Candace Parker on Sports, Fame, and Motherhood

Think of this as Mombian: The Weekend Sports Edition:

ESPN the Magazine’s cover story this month features WNBA superstar Candace Parker, with her hands cupping the round curve of . . . her pregnant stomach. It’s a striking picture for a magazine that rarely has females of any sort on the cover.

The article asks, “Can Candace Parker be the female Jordan?” meaning not only in her basketball skills but also in her marketing appeal. Can women athletes be marketed as athletes, not just sex symbols? Can they take time off for a pregnancy and return to an athletic career and motherhood?

Parker says:

“The baby will be along for the ride, with me on trips, at the court.” She sighs. “You don’t hear about male players doing that, do you? Women, we just have to balance more things. It’s harder for us. That’s just the way it is.” She offers a weary smile before adding, “For now.”

Parker is, of course, treading ground that moms and ball players like Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie have trod before her. Whether Parker’s record will stand up to theirs in the long term remains to be seen. She has yet only one professional season to her credit. One advantage she has that they didn’t however, is that she is entering an already established league, with a few more years of public awareness about women’s professional sports.

The article does start with a mention of Parker’s bra size, which seems gratuitous, but most of the article is about how she’s been able to capitalize on her success “by selling her game, not her body.” I’ll allow the writer a catchy lead for what is really a more balanced article.

The print magazine includes a chart of five women athletes who returned to competition—and victories—after motherhood: Leslie, swimmer Dara Torres, runner Paula Radcliffe, tennis player Lindsay Davenport, and softball pitcher Jennie Finch. It doesn’t seem like motherhood has slowed them down at all.

It’s a good read in a publication I’m guessing most of us don’t read regularly. (Which brings us to the issue of women’s sports and media coverage, but that’s a whole other post . . . .)

Sheryl Swoopes Dropped by Storm

The Seattle Storm dropped basketball legend and lesbian mom Sheryl Swoopes from their roster this week, citing the league’s salary cap. (After Ellen reports that the NBA’s cap is $58 million per team, whereas WNBA teams have to make do with $803,000 per year.)

The three-time WNBA MVP and three-time Olympic gold medalist said she’s “disappointed,” and that her previous back injuries have now healed. If she still wants to play, I hope another team will pick her up. (I’m rooting for the Connecticut Sun, since they play closest to where I live.)

She’s keeping busy in the off season, though, coaching middle-school girls’ basketball with her partner Alisa Scott. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a great story of how she found the position through Craigslist:

“My name’s Sheryl,” she said in a voice mail to [athletic director John Wiley]. “Can you call me back?”

Not knowing who she was, Wiley called her and told her he was looking for people with playing and coaching experience.

“Well, I’ve played the game a little,” Swoopes told him, “and I’ve done some coaching of my son’s AAU team.

False humility or genuine modesty? I’m betting on the latter:

Swoopes was nervous the first day, allowing former coach Steve Meredith to run practice. “I chickened out, I did,” she said.

She didn’t want the players to call her “Coach” because that made her feel old, so she asked them to call her Sheryl.

Somehow, this makes me want to go work out tonight.

[Update: More breaking WNBA mom news, though without the lesbian twist: Three-time WNBA MVP and four-time Olympic gold medalist Lisa Leslie has announced she will retire after this coming season, in part because "I’m really passionate about raising a child and being there for her." Her former LA Sparks teammate Candace Parker, last year's league MVP and rookie of the year, will be taking the coming season off because she is expecting her first child in May.]

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 40

Last week, Helen and I talked about Olympic athletes who are mothers. This week, we turn to the mothers of athletes, bringing you some of our favorite stories of supportive parents at the Beijing Games. We add an LGBT twist by revealing which character from an LGBT-themed show Michael Phelps’ mom reminded us of, and pointing out an unintended double entendre about beach volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

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Beijing Olympics in Legos

My love of both Legos and the Olympicsis well documented. My son is also obsessed with the former and learning to love the latter.

I was thrilled, therefore, to see this astounding recreation of the Beijing Olympic facilities in Legos, including the Bird’s Nest, the Water Cube, the beach volleyball court, the equestrian arena, and more. (More photos here, including cutaways that show how they did the patterns in the walls of the Water Cube.)

Show this to your kids and hear them say “Wow!” (Then quickly explain why you can’t run out to the nearest Lego store and buy them enough bricks to do it themselves.)

(Thanks, Slashdot.)

Mom Wins Gymnastics Silver

Oksana Chusovitina, a 33-year-old German gymnast and mother, won silver last night in the Women’s Vault, proving her presence there wasn’t just a fluke.

I wrote about Chusovitina in a previous post (and Helen and I discussed in our vlog)—she kept competing past the “normal” age in order to raise money for her son’s leukemia treatments. NBC has a good interview with her in which she talks about her son’s illness, his status today, and what it was like switching citizenship from Uzbekistan to Germany in order to get medical care for him.

I also have to say it’s refreshing to see a female gymnast free of the eyeshadow and glitter that seems endemic in the sport. Let’s judge them by their skills and not by their makeup.

Congratulations to Chusovitina, and best wishes for her son’s continued good health.

Sterling Performances by Dara Torres

Forty-one-year-old mother Dara Torres won two silver medals last night, bringing her count to three for the Beijing Games. Her first was in the Women’s 50m Freestyle, where she missed gold by one one-hundredth of a second. The second was in the 4×100 Medley Relay, where she anchored the team and closed, but did not make up, a deficit against Australia.

