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      World Cup Picks Up Baton for Women’s Sports in Australia

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      For as long as there have been sports in Australia, women have clamored to play and participate. But winning visibility, and support, has been a long road.Fans celebrated in central Melbourne this week after a national triumph: The Matildas, the Australian women’s soccer team, had defeated Canada, the reigning Olympic champion, 4-0.It was a glorious victory after a dismal start to the Women’s World Cup for one of the two host teams. In Federation Square, Australians held up gold and green scarves and bellowed, “Up the Matildas!”Two years earlier, the same city had seen a similar outpouring of support for the Australian women’s cricket team. Inside Melbourne Cricket Ground, more than 86,000 people had gathered to watch the final of the Women’s T20 World Cup, while 1.2 million people tuned in from elsewhere in Australia.For Ellyse Perry, an Australian sporting legend who has represented the country in both the cricket and soccer World Cups, the 2020 match — the largest crowd ever to watch a women’s cricket match — was a milestone for women’s sports in Australia.“It’s really now starting to become embedded in general society, and it’s commonplace,” she said. “We don’t think differently about it. It’s not an oddity any more.”For as long as there have been sports in Australia, women have clamored to play and participate. What is believed to be the world’s first cycling race for women took place in Sydney in 1888; the country’s first golf championship, in 1894, was women only; and at the 1912 Olympics, Australian women won silver and gold in the first women’s Olympic freestyle race.Yet even though Australian women’s sports have an extensive and proud history, only recently have they received significant mainstream support. A strong run in the World Cup — Australia will face Denmark in the round of 16 on Monday — was seen as an opportunity to change that, to cement the place of women’s sports in the country’s daily rhythms and conversation.Australia’s win over Canada saved it from an early elimination, and sent it to a game against Denmark on Monday.Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesSam Kerr, the Matildas star who is widely regarded as one of the best players in the world, said the impact of the tournament on women’s soccer was all but unimaginable.“For years to come, this will be talked about — hopefully, decades to come,” she told reporters last month, citing an uptick in young boys and girls coming to women’s soccer games.A longer view on the history of women’s sports in Australia involves many moments of triumph, but also times when able and enthusiastic sportswomen were simply shut out.“There are peaks and troughs all the way through,” Marion Stell, a historian at the University of Queensland, said of women’s sports in Australia. “Women make advances — but then it goes away again. It’s never a smooth upward curve.”Only in the past couple of decades had female athletes been able to make consistent strides on pay, opportunities and representation, she added. Today, half of all Australian girls play sports at least once a week, according to the Australian Sports Commission, compared with about 30 percent of girls in the United States.“I don’t think anyone would have dreamed that it would happen so quickly,” Dr. Stell said. “On one hand, it’s been very slow. But on the other hand, when it happened, the floodgates just opened.”Yet despite their enthusiasm, and their prodigious talent for bringing home Olympic medals, female athletes in Australia have, like their international peers, historically been sidelined, blocked or simply not taken seriously.In 1980, women’s sports made up about 2 percent of print sports coverage in Australia. By 2009, women’s sports made up about 9 percent of television news coverage, according to a report from the Australian Sports Commission. But the balance appears to be shifting: A poll last year found that nearly 70 percent of Australians had watched more women’s sports since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.Fans watching the Australia-Ireland match in Melbourne on the World Cup’s opening night.Hannah Mckay/Reuters“A lot of it has been in line with the way that social perception has changed more broadly, in terms of how we perceive women’s role in society, and particularly the workplace,” said Perry, the sports star.Dr. Stell, the historian, pointed further back. She saw the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where Australia failed to win a single gold medal, as a turning point. The country’s lackluster performance spurred a significant backlash in the Australian news media, which described the results as a “crisis for the government” and called for action for Australia to “regain its lost athletic potency.”Women had historically been something of a golden goose for Australia at the Olympics, making up a minority of the country’s total athletes but often winning the majority of its medals. At the 1972 Games in Munich, for instance, 10 out of 17 Australian medals were won by women, even as they made up only about 17 percent of the team.And so in 1981, Australia established the Australian Institute of Sport, a high-performance sports training center for both men and women that, for the first time, gave women the financial support to concentrate on their sports full-time — beginning with Australian rules football, basketball, gymnastics, netball, swimming, tennis, track and field and weight lifting.That was followed a few years later by the Sex Discrimination Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender or sexuality.“Those two things together might be some kind of watershed,” Dr. Stell said. “But not, I guess, in the public imagination — more in sporting women’s lives.”The Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, established in 1981.David James Bartho/Fairfax Media, via Getty ImagesThe facility offered dedicated training space to women in a variety of sports.Andrew Rankin/Fairfax Media, via Getty ImagesEven after that, female athletes in most other sports often had no alternative but to play in a semiprofessional capacity. In the mid-1990s, as male Australian cricket players were on the cusp of striking over what they felt was inadequate remuneration, female players in the sport barely had their expenses covered, and often had to pay their own way to compete. Most juggled jobs and other commitments alongside their sports careers.“How did it make me feel? I just wanted to play as much cricket as I possibly could,” said Belinda Clark, who was the captain of Australia’s World Cup-winning women’s cricket teams in 1997 and 2005.She added: “We all structured our lives — our working lives and our personal lives — around being able to do that. That comes at a financial cost. We all accepted that.”In recent decades, cricket has led the charge on fair pay for female athletes in Australia. While male cricketers still significantly out-earn their female counterparts, the majority of female players earn at least 100,000 Australian dollars, or $66,000. By comparison, female players of Australian rules football, rugby league, netball and professional soccer have a minimum salary of less than half of that — a source of ongoing tension since it is far below the country’s living wage.Across all sports, perhaps the most important factor for female athletes was having women in positions of responsibility across journalism, management, coaching, umpiring and administration, Dr. Stell said.In the early 1980s, Australian universities began to offer the country’s first sports management degrees. “That kind of allowed women to get a kind of professional qualification so that they could take the administration of sports off the kitchen table and make it more professional,” she said.Belinda Clark next to statue of herself, with Quentin Bryce, the former governor general of Australia, at left.Brett Hemmings/Cricket Australia via Getty ImagesWomen are gradually becoming more visible as sports people in Australia. But it was not until earlier this year that a female cricket player was celebrated in statue form for the first time, though the country claims more than 70 statues of male players.A bronze statue of Clark was unveiled at Sydney Cricket Ground in January; it is the first public statue of any female cricket player anywhere in the world. Representation of that kind sends a powerful message, especially to younger players, Clark said.“What are the photos in the club? Who’s on the honor boards? What are we saying to the people that walk in this door?” she asked. “Are you part of this, or are you a guest or a visitor?“It symbolizes that you’re actually part of it. You’re no longer coming, cap in hand, to beg for an opportunity.” More

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      The Morocco Women’s Team Has Already Won

