Jackson honored at NY Liberty's Inspiring Women Night
Published: Tuesday, July 28, 2009
On Thursday, July 23, 2009, the Foundation’s Yolanda Jackson was honored by the New York Liberty at their Inspiring Women Night, when the Liberty took on the Sacramento Monarchs. Jackson, who serves as the Foundation’s Senior Director of Athlete Marketing, was recognized alongside 12 other women who are pioneers of local New York City non-profit organizations that empower the lives of women and young girls. Before the game, the Liberty hosted a reception and networking event in the Club Bar & Grill at Madison Square Garden that featured the evening's honorees and special guest speakers Liberty president and general manager Carol Blazejowski and WNBA president Donna Orender.
Foundation President featured in CaptainU Internet radio interview
Published: Thursday, July 09, 2009
Jessica Mendoza, Women's Sports Foundation President, was recently featured on "Role Models." In a wide-ranging interview, Mendoza talked about winning Olympic gold, her work with the Women's Sports Foundation and her recent visit to the troops in Afghanistan. "Role Models" is an Internet radio show produced by CaptainU, a college softball recruiting software company.
Listen to the full interview here!
Foundation research highlighted in New York Times
Published: Monday, June 15, 2009
Research commissioned by the Foundation is used in a poignant New York Times article emphasizing the lack of opportunity for girls in urban neighborhoods to take part in sports. On Saturday, June 13, Katie Thomas of the Times describes how the youth sports movement has been highly influential in suburban communities, while girls living in cities from Los Angeles to New York are being left behind.
Disparity in girls’ sports is revealed through a look at urban teams
Foundation’s Director of Research, Don Sabo, is quoted
By Katie Thomas
New York Times Staff Writer
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Cougars of Middle School 61 had a basketball game in the Bronx, but a half-hour before tipoff, six girls and Coach Bryan Mariner were still inching through traffic in Brooklyn.
A cell phone rang. It belonged to forward Tiffany Fields-Binning, who passed the phone to Mr. Mariner. “You don’t want her to go?” he said. He peered up at a street sign. “We’re on Atlantic and Flatbush.” He paused. “O.K. O.K. We’ll wait here.” Mr. Mariner turned off the ignition. “Tiff-a-ny.” He said her name slowly, like a sigh. “You didn’t set this straight with your pop?” Tiffany stared out a window. Mr. Mariner turned and assessed the situation: “We’ve got five.” Five players. No substitutes.
With this team, it’s always something. In the suburbs, girls’ participation in sports is so commonplace that in many communities, the conversation has shifted from concerns over equal access to worries that some girls are playing too much. But the revolution in girls’ sports has largely bypassed the nation’s cities, where public school districts short on money often view sports as a luxury rather than an entitlement.
Coaches and organizers of youth sports in cities say that while many immigrant and lower-income parents see the benefit of sports for sons, they often lean on daughters to fill needs in their own hectic lives, like tending to siblings or cleaning the house.
Others, like Tiffany’s father, Gavin Binning, are worried for their daughter’s safety, another roadblock to playing.
“Tiffany’s my baby,” he said. “They weren’t going around the corner, they were going to the Bronx. And for me not knowing that, it drove me crazy.”
Since the passage of the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX in 1972, girls’ participation in sports has soared. In the 1971-72 school year, girls accounted for 7 percent of all participants in high school sports. By the 2006-7 school year, their share had grown to 41 percent, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
In the suburbs, girls play sports at rates roughly equal to boys. A 2007 survey by Harris Interactive of more than 2,000 schoolchildren nationwide showed that 54 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls in the suburbs described themselves as “moderately involved” athletes.
Urban areas revealed a much greater discrepancy. Only 36 percent of city girls in the survey described themselves as moderately involved athletes, compared with 56 percent of city boys. Girls in cities from Los Angeles to New York “are the left-behinds of the youth sport movement in the United States,” said Don Sabo, a professor of health policy at D’Youville College in Buffalo, who conducted the study, which was commissioned by the Women’s Sports Foundation, a private advocacy group.
The Cougars have few of the basics that suburban public school girls have come to expect, including free transportation, uniforms and full seasons of regularly scheduled games. At M.S. 61 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, each road game is a logistical puzzle for Mr. Mariner, 46, who is dean of students and coach of the school’s girls’ and boys’ basketball teams. Even when the Cougars arrive ready to play, games are sometimes canceled because the opponents — facing the same obstacles — cannot field a team. Parents rarely show up to watch.