Both races set new American records. The relay team broke the previous world record, although not by as much as the winning Australians.

Just to keep things in perspective, though: Teammate Kara Lynn Joyce told the New York Times of a locker-room conversation with Torres: “She said swimming was tough, but she thought childbirth was tougher.”

When asked by an NBC reporter what she would someday tell her two-year-old daughter about this day, Torres replied, “I’ll tell her you don’t have to put an age limit on your dreams.”

Congratulations to Torres and all of the older athletes at these Games. (See my post last week on a few of them.)

Because She’s a Mom

Helen and I have been watching the Olympics all night. Dara Torres just won her heat in the Women’s 50m freestyle. Before the race, she went over and spoke with one of the officials, an action that puzzled the announcers until they realized she was asking them to hold the race so Swedish competitor Therese Alshammar could change out of a torn swimsuit.

The announcers were falling all over themselves praising her sportsmanship. They have a point. Torres herself told an interviewer later, “In the pool we’re competitors; out of the pool we’re friends.” True enough; but then any of the other swimmers could have asked the officials to wait. What made Torres do so?

Just then Helen looked over at me and explained it all very simply: “She’s a mom.”

“She Got Me Pregnant”: Episode 39

Dara Torres isn’t the only older mom competing in the Olympics, and this week Helen and I tell you about some more of them. Several are previous medalists and two managed to have three kids each in between Olympic appearances.

In a heartbreaking story, one mother even needed to keep competing in order to raise money for her son’s leukemia treatments. Another took a five-year break because of an injury and to have a family, but got back into training and made the 2008 team. An inspiration? Yes, but what if her politics make her less than supportive of LGBT families? We discuss.

(Regular readers will know I covered some of these athletes in two previous posts. Since this vlog also appears on other sites, we thought we’d tackle them again for the audiences there. You get to hear Helen’s thoughts now, too, including what she thinks about age limits in gymnastics.)

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Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.

Another Olympic Mom: Hero or Not?

I was excited yesterday to watch Melanie Roach, a U.S. weightlifter in the 53-kilo (117-pound) category, set a new American record and come in sixth in her competition. Roach is the mother of three, and returning to competition after a five-year break and a herniated disk that required surgery. One of her sons was also diagnosed with autism, and she is a member of “Athletes Against Autism,” a group dedicated to finding causes, treatments, and cures for the disorder.

Cool, I thought. Another Olympic mom like Dara Torres, not taking an unbroken path to Olympic fame, but getting there nonetheless.

I looked further into Melanie’s background, however, and discovered that she is married to four-term Washington State Representative Brian Roach, a Republican who voted against the state domestic partnership bill. Her own politics may differ from those of her husband, of course, but she has been active in his reelection campaigns. Even if she disagrees with him on this one issue (and I have no evidence either way), she’s kept a vote in the Legislature against our families.

Sigh. This doesn’t take away from her accomplishments as an athlete or as a mother who has managed both kids and career and contributes to a charitable cause. Still, she has done so while directly or indirectly working against families like mine, and that spoils my admiration for her. I admit, though, it is a bit unfair to say that while lauding Dara Torres and others, whose politics I don’t know one way or the other. Like most other athletes, they have been apolitical in their interactions with the media during the games.

Athletes are as varied and complicated as anyone else, and it is no surprise to find reasons for rejecting potential heroes. We pick them as best we can, and hope they don’t disappoint.

Have you ever had a hero (athlete, rock star, thinker, etc.) whose actions or beliefs caused you to reconsider your admiration?

You Thought Torres’ Age Was Impressive?

Olympian and mother Oksana Chusovitina is 33, a far cry from Dara Torres’ 41. I’m almost more impressed by her than by Torres, however, because she’s competing in gymnastics. That’s right, gymnastics, where most athletes hover around the 16-year-old minimum and there are rumors of some sneaking in at younger ages.

This is the fifth Olympics for the Soviet Union/Uzbekistan-born Chusovitina. You can see her in this video competing for the gold-medal Unified Team (the former Soviet republics) at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, or watch her next Sunday in the vault finals.

Like Torres, Chusovitina took a very small break between giving birth and returning to competition: November 1999 to the spring of 2000. Her ongoing participation in the sport, however, is very concretely tied to her son Alisher, and not just in the “I want to be a good role model” way of Torres.

According to her profile at NBC, Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia in October 2002. She took him to a Moscow hospital that couldn’t guarantee staff and medication for treatment and that demanded payment up front. She went to friends in Germany, who helped her find an appropriate hospital. She could not have paid for it, though, without the generous donations of the international gymnastics community. Chusovitina continued to compete for prize money, however, to pay for Alisher’s ongoing care. “If I don’t compete then my son won’t live; it’s as simple as that,” she said. She has taken German citizenship and now competes for her new country.

The more athletes I learn about, the less I understand why the press is making such a fuss about Torres’ age and motherhood. Foil fencer Jujie Luan, the mother of three, is 50. She earned China its first-ever Olympic fencing medal in 1984, retired after the 1988 Seoul Games, and returned in 2000 to fence for her adopted country, Canada, in Sydney. She’s now in Beijing for her fourth Games. [Update: She won her first bout, but lost in the second round, as did all three of the much-younger U.S. team. An honorable showing.] French cyclist Jeannie Longo, though not a mother, is 49, competing in one of the most grueling events, the 78.5-mile road race.

Now I really have no excuse not to go for a run later.