Episode 175: Much ado about Coaching
This week, Lindsay, Amira, and Jessica talk about coaching, the racialized dynamics, the way it influences girls dropping out of sports, and why all of this matters. [3:52].
And, as always, the Burn Pile [26:00], Torchbearers, starring Sue Bird and WNBA 2020 Champs Seattle Storm (!!!) [34:23], and what is good in our worlds [39:42].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.
Links
White men are the last head coaches standing for the 3rd WNBA season in a row: https://www.powerplays.news/p/white-men-are-the-last-head-coaches/
US Soccer, Jill Ellis announce coach mentorship program: https://www.thestar.com/sports/2020/10/06/us-soccer-jill-ellis-announce-coach-mentorship-program
Hispanic TXHSFB Coaches Association seeks ‘seat at the table’ https://www.themonitor.com/2020/08/23/hispanic-txhsfb-coaches-association-seeks-seat-table
Diversity in football coaching: Why are there so few black coaches? https://ktxs.com/sports/high-school-sports/diversity-in-football-coaching-why-are-there-so-few-black-coaches/
Minority head coaches underrepresented in Texas high school football: https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/dfwvarsity/prep-football/article201096284
Texas Tech women's basketball players describe toxic culture: 'Fear, anxiety and depression': https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/ncaaw/big12/2020/08/05/marlene-stollings-texas-tech-program-culture-abuse-players-say/5553370002
Wichita State investigating coach Gregg Marshall amid misconduct allegations: https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/30074157
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast that you definitely need. Im Amira, and today I’m joined by Jessica and Lindsay. On this show we’re gonna be talking about coaches – good coaches, bad coaches, everything in between; much ado about coaching.
Lindsay: If we’re holding women to a higher standard as far as not being abusive, you know what? I’m fine with that.
Amira: Plus we will burn some things that need to be burned–
Jessica: 90,000 people in a football stadium?! Right now, anywhere, but especially in Florida…Again, I ask: WHAT THE FUCK?
Amira: –shoutout the torchbearers who are leading the way during this time, and let you know what’s good in our worlds. On Thursday we will be dropping an interview: I chat with Tziarra King and Madison Hammond from the NWSL about what it’s like to be rookies during this very unusual time. But before we get into all of that, I wanted to ask y’all about statues. Yes, statues. There’s an announcement that Marta is getting a statue in Brazil, there have been more conversation about LeBron and a statue; statues! It made me wonder: if you could give anybody a statue, who would it be? But really what I’m mostly curious about is where would you put it – which is an underused conversation, and I can say from experience when me and Jessica went on a trip in Clarksville, Tennessee to try to find Pat Summitt’s statue that took forever because it’s in the most nonsensical place in the world, that location matters almost as much! Where would you put a statue, Jess?
Jessica: Well, I found out this week that Sue Bird doesn’t have a statue – I’m pretty sure, like, 98% on that. We’ll talk about why she deserves one later in the show. So, where would I put it? I’ve been to Seattle one time, so, sorry, Seattleites, if that’s what you call yourselves. But there’s a huge public park not far from the tower, and she should just be kind of in the middle of that.
Amira: Yeah. And the ease of finding it should be key here, because it doesn’t make sense if you have a statue but nobody knows that it’s there! Lindsay, where would you put a statue? Who would you make a statue of?
Lindsay: I know it’s obvious; we just talked about Sue Bird, now I’m gonna say Megan Rapinoe. But it’s because of that pose, that World Cup pose is just made for a statue, right? That arms up, chest puffed out. I’m being real petty right now, and I don’t wanna define her by Trump but it does happen to be in the middle of New York, but I would just love if it was across from Trump Tower in New York City or something like that, where it would be easy for a bunch of people to find and Trump would have to see it every single day when he is out of the White House, that would make me happy. I also don’t care where it is, I just think somebody should make one of Simone Biles tumbling, because I think it would just make the coolest statue ever.
Jessica: Houston could use that.
Amira: Yes, absolutely. This is all coming on the heels of the Mellon Foundation announced that it’s pledging $250 million over the next five years to change the inadequate statues we have in this country. A lot of this is part of taking down racist people and confederate monuments and memorials, and reimagining those spaces. On a lighthearted note, it’s fun to think about athletes but the built environment matters and statues actually convey values and ideals, and so I’m looking forward to reimagining statues. I would love a Simone Biles, mid-tumble, a million feet off the ground so you can see how high she gets, in the middle of that park downtown in Houston.