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      Khadija Rmichi’s path to the Women’s World Cup started on a bicycle.Rmichi, a goalkeeper, grew up in Khouribga, a mining city in central Morocco. As a girl, she tried many sports, including basketball, but always grew bored with them. She was frequently drawn instead to the soccer played by boys in the streets. Sometimes she enjoyed just watching the games. Many days, she couldn’t resist joining in, even when she knew it would mean trouble.“It was considered shameful to play with boys,” Rmichi, now 33, said in an interview in April. “My older brother would hit me and drag me home, and I would just return to the street to play whenever I had a chance.”A local coach liked her spirit. He told Rmichi that if she could find enough girls to form a team, he would train them. So she hopped on a bike and toured Khouribga’s side streets and playgrounds, looking for teammates. When it was necessary, Rmichi said, she would take her sales pitch directly into the girls’ homes, helping to persuade reluctant parents and families to let them play.“I tried to get into other sports,” she said, “but I just wanted to play soccer.”Morocco goalkeeper Khadija Rmichi, top. She and her teammates won’t win the World Cup, but that’s not the point of their journey.A Team of FirstsOne of eight first-time qualifiers in the Women’s World Cup field, Morocco may not win a game playing in a group that includes a former champion (Germany), an Asian regular (South Korea) and the second-best team in South America (Colombia).But the fact that Morocco is playing in this tournament, which began Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, and that its women’s team exists at all, is serving as an inspiration and a measurable source of pride at home and abroad.Morocco is the first Women’s World Cup qualifier from North Africa, and the first from a majority Arab nation. Still, its squad was little known even to most Moroccans before it hosted the event that served as the continent’s World Cup qualifying tournament on home soil last July. As it posted win after win, however, the country’s stadiums started to fill with fans, many of them seeing the team play for the first time.In a country where soccer is revered but where interest in the women’s game is a new phenomenon, that success raised the team’s profile. “They showed us that they can fill stadiums and make Moroccans happy,” the team’s French coach, Reynald Pedros, said. “They did it on the African stage. Now we are hoping to do the same on the international one.”Morocco’s presence in Australia this month is a testament to the efforts to develop women’s soccer in the country through government investments and a concerted effort to unearth talent not only in cities like Rabat and Casablanca but also from the vast Moroccan diaspora in France, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands.Nesryne El Chad, above, a 20-year-old central defender. She grew up in Europe as did several of her Morocco teammates.That diversity was on display on a cold but joyful night earlier this year in Prague, where the team had come to face the Czech Republic in a pre-World Cup exhibition match. During the evening training session, Pedros gave instructions to the group in French, and the players shouted commands and encouragement to one another in a mix of Arabic, French and English. An interpreter stood by the field in case he was needed. For most of the practice, he was not: Most of the players had by then established ways to communicate even when they didn’t share a common language.Their diverse paths were sometimes bound by similar threads. Sofia Bouftini, a 21-year-old who grew up in Morocco, initially faced resistance from her family when she expressed an interest in taking soccer more seriously. Like Rmichi, she had fallen in love with the sport playing against boys while longing to be part of a real team.“My grandmother advocated for me and convinced my father,” she said. “My dad was against it.” He eventually relented, Bouftini said, when he realized how talented she was.ExpectationsSitting in his office this spring, Pedros, 51, cautioned that expectations for his team should remain realistic. The stakes for his squad, a first-time qualifier to the biggest championship in women’s soccer, aren’t the same as those for the men’s team, which won admirers far and wide in December as it became the first African team to advance to the semifinals.Matching that achievement should not be the measuring stick this month, Pedros said. “Comparing them to the boys,” he said of his players, “is not a good thing.”Morocco’s men had participated in international tournaments many times, he pointed out, before mounting the stunning run in Qatar that produced cheers at home and praise nearly everywhere else. The stars of the men’s team are employed by some of Europe’s best clubs, and so long ago learned how to perform on soccer’s biggest stages. For the women, he said, it will all be new. Success will be marked in smaller steps. “There won’t be 20,000 Moroccan supporters in the stadiums in Australia,” he said.Playing the long game is something the country’s sports leaders seem to acknowledge. On the sprawling Mohammed VI football complex in Salé, close to Morocco’s capital, Rabat, ultramodern facilities built in 2009 are where the new generations of soccer players are being groomed to become tomorrow’s champions.Morocco in the tunnel and on the field for a warm-up match against the Czech Republic in April.But for those who started before such facilities were available, the path to elite soccer was not always easy. For the players who came to the team after growing up in Europe, choosing Morocco was a complex question of opportunity and identity. But even those who had better opportunities to learn the game and train in the European countries where they grew up acknowledged they often faced similar resistance from their families.Nesryne El Chad, a 20-year-old central defender, grew up in Saint-Étienne, France, a city steeped in soccer. The daughter of Moroccan immigrants, she learned the game playing against boys during recess when she was at school. When her family traveled to Morocco during summer vacations, she said she would buy a ball from a shop and play on the beach.When she was 12, her parents realized she might be talented enough to have a future in soccer, so her mother enrolled her in a sports study program and made sure she was excused from some of the household chores that her siblings had to do, so that she could rest on Sundays before games. Her father, a black belt in karate, initially resisted the idea of a soccer-focused future for Nesryne — until, she said, his own mother told him to let her play. He ended up taking her to every practice, and every game, and is now one of her most fervent supporters.It was never a question, she said, which country’s colors she would wear if given the chance.“I was raised feeling Moroccan,” she said. “I always wanted to play for Morocco.”Voices From HomeA few hours inside the Ledni Stadium in Chomutov, close to the Czech Republic’s border with Germany, showed both how infectious Morocco’s success has become for fans, at home and abroad, and how far the team still has to go.The crowd that had defied the cold to watch Morocco’s friendly in April was mostly Czechs, including a group of loud, inebriated hockey fans who had spilled inside 30 minutes into the game after leaving a different event nearby. But there were also small pockets of Moroccans — expatriates mostly, some of whom had traveled more than 100 miles to attend. They were filled with purpose and belonging, drawn in by an urge to express love for the country where they had been born, and by the need to share that sentiment with others who would understand. Gender mattered little to them.Morocco’s team was little known even to most Moroccans before it qualified for the Women’s World Cup on home soil last July. Now it will play on the sport’s biggest stage.“To me, girls or boys, it’s all the same,” said Kamal Jabeur, 59, who had come about 190 miles from the city of Brno. “We came here because we wanted the girls to not feel alone.”Jabeur stood perched on his seat the entire game, cheering and chanting, “Dima Maghrib” — Always Morocco. His enthusiasm, while welcome, only did so much: Morocco lost to a Czech team that didn’t qualify for the World Cup. A few days later, it did the same against Romania, another nonqualifier, by 1-0 in Bucharest. Rougher nights could lie ahead.On Monday, Morocco will open its first World Cup with its toughest test yet: a date against Germany, one of the tournament favorites, in Melbourne. The players know their countrymen, and their families, wherever they are, will be watching.El Chad, the central defender, said her grandfather has made a habit of watching all of her games from a favorite cafe back in Morocco, where he likes to boast to his friends and neighbors about his granddaughter.El Chad knows the joy that games like the ones she will play this month can bring. She hurt a foot jumping with joy while watching one of Morocco’s wins in the men’s World Cup on television. This month, it is her team’s turn. She hopes to inspire similar sentiments, though not similar injuries, no matter the outcome. More

