Our Girls Won Gold

Our girls Stanford's, Kayla Pedersen and Jeanette Pohlen, played key roles in helping the 2009 USA Basketball Women's World University Games Team get the gold. Team USA beat Russia 83-64. Kayla just missed a double double again, getting 11 points and 9 rebounds. Pohlen gave out five assists to a talent-laden team and scored 7 points herself.

This is Kayla's third career gold medal with USA Basketball. She won gold at the FIBA U18 World Championships in 2006 and at the FIBA U19 World Championships in 2007. For Jeanette, this is her first time on Team USA, and her first gold medal.

In other news, head coach Tara VanDerveer wrote to R and told her to buy the Season Tickets again because Stanford’s money foundation has dropped to only half a trillion or 5 billion, or something like that. No, we kid you Stanford, we kid you because we love you! The personalized form letter for money was a nice touch. Anyway, Tara is excited about incoming freshmen Joslyn Tinkle….Must… Not… Make….. Fun…. Of….. Name….. Boy, that was hard. If we can’t make fun of her name, that doesn’t mean you can’t. Send us your jokes, now, before we explode.

Tinkle, oh yeah, that reminds us; she also won a gold medal with Team USA, as an Under 18, I think. So for the members of the incoming Stanford team, that makes 6 players that have a Gold Medal from Team USA. Pohlen, Pedersen, Jayne Appel, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Sarah Boothe and incoming freshman Joslyn Tinkle make the six. Necka has another shot at a medal at the end of July.

Is College Basketball Season here yet?

Say It Isn’t So, Diana!

Okay, I saw on other WNBA websites that Phoenix forward Diana Taurasi was pulled over for a DUI on July 2nd. I was shocked. I love Taurasi and always have thought of her as a role model.

And low and behold, my paper, the San Francisco Chronicle just put it in their paper today! On the back page, one inch of column, as usual, but 13 days late? Come on, SF!

More reports have surfaced, just not on the San Francisco Chronicle, that she was out with friends and ex-teammates (Sue Bird, Swin Cash), and that they were driving behind her. Boy, didn’t any of them have the sense to say, “D, give me your keys and let's call a taxi”?

So that got me thinking, always a dangerous thing. Should women athletes be role models? (This question is often asked of men, and Charles Barkley). Are women athletes held to a higher standard as role models (the good girl syndrome) than male athletes (boys will be boys)? Many male athletes have had DUIs, so what is the big deal?

I asked R what she thought of these questions. She said, “Drinking and partying with your friends is acceptable, and driving drunk is unacceptable, no matter who you are.” And on whether women athletes should be role models? She answered, “It might not be their choice to be a role model, but they are in the media, more than, say most business people and laypersons. Being in the media attracts fans, and sports figures, because they usually have to be in shape and healthy to play, are thought of as positive role models in their communities. So like it or not, they are role models.” Good answers.

One of the great things about joining Women Talk Sports is that I can ask other women bloggers about women athletes as role models, and they are so much smarter and articulate them me, too, and they nary make a typo.

Jane Schonberger of Pretty Tough Sports attended a panel called, The Athlete as Role Model awhile back and wrote about it. It is more scholarly than my ramblings. She wrote about how one question was answered:
“Why are athletes perceived as role models? The answers varied but several common points were raised. Athletes are held to different (albeit unrealistic) standards than actors and entertainers. While money and the media creates exposure for the athletes, they are often put on a pedestal without wanting the position.”

Ann Gaffigan, co-founder of Women Talk Sports writes:
“YES I think athletes, male and female, should strive to be good role models. I think sports serve that exact purpose to society: they inspire us by making us believe even the wildest dreams can come true. BUT, we should not expect athletes to be roles models in the sense that they are perfect beings because they are not and cannot be.”

Jayda Evans, who writes Women’s Hoops Blog for the Seattle Times, had several posts and related articles on the incident and aftermath. She reported that Diana met with the media and had the good sense to “be embarrassed”.

Well, that’s a start. Admitting her mistake and learning from it is always a stand-up kinda thing. She almost sounds like a role model.