This week on BIAD it’s all about coaching. There’s many different ways that we wanna think through coaching in this segment, and first and foremost I wanna start by talking about access to coaching. It’s something we’ve covered a few times on the show, that the pathways to the sidelines or to the side of the court is not always linear and it’s not always equitable for many people. So when you think about coaching first and foremost there’s real barriers to access to the profession, and to start, Lindsay, I wanna ask you: what are the current stats looking like in terms of coaches in a league that we’re all very familiar with, like the WNBA?
Lindsay: Yeah, so, for Power Plays I ran the stats on gender and race of coaches in WNBA history. This was because this is the third year in a row we’ve seen two white male coaches dueling it out in the finals. I was kind of curious, historically, what does that mean? I’ve got to say, the numbers aren’t shocking for those of us…But there’s a difference between shocking and still upsetting, right? It’s okay to still be upset by some of these numbers. So, first of all, in the league’s debut season, 1999, 90% of all head coaches were women; 3 of them were Black women and 6 were white women. Starting in 1999 though men had already become the majority of the head coaches in the WNBA, and they have held at least half of the league’s head coaching positions in 18 out of 22 seasons, including 5 of the last 6 years. This isn’t getting better.
So, the most prominent women’s league in the world almost is predominantly coached by men. It’s obviously far worse for Black women – 18 Black women have coached a total of 44 WNBA seasons, 21 white men have coached a total of 130 WNBA seasons, which means white men are essentially getting three times as much coaching time in the WNBA. This goes to rehires as well: there have been 8 male coaches that have been rehired as a head coach in the WNBA more than once in their career, so they’re gotten more than two stints as a head coach, 8 male coaches. Only one woman – and it's a white woman – the late, great Anne Donovan, has been rehired as a head coach in the WNBA more than once in her career. This was a 13th playoff with no Black women head coaches at all. You’ve only had 2 Black women coach in the WNBA finals in history and neither have won a championship. This is not good enough.
Amira: Absolutely not. I mean, those are absolutely startling statistics. Sadly they’re in line with a lot of trends that we saw, and this is one of the undersides of Title IX that we don’t talk about quite enough. I’ve said this statistic on the show, I say it when I give any talks almost anywhere, but when we think about college coaching statistics for instance, before Title IX women coaching women’s sports were upwards of 95% of those in coaching positions. Now they’re under 50%. So as positions get incentivized, get professionalized, what we see – like many other walks of life – is that women, particularly Black women, get meted out of those hiring pools and what we get is these statistics that Lindsay mentioned. It’s at the professional level, as that example, and at the collegiate example. But coaching issues do not just start when you get to college. Jessica, Texas – Texas football, Texas high school football – tell us about it.
Jessica: It’s interesting to bring up Title IX because that was, what, 1973? So there was a huge shift in Texas in the late 1960s, specifically ending in 1970, which was the desegregation of high schools, schools in general. So what we’ve seen ever since then is Black head coaches were pushed out. They would take all their players but they would get rid of the coaches, and that history is still with us here in Texas. You can’t overstate how big high school football is here, right? So, in 2018 Dave Campbell’s Football, which is like the bible of football in this state, they did a demographic study of high school football coaches in Texas and they found that of the 253 teams in class 6A – so, this is the largest schools in Texas high school – 179 of the 253 had white head coaches, 45 head coaches were Black, 28 were Hispanic, 1 was a Pacific Islander.
While more than 70% of the 6A coaches were white, just 26.4% of the students that attend those schools are white. 95% of majority white schools have a white head football coach, while 47% of majority Black schools have a Black head football coach. At majority Hispanic schools, only 19% have Hispanic head football coaches. So, one thing we’ve seen is that these coaches are trying to figure out what to do about this themselves. We have the Hispanic Texas High School Football Coaches Association trying to make space for themselves, but this is just a historical issue within a state that’s been here since around 1968-1970 when they desegregated and got rid of so many of these really amazing Black head football coaches, and so it’s still a problem in 2020.