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      Overlooked No More: Lily Parr, Dominant British Soccer Player

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      She persevered at a time when women were effectively banned from the sport, and was the first woman inducted into England’s National Football Hall of Fame.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In 1921, the Football Association, English soccer’s ruling body, effectively banned women from playing the sport, deeming it “quite unsuitable for females.” But by then, a standout player named Lily Parr had already gained fame for her skill on the field.Her renown was part of the growth of women’s soccer at the time, exemplified by a match in which she played at Goodison Park in Liverpool that drew a crowd of about 53,000, with thousands more outside the stadium. (It would remain the largest crowd for a women’s club soccer match for 99 years, until Atlético Madrid hosted Barcelona in front of 60,739 fans in March 2019.)Though the association’s ban would hamper Parr’s career, barring her and other women from playing in stadiums, she competed where she could, in fields and parks in England and abroad, and continued drawing attention over her 31 years with the same team, Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club.In 1927, the English newspaper The Leicester Mail called her “a remarkably nimble and speedy performer” with “a kick like a cart-horse.” By the time she retired from soccer, in 1951, she had scored an estimated 1,000 goals.Parr was “a great player in a great team,” said Gail Newsham, author of the 1994 book “In a League of Their Own!: The Dick, Kerr Ladies 1917-1965,” and she contributed to the club’s immense success alongside other star goal scorers like Florrie Redford, Jennie Harris and Alice Kell, the team’s longest serving captain.Soccer officials began lifting the ban in England — as well as those in other countries — in the 1970s. The first official Women’s World Cup was held in 1991, and interest in the event has grown considerably since then.This year, the Women’s World Cup, which is currently underway in Australia and New Zealand, includes an expanded field of 32 teams, up from 24.Club competition in England has grown, too; the Women’s Super League, which began in 2011, became fully professional in 2018. In the United States, the National Women’s Soccer League began in 2013.In 2002, Parr became the first woman inducted into England’s National Football Museum Hall of Fame, now in Manchester, and in 2019, the museum installed a life-size statue of her there, also a first for a British female soccer player.“We have come a long way since Lily Parr’s days, and she deserves recognition as a true pioneer of the sport,” Marzena Bogdanowicz, a spokeswoman for women’s soccer at the Football Association, was quoted as saying in The Guardian in 2019.Parr, with dark hair, leaps while training with her team. She drew attention as “a remarkably nimble and speedy performer” with “a kick like a cart-horse,” as one newspaper wrote.GettyLilian Parr was born on April 26, 1905, in St Helens, about 10 miles northeast of Liverpool, to Sarah and George Parr, a glassworks laborer. Growing up, she played soccer in the street with her brothers.Women had been playing soccer in Britain since the late 19th century, but World War I offered an opportunity for them to blossom. As men were sent to fight and women filled the country’s factories, the government encouraged soccer as an after-work activity.Parr went to work for Dick, Kerr & Co., a locomotives factory that had switched production to munitions during the war, and joined the company’s team as a left back when she was about 15.Her manner could be rough and abrupt, but with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor she enjoyed strong friendships with many of her teammates, Newsham wrote.In one perhaps apocryphal story, the team was playing at Ashton Park in Preston, England, northwest of Manchester, when a male professional goalkeeper declared that a woman would never be able to score on a man. Parr, famous for her powerful left foot, accepted his challenge. She lined up to take a penalty kick against him and broke the man’s arm with her shot.Parr and her team in 1939 discussing tactics for a forthcoming match.GettyParr, who later moved to left winger, exploded onto the scene in 1921.On Feb. 5 that year, she scored a hat trick — three goals in a single match — at Nelson, England; she scored another three days later at Stalybridge in a 10-0 win. In a 9-1 win in Liverpool at Anfield Stadium the next week, she netted five goals against a team of all-stars assembled by the comedian Harry Weldon. That May she scored every goal in a 5-1 win over a visiting French team.Parr’s shooting and crossing abilities, as well as her impressive physique (she was a sturdy 5 feet 10 inches tall or so), quickly made her a star, and she finished 1921 with 108 goals, according to Newsham.That year the team won all 67 games it played and scored some 448 goals in the process while allowing just 22. Other players, including Redford and Harris, contributed to the team’s dominance. In one April 1921 match at Barrow, for example, the team won 14-2 with seven goals from Redford, four from Harris and three from Parr. Redford led the year’s scoring with a 170 goals.On Dec. 5, 1921, the Football Association unanimously passed its resolution declaring that soccer “ought not to be encouraged” among women. It mandated that all of the association’s clubs “refuse the use of their grounds for such matches.” Because association clubs owned virtually all stadiums, women’s soccer on any significant scale was, in effect, banned.Similar bans were common across the world for much of the 20th century. The momentum that had been building since World War I screeched to a halt, and the sport, for women, withered on the vine.Parr’s team nevertheless continued to play in front of smaller crowds and on tours abroad. In 1922, she captained a trip to the United States. That October, the team tied a men’s team, 4-4, in Washington, D.C. Some sources suggest that President Warren G. Harding kicked off the game and autographed the match ball.As she continued playing, Parr trained to be a nurse and worked at what was then known as Whittingham Hospital, a psychiatric facility northeast of Preston. Some have viewed Parr as a queer icon, but there is no evidence that she was gay. “Like all our great football stars there are as many myths as there are facts, and we all embroider her story with our own influences,” said Jean Williams, a professor of sports history at the University of Wolverhampton. “That is why she means so much to so many.”Parr’s career lasted into her 40s; she played her last game in 1951. In 1965, she retired from nursing. A few years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She lived to see the ban on women’s soccer lifted in 1971, but died of cancer on May 24, 1978, at her home in Preston. She was 73.Only in recent decades has recognition of Parr and her club’s accomplishments gained momentum. Historical markers for her team are now at the Preston factory site, Preston North End’s stadium and Ashton Park. The English National Football Museum installed a permanent display about her life in 2021.“Lily is a lens through which to look at the women’s game in the ’20s,” Belinda Scarlett, then the curator of women’s football at the museum, told The Guardian in 2020. “It will tell the stories of all the women she played with and against.”She added that “women’s football probably wouldn’t have continued if those groups of women didn’t fight that ban and just play wherever the hell they could find a space to play football.” More

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      ACL Injuries Are Hurting Women’s Soccer

