I just never have liked the idea of women playing men's sports. Our bodies are built differently. Plus, there are other issues when mixing genders in this way.
I was at the Y last night playing hoops. After playing a few games I was sitting out a game watching when this small girl who had just arrived with a group of guys got in the next game. I rarely see girls play with us guys out there and usually it's for good reason.
I sat back and watched the game and noticed that she was hacking quite a bit when making a steal or when trying to keep someone from getting up a good shot. Now don't get me wrong, she was not a bad player. She had a decent mid range shot and played the passing lanes well for steals. But her size was a problem for her, especially on defense.
When I got in the next game, I grabbed a rebound with the intention of putting it back in. I knew she was right next to/behind me. So, I gave her a good bump to clear some space to put it back in. My boys commented about that later. I simply said that I had seen her hacking people to prevent them from making their shots earlier and I wasn't about to let her do that to me. There were a few times that she tried to set a screen on me. In cases like that, I will just about run through the screen so that the screener thinks twice about doing that again. Or you had better know how to set a solid screen. With this girl being about 80 or more lbs less than me, that was almost unfair. :D Needless to say, she didn't try to screen me very much.
But you know the way I see it, if she wants to play with the big boys then she has to know that she's gonna get banged around like that because that's what we do to each other. It's just how basketball is played. And she's gotta be able to take it or go play with the girls. She actually didn't have a problem with it so I respected her for that.
But the other problem was that when she had the ball my middle son (16 years) didn't want to block her. Keep in mind that this is the boy that will block anyone (including and especially me) if he gets the chance. But he didn't play as hard of defense against her simply because she was a girl. That's ridiculous. I gave him crap about it later, though.
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