Amira: Absolutely. What Jessica is describing that’s happening in Texas is really a national story. It’s a national story about the costs of integration in reality. One of the things that happened as Black institutions crumbled under the weight of so-called desegregation was that Black professionals got completely written out of those spaces. So, this is a story that’s happening in schools, when you think about schools integrating, you know, one of the massive things that happened that we don't talk about enough is that Black teachers were largely out of work because they were not being hired in these new integrated schools.
In sports this is really something that we know is a phenomenon that happens, and what it leads to is things like this today where you have teams that are predominantly Black with white coaching staff and you can see – especially as they try to navigate this moment of Black Lives Matter, right? – you can see the kind of fraught power tensions, especially as they are animated by the kind of racial disparities within those systems. I think that it really is important to note that right on the heels of this time period that Jessica was describing when you had the early kind of integration of college spaces, predominantly white college spaces with Black athletes, one of the first things from ’69 to ’73 that they were protesting constantly was that they didn’t have enough Black coaches or Black professors or a whole community outside of the labor that they were providing. So, I think that those are some of the racial implications of these coaching disparities. But also why is this important about gender disparities? Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, so, I think one of the huge issues that we see, especially in youth sports for girls, is that they just stop playing sports and the older they get the worse this gets. So, coaching could be an answer to this, right? The Women’s Sports Foundation released a report last year, it’s called Coaching Through a Gender Lens: Maximizing Girls’ Play and Potential. It’s very long; you should go read it if it’s something that you’re interested in. What they did is they talked to girls and their parents about what coaching strategies would help girls in particular stay in the game. It almost feels basic when you read it, but what they found is that a lot of these coaches don’t do these things. So it’s like emphasizing fun, effort, skill development, have girls set personal goals each one of them can meet, positive and encouraging feedback for both successful and unsuccessful performances, and that these are the kinds of things that will allow girls not to worry all the time, that girls in particular have…When they start to feel all this angsts and anxiety around it, that’s one thing that will have them drop out. I think this is important in that it speaks not only to the gender lens through which we view coaches, but also that we have to consider that there might be different strategies for successfully coaching two different groups, right? In this case we’re talking about girls..
Amira: Absolutely. I think that, like Jess mentioned, the various alliances that are trying to work in certain sports to address these coaching disparities and issues, and we’ve seen this on a larger scale as well. Lindsay, what’s one of the ways that you’re seeing programs being put in place to address some of these coaching disparities?
Lindsay: Well just recently we’ve had…Actually, just this last week, Jill Ellis announced that she has a coaching mentorship program, which, the idea is to double the number of professional female coaches at the elite level in the United States because currently there are only about 50 women with A or pro level licenses. I love this, because she said this is now her priority above even getting back in the head coaching position is to create more of a pipeline for women in this industry and noticing how much mentorship has meant to her. I also love that there’s a concrete goal: doubling this number. Another thing that’s been successful is, as I’ve mentioned, in the WNBA, that the head coaching positions are so white and male, but there is work being done on making the pipeline better. Of course, until the WNBA expands beyond 12 teams it’s gonna be hard, [laughs] that pipeline’s just gonna burst. But there were Black women on the sidelines in the finals. There were 3 Black former WNBA players: Noelle Quinn, the associate head coach for the Seattle Storm; Vickie Johnson and Tanisha Wright, assistant coaches for Las Vegas. They’re far from alone: 8 of the 12 WNBA teams have former WNBA players on their coaching staff – 5 of those teams employing multiple former WNBA players as coaches this season. All in all, there are 14 former WNBA players coaching the league and 10 are Black women – obviously if you’re employing former WNBA players the majority of those are naturally gonna be Black women because the WNBA is 88% Black women. The only head coach that's a former player is Sandy Brondello of the Phoenix Mercury. But there’s a policy thing helping this; Erica Ayala wrote a must-read deep dive for this on The Athletic about the need to build up this pipeline for more former WNBA players transitioning to coaching, reported that the league has a new rule in 2020 which allowed teams to carry 3 paid assistants as opposed to 2, given one of the four coaches – including the head coach – is a former WNBA player. What a great rule! It allows you to have more people on your coaching staff if you’re hiring a former WNBA player. That is a common sense philosophy, like, more of that, please! That is actionable. I love it.
