Episode 159: Bundesliga and an Interview with Referee Phenom Jawahir Roble

This week, Lindsay, Shireen, Brenda, and Jessica talk about the 2023 Women's World Cup [1:48]. Then, they discuss the return of Bundesliga [5:10]. After that, Shireen has a conversation with Somali-British referee Jawahir Roble [17:32]. Finally, they speak on the NWHL [32:17].

Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [47:12], the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring the Football Club Barcelona Women's Team [55:52], and what is good in our worlds [58:16].

Links

FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 Council to select host(s) on 25 June: https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fifa-women-s-world-cup-2023tm-council-to-select-host-s-on-25-june-2020

Which Bundesliga club should you support when it restarts this weekend?: https://www.the42.ie/bundesliga-club-support-quiz-5097288-May2020/

Behind the Game: Former Players Detail Life in the NWHL https://victorypress.org/2020/05/10/behind-the-game-former-players-detail-life-in-the-nwhl/

Zoë Hayden’s editor’s note: https://medium.com/@zoeclaire_/editors-note-f2c96638a204

THE NWHL EXPANDS TO TORONTO: https://www.nwhl.zone/news/the-nwhl-expands-to-toronto

Last surviving member of original Rockford Peaches dies at 101: https://www.today.com/news/last-surviving-member-rockford-peaches-league-their-own-fame-dies-t181225

TV pioneer Phyllis George, co-host of 'The NFL Today,' dies at 70: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29184112/tv-pioneer-phyllis-george-co-host-nfl-today-dies-70

Aces Finalize 2020 Coaching Staff As 14-Year WNBA Veteran Tanisha Wright Joins Laimbeer, Johnson: https://www.wnba.com/news/aces-finalize-2020-coaching-staff-as-14-year-wnba-veteran-tanisha-wright-joins-laimbeer-johnson/

Courtney Paris returning to Oklahoma as assistant coach: https://apnews.com/1559376f3b9d365fa05af1235f86450b

SIGN UP AND SUPPORT the Brown Bears donating directly to the NAACP Anchorage, Alaska: https://brownbearsonthefrontlines.weebly.com/

Transcript

Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica Luther, freelance journalist and author in Austin, Texas, and on today’s show I’m joined by Shireen Ahmed, a writer public speaker and sports activist in Toronto; Brenda Elsey, an associate professor of history at Hofstra University on Long Island; and Lindsay Gibbs, the creator of Power Plays, a no-bullshit newsletter about sexism in sports that arrives right in your inbox 3 days a week. First things first: our thoughts and thanks go out to all the people who are on the front lines of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. We are keeping all of your in our thoughts. As always, thank you to our patrons whose support of this podcast through our ongoing Patreon campaign make Burn It All Down possible. We are forever and always grateful. If you’d like to become a patron, it’s easy: go to patreon.com/burnitalldown. For as little as $2/month you can access exclusives like extra Patreon-only segments, or our monthly behind the scenes vlog. We recently posted a long vlog for March-April with all the co-hosts involved, and just did a Patreon segment for April with Amira where we talk about Quidditch…Amira’s adorable in the whole thing.

On today’s show we’re going to talk about Bundesliga’s return, Shireen interviews Somali-British refereeing phenom Jawahir Roble about her meteoric rise, how Roble is training during the month of Ramadan, and what it’s like to hang out with supermodel friends. Then we will turn our attention to women’s hockey, specifically the NWHL. Of course, we’ll cap off today’s show by burning things that deserve to be burned, doing shoutouts to women who deserve shoutouts, and telling you what is good in our worlds. But first, before we get into all of that, some not bad news. I don’t wanna say it’s good necessarily as it should’ve happened years ago, but still, FIFA announced this week that it will select the hosts of the Women’s World Cup in 2023 – which is only a few years away at this point. They’ll do this on June 25th at its online council meeting. The four countries in the running are Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, and Japan. So if you got to pick, where would you all have the 2023 World Cup from among these finalists? Brenda, I can guess…

Brenda: Obviously Brazil. [Jessica laughing] There’s not a question. First of all, it’s never been anywhere in the global south, right, and never in CONMEBOL – it’s never been in a CONMEBOL country. It has been in the Asian Confederation, obviously. It has been in CONCACAF. It has been in UEFA. So I see it as either Africa or South America at this point – and use all the resources that were spent to make the enormously ridiculous mega-event that was the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2014 Men’s World Cup, right? It would give so much attention…I dunno, I would love it, okay? And Brazil’s awesome. 

Jessica: [laughs] Shireen.

Shireen: I love Brazil, absolutely. I’m very reluctant to say anything that isn’t “Yay, Brazil!” because of Brenda [Lindsay laughing] but you know what? Australia. Australia. Hi Ann Odong, Moya Dodd and all our friends of the show down there. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was supposed to be there actually next week, and that didn’t obviously happen. But I just think that, you know, it would be great. Burn It All Down has a lot of lovely friends in Australia, friends of the show, and I think it would just be great and we could all go to Australia. That being said, I also love Brazil. Love it.

Jessica: Yeah, I’m willing to go on a Burn It All Down trip to either of those places. Lindsay?

Lindsay: I am willing, but I think for me it is much for practical…I think I could get to Colombia or Brazil easier, and the time zone’s way better if I can’t.

Jessica: Ohh! Excellent, excellent point.

Lindsay: Watching it, realistically, I just don’t…Maybe I should have more hope that I’m gonna have tons of money and lots of sponsors in a few years that are gonna send me to Australia or New Zealand, but practically I would really love Colombia or Brazil, because I just think that would be logistically much easier.

Jessica: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Lindsay: And I’m selfish, this is personal, so I’m gonna be personal about it. [laughs]

Jessica: Yeah. Well I feel like I’m now swayed to say Brazil. 

Brenda: Yay!

Jessica: I think you guys won are over. I obviously would like to go to Australia/New Zealand, like anyone, but man, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, well we’ll find out what – I don’t even know what today is – in a month or so. [laughter] Roughly speaking. That’s what I think is right. Okay, so that’ll be fun. We will be talking about that plenty in the future. So now, onto the show. Brenda, please get us started on Bundesliga’s return this weekend.

Brenda: Right, so Bundesliga was back making it the first major sports league as far as I know to reappear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bundesliga, it was interesting, because you saw this sort of rush for people to figure out “What does Bundesliga mean for me?”

Jessica: [laughs] Right. Everyone’s an expert now, yeah. 