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      The World Cup is missing some of the sport’s biggest stars because of a knee injury epidemic. No one can say for sure why it’s happening, or how to fix it.The third time around, Megan Rapinoe’s reaction to a potentially career-ending knee injury went no further than an eye roll. She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament. She could reel off the recovery schedule from the top of her head. She could see, crystal clear, the next nine to 12 months spooling out in front of her.The surgery, the painstaking rehab, the grueling weeks in the gym, the anxious first steps on the turf, the slow journey back to what she had once been. As she considered it in 2015, she felt something closer to exasperation than to despair. “I was like, ‘I don’t have time for this,’” she said.The first time had been different. She had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee at age 21, when she was a breakout star in her sophomore year at the University of Portland. At that time, she felt what she called “the fear” — the worry that it might all be over before it had begun.A year later, she had done it again: same ligament, same knee, same arduous road back. It did not stop her from doing all that she had dreamed of doing. She turned pro. She was named to an all-star team. She represented her country. She won a gold medal at the Olympics. She moved to France. She played in two World Cups. She won one of them.And then, during a training session in Hawaii in December 2015, months after her 30th birthday, it happened again. This time, it was the right knee, and this time, her reaction was different. “It changed for me as I got older,” she said. “That one was like an eye roll. ‘This is annoying. I know what it is going to take to come back’. But generally, I think there’s this fear. Is this going to be the end? Am I going to come back from this? Am I going to have pain forever?”Over the last year or so, that fear — and the searching questions it prompts — has coursed through women’s soccer. The sport has at times seemed to be in the grip of an epidemic of A.C.L. injuries, one so widespread that at one point it had sidelined a quarter of the nominees for last year’s Ballon d’Or.Alexia Putellas, the Spain midfielder who won that award and the consensus pick as the best player of her generation, has recovered in time to grace the World Cup, the sport’s showpiece event. But countless other stars have not. They will, instead, spend their summer at home, nursing their injuries, cursing their luck.Alexia Putellas of Spain missed last year’s European Championship after tearing a knee ligament. She hopes to play a key role in her country’s World Cup campaign.Damien Meyer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe list is a long one. Catarina Macario, the U.S. forward, tore the A.C.L. in her left knee last year and could not regain her fitness in time. She will not be present in Australia and New Zealand. Nor will two of the stars of the England team that is hoping to dethrone the United States: The team’s captain, Leah Williamson, and its most productive goal-scorer, Beth Mead, both fell victim to A.C.L. injuries this season.The Olympic champion, Canada, has lost Janine Beckie. France has not been able to call upon Marie-Antoinette Katoto or Delphine Cascarino. The Netherlands, a finalist in 2019, is without striker Vivianne Miedema.But these are just the famous names, the familiar faces, the notable absentees. The problem has become so acute that, at times, it has strained tensions between national teams and the clubs that employ the players from which their rosters are drawn, with at least one high profile European coach suggesting that too much was being asked of the athletes.Miedema herself pointed out that, this season alone, almost 60 players in Europe’s five major leagues had torn their A.C.L.s. “It is ridiculous,” she said earlier this year. “Something needs to be done.”Working out precisely what that might be, though, is more complicated than anyone would like.Lack of KnowledgeThere is fear, of course, for players who are enduring those long weeks of recovery, but it is not the only type of fear. In Europe particularly, over the last 12 months, the sheer scale of the issue — the numbers of players being struck down by torn A.C.L.s — set off a psychological contagion.A number of national associations, as well as local offices of FIFPro, the global players’ union, reported inquiries from active players — those who had seen teammates or opponents or friends condemned to months on the sideline — seeking reassurance, solace or even just basic information.“The players are asking for research,” said Alex Culvin, FIFPro’s head of strategy and research in women’s soccer. “We’ve had a lot of feedback from players saying they feel unsafe. You saw it last season — at times, players were not going in for tackles as they normally would because they were worried about injury.”The problem, Culvin said, is there is not enough research available for anyone to give the players clear answers. European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, has been running an injury surveillance study on men’s soccer, for example, for more than two decades. The women’s equivalent has been operating for only five years. “That lack of knowledge creates fear,” Culvin said.It is established fact that women are more at risk of suffering an A.C.L. injury than men. Quite how much more at risk is a little murkier. Martin Hagglund, a professor of physiotherapy at the University of Linkoping in Sweden, puts the risk at “two to three times greater, based on a systematic review of studies.” Culvin goes a little higher: Some studies, she said, suggest the risk for women could be “six or seven” times as great as that for men. “There is a real range,” she said.The France striker Marie-Antoinette Katoto, on crutches, was left off France’s World Cup roster after she was unable to complete her recovery in time.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe issue of why that might be is more contested still. Traditionally, much of the research has focused on biology. “There are obvious anatomical differences” between men’s and women’s knees, Hagglund said. Not just the knees, in fact — the whole leg. Some studies have suggested that women’s A.C.L.s are smaller. There are differences in the hips, the pelvis, the engineering of the foot.Increasingly, too, there is a body of evidence to suggest there is a link between hormonal fluctuations and susceptibility to injuries in general, and A.C.L. injuries in particular. Chelsea, one of the leading clubs in England’s Women’s Super League, now tailors players’ training loads at specific phases of the menstrual cycle in a bid to mitigate the impact.As a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in September 2021 pointed out, though, the instinct to focus purely on physiological explanations is both rooted in and serves to reinforce the misogynistic stereotype that “women’s sport participation is dangerous predominantly due to female biology.”It also runs the risk, in Hagglund’s mind, of turning a blind eye to the host of other issues that may have played a part in depriving the World Cup of so many of its brightest lights this month. “The focus on anatomical differences means we have left out the other parts, the extrinsic factors,” he said. It just so happens that those are the ones that might, feasibly, be addressed.Injury as a Measure of ValueIt is perhaps natural that for the players themselves, the cause of the run of A.C.L. tears is obvious. “We keep adding games left, right and center,” said Miedema, one