Amira: Yeah, and I think that it’s important to note that getting people in these positions is the beginning of these conversations, right? [laughs] Retaining, sustaining, supporting, not seeing these steps as stepping stones to the men’s game or things like that, being able to celebrate somebody like Kara Lawson coaching for the Celtics and then also celebrate her transition to coach at Duke for their women’s basketball program. Also, I think that is really important because we know that the meaning of these coaches are important but there’s also limits to that. One of the things that happened this week was that Deion Sanders was announced as the new coach of Jackson State University’s football team, which, he said, “I’m reviving HBCU football,” and there was all the discourse around if this was gonna bring HBCU football back or if this was gonna be better, if he was gonna be somehow more understanding. It was like, people forgot that, I don’t know, a month and a half ago, Deion was out here literally tweeting that, “All Players OPTING out in all sports PLEASE BELIEVE the game will go on without u. This is a business & don’t u EVER forget that. There’s NO ONE that’s bigger than the game itself. Only the ref, umps & officials are that important that u can’t play without them. NOT YOU! #Truth.” So, no, Deion Sanders is not gonna completely eradicate the capitalist, exploitative system that college football is built off of, right? [laughs] He literally just told you six weeks ago. I know pandemic time is funny, but he’s on record. Also we’re wondering if this makes it more, I don’t know, “progressive”…I guess in some ways, but also the second thing he did was like, “Now I’m here, we gotta bring Barstool to Jackson State…” and it was all of this stuff. I think that that highlights some of the limits that a single person in a coaching position can have. But for more on this, because I am really interested in the HBCU angle here, I had to call up my friend, Dr. Derrick White, who is the co-host of The Black Athlete pod and the author of a tremendous book called Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A&M, and the History of Black College Football, just to quickly ask him what to do about Deion. What do we make of this?
Derrick: I think Deion Sanders represents the kind of conundrum facing HBCUs. They have been materially and I think socially marginalized from the broader mainstream of college sports, and I think that there’s an intense desire for them to return to the limelight. In particular old-timers complain about the inability to recruit the best Black athletes to their campuses, so Deion with his celebrity is Jackson State’s hope, I think, in some ways a hail Mary for them to return to glory, a program that produced four Hall of Famers including Walter Payton. I think Deion Sanders is an interesting person to lead this charge for a number of reasons. One, it’s not particularly clear that he had any kind of extensive relationships with HBCUs beyond going to Florida State University, which is a nearby neighbor of Florida A&M.
Two, I think that he has engaged in some serious and questionable commercial relationships with Barstool, with other organizations that raise questions. Then finally I think that his Prime high school academy, the Prime Academy that he started a few years ago, which failed, raises concerns about whether Deion has the administrative wherewithal needed to leave his team back. That said, I think that a school like Jackson State face a particular set of challenges. They have not been good, to be perfectly honest, in the last 7 or 8 years. Their fanbase would like to return to its glory days of the 70s ideally, but even more recently when they were regular champions of the SWAC. The SWAC has become more competitive with the addition of Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman, and so the task laid out for Jackson State is tremendous. It’ll be interesting to see whether Deion has the kind of coaching acumen to translate his celebrity into success on the field.
Amira: So, other stories that we saw this week about coaching have unfortunately reminded us about how toxic coaching can be. For more on this, I wanna start with you, Jessica. What have we seen this week that we’d file under bad coaching?
Jessica: Yeah, this is like a mini burn pile, really. The Athletic published a piece about Wichita State men’s basketball head coach Gregg Marshall. The school has launched a formal investigation because there are multiple cases with witnesses of Marshall physically assaulting people, including one case where he punched a player between the shoulders, near his neck, during practice. Like, what? And he’s not fired, he’s just “under investigation.” Marshall has said, I kid you not, “My coaching style isn’t for everyone.” [laughs] Sorry. “Many players thrive in the system we’ve created and are energized by our team culture. For those players I’m a motivator, a pusher, someone who can tap” – TAP, he used the word TAP? – “into their greatest potential potential. For others I can be demanding, harsh, or strict. I don’t argue with those descriptions. What I am not is demeaning or abusive.” We clearly just have different definitions of abusive, because he has been reported three separate times for physically assaulting people, and yet he's still coaching!
Amira: It’s absolutely ridiculous. The one where they said he routinely parked his car behind people who might park in his spot and chase them, it’s…
Jessica: Yeah, he chased them down to punch a student through the window of his car because he was mad that he parked in his spot.