Foundation featured in Washington Post article
Published: Thursday, May 21, 2009
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, Former president of the Women’s Sports Foundation Board of Trustees, has been chosen as USA Track and Field's first chief of sports performance. In an article published on Thursday, May 21, Amy Shipley of the Washington Post desribes the challenges Fitzgerald Mosley will face in fixing a troubled U.S. Olympic track and field program.
U.S. Track Program Gets a Fix
Fitzgerald Mosley Will Be First Chief of Performance
By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist, will be charged with fixing a troubled U.S. Olympic track and field program today when she is announced as USA Track and Field's first chief of sport performance, according to two sources with knowledge of the move.
Fitzgerald Mosley, 47, who resides in Haymarket and attended Gar-Field High in Woodbridge, helped put together a blisteringly critical report of the U.S. track and field team's performance after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing as a member of an independent panel that included famed sprinter Carl Lewis.
Among more than a dozen recommendations in the report, which blamed the U.S. team's debacle-filled Olympic performance on disorganized coaching and a lack of professionalism by athletes, was the appointment of a general manager of sports performance to take charge of an area the report deemed to be in "chaos."
Fitzgerald Mosley was considered an ideal choice for the post because, despite her close connection to track and field, she had remained apart from USATF politics and policies since she retired as an athlete in 1988, giving her a desirable distance and independence, according to one of the sources. She also was considered among the most clear-thinking, incisive and diplomatic members of the nine-person panel that authored the report, the source said.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly in advance of the announcement.
USATF chief executive Doug Logan made the decision with input from President Stephanie Hightower and other USATF constituents, according to a source, and began informing them of the move yesterday. About a half-dozen candidates were interviewed, the source said, and Fitzgerald Mosley was considered the first choice.
"She's got nonprofit experience, she's got leadership experience, she's got athlete experience, she's got athletic managerial experience as well," one of the sources said. "She's someone everybody knows, but she's not someone who owes favors to anybody either."
The independent panel was assembled by Logan on the heels of an Olympic Games in which the U.S. team led the overall medal count but underperformed in many areas, most notably the relays. In a stunning embarrassment, both the U.S. men's and women's 4x100 relay teams dropped batons in back-to-back races near the end of the track and field competition.
As star U.S. athletes struggled, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and others from his nation dominated the headlines.
Fitzgerald Mosley's first priority will be ensuring that post-collegiate athletes have access to the best possible training opportunities, one of the sources said.
After graduating from Gar-Field in 1979, Fitzgerald Mosley attended the University of Tennessee on a track scholarship and earned a degree in industrial engineering. She won a gold medal at the 1983 Pan American Games before becoming the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold in the 100-meter hurdles.
She has spent eight years as chief executive of Women in Cable Telecommunications in Chantilly and will remain in the region for the immediate future, a source said. USA Track and Field, the governing body for the sport in the United States, is based in Indianapolis.
Fitzgerald Mosley was president of the Women's Sports Foundation Board of Trustees in 1997-98, and remains a member of the board. She also has overseen the direction of the U.S. Olympic Committee's training centers, considered a valuable trait as the USATF seeks to improve its training opportunities for athletes.
In addition to appointing a director of sport performance, the 69-page report recommended an overhaul of USA Track and Field's high-performance program, improvements to its anti-doping policies and the termination of its million-dollar relay developmental program. The report deemed that program "a waste of money and a failure."
The relay program has been dissolved.
Published: Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Steve Ballard, sports reporter from the Indianapolis Star, spoke with Foundation CEO Karen Durkin and former Foundation President Lyn St. James to discuss the viability of women's professional sports leagues in trying economic times:
Women's pro leagues fight to remain viableIndianapolis Star
By Steve Ballard
steve.ballard@indystar.com
The WNBA lost one of its marquee franchises and is trimming rosters. Five LPGA tournaments have been canceled because of a lack of sponsorship. Women's Professional Soccer has scaled back expectations in its inaugural season.
But if women's professional sports leagues aren't thriving in a struggling economy, neither are they in imminent danger of going under, which is evidence of how far they have come.
"Like every company in this country, we're feeling the effects of the worst economy since the Great Depression," said Karen Durkin, CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation.
"But we're strong enough to weather the effects of the economy a lot better than we could have a decade ago. The ability of the women's professional leagues to withstand the current crisis is a sign of the evolution of women's sports."
Durkin, who just finished her first year presiding over the organization begun in 1974 by women's sports pioneer Billie Jean King, pointed to such things as Danica Patrick's IndyCar Series win last year and the equal prize money for women and men in tennis' four grand slam tournaments as signs of progress.