of four players at Arsenal alone who have sustained the injury this season. “Instead of 30 games a season, we now play 60. But we don’t have the time and investment that is needed to keep players fit.”Kristie Mewis, a U.S. midfielder, contended that the “intensity” with which women’s soccer is now played had compounded that effect. It is not just that there are more games, she said. It is that they are exponentially faster, more physical and more demanding than ever before. “As the game is growing, it’s getting more competitive,” she said. “Maybe stress has something to do with it.”Rapinoe would endorse both ideas — “the load and intensity are different,” she said — and would add that while women’s soccer has professionalized on the field at breakneck speed, it has not always matched that pace off it.Megan Rapinoe has endured three A.C.L. tears, injuries that left her unable to play in the 2007 World Cup and the 2008 Olympics.Rob Kinnan/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We don’t generally charter; we don’t fly private,” she said. “We don’t have the resources. So with recovery, you’re being asked to produce a bigger load than you ever have but with less resources than you really need to do that.”To Hagglund, that is only the start of a long list of possible structural, cultural factors that might be at play. “Women’s soccer does not have the same organizational support as men’s,” he said. That applies not just to travel, but to the number and the quality of medical staff members, physiotherapists, nutritionists.Likewise, young female players, until relatively recently, did not have the benefits of the same sort of specialized strength and conditioning training that is commonplace in boys’ academies. Women’s teams have what he called smaller “competitive” squads — they rely heavily on a handful of high-profile players, ones who cannot afford to be rested. “That means they are more exposed to fixture congestion, there is less rotation, they are more likely to play with an injury,” he said.And then there are the environmental problems. Women’s teams do not play on the same perfectly manicured lawns that top men’s teams do. “In Scandinavia, certainly, it is still quite common for teams to play on artificial turf,” he said. The players must do so, often, while wearing shoes designed with men’s feet, rather than women’s, in mind.As diffuse as all of those problems are, they come down to much the same thing in Culvin’s mind. “It is a question of value,” she said. “What value do we place on an athlete? The players might be professional, but the conditions around them are not always suitable for professional athletes. There is not equity in the workplace until we value them properly in all components — the fields, the stadiums, the support staff around them.”The Right FitLaura Youngson is always surprised, even now, by the number of players she encounters who have convinced themselves that soccer cleats are designed to be uncomfortable. “That’s the perception,” she said. “That they’re supposed to feel like that, and that women, in particular, are just supposed to put up with it. They’re really not meant to be like that.”Still, the belief is widespread. Earlier this year, an in-depth study conducted by the European Club Association and St. Mary’s University, London, found that 82 percent of elite female players experienced “pain or discomfort” from the footwear they wore while playing.The reason for that is simple. In contrast to running, say, where major footwear brands realized long ago that women and men required — and would buy — different types of shoes, the soccer versions sold to women are, largely, not actually designed for them. The abiding market principle has effectively been, as Youngson put it, “that women are just small men.”Laura Youngson started a company that produces custom-made soccer cleats for women, using research that found they tended to have narrower heels, wider toe boxes and higher arches than men.Hannah Peters/FIFA, via Getty ImagesFor a long time, like everyone else, Youngson just accepted that her soccer shoes never seemed to fit quite right. Then, after organizing a charity game on Mount Kilimanjaro in 2017, she realized that she was not alone. Even the professional players on the trip had the same complaint. She saw an opportunity — both a business one and a moral one — to put it right.Since then, the company she founded, Ida Sports, has conducted extensive research to produce the first custom-made women’s soccer cleats. They found that women tended to have narrower heels, wider toe areas and higher arches. (They are also more likely to change than men’s are, particularly during and after pregnancy.) That means they “interact differently with the ground,” something that Ida Sports has tried to remedy by redesigning the sole of the shoes she makes.There is also enough evidence to suggest that the shape and structure of women’s feet may make them more susceptible to injuries, both chronic and acute, including A.C.L. tears. Youngson does not claim to have a silver bullet for the knee injury epidemic, nor does she believe that wearing better-fitting shoes will end the problem on its own.“But there is definitely an opportunity for further research,” she said. “People are doing great work studying hormones and behavior and other things. We know boots and surfaces. There are definitely recommendations that we would make. The issue is, how do we keep more players on the pitch? Even if it is for a 1 percent gain, it is worth it.”Like Rapinoe, the former England international Claire Rafferty endured three A.C.L. injuries in her career. As with Rapinoe, her reaction changed over time. After her first, in her left knee, she felt “invincible,” as if she had gotten her bad luck out of the way early. She was only 16. It would, she assumed, be smooth sailing from there.She did not know then that the single greatest risk factor for sustaining an A.C.L. injury is having experienced one. Research suggests that 40 percent of players who have torn a cruciate ligament will do so again — in either knee — within five years. It is closer, in other words, to the flip of a coin than a roll of the dice.Rafferty learned that the hard way. In 2011, she tore the A.C.L. in her right knee. That time, she recalls being “in shock.” She did what she could to mitigate the risk. Despite her entreaties, her coach at Chelsea, Emma Hayes, regularly refused to allow her to play on artificial surfaces. Two years later, Rafferty tore the A.C.L. in her right knee again.“Nobody thought you could come back from three A.C.L.s then,” she said. Rafferty did. Physically, at least. Mentally, the scars did not heal. “I wasn’t calm,” she said. “I thought every game could be my last. I was playing with a lot of fear. I had quite a lot of anxiety. I couldn’t play like I did before.The former England player Claire Rafferty retired from soccer after three A.C.L. injuries left her unable to play without the fear that another was only a step away.Ker Robertson/Getty Images“I remember hearing people ask, ‘What’s happened to Claire Rafferty?’ I wanted to tell them that I couldn’t run properly because I was so afraid. I didn’t enjoy playing football. I started to resent it.”That fear, the one felt by the players missing this year’s World Cup, the one shared by all those who now feel unsafe on the field, had overwhelmed and inhibited her. She knew what she had to do. Long before her career should have ended, she walked away. She was 30. For women’s soccer, the real risk of its A.C.L. epidemic, the one rooted in lack of knowledge and a historical lack of care, is that she will not be the last.Jeré Longman More