Amira: I mean, literally…If you haven’t read the article, READ IT. It’s disturbing on too many levels. But that was not the only disturbing coaching news this week. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Well this actually came out a couple of months ago in August, I think, when we were on our recess. But Texas Tech women’s basketball coach Marlene Stollings…A USA Today investigation found that coaches in that program punished players whose heart rates dropped below 90% capacity during playing time for more than 2 minutes. So players tried to elevate their heart rates artificially by jumping up and down and also avoided taking painkillers in hopes that that would impact their heart rate. Players alleged that coaches and staff called them names like ‘fat pig’ and ‘disgusting’; they were mocked for their weight, and there’s also sexual harassment involved. This is another reminder that Marlene Stollings has been fired, and everyone…Brittany Brewer, who was in the WNBA this season, former Texas Tech player, came out. All former athletes kind of came out and said that that report was correct, that that was what was going on. I’d just like to point out that both male and female coaches can be abusive.
A lot of times talk about abusive women’s coaching, a lot of the Title IX advocates and community often feel like female coaches are wrongfully targeted for abuse. There have been a number of documented situations where women coaches have come forward to administrations about low pay or lack of equal resources, you know, you name it Title IX violations, and the administrations themselves have retaliated by essentially encouraging complaints about their abusive coaching as a way to get them fired and to oust them. That has happened. But that is not what all of these cases are. There are also a lot of cases where female coaches are downright abusive and that needs to be taken seriously and I do not care that male coaches often get away with being abusive at a higher rate. [laughs] That is not an argument that really appeals to me, right? That doesn’t work. No abuse! Nobody. Everyone needs to be held accountable. If we’re holding women to a higher standard as far as not being abusive, you know what? I’m fine with that.
Amira: Right, exactly. Sign me up.
Lindsay: Yeah. [laughing]
Amira: That story just hurts me so much, especially the heart rate thing, because there’s so many ways to be abusive and, like Lindsay alluded to, it’s too often that abusive coaches very easily slide into another position. I couldn’t help listening to that, Lindsay, and thinking about Jordan McNair and thinking about neglect that led to a death and DJ Durkin just kept fucking coached. Then even when he was fired, like, Jess talked about it on this show, how he was then hired to be a special person down at Alabama under Saban even though he’s not a good coach! If anybody wanted an update on DJ Durkin, he’s an assistant coach now to Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss. How is he still in this game? It’s appalling. So often when we talk about coaching we do talk about how toxic or abusive it can be, but we did wanna stop and have a little bit of a conversation about what good coaching looks like. So if you want more of that conversation please check out our October Patreon where Jess, Lindsay and I break down thoughts about good coaching, examples of good coaching, and I chat with Erica Dambach and Ann Cook of the Penn State women’s soccer team and women's national team about their path to coaching and what they think makes a good coach.
Just a reminder, we have our interview episode dropping on Thursday. When this episode airs many people will have just celebrated Indigenous People’s Day, and as part of that I’m really excited to talk to Madison Hammond, who just became the first Native American woman to play in the NWSL. I also talk with both Madison and Tziarra King – we welcome her back to the show – about what it’s like to be rookies in this very unusual season, particularly Black women who, while they’re rookies, are also demonstrating that they’re leaders off the pitch in terms of pulling the NWSL along in terms of racial issues.
Madison: You know, you get to the league and you realize just how few Black and brown girls there are in the league. It’s like, whoa. Then you get asked the question of, like, “Why aren’t Black and brown girls playing soccer?” and it’s like, they ARE playing soccer, they ARE playing soccer. Please, repeat with me! They ARE playing soccer!
Tziarra: I’m new, not everybody knows me. Should I say these things? But then I was thinking about it like this will not only affect me but this will affect so many people after me, and so it only feels right to stand up for things to then blaze a path for Black women to come after this.
Amira: Be sure to check your feed on Thursday for the full interview. Alright y’all, we have a burn pile of updates. It’s if all the things we have burned before are slowly simmering, this is the burn pile where we’re just kind of throwing kindling on it and keeping the fire burning, because things are still frickin’ burnable. So for our first updated burn I’m gonna kick it off. Last week I talked about some of the Title IX things and cuts that were happening as one of the what’s ugly when sports return, and I just wanted to give a brief update on the University of Minnesota that has now completed these cuts, which includes indoor track and field, it includes 98 athletes overall.