But what encourages her most is that women's pro sports leagues can stand on their own and not be viewed as part of a larger women's movement.
"We're no longer being positioned as a cause," she said. "That's very symbolic for the next frontier of women's sports."
As that frontier is explored, the immediate challenge is finding ways to attract new fans and sponsors at a time neither has much extra money to throw around. But with adversity comes opportunity, and women's sports advocates are quick to point out they can offer a less expensive alternative to their male counterparts.
That's the strategy employed by Indiana Fever general manager Kelly Krauskopf entering a crucial season for the future of the WNBA franchise in Indianapolis.
Pacers co-owner Herb Simon has committed to the Fever for just one more season and has said attendance and sponsorships need to improve dramatically for the team to stay afloat. The 12-year-old WNBA already lost the Houston Comets, who won the league's first four championships, and is trimming rosters from 13 players to 11 -- a net loss of nearly 40 jobs.
Krauskopf said corporate sales are up slightly and she remains confident fans will turn out if the team wins.
"People still want entertainment outlets and we're extremely affordable," she said. "I'm approaching this year as I have every year and as I hopefully will for many years to come.
"We need to show increased revenues and put a great team on the floor that will attract new fans. We need to demonstrate progress and show that this is a growing business. But that's a part of any business."
Knowing the market Lyn St. James, an activist for women in racing since retiring as a driver, said women's sports organizations need to better identify their audience so they have a clear message to take to potential sponsors.
"We don't have demographic information on who's in the stands, so we can't go to companies and expect them to respond," she said. "Nobody knows what to do with us."
While conceding she has an "optimistic view of a pessimistic picture," St. James said women's leagues should capitalize on companies having less to spend.
"We need to be able to show them the value they can get from us when they're being forced to cut back," she said. "Then when the economy does pick up, we can hit the ground running."
The LPGA Tour, the most entrenched of women's sports leagues, also has been the hardest hit. The Corning Classic, a fixture on the schedule since 1979, will be played for the final time this month and is the fifth event since the end of the 2008 season to go away. The retirement of star attraction Annika Sorenstam hasn't helped.
Commissioner Carolyn Bivens said with no corporations automatically renewing sponsorships and every existing deal subject to review, it's more important than ever to show them a return on their investment.
"If any of us could choose, we would not choose to be faced with this economic crisis," she said. "Having said that, for organizations that are agile enough and can analyze their strengths, there's actually great opportunities to come out of this better off than we went into it."
The bleak economy did not prevent Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) from beginning play last month with seven franchises. Commissioner Tonya Antonucci said the league's investors (all the teams are locally owned) considered delaying but were unanimous in deciding to play.
"Every time we addressed it, everyone was a go and believed it would cost us more to wait," she said.
"History will tell us whether we were right or not."
Other than the game on the field, WPS bears little resemblance to the failed WUSA, which burned through $100 million before folding in 2003.
The average WPS salary is $32,000 and Antonucci said the league's business plan, which includes a TV deal with Fox Soccer Channel, can be sustained with an average attendance of around 4,000. Through the first few weeks, the average is closer to 6,000.
Antonucci is looking forward to the day that gender no longer is a dividing line in pro sports and believes soccer, where women and men play exactly the same game, can help make that happen.
In the meantime, as with all businesses, new and old, large and small, she has bills to pay.
"Everyone is dealing with it," Antonucci said. "We have learned the lessons of how to contain costs and know we have to be creative in how we spend our dollars.
"We're setting our expectations modestly, but we're growing this thing to be around for a long time."
[End reprint IndyStar]
Williams Tops Prize Money List, Credits Billie Jean King
Published: Monday, February 02, 2009
By reaching both the doubles and singles finals in the Australian Open this weekend, Serena Williams became the all-time prize money leader in women's sports. Upping her total to $22.7 million in career prize money, she surpasses both Lindsay Davenport and Annika Sorenstam.
“You look at people like Billie Jean King, then you look at things in the United States called Title IX, which gave women an opportunity to play sports. You really appreciate that,” Williams said.
“You really appreciate the people, the pioneers, the work they've done to get me in a position to have an opportunity to be called even the highest-earning female tennis player.
“I just feel so honored that I had so many wonderful pioneers doing things to open doors."
Williams headed into Saturday's final having topped the money list, and emerged with a win that put her into another elite ranking. She now joins the pioneer she credits - Billie Jean King - as well as Chris Evert, Helen Wills Moody, Steffi Graf and Margaret Court in having won 10 or more grand slam titles.
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