helps bring out how little that is recognized.