Brenda: Yeah, US fans in particular. So, a couple things. One thing is Bundesliga is the best attended league in the world.

Jessica: Yeah.

Brenda: So that’s really important for people to know, and it’s one of the reasons it’s especially eerie and sad for a lot of people to see the empty stands, the goal celebrations to nobody. Various polls seem to indicate that a slight majority of Germans actually disagreed with the decision to return, and I think Shireen’s gonna talk a little bit more about that. For people who don’t know, historically Germany’s played football since the 19th century but for World War reasons Bundesliga didn’t really get going until the 1960s…Rough patch there in the first half of the 20th century. [pained laugh] Really it was the 1962 World Cup in Chile when West Germany put in a really poor performance and they said, okay, we need a real professional league. So basically Bundesliga clubs build off these mutually owned clubs that existed. Their league is not like the US league. Bundesliga clubs cannot be owned – it’s called the 50+1 rule – by a single entity, whether it’s a person…

So, no individual is allowed to own more than 49% of any Bundesliga club. The only exception to that are clubs that are in different divisions right now because they were founded as factory clubs. That might be a little bit interesting for people, it’s a very different model. They’re supposed to be focused on social good, it’s supposed to retain that. A couple people the general US and Canadian and European audiences might be particularly interested in is Giovanni Reyna, whose dad played for the US men’s team and mom played for the US women’s team, so a lot of people were excited with him. He’s at Dortmund, but he’s injured. But my favorite person to have an eye on is Erling Håland who you can say, because it’s Bundesliga, is the Norwegian wunderkind. He plays for Dortmund and he’s a really amazing player and I’ve got my eye on him. A lot of people are excited about that. In general Bundesliga is dominated by Bayern and Dortmund. I’m going to mispronounce all of these names, as I do, but since the British casters and US casters always pronounce them wrong I don’t feel that bad. The last thing I just wanna say about Bundesliga that makes it particularly exciting that lots of people who aren’t soccer people or football people might not appreciate is that there’s relegation. Ta-da!

Jessica: What does that mean?

Brenda: Relegation is that if you end up at the bottom of the table you leave the first division. I’ve never understood US sports, like, why this doesn’t exist. It is so much more exciting. It is [x] amount exciting, and it means if you see towards the end of the season the last place team play the first place team, or any of those matches because points determine it, right, you will give a shit. It’s not just a throwaway game where you’re gonna bench [x] person. It matters. So anyway, that’s my rundown of the Bundesliga. I’m scared for everyone and any uptick in infections, but I also found it fascinating.

Jessica: Huh. Thanks, Bren. Appreciate that. Shireen?

Shireen: Yeah, thanks for that, Bren. Bundesliga, and especially Frauen-Bundesliga, is probably one of my favorite leagues – frauen means women’s. I talk a lot about OL, like…I’m literally shining right now because I love talking about football. I think that Frauen-Bundesliga and particularly Wolfsburg is one of the strongest teams in the entire world. People are usually like, it’s Olympique Lyonnais, and I stan them as well, no doubt, but Wolfsburg actually has really great treatment of the players, the women. They’re very very well-attended matches, extremely well-attended matches and have huge support. I just wanted to talk about something, talking about players and player-focused ideas and intentions. I wanted to talk about how the players felt about this, so I started to do a little digging and I spoke with friend of the show Mara Pfeiffer who is part of the FRÜF podcast, they’re friends of the show in Germany and they’re really huge BIAD fans and we love their work. So, I was just chatting with Mara who was on BBC on Friday for an interview, and she was telling me…My German’s very limited, so I was asking her about some of the players, and she sent me some articles in German, and I thought this was extremely helpful because they’re literally, you could say, from the horse’s mouth.

There’s one player who plays for Union Berlin whose name is Neven Subotić and he stated – all the quotes are in German, translated into English now – that he was disappointed that all players were informed after all decisions were made, meaning the players had no input into this. That’s problematic because it really becomes a situation of, are you being endangered in your workspace, right? There’s a player of FC Köln who is Birger Verstraete. He said, “The virus shows once again that you have to take it seriously.” That’s a very intense statement basically saying that he doesn’t feel…Now, a little bit of something interesting with Köln Spieler… Köln Spieler just means a player for Köln, I just love the way that German sounds, I wanna say that all the time. After his interview went out with FC Köln the club had another statement and they said that there was a “misunderstanding” and everything’s fine. They did that after, and that is very suspicious to me. So, I like to go with the underdogs who are Dortmund, and they just won the first match against Schalke on Friday…Saturday, sorry. I don’t even know, what day is it? I don’t even know what day it is. They won 4-0, so it’s very exciting what’s happening. I feel this is Dortmund’s year; I say this absolutely every year.

I’m just not comfortable. There are no fans, but that’s not the point. I remember in Mara’s interview she was saying that the fans are very mixed about this. Dortmund fans are so proud of their fandom, the supporters for this team are everything, and what ends up happening is you’ve got the telecasters of the show putting in crowd noises even though the stadiums are empty, and a lot of players are finding this insulting, like, you’re minimizing our role and who we are. So there’s a lot of stuff. There’s concerned within Germany that people would gather anyway, that fans would gather in huge spaces anyway despite restrictions. There’s concerns about that, we’ll see as time goes on what happens, but I just really hope that…There’s things being done, like the ball is being is being sanitized. The ball boys and ball girls, the youth that grab them, they’re sanitizing their hands and stuff like this but, friends, I love football but this is very risky.

Jessica: I mean, earlier this month 10 players – they tested everyone in the top 2 divisions of the league, so over 1700 people – 10 of them were found to have the virus, most of them asymptomatic. So that was early May. Then in the run-up to the league actually starting this weekend there were multiple instances where people weren’t following the rules. One coach said during a news conference that he broke a mandatory 7-day training camp quarantine for players and staff before the league resumed so that he could go shop for toothpaste and skin cream at a nearby supermarket. He then had to rule himself out of this weekend’s game so that the team wouldn’t get a strike against it for breaking the COVID rules. Late on Friday one club announced that a player had been placed under a 2-week quarantine due to a positive test by somebody in his personal circle. Earlier this week a different team cut short their 7-day quarantine to just 6 days because their hotel opened only on Monday. Then another player for yet another team broadcast a live stream showing social distancing measures being flouted at the capital club; he was then immediately suspended by his club.

