Boys Swimming on Girls Teams Find Success, Then Draw Jeers

[Raiders Army]

Boys Swimming on Girls Teams Find Success, Then Draw Ire - NYTimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/sports/boys-swimming-on-girls-teams-find-success-then-draw-ire.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=massachusetts%20girls%20swimming&st=cse)

Is it just me or are these girls and their parents whining? Just change the name of the sport to Swimming and it'll be okay. It's very interesting that people (not just women) want equality in some things but not others. Women want to compete with men on an even playing field in business but in athletics they don't. So what if there are physical differences? We don't give out racial champions or records. Arguably there are physical ethnic or racial differences. I'm all for gender equality; we just need to make sure it's equal in everything.

[Matthean]

They should group up the boys from the different schools and keep them separate. I find giving a boy a record for beating a girl's time when there is one for boys to be rather asinine.

[Suburban Rhythm]

Higgins’s winning time of 23.96 was a personal best by one second. He broke the girls’ sectional record, set in 1985 by Cynthia Kangos of Wellesley, by 14-hundredths of a second. (The boys’ sectional record is 21.40.)
Goodwin said an uncomfortable silence settled over the pool deck when the results flashed on the scoreboard.

“I was torn,” she said in an e-mail. “I was so happy for Will that he went a best time, but I was worrying about the reaction when he received his award. I told him, ‘If you hear any boos, just ignore them and be happy with what you accomplished.’ ”

The next day, Kangos, now Cynthia Baker, received a phone call from a Wellesley administrator who told her about her record being broken.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s great.” Then she was told the new record holder was a boy, and she grew angry.
“I’ll be upset if they give him the record,” said Baker, who earned a swimming scholarship to Alabama.

She added: “There’s a reason these records are girls’ records. If there was no difference in boys’ strength, then it would be a unisex record. It’s really not fair. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t believe it.”


I hope wherever she works now, she'd be OK with her boss explaining since men have generally been stronger in whatever field it is, she'll get paid 75% of what all the men make, regardless of individual skill. There is a good reason there is a male pay scale and a female pay scale.

(And yes I realize a gender pay gap does exist)

[Matthean]

I hope wherever she works now, she'd be OK with her boss explaining since men have generally been stronger in whatever field it is, she'll get paid 75% of what all the men make, regardless of individual skill. There is a good reason there is a male pay scale and a female pay scale.

(And yes I realize a gender pay gap does exist)

This merely makes sense if the job is physically based and the males can be proven to have a higher output.

[Big Fo]

They should group up the boys from the different schools and keep them separate. I find giving a boy a record for beating a girl's time when there is one for boys to be rather asinine.

Yeah, let them practice as one team if there isn't enough money or aren't enough boys interested in the sport to have a separate team but just have a few boy's races at the swim meets.

[bronconick]

How about not giving the boy the "girl's record."? On the other hand, if it's a record for an event or location instead of gender, tough crap for the ladies.

Seems simple enough.

[Autumn]

I found this quote interesting:

Boys have been members of girls swim teams since the 1980s, but until recently they were mostly a sideshow. It has only been in the last year or two that boys have swum well enough to draw attention — and people’s ire. The epicenter of the debate is the 50-yard freestyle, an event in which strength can trump talent or technique.

So boys have only recently started swimming faster than girls in these events? Why has it taken this long for this to happen? And it's interesting that it's only in certain events.

[Coffee Warlord]

So boys have only recently started swimming faster than girls in these events? Why has it taken this long for this to happen? And it's interesting that it's only in certain events.

Major factor has go to be - the relative talent level of the few boys who swam with them just wasn't very high. A halfway decent male swimmer is going to obliterate any womens time, in every event. I swam throughout high school, and there wasn't a single womens record that was anywhere near the mens time.

As the article said, the 50 and the 100 free are about the most straightforward events there are. Even if your technique is subpar, raw strength is going to give you an advantage there. Butterfly, backstroke, the distance freestyle events, need a lot more technique.

[Raiders Army]

Not to bring the GLBT thing in here, but what happens when a previous male obliterates a female record? Should they get it or not? The simple and equitable answer is to provide one record with no qualifiers. I don't need a woman's record. Frankly I find it interesting that more women don't take offense to a woman's record...that is, unless it's in their best interest.