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      Women’s Golf, and Its Players, Sees Rise in Money

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      Prize money has been growing, and players are landing sponsors. “Elevating purses continues to elevate everyone,” said the L.P.G.A. commissioner.When second-year L.P.G.A. player Allisen Corpuz tapped in her final putt on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links this month, she won the United States Women’s Open with a memorable final round, overtaking the leader and holding off a surging challenger in Charley Hull.Corpuz also cashed a $2 million first-place check, which was more than double what Annika Sorenstam won for all three of her U.S. Women’s Open victories combined.Despite losing ProMedica, the health care company, as presenting sponsor for the Open, the United States Golf Association increased the total prize purse by $1 million to $11 million this year.It’s part of a broader move in women’s professional golf to increase sponsorship for tournaments as well as for individual golfers. Over the past few years, purses have risen at tournaments, new sponsors have sought out golfers and even players who are not at the top of their careers have reaped the benefits.“Elevating purses continues to elevate everyone,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the L.P.G.A. commissioner.At the tour level, the L.P.G.A. has been increasing prize money for players up and down the tour ranking. This year, the total purse for 36 official events is more than $100 million. Ten years ago, that number was $49 million, but even in 2021 it was around $70 million.Charley Hull, who made a charge at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open, has cultivated support from a significant number of sponsors over the years.Harry How/Getty ImagesLast year, 27 L.P.G.A. players earned $1 million in prize money (up from 15 the year before). That number still pales in comparison with the men’s PGA Tour, where, last year, 126 players earned more than $1 million. (Only 125 players have fully exempt status on the PGA Tour, meaning even players who couldn’t play every event or who qualified for all of the majors earned more than the top L.P.G.A. players.)Yet Samaan and other leaders are also focused on the individual players. The L.P.G.A. said that from 2021 to 2022, the No. 1 player in the world earned 22 percent more, but the 50th ranked player saw her earnings rise 44 percent. The 100th ranked player got a 30 percent raise, to $167,000 from $128,000.While the top players in any sport will always be compensated well, golf is unique in that many of the players in each tournament get cut and sometimes don’t get paid anything for the week.“We’re also looking to our partners and not just how to grow the purses, but also for help on the expense side,” Samaan said. “Some of the challenges our players face is half of them don’t get to play on the weekend each week. Some sponsors include miss cut payments. Some offer stipends or travel bonus to cover basic expenses.” But not all of them.Another factor driving increased interest — and money — in women’s golf is the desire among companies to sponsor both men and women. Whereas a journeyman player on the PGA Tour has rarely wanted for a sponsor, women, even those just below the top ranks, have often struggled.Many companies, as part of broader efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion, are looking to add female players. Early to this was KPMG, which broke ground — and set a new standard — by continuing to pay Stacy Lewis under her sponsorship contract when she had her daughter in 2018.Stacy Lewis holding her daughter after finishing the Drive On Championship in March. She was among the first players to continue being paid under her sponsorship contract while out on maternity leave.Darryl Webb/Associated PressPreviously, golfers had to play a certain number of events in order to receive all of their sponsorship dollars. Instead, KPMG opted to do what it would have done for an employee who went on family leave. Many other sponsors have followed suit.Aon, the risk management consulting firm, now offers the same prize money to men and women for its yearlong Aon Risk Reward Challenge, which assesses a player’s overall score on a challenging hole at each week’s tournament.Lizette Salas, ranked 80th in the world and in her 12th year as a professional, is sponsored by Aon. She said the conversations she’s had with sponsors were radically different today from when she began.“In the beginning the conversations were short,” she said. “I was pretty much pitching myself, as opposed to an agent or manager doing it. Now as the investments become bigger, the conversation between player and sponsor has changed. It’s created a more personal relationship between the executives and the player. I’m a big person in diversity and inclusion. A lot of the companies I’m sponsored by have taken that big step in their companies, too. It’s refreshing.”Smaller companies have also gotten in on supporting L.P.G.A. players. Cozen O’Connor, a law firm based in Philadelphia, has sponsored players on the PGA Tour for several years. This year, it added Ally Ewing, who was the L.P.G.A. Rookie of the Year in 2016, finished 11th at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open and is ranked 36th in the world.“When we decided sponsoring players was part of our branding strategy, we wanted to make sure it was inclusive, said Michael Heller, executive chairman and chief executive of Cozen O’Connor. “We wanted it to represent our firm and our clients. It was important to add a female player.”The firm selected Ewing because of her story: battling through Type 1 diabetes, and succeeding at every level of the game.Law firms, like insurance and financial-service companies, are natural fits for the L.P.G.A., given the history in those industries of using golf for entertainment and marketing.Hull, the British golfer who made a charge at the U.S. Women’s Open, has a significant social media presence that has allowed her to cultivate support from a variety of sponsors, including traditional golf brands like TaylorMade, the financial adviser Hachiko Financial and a wellness supplement.“My early sponsors were brands that were already in golf and who were looking to activate their partnerships, like Ricoh around the Women’s British Open, or Omega around the Olympics,” Hull said. “Now I feel my sponsors are more personal to me, such as Drink Mojo which is a supplement I use, or Hachiko, who are helping to educate me on investment.”Hull said her sponsors have changed as she’s grown as a player, and she’s fine with that.“As I’ve grown up and matured, so have my sponsors, and that’s not always just on my behalf,” she said. “A sponsor might be looking for a specific type of person to fit their ambassador role, so as I get older I might grow out of the type of person they’re looking for.”Jessica Korda was the first female player to sign a deal with FootJoy to wear its apparel from head to toe.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesThe top players — who have the ability to transcend the sport — have the most power in negotiating deals with their sponsors. Jessica Korda, who was ranked 14th in the world last year before a back injury, signed a deal with FootJoy to wear its apparel from head to toe. She was the first female player to sign such a deal with FootJoy.She particularly appreciates the sponsors who were with her when she started.“My rookie year [2011], I played in 14 or 15 events,” Korda said, and she made about $50,000. “So having a sponsor really, really helped to cover my cost. We don’t have health care. We have to pay a lot out of pocket. Expenses are quite high.”Korda, who has made $7.6 million on the golf course, said that she’s hopeful for players coming out of college now, in a different sponsorship environment.“It allows them to play with a bit less pressure and not go paycheck to paycheck. Having that comfort was huge for me back then. Now it’s aligning with brands I really enjoy.” More