So even in the run-up to this major league coming back they’ve had all this trouble getting the actual people involved to follow all the rules that they’ve laid out, and they already know that they have players within the league who are asymptomatic carrying COVID. It’ll just be really interesting, I think, to see how successful Bundesliga is, like Shireen said, we’ll see how this unfolds. We know that the infection can take 2 weeks to show itself if you get sick…I dunno what other leagues are gonna learn from this, but it just seems real risky based on everything that’s happened so far. But let’s talk a little fandom here. So Brenda, knowing that we are all not big German soccer fans, sent us a quiz to see which team we should be rooting for. We will have this link in the show notes, if you too also need to find your Bundesliga team. Brenda, which team did you get? Who will you be rooting for?

Brenda: Okay, so Borussia Mönchengladbach which…We are in third place right now, and we have great colors: green and black, which I love, green black and white. We were founded in 1900 and located in the northwest of Germany, close to the Netherlands kind of.

Jessica: Okay. I have the same team, so I let Brenda pronounce it for me. 

Brenda: Yay! [clapping]

Jessica: For my preparation I was looking at the Telegraph live blog of their match. They won yesterday against Frankfurt. My favorite thing was that when Frankfurt scored their one goal the live blog said, “The stadium announcer plays loud music and does a full announcement to nobody, remember, to make sure they, nobody, knows who scored.” Which I think is a good example of how weird this is. Lindsay, who are you going to be rooting for in the Bundesliga? 

Lindsay: RB Leipzig…? 

Jessica: Ah!

Brenda: Ooh.

Lindsay: I’m sure I butchered that. I have a feeling they’re really bad because all my answers in the quiz, I kept being like, “I love underdogs!” [laughter] So my feeling is that this team sucks, but we’ll just have to see! 

Brenda: You’re in fourth Linz, you’re in fourth place. It’s not so bad.

Lindsay: Oh! There was a draw, they got a tie yesterday, so they didn’t lose, that’s good, right?

Jessica: Alright, okay Shireen.

Shireen: I know these quizzes are rigged, so I picked–

Jessica: You rigged it to get your answer!?

Shireen: No – well…They asked me if I like bees, I’m like, bees, of course, I want Dortmund. I can’t come out with Leipzig, no offense, Lindsay! [Lindsay laughing] I was like, Dortmund or die.

Jessica: Did you get Dortmund?

Shireen: I did get Dortmund. We were founded in 1909, it’s a big deal. There’s good politics to it, Dortmund. When I posted about Dortmund…I have never seen so much Bundesliga on my timeline, everybody’s out here loving German soccer, which I think is hilarious – fußball, everything! Which is a lot of fun, but just a gentle reminder to everybody to please watch the women’s side too, it’s very important. It’s riveting, it’s fantastic. I just can’t implore everybody enough to please remember the Frauen.

Jessica: Up next, Shireen interviews Somali-British refereeing phenom Jawahir Roble about Roble’s meteoric rise, how she is training during the month of Ramadan, and what it’s like to hang out with supermodel friends.

Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, Shireen here. I hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy during this time. We just wanted to check in on the other side of the pond, and I’m so excited to have with us on the show today one of my favs coming to us from northwest London: Jawahir Roble, who is a phenom, and I’ll get a little more into detail about that 26 year old refereeing sensation, is a Somali-born British football referee, and she did grow up in London and she’s one of many siblings. Her work promoting Black and Muslim youth in sport is just a piece of what she does. She is known for mentorship, coaching, and refereeing. She is the first FA-sanctioned Muslim hijabi referee in England. She has done notable collaborations with Nike London, has worked with Football Beyond Borders, has many many awards to her name including the 2017 FA Respect Award, and the Sports Personality Award for Somali Achievement. Her favorite food is lasagne and sushi. Not only is she a coach and an ambassador for football in general, she’s absolutely badass on the pitch and I adore here. Welcome, JJ.

Jawahir: Oh, thank you so much. Beautiful introduction, oh my gosh. [laughs] Thank you, thank you for having me.

Shireen: I could talk about you all day. In fact I include you when I do work, do presentations on Muslim women in sport, you are definitely–

Jawahir: Aww.

Shireen: I always include you. I love seeing you and the clips of you speaking, you basically owning everyone on the pitch is so wonderful. How are you doing?

Jawahir: I am doing fine, I’m fasting today; nearly about to break my fast, a couple of hours left. I’m chilling at home doing some reading, I’m good. How are you?

Shireen: I’m good. Ramadan is different this year. It’s nice to be able to see what everyone else is doing in the world. We were just chatting about this before we started recording – you are right now in a program at UCFB which is the University Campus of Football Business doing actually a degree in football, with a specialty obviously in refereeing. How are you keeping up with your training during Ramadan?

Jawahir: I’ve honestly never imagined to be in quarantine with Ramadan and training, this honestly has challenged me so much. But because I’ve worked so hard I don’t wanna come off that routine, I don’t wanna use Ramadan or quarantine as an excuse. I’ve got anything that I can find, so, I’m using t-shirts for bibs, I’m using random equipment I can find in the house to train and to at least try to keep that same routine up. It’s going okay so far. 

Shireen: The Daily Telegraph called you, I think it was one of the most phenomenal, called you THEE most phenomenal referee in England. I think that’s really interesting and something I wanna talk about. We know that part of Somali culture is very much about sports, a lot of people don’t realize this. It’s no surprise because there’s so much love for basketball, for football. How did you get into officiating? Because that’s a little bit different. I wanna see more women officiating, but how did you fall in love with being a referee?

Jawahir: I, at the beginning, honestly, have never dreamt of becoming a referee. The way it came about was I was volunteering at this local girl’s club and one of the referees who usually turns up did not come that weekend and the lady who’s in charge of the whole place said to me, JJ, please get out there. My task was to register the girls that come, the teams, give them equipment; that was literally my job. That day it was like, JJ, can you please go to that pitch number and look after the girls because they haven’t got a referee. I was like, I haven’t refereed before! But she was like, JJ, you’re a coach – at this time I was a coach, I wasn’t playing a lot. But she was like, JJ, you’ve played football, you have a bit of an idea, they’re only like 5-6 year olds, come on. [Shireen laughing] I was like, okay! I was a bit nervous and I was like, lemme do this. She gave me all the gear that I needed and then I went over.