Back to the Farm

Hey, we have some basketball news that actually pertains to the current Stanford women’s basketball team. The USA Women's Basketball team is playing in the World University Games in Belgrade, Serbia, and two of our girls are there (The third, Jayne Appel, withdrew because of knee surgery, remember?)

Stanford’s Kayla Pederson had nine points and 11 rebounds to help Team USA win 115-78 against the Czech Republic. Team USA is 5-0 and now advances to the medal semifinals and plays Australia on Thursday. And our Jeanette Pohlen added four points, three assists and a team-high three steals in the game. The coach is ex-Stanford Player Charli Turner Thorne.

If you want to watch the finals, they are set for July 11^th; you just have to get up at 6 AM PT to be part of it.

The U19 USA team is getting their roster set for the World Championships in Bangkok, Thailand beginning July 23. Another Stanford player, Nnemkadi Ogwumike is on the team. Then we discover that another Stanford player, Sarah Boothe (Boooo-the, we like to yell) is out with a stress fracture in her right foot. She had surgery in June! No one told us! Dang, we hate that all our players are getting hurt and having surgeries.

We just hope everyone comes back healthy and happy, and with a gold medal.

Candice Takin' Over

Candice Wiggins won her third straight game and scored over 20 points for the third straight game. Well, she had help from her Minnesota Lynx teammates, mostly ex-Tennessee Nicky Anosike, who added 20 and 10 rebounds. This time they beat the Atlanta Dream. Last year, Candice took a backseat role when Seimone Augustus was the star scorer, but she has come out of her shell since losing Seimone Augustus for the season with a torn ACL. Next up is the Sacramento Monarchs, with rookie Courtney Paris, who is only averaging 3 points a game.

And the other Candace, Candace Parker came back to The LA Sparks practice after having a baby girl May 13th. Lisa Leslie is also out for the Sparks with a sprained knee. No wonder the Sparks are hurting.

And, oh, check out Candace Parker in Time Magazine. She gets to answer 10 questions. Imagine, a mainstream media mag paying attention to women's sports, even if it was only 10 questions! She gives some really great answers, too. And oh, they have the interview online as a video, and it has even more detailed answers.

Speaking of the WNBA, they called. Well, the emailed us at little ol C and R to tell us about the Fast Break to Reading Program, an initiative created by Pitney Bowes and the WNBA to promote child literacy. The goal of the program is to have children log a collective one million reading minutes by the end of the summer. You can visit our site, Fast Break to Reading, to learn more details and find out how to get involved. We love when we get noticed by big time sites like the WNBA, and we do love reading, as well as basketball, so there is your plug of the day.

Candice and an Epiphanny

See, see, didn’t we tell you Candice would have to pick up the slack? For those of you fans that still read us in the off-season, we predicted that with Minnesota Lynx lead scorer Seimone Augustus out for the season with a torn ACL, Candice Wiggins would have to take on the scoring slack, and she did. She scored 25 points to lead her team over the NY Liberty and snap a mini two-game losing streak.

In other news, Rutgers star Epiphanny Prince is skipping her senior season to play professionally in Europe. Say what!!

Yes, yes, we know men have been leaving college early to go pro (And therefore get paid to play) for decades. But we hate the thought of women doing this. So does the WNBA. They have set up tight rules to discourage this. Quoting CBS Sports, “To play in the WNBA, a player must turn 22 during the year they are drafted, graduate from college or see their class matriculate during the three-month period following the draft. Or the player must be out of high school for four years.”

Okay, here’s the deal according to CBS Sports. Prince has not signed with an agent or even had a European team offer her anything. She still plans to enter the 2010 WNBA Draft.

"I just wanted to start my pro career," Prince told the Associated Press by phone. "I feel it was the right move for me and my family. I've always dreamed of playing in the WNBA."

C is totally against it. She hates the thought of women skipping college. The shelf life of a WNBA player is about 6 years, maybe less, and with fewer teams this year, it is harder to make a team. Women don’t make nearly enough money to retire on, and need a college education to fall back on. Then she reads that Prince plans to take summer school courses and hopes to graduate from Rutgers on time. Okay, there goes that argument to stay in school to graduate, if it can be done early. So it seems to come down to money.

