Girls sports hit big time in ignoble fashion

Every year, the National Federation of State High School Associations sends out a press release trumpeting its National Girls and Women in Sports Day Luncheon.

(If you read that first paragraph and are still here, thanks.)

Every year, I wait for the release to arrive, like the red-breasted robin in the backyard. It’s my clue to pull out the soapbox, stand tall and speak authoritatively (OK, I know “authoritatively” is a stretch) on the importance of girls sports.

So here comes the release late last week, heralding the NFSHSA’s NGWSD luncheon (add in a WMD or two and I have a job in Washington), to be held today.

“Perfect,” I think to myself, “that’s the day LC and University’s girls are going to play. What a perfect news peg.” (For the uninitiated, news peg is a journalism term meaning “I want to do a story, what excuse can I find?”)

There was only one problem – a big one, actually.

National Girls and Women is Sports Day was Feb. 1. You may have read about it, except here of course. But, as it turns out, the NFSHSA’s NGWSD luncheon isn’t actually on NGWSD. (Insert your own late joke here. I’m not touching that.)

So now what am I going to do?

I’m going to do what every good journalist does: Don’t let facts get in the way, just keep on writing.

And today we’re writing on National Girls and Women is Sports Day.

No, we’re writing on tonight’s U-Hi and LC girls basketball game.

Actually it’s both – and more.

Sometimes our society has to be dragged kicking and screaming from Point A to Point B. For years, girls and women’s sports were at Point A. It took some jump-starting to get on the road.

But now there’s little doubt we are at Point B. The 1,500 or so who will show up to watch LC and U-Hi play tonight is testament to that.

That’s well and good, but how do we get to Point C, that mark where girls and women’s athletics are big time, where the games and matches are more than just games and matches but events as well? (And don’t say they already are, because you know as well as I do that even the biggest of female athletic events pale in importance – or television viewership – to the World Series or Super Bowl or Daytona.)

Strangely, we may already be in the Point C neighborhood, and there was a story in Wednesday’s Seattle Times that illustrated the point.

Two reporters for the paper, Christine Willmsen and Michael Ko, spent months documenting alleged recruiting abuses by the girls basketball coaches at Seattle’s Chief Sealth High. (You can read the story at www.seattletimes.com.)

So there is an actual “news peg” for this column. Why?

Because if girls and women’s sports become important enough for men to cheat over, then they are just a hop, skip and/or bribe away from being considered big time.

We’ve become accustomed to major league baseball players using drugs to break records. We’re not surprised when an assistant hockey coach is accused of running a gambling ring. There’s no gasping anymore when a college coach is caught helping athletes cheat to stay eligible.

Men’s sports have taken so many body blows, the bruises just don’t get us blue.

But high school girls coaches? If the allegations are true, that’s a new level.

We’ve reached a point at which coaches are cheating to win the State 3A girls basketball title? Where addresses are faked, where cars are provided, all in the name of winning?

It’s more than Point C. It’s Point F.