The parents were so lovely, they were like, you’re covering for our regular referee? I was like, yes. And they were like, it’s lovely to see a female referee, you know? Because they’re little girls, it’s nice that they can look up to you. I was like, oh wow, so nice, I’m getting nice feedback week in and week out, and then I continued. Next thing you know I’m in the refereeing course…Honestly, I just fell in love with it. I got so much feedback from parents and then I was like, you know what, let me see if I can actually challenge myself to do adults, I started doing adult males…I should’ve started with adult female at least, it is what it is. I researched local leagues in my area and then this one league came up and I was like, wow, it’s not that bad you know.

Shireen: So Middlesex FA gave you an opportunity to train for the official examination. How was that, how were those exams? Were they difficult, did you study a lot, were you nervous?

Jawahir: Oh my gosh. At the beginning they tell you you only need three days and then you have the exam and then after you’re good. I was like, there’s no way I’m going to learn everything I need to learn in three days, I’m definitely gonna fail and then retake it, then fail and retake it. [laughs] Literally I was ready for it, I was like, there’s no way. But luckily the guy who was running the course was so clear, honestly so clear, the way he explained it. He showed us clips, he was like, “What would you do in this situation?” At the beginning everyone was confused, the people that were all gonna do the course, either they were injured or they didn't wanna play football anymore, but at least they got ready for it mentally. I didn’t get ready for it mentally, I was like, you know, it’s a free course, plus refereeing is something I can do maybe if I’m ever needed, like the situation I was in last time I refereed without even having the badge. I was like, just in case I’m ever needed again let me do it.

I didn’t do it so that I could become a professional, so I was like, lemme just have a go at it. Then the guy was so supportive, he was like, it’s nice to see a female doing this. He was giving me a lot of praise like, “Well done, keep going.” Then we would go outside and they would do an actual scenario where the referees that were on the course would play, and then you’d have three on the side observing the game. So we’d play and take turns, we literally understood refereeing in such a short period, and I was so impressed. The exam itself was not that difficult because…I’m dyslexic, and it was so nice seeing it in practical. There was a lot of videos, there’s a lot of interactivity. If it was theory-based, I’m failing, I’m failing that! So it was good.

Shireen: And I have been so delighted to watch your star rise, mashAllah.

Jawahir: Thank you.

Shireen: Just seeing, first of all girl, seeing your face on Nike London commercials [JJ laughing] is wonderful, because it’s so important for young Black Muslim girls to see themselves. The thing that I was gonna ask you was that, you know, there’s role models in players – Annie Zaidi who has been coaching is somebody that we can look up to as a coach, but you’ve gone into this new vertical of officiating. What has this influence been like for girls to see themselves as referees? Because normally you think players or coach. What do you feel like the impact has been? Do girls come up to you and told you…Has there been an imprint in refereeing, have people joined because of you?

Jawahir: Yes, a lot of people I think, especially from my area have considered…And especially the boys, they’ve said, J, can you please tell us where we can register to become referees? I was like, okay, here’s the link. I sent it to them. With the girls I’d say they are considering it in their head like…I don’t know a girl that said I actually wanna referee, can you help me, like, there hasn’t been any girls just yet. But when I coach them I’m like, to them, “Girls, if football playing doesn’t work out, you know there’s other avenues that you can go into.” I’m always promoting refereeing and making sure that at the back of their mind, because it was never at the back of my mind, it was just my luck. Me always giving awareness, I think that’s a big step. Maybe in 2-3 years hopefully I’ll see more girls picking refereeing up. To be honest, my plan is I’m nearly done with university. My plan is to set up a female refereeing group, so they’re gonna be focused purely on refereeing. I’m gonna help them find mentors and then just create them literally from scratch. That’s the plan.

Shireen: And because there’s a need for it.

Jawahir: There’s a need for it, honestly, not just in my area but within UK…The whole world, honestly, not enough. Because the gap…This is how it is: football is growing within female fields, so it’s nice to also see refereeing growing as well side by side. It’s nice to have female referees officiating the women’s game.  

Shireen: By the way, tell me about hanging out with Halima Aden, because that’s kind of a big deal. 

Jawahir: Oh, Halima Aden! Oh my gosh. I’ve been looking up to her for so long, and then I was like, oh my gosh, you just actually saw her, I was like, mashAllah, [Shireen laughing] seeing her in real life, I was gobsmacked. She was so beautiful, she’s stunning, and she’s so humble. Literally we were just talking about some random things and cracking up at her jokes. It was so good, it was so good. You would love her man, you would love her.

Shireen: You have a star-studded crowd, and that’s great, that’s amazing. [laughs] I was so excited, I was screaming when I looked at my phone. You’ve done such important work leading collaborations with Football Beyond Borders, an incredible organization of grassroots football. What is next for you?

Jawahir: What is next for me?

Shireen: Like, your goal.

Jawahir: My ultimate goal is to get as many female referees, I wanna recruit as many female referees, get as many girls playing football, as many coaches, honestly, it’s just pure football. One day when I’m retired at least I can say I’ve encouraged, I’ve inspired this many people to start football, start refereeing, start coaching…Literally my ultimate dream is to get as many people involved in football, especially girls. Sports are so important.

Shireen: Definitely. I think it’s been incredible to watch you and see the impact that you’ve had. Also, I can’t begin to tell you the visual…Those of you of our listeners, we’ve talked about you on the show, I’ve mentioned you before. To see the visual of you, because you’re like 5’2” – is it 5’3” or 5’2”? 

Jawahir: 5’3”, 5’3”, 5’3”! 

Shireen: 5’3”, okay, we’ll be generous, JJ! I know you’re not like 5’4”. [laughter] To see you on the pitch with grown men, there’s something else that’s so important about this, it’s your demeanor. You’re so calm. I will tell you, I refereed once in my life and it was a disaster because I’m so frantic all the time. But your demeanor is so controlled. Is that the most important element of refereeing for you, to be calm?

Jawahir: To be calm, you have to be calm because there’s so many things, right, so many things happening around me when I’m refereeing. Literally, you have to focus on what’s about to happen, you have to focus on players that are literally hurting each other for no reason, you have to focus on one guy who all in my face, there’s so many things to focus on and sometimes it’s so difficult, especially at the level I’m at right now. There’s not assistant referees so I’m handling everything on my own.

Shireen: Oh, wow.

Jawahir: Yeah, managers are complaining so much. You have to manage the subs, there’s so much to do. I’m like, you know what? Let me not panic. At the beginning I was dying, I was like, oh, this is too much, what am I gonna do? But you know, the more you do it the better you get, the more confident I got and honestly I’m still learning a lot. I can’t wait to progress to the next level and, one day, see me at a final.

