The athlete I chose is Natasha Watley. She is a professional softball player and the first African-American female to play on the USA softball team in the Olympics. She’s a former collegiate 4-time First Team All-American who played for the UCLA Bruins, the USA Softball Women’s National Team, and for the USSSA Pride. She helped the Bruins will multiple championships and also holds numerous records and one of the few players to bat at least .400 with 300 hits, 200 runs, and 100 stolen bases. She’s also the career hits leader in the National Pro Fast pitch. She won the gold medal in the 2004 summer Olympics and a silver in the Beijing Olympics. She was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjW1Zrs94LLAhUI5iYKHdkjCnIQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.womenfitness.net%2Finterview_natashaWatley.htm&psig=AFQjCNE7Ns0AV4n5hCcIJ8NOVn_1TYdBFQ&ust=1455940672915391 a) The article that I found didn’t portray any prejudices or stereotypes based on Watley’s race/ethnicity. In fact, the only mention of her race is to commend her for being a …show more content…
She’s a great player, who holds multiple records and has played professional softball for a decade. She became the first player to accumulate 300 career hits in 2014 and set a enduring league record for hits in 2011. She’s also tied second in amount of stolen bases. She’s also overall a really great person. She has a foundation, the Natasha Watley Foundation, which promotes active and healthy lifestyle choices for all age groups and cultures who are ready to make a difference. It encourages softball as an alternative outlet of daily stressors and hosts a 5k walk in support of the cause. She puts a focus on the social issues that affect women. She’s opening doors and changing lives. She wants to make softball a sport for
baseball career as a top MLB prospect after playing for Team USA in the 1996 Summer Olympics in
She led the team to a Conference championship and a State Championship. As a Senior she was the #1 player in the nation, averaged a triple double with 31 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists. For the second consecutive year in history, she led the team to a state championship and led the nation in scoring. All four years in high school she was selected to be on the all-state team, all-region team, and all-conference team. During the summers of her High School years she would continue practicing and playing for an AAU team.
In this statement "Where Girls Are Missing Out on High-School Sports", Alia Wong, writer and editor from Boston, suggests that women don't participate in as many sports because they are not given the opportunity and because of discrimination of race. She supports this claim by first providing evidence about women not getting the opportunity or is discriminated because of race. Then, she provides information about the number of women who play sports and gets scholarships for sports compared to men. Wong's purpose is to have people recognize that women are missing out on sports because of gender inequality in order to impact the lives of her readers and to make a difference with gender equality in sports. She establishes an inspiring tone for
Turn on ESPN, and there are many female sports reporters, and many reports on female athletes. Flip through Sports Illustrated, and female athletes are dotted throughout the magazine. Female athletes star in the commercials. Female athletes are on the cover of newspapers. Millions of books have been sold about hundreds of female athletes. However, this has not always been the case. The number of females playing sports nowadays compared to even twenty years ago is staggering, and the number just keeps rising. All the women athletes of today have people and events from past generations that inspired them, like Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League, Billie Jean King, and the 1999 United States Women’s World
Over the past fifteen to twenty years women's fastpitch softball popularity has continued to grow and spread internationally. By the mid-1990s it was played in more than 85 countries under the eye of the International Softball Federation (ISF). It has become increasingly popular among women at the youth and collegiate levels. More than 630 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) member institutions sponsor women's softball programs, and national championships for women are held in all three NCAA sports divisions (Encarta, 1998). In 1991 women's fastpitch softball was selected to debut as a medal sport in the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Columbia, Georgia. The U.S. won the gold medal in the 1996 Olympic Games due to a good defense and great hitters on the team. Even though defense and pitching are critical and vital parts of the game, a successful team must have an effective offense to win the game. Among all the standout hitters on the U.S. Olympic team, two of the best are Dot Richardson and Lisa Fernadez. Both Lisa and Dot have picture-perfect swings, which have made them very productive throughout their careers. Today there is a women's professional fastpitch softball league. Interest in the Women's Professional Softball League (WPSL) has been increasing for the last three years and continues to grow each year.
Do you know who Sarah Thomas is? She is the NFL’s first female full time and most accomplished female referee. She was born in 1973 in Pascagoula, Mississippi. When she was in highschool she played basketball and softball. The officials never liked her because she would always try to make them change the call and she would disagree with them. It was the same when she went to the University of Mobile. She wanted to stay involved with sports after she graduated, so she joined a church basketball league for men.She played with them for two years until she was told she could no longer play.