R says that the Prince quote shows she is doing this to take care of her family, so in her view she is thinking outside of herself and trying to help others. And a Europe team allows her to do that, start making money right away instead of risking injury her senior year.

C says how much money can she make in Europe? The CBS Sports article had an interesting tidbit. If Prince had returned for her senior season, she could have been covered under a program that allows exceptional NCAA athletes to purchase insurance to protect themselves in the event of catastrophic injury or illness during their college career. Just how much for women? A women's basketball player can get up to $250,000 in coverage. Okay, but CBS Sports thinks, “It's likely Prince would earn more than that playing abroad as many American players have earned six-figure salaries in Europe.” More than $250,000? And just why is it Europe values women basketball players so much moreand pays them so mucjh more than right here in good ol’ USA?

Here’s another interesting fact. Prince isn't the first woman to leave school early to play in Europe. Schuye LaRue left Virginia after her sophomore year in 2001 to go play abroad before getting drafted in the second round by the Los Angeles Sparks in 2003.

So I guess there is hope she will come back and play for the WNBA. But if you can make more in Europe, the question is why?

Team USA

Our Stanford girls, Kayla Pederson and Jeanette Pohlen both got picked for the USA National Basketball Team that will play in the 2009 World University Games. This is Kayla’s third time on the team, but the first for Pohlen, who stepped up her game this year by playing in the point position for Stanford and staying in tip-top shape.

It actually would have been a trio of Stanford players on the team, but Jayne Appel, a sure lock-in, had to withdraw due to KNEE SURGEY. Again. Jayne, we are worried about you.

Kayla and Jeanette will be in training camp until June 25th, and then go to Belgrade, Serbia, to play in the Games July 1-11. Hope their shots are up to date! And darn, again, that means we won’t be able to see them when we drop in on Tara VanDerVeer’s summer camp this week!

Azzi all the Way, Baby!!

You Didn’t think we would let Jennifer Azzi’s induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in June go by unnoticed did ya?

It wasn’t just what she did; she was the first in so many ways for Stanford. Jennifer brought Stanford's first national championship home in 1990, with a win over Auburn on Tennessee’s floor! The Cardinal went 31-1 that year and she was the Finals MVP. She became the first Cardinal women's basketball player to earn the Wade Trophy, the James Naismith Player of the Year award, and the Honda-Broderick National Player of the Year and was Stanford's first WBCA/Kodak All-American. She earned the three national player of the year awards as a senior in 1989-90, while twice being named to the WBCA/Kodak All-America First Team (1989 and '90). And oh, she won a gold medal in 1996. Her national team went 60-0 that year. Her coach? Tara VanDerVeer. After that, she was a founding member of the ABL for two seasons before it folded, and then went on to play 5 seasons with the WNBA, plus overseas.

And she grew up in Tennessee, yet chose Stanford. She might have been regretting that choice her freshmen year when Stanford was 14-14. She and her teammates went around campus posting flyers to get fans to come to see them in Maples. (I know, I can’t believe it either.)

Azzi, ever the workaholic, would ask her coach to come rebound for her on Sunday mornings. Jennifer talks about how Tara VanDerVeer asked her to have patience and see her vision that freshmen year. "It was a moment in the gym, just the two of us,'' Azzi recalled, "and she said I know this is really hard for you. You're from Tennessee. You're used to winning. But I want you to see this vision. I want you to see my vision. Picture this place sold out, full of fans. We're going to do everything we can do as a staff ... but I need you as the leader to see this vision. I want you to see us winning a national championship by your senior year."

Give me goose bumps! Wonder if Tara would like to predict the stick market, too?
During her induction, Jennifer was characteristically humble. It's not just about me, it's about all the coaches and teammates and players and everybody that has been involved in my career," Azzi said of being inducted. "That's what I've loved about the game my whole life, that it brings people together."

So glad you went to Stanford, Jennifer, not Tennessee.