Shireen: See you at a Women’s World Cup final, a Men’s World Cup final.

Jawahir: See me at a World Cup final, that’s where I’ll be at. Your ticket will be sorted, don’t worry! Don’t worry!

Shireen: Oh, girl! Yeah, I’ll chill with Halima Aden in a box somewhere! [laughter]

Jawahir: That’s how I treat my girls!

Shireen: Thank you so much for coming on Burn It All Down, it’s always a joy. And thank you so much for making time for us, and I hope the rest of your Ramadan goes well and that you and your family are safe and healthy during this time.

Jawahir: Thank you so much, honestly, look after your family, look after everyone, I hope everyone is safe and their families too. Just chill and take every day as it comes, because it’s a blessing right now to be at home, you know, being with everyone.

Shireen: Yeah, definitely, definitely. We’ll talk soon, my friend.

Jawahir: Definitely, take care man.

Shireen: You too.

Jawahir: Bye bye.

Jessica: So there’s been a lot of discussion about the National Women’s Hockey League over this last week. Last Sunday, I believe while we were recording last week’s episode, The Victory Press dropped a long investigative piece about the NWHL titled Behind the Game: Former Players Detail Life in the NWHL. It was written by three people: Melissa Burgess, Kirsten Whelan, and Zoë Hayden, two of whom we’ve had on Burn It All Down. I’m not gonna go into a ton of detail right now; in broad strokes, the piece covers issues with poor facilities, locker rooms that were too small to accommodate teams or no access to locker rooms or even bathrooms – perhaps the most sensational bit is the recounting of players having to pee in garbage cans near the rink, because once players had equipment on they couldn’t get to the only available bathrooms. Players talked to The Victory Press about lack of ice time, all kinds of transportation woes, and of course issues with being paid. The piece went on to note that much of this has since been corrected and there’s praise for the work of the NWHL Players Association. The backdrop to this is the folding of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League last year, which we covered on this show in episode 101. The Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, the PWHPA, grew out of that.

Here’s how Kirsten Whelan described this back in episode 134, Shireen interviewed her: “Basically in the weeks following the shuttering of the CWHL a bunch of the top women’s hockey players in the world, so the entirety of the US and Canadian national teams, as well as most of the players who had previously played in the CWHL, and a large number of players who had played in the NWHL as well, got together and collectively took a stance that they were not going to be playing professional women’s hockey in a league that existed in North America because they wanted to fight for a league that would provide the resources that they felt women’s hockey needed and deserved.” This matters, because there’s a lot of animosity between the NWHL and the PWHPA. In fact, when The Victory Press reached out to the NWHL for a statement about everything they were reporting in their piece, the NWHL responded – this was the first sentence in their statement – “This is part of a continuous smear campaign by the PWHPA, which for more than a year has tried to eliminate the NWHL because they have told players that if our league folds, others would start a league for them.”

The NWHL goes on in their statement to say they’ve had a lot of improvements and they’re proud of their progress. “These steps forward serve as our statements in response to this destructive and false narrative.” I’m not an expert on women’s hockey, and I won’t pretend to be. I do think these moments though are always difficult. It’s important to hold women’s leagues responsible for issues like the ones addressed in the article, but we also have to simultaneously recognize and be sensitive to the reality that these leagues are often operating under cash-strapped constraints and also that the public and media tend to focus on women's sports when women’s sports are struggling, and don’t give much space for covering their successes. This is not at all true of The Victory Press, and I want to be really clear about that. They deeply cover women’s hockey, always. This is more a point about which stories stick in people’s minds and get picked up by larger media. To that end, I do just wanna mention there’s also exciting news in the NWHL recently: there will be a new team in Toronto–

Shireen: Yay!

Jessica: –and this past week they hired a woman general manager to steer their ship. Okay, enough from me. Shireen, what are your thoughts on the Victory Press article and the reactions to it?

Shireen: I do first of all wanna say that I am a supporter independently of The Victory Press, I have a lot of respect for what they do. They’ve been covering women’s hockey for a long time, and independent media is something that I believe in. There was a lot of reaction to this article, and there’s one thing that I did wanna point out, that there’s accusations that PWHPA, commentary flying around, that they’re anti-NWHL, but I think that the distinction needs to be made that they’re actually pro-labor, and I had an off-record conversation with somebody very knowledgable in this field, and they were explaining that to me. Just to say that that’s what the distinction is, it’s that being pro-labor does not necessarily mean that you’re anti- something else, you’re just standing in your convictions. I just wanted to say that in this discussion it’s really important to remain balanced on this. I know that this is not easy to do, but as a result of a lot of the kerfuffle – I like that word, kerfuffle – Zoë, who’s the editor, ended up writing an editor’s note on her personal Medium site. I think that she was addressing a lot of the criticism, like, “Why did you ask this question?” One of the common critiques of the piece was, “Why aren’t you providing a solution?” Well, I think a reporter’s job is to report, a reporter’s job is to find the story and give the details. If you’re not comfortable with that aspect of journalism, I mean, nobody can do anything about that.

But it was a very solid piece. They cross-checked their facts, they made sure…The fact that a lot of players were anonymous and didn’t want to speak publicly is also quite telling for me. Part of Zoë’s response was very much that she didn’t even think that she needed to do a response, but then she did. She said, unsurprisingly, even the first line was that obviously we expected that some of the reaction to this article would be very, very negative. I mean, when you start off something like that, no fluff, she gets right into it. People are saying that you shouldn’t question this and this and this, and why are you talking about this because a lot of those things have been resolved. I absolutely get that, but from a different point of view, it’s important not to gloss over the history of what happened, and chronicling events in leagues, particularly with women’s sports, is never a bad thing. One of the responses was like, “Well, the WNBA didn’t start off where they are now, it took a long time.” And I understand that, but initially when they started out, and correct me if I’m wrong, Linz, their salaries were like $45,000. That’s absolutely not where the NWHL is. I wanna see women’s hockey there, but–

Lindsay: Yeah. They were a little bit lower, but it was, yeah, better.

Shireen: Yeah, it was way better. There’s always, I think ways that you can look at something.

Jessica: Thanks Shireen. Lindsay, you’re working on a piece about this, right?