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      in Tennis

      Billie Jean King on Victories Past, and the Battles to Come

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      The tennis champion’s activism won equal pay for women at the 1973 U.S. Open. Now 79, she is still leading the fight for equity — in sports and beyond.The more Billie Jean King talked about the past, the more animated she became about the future.King, the 79-year-old grand champion of tennis and gender equity, said she wanted to see more investment in women’s sports. More teams. More leagues. More women owners. More racial diversity, more data, more access and more opportunities.She charged crosscourt from one topic to the next, not content to celebrate the history she had made; she was too busy creating the template for tomorrow.“Equal investment is the most important thing,” she said during a telephone interview from London, while attending this year’s Wimbledon. “If I talk to a C.E.O., I ask him, or her, or whoever, ‘Do you spend as much on women’s sports as men’s sports?’ That’s the magic question.”It always has been.This summer marks 50 years since the United States Open awarded equal prize money for men and women, becoming the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments to offer it. King, who won 39 major titles, made that milestone possible with her relentless activism and by securing corporate sponsors behind the scenes.King celebrates after defeating Margaret Court in their women’s singles second-round match at Wimbledon in 1962. King went on to capture 20 Wimbledon titles.Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesOn the eve of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup — set to showcase the rise of women’s soccer and the movement for equal pay, led by the U.S. Women’s National Team — King’s influence still ripples through the sports ecosystem.“She is working as hard today as she was 50 years ago,” said Stacey Allaster, the United States Tennis Association’s chief executive of professional tennis, and the first female director of the U.S. Open, said. “And she’s so focused, I would say possessed. She’s continuing to live by what she believes: that sport is for social change, and it’s not what you get, but what you give.”King and her wife, Ilana Kloss, who is also her longtime business partner, have invested in six sports. In June, it was announced that Billie Jean King Enterprises would help run a new six-team women’s ice hockey league starting in January along with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ majority owner, Mark Walter, and his wife, Kimbra Walter.“We believe this is transformational, and it’s a sport that hasn’t had the platform that we believe it needs,” said Kloss, 67, a former doubles champion from South Africa and the chief executive of BJK Enterprises.Although she admitted that the path to establishing a successful women’s hockey league has been a “long road” (one that’s littered with past failures), she applauded the Walters’ commitment to women’s sports. “That belief sends an incredible message to the rest of the investment community,” Kloss said.Flashback to 1970 when King and eight other players, outraged the men were earning more than eight times the prize money that the women were at one tournament, signed $1 contracts to form a offshoot professional women’s tennis tour. The women, known as the “original nine,” risked being banned by tennis officials, but the gambit worked. In 1973 at Wimbledon, King led players in a vote that created what is now called the Women’s Tennis Association.King speaking before the Senate education subcommittee in Washington in 1973. After Title IX was passed, King started the Women’s Sports Foundation to develop more sports opportunities for girls and women.Associated PressIt was a heady time for women’s sports. In 1972, Congress enacted Title IX, which prohibited sex discrimination in schools and thus led to the creation of sports programs that spawned a generation of female athletes. Against that backdrop, King, No. 1 in the world, won the 1972 singles titles at the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.In New York, she was incensed to earn $10,000 — $15,000 less than the U.S. Open men’s champion, Ilie Nastase, did. King recalled how she met then with the tournament director Bill Talbert in a referees hut.Turning her chair to face him in the tiny space, she argued that a fan poll showed massive interest in women’s tennis. Then she revealed her ace: She had secured a sponsor — Bristol Myers’s “Ban” deodorant — to make up the difference in total prize money. Equal prize money became official in 1973.A few weeks after the 1973 U.S. Open, King crushed former No. 1 Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes spectacle that catapulted gender equality onto a world stage.“It’s hard to believe that 50 years have gone by — boink!” King said.This year’s U.S. Open, starting Aug. 28, will mark the equal prize money anniversary in multiple ways, including posters of King, an opening night tribute and an “equity lounge” on the site of the United States Open in Flushing, which in 2006 was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.When she’s on the way to her office there, Allaster touches a sign bearing King’s motto: “Pressure is a Privilege.”Allaster, the previous chief of the WTA, said King was an “accessible leader,” not just for her, but for rookies and superstars alike. Allaster called Venus Williams a “modern-day Billie Jean King” for how, during her prime, Williams lobbied Wimbledon officials — and by extension the French Open — to award equal prize money to women.King’s advocacy has always transcended tennis. She started the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1974 to develop sports opportunities for girls and women post-Title IX. After she was publicly outed for being gay in 1981 and lost many of her endorsements, she later became an activist for gay rights.King standing with her wife, Ilana Kloss, also her business partner of more than 40 years. The pair have invested in six sports, including women’s hockey.Chris Tanouye/Freestyle Photography, via Getty ImagesPhaidra Knight, a World Rugby Hall of Fame player and past president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, said King created an inclusive culture at the group. “Through that LGBTQ+ lens and her courage, she has inspired courage in many other lanes, for people to work together,” Knight said in an interview.Beyond King’s encouragement of her as a Black and gay woman, Knight said she valued how King taught her to approach rugby officials to improve business opportunities for the women’s game.Angela Ruggiero, another past president and a former women’s ice hockey Olympian, has also followed King’s lessons. She co-founded the Sports Innovation Lab, a market research company that uses analytics to understand digitally savvy sports fans. Her research shows that fans of every gender are responding to women’s sports. She has frequent brainstorming sessions with King, who never stops asking questions.“We’re going back and forth on how do we bring more capital into women’s sports,” Ruggiero said. “She’ll be at the edge of her seat, fired up. It’s just her nature to be an agent of change.”King said she secretly advised the soccer player Julie Foudy and eight of her teammates in 1995 to hold out for fair contracts and get the younger players behind them. The team won the 1996 Olympics and ignited the frenzy for women’s soccer by winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup before 90,185 fans in the Rose Bowl.Twenty years later, Megan Rapinoe led the U.S. women to another World Cup victory, this time with the fans chanting “Equal Pay.” In 2022, the women’s national team settled its gender discrimination lawsuit against the national federation for $24 million, and a pledge to equalize salaries and prize money.Megan Rapinoe led Team USA to victory at the 2019 World Cup, as fans in the stands shouted “Equal Pay.” Rapinoe recently said that the 2023 World Cup will show that “equality is good for business.”Alex Grimm/Getty ImagesLast month, Rapinoe talked at a news conference about how the 2023 World Cup would be a game-changer for women’s sports, showing that “equality is actually good for business.”King chuckled.“Every generation thinks they are the first to say this — it’s fun to listen to them,” she said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page trying to get things done.”As always, capital is key. She and Kloss — who joined the celebrity ownership group of Angel City Football Club of the National Women’s Soccer League in 2020 — were encouraged by Y. Michele Kang’s recent $35 million purchase of the league’s Washington Spirit.“We need more people to continue to step up,” King said. “If you look at everything now, it’s the billionaires. And then you look at the Middle East, that’s going to be another thing.”In a news conference, King supported the WTA’s exploration of funding from Saudi Arabia, which has already bought in to professional golf with its LIV Golf merger with the PGA Tour. Although she acknowledged the country’s discriminatory policies around women and homosexuality, she told reporters, “I don’t think you really change unless you engage.” She added that this was her opinion. “I’d still probably go and try to talk with them,” she said.Engagement has always been King’s life philosophy, along with knowing your history. She’s not ready to finish writing hers.In November, King will turn 80.“She really has a sense of running out of time,” Kloss said, “and she can’t get enough.” More