The reason why I wanna particularly draw our attention back to this is that these cuts were now voted on; they passed by just a two vote margin. But it also comes on the heels of Minnesota announcing the full cost of their testing program. They didn’t announce a number because they don't want to, but they indicated that not only are they making these cuts obviously because of the pandemic circumstances, but because the testing program for bringing Big Ten football back has put them in even more of a deficit. So these things that we had mentioned on the show that we’re watching happening from university to university – they’re here, they’re happening, it’s infuriating, and I wanted to just give an update about that. The other update I have is about the NFL COVID tests, which…[laughs] have not gotten better. Shockingly. As of this morning – we’re recording on Sunday morning – the Patriots and Broncos game has been postponed again, because the Patriots facility shut down, again, because there’s another positive, again. If you’re looking for more agains, there’s yet another positive out of the Tennessee Titans facility; this time it is a staff member. It also comes on the heels of an announcement that after this facility was shut down last week a group of players still got together at a high school football field to continue to train together, even though the point was to stay away from each other!
So here we are. And to sprinkle a little more goodness on that there are reports that both the Bears and Kansas City now have positive COVID tests and, if you remember, Kansas City played WHO last week? Oh, that’s right: the Patriots! After that game, Gilmore tested positive. So…I don’t know. We’re just kind of watching this roll merrily along and it’s racking up more and more positives as the season goes down. I honestly don’t know how we finish the season but they seem dead-set on doing it despite the fact that they’re having COVID outbreaks across the country in various facilities. I just wanna burn it down.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright Jessica, what are you updating us with?
Jessica: More COVID and college football! So, according to the New York Times, at least 915 new coronavirus deaths and 58,539 new cases were reported in the United States on Friday, October 9th. Over the past week there have been an average of 47,782 cases per day – an increase of 12% from the average two weeks earlier. There’s been a nationwide increase since mid-September; we’re back in a trouble spot. Despite all of this the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, a Trump sycophant – if he’s not the most kiss-ass of the Trump flunkies he’s definitely vying for the position – he announced this past week that stadiums in Florida can return to full fan capacity. Florida has famously struggled in its response to COVID, so what the fuck, I ask you.
It looks like for now the three NFL teams in the state will maintain limited capacity at their stadiums, but this weekend after the University of Florida lost their away game to Texas A&M, Florida’s head coach Dan Mullen said that next week when the Gators host LSU, “Absolutely want to see 90,000 in The Swamp.” The Swamp’s the nickname for their stadium. Mullen, see, thinks that A&M stadium at 25% capacity – around 25,000 people – helped their team beat his team. I mean, I’m not jazzed about the 25,000 number in College Station which isn’t that far from where I live, but 90,000 people in a football stadium? Right now? Anywhere, but especially in Florida? Again, I ask: WHAT THE FUCK? To tie a bow on this, Mullen went on to explain out loud and publicly, 1) he doesn’t know anything about COVID, and/or 2) gives no fucks about the community of Gainesville – which, I’ll just note here, has a major hospital, because it’s tied to the university. Someone near and dear to me got a double lung transplant at that very hospital earlier this year and had to live in that community in the spring, because you don’t just get new lungs and then get to go home. To say that I’m fearful of a packed stadium is to undersell it.
Anyway, Mullen said, “I know our governor passed that rule, so certainly, hopefully, the UF administration decides to let us pack The Swamp against LSU.” Perhaps Dan Mullen should consider that his team lost not because A&M had people in the stands but rather because he’s a fucking terrible coach. Though no props for A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, I wanna be clear on that. So this week I wanna say: fuck Ron Desantis, fuck Dan Mullen. So many of my family live in Florida and they’re in or near the age group that is most vulnerable to COVID and I just…When am I ever gonna be able to see my family again? This is so distressing on so many levels. I have personal ties to this, but also just…The fuck are these people doing?! I just wanna burn all this shit. Just…Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright Linz, take us home.