Lindsay: I started reporting a piece on the divided state of women’s hockey for Power Plays back in like the last weekend of February/first week of March, and then of course the world stopped turning so it got put on hold a little bit. [Shireen laughs] But for one weekend I went up and I saw the Riveters play against the Buffalo Beauts, it was actually in Jersey, and then the next day I went and saw a PWHPA event – it says in Philly, but it was actually in Jersey as well at the Flyers’ training center. It was a great time to see both, what was happening on both sides of the fence, and to talk to players who are involved on both sides of the coin. First of all, I’ve gotta say both places were packed, had a lot of fans. They were smaller venues, very small, you know, just a couple hundred each. The Riveters had a lot of dedicated fans, they were talking about the playoff scenarios and breaking them down, and in merch and all this stuff. Then the PWHPA was a lot of fans who have really never seen women’s hockey up close, that were just kind of in awe.

Both events were great and had a lot of enthusiasm, but I think the divide here is just so tough, because it speaks to just these two separate ways to go about progress. This is a conflict that we talk about here on Burn It All Down through lots of different areas, mainly through activism, which is: do you work within the systems that exist to make them better, or do you push from outside for change? The PWHPA players, once the C-dub folded and there was no big step forward, a lot of them did not trust the NWHL enough to go back and work for them – and for legitimate reasons. They wanted to start this big huge movement that would lead to a league that was supported maybe by something like the NHL that could really start a league that they were super proud of and they felt had a future. Talking to one of the PWHPA players who was not one of the national team members, she said she just wanted to be part of a collective movement and that it was going to take a big financial investment, she was sick of incremental steps and they needed to make noise. A little bit of money is not enough, it needs to be a living wage.

Meanwhile on the NWHL side you have people like Anya Packer who’s the head of the players association there, and her wife Madison Packer is a player. Anya has really taken up the mantle for the players and decided that the best thing to do is to fight within this system. She’s worked really hard on organizing and on pushing within the NWHL to make things better. She told me in March, she said, “My process is to lean in and fix the problems.” Player salaries are up 26% last season, they had 6 million views on Twitch alone, and most importantly there’s now a 50/50 revenue share in the NWHL between players and ownership. Since that was borne, which was about the exact same time that the CWHL folded, this was all going on at the same time, Anya said that she’s been on every single call, every single sponsorship call since the day that revenue share was finalized, so she knows the ins and outs of all these sponsorship deals since there’s a 50/50 split. There’s more transparency than we’ve really ever seen before, so that's great too. That’s phenomenal, the work they’ve done is phenomenal. Anya was very transparent with me about the fact that the PWHPA movement forced the NWHL to open its books and to be more transparent and to work harder to make things better.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Most of those things that The Victory Press reported on, those horrible conditions happened last season. Anya released a statement that was much better than the NWHL’s statement [laughs] which was just the peak of pettiness. Her statement said that, “the article addressing the shortcomings in NWHL seasons 1-4 highlights problems that had eventually risen to the NWHLPA, and many of the most egregious complaints were resolved within the season.” She said, “The NWHL…PA,” – that is so many letters – “want to reject these as ‘growing pains’ and really push for things to be better.” So on the one hand I have so much admiration towards the people working within the system that exists to make things better. On the other hand I have so much respect for the people who are taking movements on the outside to make things better. One of the things, as Shireen alluded to, is there’s been a lot of subtweeting…Hilary Knight, who’s with the PWHPA, has called the NWHL a “glorified beer league.” There have been articles written saying “there is no pro women’s hockey league.” All of that stuff, talking to NWHL players, really hurts them. It’s really hard to hear.

During the draft, which we talked about, it went really well, there were players on the PWHPA side subtweeting the NWHL about the quality of the players that were being drafted; the same thing happened when the Toronto team was announced. This is really hurtful to so many within the NWHL. There are people who work for the NWHL on the operations side who grew up admiring these women, d’you know what I mean? These were their heroes, and now their heroes are tweeting negatively about them. So, I think it’s really tough. I will say, just to finish here, I know I’ve talked for too long, but one of the big things is that the NWHL players think the PWHPA has actually pushed them forward to a better place and thinks there’s a future for the NWHL with or without the PWHPA, while the PWHPA – most players I’ve talked to – think the NWHL is a hindrance, they feel like nobody is gonna go forward with a plan for women’s hockey while this league still exists. Gary Bettman, NHL commissioner, has said that he’s not gonna jump in until there’s on option. He’s not gonna pick sides here. So, it’s a mess, and there’s a lot of good work being done on both sides, and I don’t know where it goes from here.

Jessica: Shireen?

Shireen: I just wanted to bring up, we’ve had Liz Knox on the show as well before, I spoke to her a couple of years ago, former Markham Thunder goalie in the CWHL, Clarkson Cup winner. She tweeted out, because it was recent news that the PWHPA was having changes in the cities where they were being featured and stuff like that. What Liz Knox had said was in a tweet that all the changes were player-driven. She emphasized that that’s really important; many of the PWHPA, many of whom are Olympians, national team players, they want a certain caliber of it. I don’t believe that there’s one way forward, I’ve never ever felt that the NWHL and the then-C-dub or PWHPA could merge. I personally, as a journalist and a longtime fan of women’s hockey, have never felt that’s a solution, because the visions are so different, historically and currently. What Dani Rylan wants, and even in the way that the statement was given back to The Victory Press that Jess read, was very different. Ultimately, that’s okay. If there’s two leagues or one league and then one other formation of something working towards a league, that’s what it is. I think there’s definitely a way to have a discussion about this to support women’s hockey, period, which is what I fully intend to do. There’s gonna be women’s hockey in Toronto – you better believe I’m gonna be there. I think that it doesn’t only mean support one thing. This doesn’t have to go there, it doesn’t have to be like Bundesliga supporters where we support one and wish nothing for the others. That’s not what this is. I think we can support as many leagues and that’s what my plan is.

Jessica: Now it’s time for everybody’s favorite segment which we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we hated this week in sports and set them aflame. And still we have things to burn. It’s amazing to me that sports continues to give. [laughter] Okay, Brenda, what is on your pile?

Brenda: What is on my pile are the directors of Spain’s professional football. After striking last November, all of the women’s teams in Spain signed their first collective bargaining agreement. This was just this past mid-February, and we covered it a little bit on the show. It guarantees €16,000 a year for players on full-time contracts, okay? €16,000 a year. That’s not very much if you try to live in Spain, and you know how expensive it is, then you know it’s even less than you might think! So, in any case, they got a little bit more in terms of resources and medical provisions and things like that. This week they announced that they were ending the women’s league altogether for this season, but they are not ending the men’s league. So Barcelona is given the championship, they were 21 games into the season – undefeated, so it was amazing. Their season was abandoned in mid-March.