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      in Basket

      Nikki McCray-Penson, Basketball Star and Coach, Dies at 51

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      After a standout college career at the University of Tennessee, she won two Olympic gold medals, played nine years in the W.N.B.A. and was the head coach at two universities.Nikki McCray-Penson, an all-American point guard for the powerhouse University of Tennessee women’s basketball team, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a three-time All-Star in the W.N.B.A., died on Friday. She was 51.Her death was announced by Rutgers University, where she was about to enter her second season as an assistant coach of the women’s basketball team. The school did not say where she died or cite a cause. McCray-Penson had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013.“Thank you my little sister, my friend, my foxhole partner, my teammate, my fast food snacker, my basketball junkie, my fellow Olympian, my gold medalist and now my angel,” Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina, where McCray-Penson was an assistant coach for nine years, wrote on Twitter.At Tennessee, McCray-Penson was a two-time all-American and a three-time all-Southeastern Conference player. She helped lead the Lady Vols to three consecutive regular-season conference titles and two conference tournament championships.She began as a defensive specialist, but she evolved into an offensive force.“It bothered her that she was considered so much of a defensive player,” her Basketball Hall of Fame coach, Pat Summitt, told The Tennessean of Nashville in 1994, late in McCray-Penson’s breakout season, when she averaged 16.3 points a game as a junior. “She wanted to develop the total game, and she has.”In the same article, McCray-Penson said, “I had to learn to respond when being criticized and learn from mistakes. Pat is not going to motivate you.” She added, “You have to come out with an attitude about yourself, and that comes from maturity.”Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist who collaborated with Summitt on three books, said in a phone interview that there was a special connection between the coach and McCray-Penson. “Pat glowed when Nikki came to visit,” she said.She added: “There were a lot of players who came to Tennessee who were like 15-story buildings, but the elevators only went to the 10th floor. Some kids found a way to get to the top and develop all their promise. Nikki was one of those.”McCray-Penson at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She was a two-time Olympic gold medalist.Darren McNamara/Getty ImagesAfter graduating from Tennessee in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in education, McCray-Penson became part of the U.S. team that would win the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After an early-round victory over South Korea, in which McCray-Penson led the team with 16 points and nine rebounds, she said, “We want to be the best basketball team in history.”Overall, she averaged 9.4 points a game in the tournament and provided some of the stifling defense that limited opponents’ scoring. Four years later, when the U.S. team won the gold medal in Sydney, Australia, McCray-Penson averaged 5.1 points.By then, she had turned professional. With the Columbus Quest of the short-lived American Basketball League, which preceded the W.N.B.A. as a women’s league, she averaged 19.9 points a game, led the team to the league championship in 1997 and was named most valuable player.She did not stay with the A.B.L. for long. She jumped after one season to the Washington Mystics of the W.N.B.A., which had been created by the National Basketball Association.“I saw what the N.B.A. can do to promote women’s basketball,” she told The Associated Press in 1997.Starting in 1998, she spent four seasons with the Mystics, averaging 15.4 points a game and was chosen for three All-Star games. She had less success over the next five years, when she played in Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio and Chicago. She retired in 2006.McCray-Penson in Norfolk, Va., in 2017, when she was the women’s basketball coach at Old Dominion University there.Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot, via Associated PressShe quickly moved into coaching: She was an assistant women’s coach at Western Kentucky University for two years before moving to South Carolina in 2008, where she joined Staley, her teammate on the 1996 and 2000 Olympic teams.After helping lead South Carolina to its first N.C.A.A. women’s basketball title in 2017, McCray-Penson was hired for her first head coaching job, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. She coached the team to a 53-40 record over three seasons; in the 2019-20 season, she led the Monarchs to a 24-6 record and was named Conference USA coach of the year.In 2020, she was named the head coach at Mississippi State University, but she resigned for health reasons after a 10-9 record in her only season there.In 2022, Rutgers hired her as an assistant.“Simply put, Nikki is a winner,” Coquese Washington, the Rutgers coach, who was a teammate of McCray-Penson’s with the W.N.B.A.’s Indiana Fever, told The Associated Press. “She has excelled at the highest levels of our game.”McCray-Penson was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, in Knoxville, Tenn., in 2012.Nikki Kesangane McCray was born on Dec. 17, 1971, in Collierville, Tenn. Her survivors include her husband, Thomas Penson, and her son, also named Thomas. Her mother, Sally Coleman, died of breast cancer in 2018.“We know there’s no cure,” McCray-Penson told The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Miss., in 2020. “We live with it. Every day, you don’t let that define you. You live life. You make every day count. That’s what I saw my mom do.” More

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      in Tennis

      Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

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      The WTA Tour approved a plan to achieve pay equity at its biggest tournaments. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2033.The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years.The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even in tournaments where they play the same best-of-three-sets format.In Rome, in May, the men competed for $8.5 million while the women competed for $3.9 million. The Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open, paid men $6.28 million while women competed for $2.53 million. The National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women.“More and more players have been getting restless with this,” said Jessica Pegula, the world’s fourth-ranked player and a member of the WTA Players’ Council. “Equal pay started with the Slams, and I think a lot of people thought that meant every tournament.”Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. As part of this deal, organizers of the next two tiers of tournaments — the 1000-level tournaments, which are the biggest competitions outside of the Grand Slams, and the 500-level tournaments — have committed to pay equity as well.All events featuring both men and women at those two levels will pay prize money equal to that on the men’s tour, the ATP, beginning in 2027. By 2033, all events at those two levels will offer the same prize money.Tour executives and tournament officials say the phased-in approach is essential for raising the additional revenue to fund the pay increases, but that has not sat well with all players.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain, who has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, said last month.Sloane Stephens, another Players’ Council member, said she understands the impatience of players who don’t want this benefit to kick in only after they have retired, but there are many existing contracts that prevent an immediate shift.“It may not be the fastest pathway, but we will get there,” she said. “If I wasn’t on the council, it would be hard for me to understand. This process takes time.”In an interview this spring, Steven Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the time frame is necessary to allow the market to catch up with player sentiment, as the tour expands its marketing and renegotiates existing media contracts. Tournament organizers will also be able to take advantage of new rules that will make player attendance essentially mandatory at the biggest tournaments. Tournament organizers have long used the lack of a mandatory attendance requirement and a slight difference in the number of rankings points that players received as excuses for not providing equal pay. All of the tournaments with men and women will also now offer the same rankings points for both, making the competitions equal in every way and less confusing for fans.But while the pay equity deal offers an eventual solution to an old problem for tennis — and in all sports — it is hardly a panacea. With Wimbledon set to begin on Monday, women’s tennis continues to grapple with challenges.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa has said about the gap between men’s and women’s prize money at most tournaments.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockMost immediately, the tour has yet to announce the location of its season-ending tour finals in November. That issue was supposed to have been settled after the tour announced earlier this year that it would end its 18-month suspension of operations in China over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai. In a social media post in 2021, Shuai accused a government official of sexually assaulting her, and tour officials were subsequently unable to contact her.Simon said its boycott proved ineffective. But when the tour released its fall calendar earlier this month, it gave no location for the finals, though it included several tournaments in China. Tour officials have said they intend to hold the event there, but negotiations are continuing with the Chinese over the details of its existing 10-year deal that guaranteed nearly $150 million in prize money.There is also the larger issue of whether the WTA Tour will be able to further unify with the men’s tour, a move that experts say is vital for maximizing the potential of pro tennis. And looming over all of this is what role, if any, Saudi Arabia may play in the sport.Saudi Arabia, whose LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour, already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, but so far it has shown an inclination to grow its investments in tennis without the acrimony and litigation that accompanied its aggressive push into golf.Saudi Arabia is a leading candidate to become the host of the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending 21-and-under tournament that has been held in Milan since its inception in 2017, according to people with knowledge of the bidding process. The proposal to stage the competition, beginning later this year, includes a plan to launch a similar women’s event.The WTA has yet to commit to that or to staging any competitions in Saudi Arabia, where women only recently gained the right to drive and where an abysmal human rights record includes the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Simon traveled to the kingdom earlier this year for talks with government officials, though it’s not clear whether the WTA’s idea of further unification with the ATP includes a new tournament in Saudi Arabia.For now, erasing the pay gap is the first step, though some players do not understand the slow pace of change.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, who is ranked No. 6, said recently.In response, Simon has pointed to the deal the tour struck earlier this year with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. Much of the investment will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts at a time when many of its players remain unknown to casual sports fans.Doing that may require some work on the part of the tournaments that goes beyond giving women more money.“We have to build these personalities,” Simon said.Women in tennis have also been increasingly vocal in recent months about the disparate treatment they have received. At the French Open, organizers put a men’s match in the featured prime-time slot on nine of 10 nights.The mixed tournaments almost always conclude with the men’s final on the last Sunday — an implicit peak — with the women’s final played the day before. At the Italian Open in May, Elena Rybakina and Anhelina Kalinina took the court at 11 p.m. local time in a largely empty stadium after rain and the men’s semifinals delayed their match for hours.After Tuesday’s announcement, at least the money will be equal — eventually.“It’s time for change,” Simon said. “The pathway is now there.” More