Women Get A New Spin On Sports

The cover has a familiarity to it. There’s the Sports Illustrated nameplate and a woman pictured in a sleeveless practice jersey, her fleshy arms exposed, a look of self-confidence on her face.

But look inside. There are no multi-million-dollar smiles from Naomi Campbell, sprawled on the rocks at Venezuela’s Canaima National Park. Nor will you witness Vendela’s best rehearsed come-hither look, beckoning from the alluring beaches of Cabo San Lucas.

This SI publication, Sports Illustrated Women/Sport magazine, which hits newsstands April 21, is aimed at women and is written predominantly by women.

The magazine, said Women/Sport editor Sandy Bailey, is a response to the ground swell that grew from the 1996 Summer Olympics. Millions of women watched and took personal pride in the accomplishments of Amy Van Dyken, Kerri Strug, Mia Hamm, Dot Richardson.

The premier issue’s covergirl is a pregnant Sheryl Swoopes. The teaser reads, “Sheryl Swoopes and the WNBA are both due in June.”

The marketing minds behind the cover billings also hope to hook the readers with “The Coach As Sexual Predator: Are Young Girls Safe?” and “Why I fell for Grant Hill,” among other articles.

“I think men have enough to read already,” Bailey said. “We (women) don’t have enough to read already. Let them keep reading everything they’ve got.”

But do women want to read separate magazines about women’s sports?

What about those of us - and we are finding there are plenty out there - who remember wrestling with a brother for first dibs on the latest SI when it arrived in the mail? Or those who impressed a college boyfriend when he discovered you subscribe?

Take a look at this slick, impressive, 170-page magazine. It’s compelling, funny, and at times, it might throw you off-guard. (See “the phallic fallacy,” written by Jane Leavy, a pioneer among women’s sportswriters).

“We’d like to tell as many stories from women’s perspectives as we can, which is really not how we do it at Sports Illustrated, for obvious reasons,” said Bailey, an SI Olympic editor who joined the magazine in 1993.

Issue No. 1’s roster of storytellers is indeed loaded with talent, from SI senior writers to contributing writers such as Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen.

Bailey said Sports Illustrated still will continue to cover women’s sports, adding, “We’re the magazine that had (Stanford guard) Jamila Wideman on the cover a couple weeks ago.” And yes, there will be some overlapping topics, such as, “If (Martina) Hingis wins the French Open, that will be in SI.”

Don’t expect game stories in Women/Sport. If it’s launched permanently, the magazine will be published monthly.

“We really have to bring a different spin to any event, no matter how big it is or how interesting it is, to do it in a monthly,” Bailey explained.

At the women’s Final Four basketball championship, which Bailey considers the biggest women’s sporting event in a non-Olympic year, SI writer Johnette Howard and photographer Lynn Johnson went behind the scenes. Their piece is laid out in a six-page photo essay.

There are photos of women receiving medical treatment, Tennessee’s Kellie Jelly getting her hair braided and her ankles taped at the same time, Vols coach Pat Summitt enjoying her ritual massage. You get the picture. No Tyra Banks doing the Bahamas.

“Betrayal of Trust,” written by Howard and Lester Munson, focuses attention on sexual abuse of athletes. It’s a story of Rick Butler, a male volleyball coach in Chicago, who was accused by three women of forcing them to have sex with him when they were teens playing on his club team. The alleged incidents occurred in the mid to late ‘80s. Butler still is coaching.

“Unfortunately, from the victims’ point of view, they have no recourse now in either civil or criminal court because of the statute of limitations,” Howard said. “So whatever allegations they might make can only be aired in venues like this one.”

“Circle of Life,” by Miami Herald columnist Linda Robertson, is a profile of Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer. It’s a wonderfully written article about a woman in her 40s who was nearing the top of the coaching world when her daughter suffered a crippling illness and her husband suddenly died.

But there’s much more to the magazine than exposing those of rotten character or depressing (but uplifting) tales.

There’s a Tonya feature, followed by a vanilla-is-as-vanilla-does Nancy feature. There also are short portraits on some of the players from the Olympic basketball team.

There’s a “Help Wanted” column that asks, “Is there a generally accepted rule about the effects of pre-event sex?” Olympic skier Edie Thys has the answer.

Classified information that women wouldn’t have dared ask years ago.

Said Bailey: “When I wrote my first sports story in 1976, the goal was to write like a man, to be sure that you were one of the guys. To be sure that if somebody took your byline off, they couldn’t tell that you weren’t a guy.”

We’ve come a long way with our written word, baby.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Hilary Kraus The Spokesman-Review