Asians in college women's tennis

[raacluse]

Normally, I don't pay attention to college women's tennis, but after checking the rosters of some of the top div I teams, I noticed many have one or two Asian players (sorry, athletes)...

...including my relative on the top seeded team in the upcoming team tournament (opening round May 9).

It's also interesting to note the diversity of the athletes' origins. Like most of the Baylor team is from a slavic country (Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Czech Republic).

[BillBlythe]

Normally, I don't pay attention to college women's tennis

That goes for most people.

But I did hear that an up and comer Asian female is being trained by Michael Chang. She'll supposedly turn pro soon.

[raacluse]

Sweet Sixteen playing May 15 at Univ. of Tulsa

Northwestern v. Fresno St.
Cal v. Duke
Stanford v. Clemson
Baylor v. Miami (FL)
Vanderbilt v. Florida
Texas v. Georgia Tech
USC v. UCLA
Arkansas v. Georgia

[raacluse]

The Div I field of 16 has been whittled down to 8 for the semis today in Tulsa:

Northwestern v. Cal
Stanford v. Baylor
Florida v. Georgia Tech
UCLA v. Arkansas

Arkansas' (ranked 17?) win over Georgia (#2), on Thursday, was somewhat of an upset, although the Razorbacks have the nation's top-ranked singles player (from Lithuania, I believe).

UCLA has the top-ranked doubles pair (both Asian, it seems).

The Razorbacks and Bruins met in Feb. and UCLA won 4-3.

[raacluse]

semi-finals today

Cal v. Baylor
Florida v. UCLA

it seems the "unexpected" (although at this stage there's probably little difference between teams) victories in the previous round were

Cal over Northwestern 4-2
Baylor over Stanford 4-1
FL over Georgia Tech 4-2

[raacluse]

battle of the ursine mascots

finals going on right now in Tulsa...(who's the best UC school?)

Cal v. UCLA

[snow ninja]

got any short skirt panty exposed pics?

[raacluse]

sorry, no hot pics...

instead I've been wondering about the unintended consequences of Title IX that boosted women's college sports and has led to a much higher incidence of ACL (knee ligament rupture) injury to adolescent female vs. male athletes.

2 weekends ago, the NY times magazine featured a story on this (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html)

but it seems that, this gender difference has been noted for at least several years (http://www.theacc.com/genrel/100104aae.html), so maybe the NYT coverage is late to the party.

I thought that young women tennis players would suffer like their counterparts in soccer, volleyball, basketball, field hockey, etc. But maybe not as much. (Sorry, lost the link.)

This all was set in motion because of Title IX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX), a law written by the late Congresswoman Patsy Mink, the first Asian American female Congressperson. The wikipedia article notes that the law wasn't intended to promote college women's sports, but that's what was emphasized by the federal government's compliance criteria.

(I'd been researching about some aspects of Asian american activism in the 70s, and one thing led to another...)