Lindsay: Alright, I’ve got two quick burns here, burn updates. First of all, Yelena Leuchanka, the Belarusian basketball player who was imprisoned for a 15-day sentence for protesting in Belarus, her lawyer has reported that she’s in a cell with three other prisoners, she’s struggling to sleep because of her knee injury. She was actually leaving Belarus to get that knee injury treated when she was arrested, and she hasn’t been allowed to shower; prisoners have to wash in their cell. So it looks now like she’s gonna have to be in prison for the full 15 days. This is the Belarus government sending a direct message to athletes not to use their influence, so burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: And then World Rugby just updated us a few weeks ago they were trying to implement that would outright ban trans women from participating in the sport at all levels, despite public outcry, despite many organizations – up to 100 sporting organizations around the world – coming out against this ban, and despite the fact that the vote wasn’t supposed to be until next month. World Rugby announced this week that it has adopted these new guidelines. So, it’s just sneaking that in. It’s becoming the first global sport governing body to issue a blanket ban against trans athletes. Absolutely, unfathomably horrific. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Lindsay: [smooth jazz music playing] Autumn colors means it’s getting cold.
Brenda: I love fall, but, brr….
Amira: It’s like mulled wine, so spicy and sexy.
Shireen: I love long fireside chats…
[record scratch, music stops] [laughter]
Jessica: Speaking of warmth and fireside, Burn It All Down will host its first fireside chat, open to patrons in the top 3 tiers. You’ll get to talk to all of us in an informal and casual setting about whatever you’d like. Our first fireside chat will be Friday, October 16th at 7pm eastern.
Amira: After all that burning, let’s light a different flame. Let’s light a torch and hit this relay for our torchbearers of the week. First up, who is our clay court champ of the week, Linz?
Lindsay: That would be Iga Świątek who beat American Sofia Kenin to win the first major title of her career – the French Open! – with a dominant 6-4 6-1 victory in barely an hour and 24 minutes. Iga is only 19 years old, she’s the first Polish player to win a major title, and she’s the first woman to win a major in more than 40 years without having cracked the world’s top 47; she’s only ranked #54. While there were a lot of people missing from the French Open she did beat Simona Halep on the way in dominating fashion, so congrats to her. What a breakthrough win.
Amira: Absolutely. Alright, we got some runners doing some really dope runner things. Jess, who are our pavement pushers of the week?
Jessica: Brigid Kosgei defended her London Marathon title, winning with a time of 2 hours,18 minutes and 58 seconds; and Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey ran 14 minutes, 6.65 seconds to break the women’s 5000m world record, which had stood since 2008!
Amira: Impressive. I will tell you, our most impressive streak of the week goes to the Australian women’s cricket team which reached 21 successive ODIs – that’s One Day Internationals, a big cricket tournament. They are absolute legends in the women’s game and this just confirms that. Now, can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Our torchbearers of the week go to multiple people, all within the umbrella of the WNBA. So, let’s start with Sue Bird. Jessica?
Jessica: So, Sue Bird – who turns 40 this week and is the league’s oldest player! – won her fourth WNBA championship. She is the only player in the WNBA ever to win titles in 3 different decades. For comparison, only 2 NBA players have done that: Tim Duncan and John Salley; and the WNBA is much younger than the NBA. Bird also averaged 11 assists in the final, tying Nikki Teasley for the highest assist average in finals history, and her 9.2 assists per game for the entire playoffs was also the best ever in the playoffs. How, Sue? HOW?
Amira: Amazing. Also, we wanna shout out the Storm! Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, they absolutely dominated in this playoffs. They have now won two of the last three WNBA championships and have just continued to win. One of my favorite stories is they used last year, when Stewart and Bird were out, Dan Hughes said, “This isn’t a year off. This is a year to get better.” Every single person on their roster got better and it showed when Stewie and Bird got back. Shoutout to their owners who we love here at Burn It All Down, they are the only all-female ownership group in the WNBA that we recognize, and it was great to see them on court celebrating with their wives, and it was just a big moment that ownership doesn’t have to look like you think it has to.
Amira: Absolutely, and shoutout to the Aces for a tremendous run as well, and really wanna take the time to shout out all of the WNBA: you started this season going into the wubble saying we’re also dedicating this to Say Her Name, to Breonna Taylor. You were unapologetic, you had the audacity to show up and demand the spotlight, demand to be heard. You played your first season under the new CBA even though it wasn’t the season you thought you had. It has been a tremendous, unprecedented summer, but you have shown on and off the court why you guys are absolutely the blueprint for athletic activism, absolutely the leaders that we need right now, absolutely one of the most exciting leagues to keep an eye on. Your ratings, while everybody else has shit ratings, yours being up 68% is a testament to that. But beyond just the data and the numbers the women and the non-binary folks in the WNBA are absolutely, absolutely torchbearers. If you needed to hammer that home in any other way, check out Alisha Clark summing this season up:
Alisha Clark: It's a championship for little Black girls and Black women across this country honestly. I said it after the game when I was letting it all soak in. I hope each and every one of them feel just as victorious in this moment as I do. Because you should. We see you. We hear you. We acknowledge you, and your life matters. And that was what the season was about. So to be able to win a championship with that mentality, and all that on our minds, man, it's really special and historic.