I know we have a lot of questions and qualms about when they can come back, but there’s absolutely been no indication that they’re giving a priority to rescheduling…that the Spanish football directors are really racking their brains over how to get women back on the pitch. Not. At. All. So, Club Barcelona will post, for example, drivel videos – and if I say this, you know it’s shit – drivel videos of Leo Messi with a face mask by himself training on their grounds, right? Drivel! It’s stupid. They play goat noises in the background…But do absolutely nothing to try to prioritize women, just when Barcelona has after 5 years done this amazing season. So I want to burn the fact that this is one of the most lucrative, lucrative teams – €16,000 a year! And you’re paying transfer fees for people like Coutinho – Ha. Ha. Ha. – in the hundreds of millions of euros! Hundreds of millions! That’s not his contract, that’s not his salary, that’s just his transfer fee. You can’t figure out how to prioritize them? That should be priority #1. So I wanna burn the ongoing sexism involved in how we’re bringing football back.

All: Burn.

Jessica: So, even in the time of COVID, coaches are out here publicly shaming college athletes  for the decision to transfer schools. The latest is Matt Painter, head basketball coach at Purdue. He went on sports radio, which is never really a good idea, on Wednesday, [Shireen laughing] and was talking about two of his players, Matt Haarms and Nojel Eastern, transferring. This is what he said about them leaving, he said, “We got better,” yesterday. It’s just so cruel. Can you imagine going to play for a petty man who says something like that about another player? I hope that prospective Purdue players really listen to him. Haarms graduated from Purdue and is playing his graduate year at Brigham Young after a difficult year where he was often hampered by injury and saw another player step into his role. About Haarms, Painter said, “You might’ve gotten your degree from Purdue, but you’re not a Boilermaker if you walk out the door in the end.”

I ask you: WHAT? Because this young man is pursuing another opportunity after graduating from the school that you are in theory an educator at, you’re publicly disowning him from your community? I think it’s just mean. I think this whole thing is so mean. Painter suggested that Eastern, the other player, has a “poor work ethic.” About Eastern, Painter said – again, publicly on sports radio – “The other guys got better, but the other guys also stayed and fought through adversity. Now you walk out the door after you put your name in the draft twice when you averaged 4 points.” It’ll never not be gross when an often older white man who, in this particular case, makes $2.5 million annually and can leave a school whenever he damn well pleases, wagging his finger at often young Black men navigating a system that rarely cares about them off the court, academically, financially, mentally, etc. Painter should be ashamed of this fit he threw against these two, but that would require any of these men to have shame when it comes to how they treat the players they claim to care so much about, so, burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: Shireen, what do you wanna torch?

Shireen: I wanna torch…Brenda has adequately had Bolsonaro on our burn pile, and I wanted to talk about how football legend Raí who is the brother of Socrates, the legendary footballer from Brazil, and Mauro Silva, who are standing up against him. Bolsonaro has been very blasé, which is a very nice to put it, about COVID. He called it “a little cold” and says it’s been exaggerated by media hysteria. So he has no empathy about anything. Raí did in speaking out very publicly against Bolsonaro and his status about not caring about COVID, he said he doesn’t care about the abuse he’s received from Bolsonaro supporters, who can be vicious and mean. He said, “I’ve ignored them and the smell of their bigotry,” and I’m getting this from a piece by Tom Sanderson from Guardian about this. I think the thing is when you’ve got footballers that are heroes in those countries…Raí in coordination with Mauro Silva, they both won the World Cup in ’94, and they’re involved with the São Paolo State Football Federation; basically you’ve got football organizations rallying for the health and safety of people, and when there’s a president like Bolsonaro who’s out there not caring about the people, they become those leaders.

Sometimes we talk about how crappy the spaces are that men in power occupy, but sometimes you have them radically supporting in ways that are so important. Now, to say that the Brazilian government is hard-headed is so minimalistic, and I’m so frustrated when I see this, but at the same time I’m so heartened by these efforts of these footballers, but the fact that this entire thing is being so recklessly and callously treated by Bolsonaro, I wanna put that on the burn pile. Burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: Lindsay, what are you burning?

Lindsay: Yeah, well it’s been a little while so I wanna return to the quest for absolute justice in the Larry Nassar case, not just for Nassar but for his enablers as well. This past week there was a step backwards when former Michigan State university president Lou Anna Simon prevailed in charges that she lied about what she knew about Nassar. A judge ruled that prosecutors did not present sufficient evidence to make the criminal case against her to trial; this was Eaton County judge John Maurer who said this. This is burn-worthy for many reasons, but I’m gonna keep it short and just give the quote by Amanda Thomashow who filed the 2019 Title IX complaint that was at the root of Simon’s case. She gave this quote to Dan Murphy of ESPN on the decision to dismiss; she said, “I’m so sad. I can’t stop crying, I feel like I don’t matter.” It’s important to remember that the quest for justice does not just involve the abusers, it’s about reforming the whole system, and you can’t do that unless you hold the people in power within that system accountable. This was a step back, but I have no doubt that these survivors will continue to fight, even though they shouldn’t have to. Burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: After all that burning, it’s time to celebrate some remarkable women in sports with our badass women of the week segment. Rest in peace to Mary Pratt, believed to be the last surviving member of original Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Pratt died at the age of 101 last week. She was a pitcher who played for both the Peaches and the Kenosha Comets between 1943 and 1947.

Also, pioneer female sportscaster Phyllis George died at the age of 70. In 1974, George was hired by CBS and became the first female sportscaster to work at a major US TV network. In 1975, she was named a co-host for The NFL Today and kept that job for nearly a decade. She, of course, received a bunch of hate mail for daring to be a woman on a sports program. She later said, “I can't help how I look, but below the surface, I was a hard-working woman. If I hadn't made that work, women eventually would have come into sportscasting, but it would have taken them longer.”

Now, our honorable mentions. Cheers to former WNBA players becoming coaches! 14-year WNBA veteran Tanisha Wright will be an assistant coach for the Las Vegas Aces. Wright retired last year but has been coaching for a few years at UNC Charlotte. Courtney Paris, an Oklahoma Sooners legend, will return to the school as an assistant coach. She played 10 years in the W and, while a player in college, racked up – this is an amazing thing – an NCAA-record of 112 consecutive double-doubles

Mandy Cronin, a co-founder of the CWHL, has been named the General Manager of the NWHL’s new team in Toronto.