Kathrine Switzer is not a name you as often as Susan B. Anthony or Sojourner Truth in the fight towards women's equality, but in 1967 she made a stand for all women and proved that she was and still is strong enough to do anything a man can do. Run the Boston Marathon, this little task to some now was a huge step for her, she had to push against everything almost every man most of her life except or few, including one of the men's coaches “A woman can't run the Boston Marathon. Women are too weak and too fragile for 26.2 miles. No dame ever ran no marathon.”(ESPN). During a time period where women in the United States were fighting for equality in the world, Kathrine Switzer battled her way for equality in the world of sports. In 1967 she
Jennie Finch is by far the most well known softball player. Jennie was a 3 time all american pitcher and first baseman at the university of Arizona. While in college she made history. She set an NCAA pitching record by having 60 consecutive wins over three seasons and winning 109 total games. During these season she also has a total of 1,028 strike outs as well. While in college she also won the nation's best softball player in 2001 and led her team to a national title win in 2002. The number 27 was retired a year later at the University of
Softball is a sport around the world that is gaining a lot of popularity, and Jennie Finch wants to bring the sport back into the olympics. In the article “ Jennie Finch Makes Case For Olympic Softball “, It talks about why Jennie wants the sport to return to the olympics. Jennie Finch is an a two time olympic medalist, a gold and silver medal, and she also played at the University of Arizona where she once had a sixty game winning streak. In 2013, Jennie wrote an essay explaining why softball should be in the 2020 olympics. In the essay, she says that including softball in the olympics would inspire women all over and give them the opportunity to participate in the greatest celebration of sport known to man, The Olympic Games. She goes on
Dot Richardson is a well known name in the softball community. She has had people tell her that she will never make it in the big league for softball, that she will never become a doctor. But, she never gave up in fact it made her work harder. She studied harder, she practice harder. She did everything A hundred and ten percent, never taking shortcuts.
Sheryl WuDunn is a multi-faceted third generation Chinese American who was born November 16, 1959 in New York City. She holds several degrees from distinguished Universities such as, Cornell, Harvard and Princeton. She is a best selling author, journalist, educator, lecturer, international women’s rights advocate and business executive.
Women sports have come a long way, since the days when women were only allowed to watch. “The past three decades have witnessed a steady growth in women's sports programs in America along with a remarkable increase in the number of women athletes (Daniel Frankl 2)” From an early age women were thought to be “Lady Like”; they are told not to get all sweaty and dirty. Over 200 years later since Maud Watson stepped on the tennis courts of Wimbledon (Sports Media digest 3); women now compete in all types and levels of sports from softball to National racing. Soccer fans saw Mia Hamm become the face of Women’s soccer around the world , Venus and Serena Williams are two of the most popular figures in tennis, and Indy car racing had their first woman racer, Danika Patrick. With all the fame generated by these women in their respective sports, they still don’t receive the same compensation as the men in their respective sports fields. Venus Williams, net worth is 60 million dollars; 27 million came from playing tennis (celebritynetworth 4). Her sister, Serena Williams has a tennis...
For this Women of Diversity Group Project, my group chose to write about female pioneers in sport. Within that category I chose female pioneers of softball. During this paper I will discuss the history of the sport and female participation in the sport. I will also give some statistics and make comparisons between females and males involved in softball and baseball.
Who are some of the 2008 players? One of the women on the 2008 softball team was Monica Abbott. Monica Abbott was number 14 for the USA team. She was one of the pitcher. Monica Abbott grew up in Salinas California. When she was 23 years old she became a member on the USA softball team. Monica went to college at the University of Tennessee. She was a 2008 Olympic silver medalist. In the Olympic she also had a 3-0 record in 24 innings pitched while striking out 32 batters. In the World Championship she had 2-0 record in 12 innings and in the 12 innings she strook out 16.
My father grew up in Pearl Mississippi and in my eyes and the eyes of others he was a stellar athlete. He went to six different schools between 1st and 12th grade and was an athlete at all of them. My dad was the starting quarterback at Faith Academy from 8th until 10th grade when he moved to Pearl. He made the high school baseball team at Pearl and was begged by the football coach to play, but he refused. He set out to play baseball and be one of the greatest of all time. When he found out that was nothing more than a dream he turned to men’s softball throughout the state of Mississippi. My dad started playing men’s softball when he was 17 and finally retired when he was 45. He has won six state championships over a span of almost 30 years and came