Amira: Alright y’all, what’s good in your worlds? Lindsay.
Lindsay: Oh, I was hoping you would not do me first because I forgot to write things down. I know I actually thought of things during this week…Okay, so first of all, my dog has just been extra special amazing. What is not good is parrots. [laughter] I do have to mention, I am staying with my aunt and uncle in North Carolina right now and they’re out of town for the weekend and so I am babysitting their parrot. First of all, I knew that this person had a parrot when I was growing up so I was like, wow, they got a new parrot. Nope – same parrot! This parrot is 30 years old. It’s name is Baby; it is not a baby. Parrots can live until they’re 80 years old! I gotta say, just trying to feed this parrot I got bit so many times. Parrots are what is bad, but what’s good is I’m surrounded by dogs. Also, Shireen, listen up! I have been enjoying the crap out of my basic pumpkin spice drinks this week, and savoring every moment of it because I need a little joy in my life, and that’s where I’m getting it.
Amira: Shireen at this very moment is hate-tweeting about pumpkin spice samosas that she found. [laughter] Just so we all understand what’s happening!
Lindsay: Shireen! Let me have this joy! Stop! [laughter]
Amira: I will go next. I have booked a hotel with my IHG points, the Kimpton. I love Kimpton’s. Anyway, I have booked a hotel to get away for a few days this week to write my last chapter of my book, and I just was like, guess what y’all? You need to get the fuck out of your house and go finish your book! So I will be going, and I get to use my away weekender bag that I got when they had a 50% off sale because nobody can travel, and I stare at it like, where can I possibly travel to with my bag? And now I have a reason. I’m gonna mostly put books in it and then go to this hotel and write for hopefully 3 straight days and get this done. So that is what I’m very excited about, that’s my what’s good right now. Jessica?
Jessica: Yes, so, I got a flu shot this week and it felt good to be participating in the community in that way. I made 2 spoon cakes this week, which…I texted Martin to let him know that update. They were both wonderful. One was blueberry and one was plum. Aaron loves to make Halloween decorations, so we have this one that we’ve had for years where he did the Stranger Things alphabet like Winona Ryder does, then he has the LED lights and he programs it to flash out ‘Happy Halloween’ and then to crazy flash with his raspberry pie – he does this thing, it’s really really cool. But then the new one this year is that he bought a projector and a see-through curtain and he projects what looks like a ghost onto the curtain, so it looks like there’s a ghost in our window in our house. It’s like the haunted house at Disneyworld or whatever. It’s really cool and now I want him to buy a projector and curtain for every single window in the house, [laughs] which is not financially feasible. But I am just really into this. So kudos to Aaron. Then the last thing is this week I get to early vote. We’re going in person, I cannot wait to cast my ballot.
Amira: A few things to keep an eye out this week: baseball playoffs are among us and this week we’ll be seeing the Braves and the Dodgers face off as well as the Rays and the Astros, so, baseball is happening, so there will be a few games on this week. The thing that I am perhaps most looking forward to, there’s a slate of NWSL games this weekend: the Orlando Pride play the North Carolina Courage, and the OL Reign take on the Utah Royals, so you can listen to our episode with Madison Hammond and Tziarra King, and then you can watch them play each other. That’s Saturday night at 8pm, check it out. That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of me, Jess, and Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us. This episode was produced by award winner Martin Kessler!
Jessica: Woo!
Amira: Shelby Weldon does our website and our transcripts and social media. You can find us on Facebook, on Twitter and on Instagram. If you wanna subscribe, check out Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, all the places. You know the deal. For more information about the show – transcripts, links, all of that jazz – check out burnitalldownpod.com. You can email us, you can shop at our Teespring store…It is sweater weather! So pick up a hoodie or a blanket, use the code fallflames for 15% off your order. If you’re a patron check your email for an extra special discount code for you there. As always, thank you for your support, it means the world to us. From all of us here at Burn It All Down: burn on, not out.