Congrats to Megan Rapinoe who won a Shorty award in the ‘best in digital and social media content’ for the Sports category.

Shoutout to the Brown Bears Hockey Club, a national network of female hockey players of color, who raised nearly $2000 for the NAACP branch in Anchorage, Alaska. The money will go towards helping the homeless population in Anchorage.

Can I get a drumroll please?

[drumroll]

Our badass women of the week are the FC Barcelona women's team [Shireen and Brenda cheering] which has won the league title for 2019/2020. They would have loved to finish the season on the pitch, but we’re thrilled for them all the same.

Okay, what’s good, y’all? Brenda, what’s good with you?

Brenda: Well, ongoing goodness comes in the form of the new cat Leo. He’s amazing, he continues to be super fun, and he caught his first giant black fly, so yay to Leo for killing a fly–

Jessica: Yes!

Brenda: –not eating it, and not presenting it, but very neatly putting it in the corner of the room where I can sweep it up. Thank you, thank you. That’s more than my children have cleaned voluntarily, ever. [laughter] Also I wanna give a shoutout to bestie Jessica Stites for inviting me to a book club. I have never been invited to anyone’s book club, and people who know me know I’ve often been in existential angst about why I’m never invited. I would like to thank Lindsay for actually featuring my book in her book club, which was almost as good. We are reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead [Jessica cheers] which was – have you read it?

Jessica: No, but the name!

Lindsay: Sounds like a real humdinger. [laughter]

Brenda: Yeah, well this is why I’m probably not invited to book clubs [laughter] because this is exactly where I go! I’m like, this sounds super fun! So it’s Olga Tokarczuk who is Polish, it was published in 2009, and now it’s just been translated and I’m super excited to read it. I’m excited to read something that has nothing to do with my field and isn’t Latin American. I love Latin American novelists, just something really different. So that’s good.

Jessica: Very cool. So, my what’s good, I read an amazing romance novel this week, it’s called The Rakess, like, rake, but rake-ess, by Scarlett Peckham. I couldn’t even breathe for the last fifth of the book, I loved it so much. I loved recording the Quidditch Patreon segment with Amira this week. It’s up right now, everyone can listen to it. You have to listen to Amira intellectualize about Harry Potter, she is brilliant on it. I was so happy, I was smiling broadly as we were recording because I just love listening to her. And then I would be remiss if I did not mention that last weekend after we recorded I made macarons for the first time ever on my own. They were fucking amazing, and I was so proud of them – until we ate them all I would go make Aaron look at them, like, six times a day. I would be like, look at this thing I made! They were so good, I was so so proud of myself for just using YouTube and making them. I’m going to make lemon ones next, so I’m very excited about that. Shireen, what’s good with you?

Shireen: Ramadan is coming to an end; I will not be recording next week because I will be celebrating, so Eid Mubarak to everybody. I just started getting caffeine withdrawal headaches yesterday, which is pretty great because we’re in the last 10 days. I finished a beautiful class on  self-love by this incredible woman, a teacher named Angelica Lindsey-Ali. She’s based in Phoenix. It was so important for me, finding spiritual spaces that are really powerful and poignant and women-centered, and that’s just been really incredible for me. I got this book that I’ve been reading; I follow this account on Instagram @r.h.Sin and Samantha King Holmes are co-writers, a husband and wife team that write this poetry, and it’s really beautiful and I’m glad I have it in my hand because normally I just repost their Instagrams, so it’s nice to actually have the book.

And our table tennis continues. I just wanna say on record that I beat both my younger sons, Sallahuddin and Mustafa, last night, and that’s just exciting for me because I like to do that, to beat my kids competitively in these kinds of sports. We’re having so much fun. Basically, I have a driveway and a small garage, but we kind of turned the garage into a table tennis room, so it’s just its own space and it’s a lot of fun. I didn’t think we would have this much fun…I hoped, but it’s surpassed any type of thing. Not being able to go out and not being able to gauge…Table tennis is hard, y’all. It’s not easy, I was huffing and puffing after two games! Also because I’m probably totally out of shape, but also it’s a very important thing, and it’s making me think about what we can do to talk more table tennis on this show. [Lindsay laughing]

Also, I’m going to make rosewater today. I started to do plants; I acquired a zucchini my sister in law Khadija just sent me, a zucchini plant and a pea pod plant. So basically I’m a farmer. I have a lavender plant, I have another plant…I have like five plants, which is the most I’ve ever had in my life and I’m really excited about this. I’m just very excited! And I’m going to make rosewater with some leftover rose petals I have, so I’m basically a farmer and a botanist, so we’ll see how that goes…We’ll just see how it goes.

Jessica: Nice. Thank you, Shireen. Lindsay, what’s good with you? 

Lindsay: Last night I watched Sue Bird give Megan Rapinoe a haircut on Instagram Live–

Jessica: I could not! I could not do it, I was stressed! [laughter]

Lindsay: It was legitimately one of the most dramatic things I’ve ever watched in my life. I was on…Normally even sometimes great Instagram Lives like Sue and Megan’s have a hard time keeping my attention, because I watch them on my phone and I’m always wanting to switch to other apps on my phone, you know what I mean, like, multitask. So I’m not great at watching Instagram Lives…I could not look away from this one. And Sue did a great job! Sue did a great job. I was just very impressed. So, that happened, and I thought I had something else but I can’t really remember which just kind of sums up where I’m at right now. There’s just not a lot. Oh, the weather was prettier this week, so that’s something.

Jessica: That’s it for this week’s episode, thank you all for joining us. Kinsey Clarke is our producer, Shelby Weldon does our graphics and social media. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website: burnitalldownpod.com. You can also email us from the site to give us feedback. We love hearing from you all. If you enjoyed this week’s show, do me a favor and share it with two people in your life whom you think would be interested in Burn It All Down. Also, please rate the show at whichever place you listen to it – the ratings really do help us reach new listeners who need this feminist sports podcast but don’t yet know it exists. If you’re interested in Burn It All Down merchandise – hoodies, pillows, blankets, t-shirts, tank tops, tote bags, those kind of things – check out our Teespring store. One more thank you to our patrons, we couldn’t do this without you. You can sign up to be a monthly sustaining donor to Burn It all Down at patreon.com/burnitalldown. That’s it for now. Until next week: burn on, not out.

Shelby Weldon