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Skeleton Key

zuzu

Tim Nardiello has been reinstated as the U.S. skeleton coach after several sexual-harassment complaints.

Now, I don’t know what happened between him and the female skeleton riders(?) , but it seems too easy for him to dismiss the complaints of riders/players who didn’t make the team on the grounds that they were bitter about not making the team. I’m just gonna wildly guess that when they got cut from the Olympic team, they perhaps felt free of the pressure of making the team, so they weren’t so concerned about the fallout. Not that their timing was so great.

I have to say that I don’t feel that only women should coach women’s teams, or that having men coach women’s sports necessarily leads to abuse. I know that having men coach women’s college sports is controversial. As a UConn alum, I can’t agree that it’s a bad thing. In fact, the worst thing I heard from UConn women’s basketball players about Geno Auriemma while I was in college (1986-90) was that he picked his nose.

13 thoughts on Skeleton Key

  2. Maybe it’s just the back-to-back Buffy/Angel marathon we’ve been having, but I had a very strange mental image from the first sentence of this post. “We have a team of skeletons?”

    (Other than the fashion model’s union, of course.)

  3. Zuzu, from my collection of rare knowledge: participants in luge and skeleton can be referred to generally, and gender-neutrally, as “sliders.”

  4. I have a feeling they call themselves ‘sliders’ as a group. Of course they’re all collectively out of their minds for doing it in the first place.

  5. On the issue of having men coach women’s team…do you think the same arguments for/against it would be made if a woman was coaching a men’s team?

    (Personally, I believe a large number of men would be absolutely screaming “fowl.” But I’d love to see it, just to screw with them!)

  6. Jim, I don’t think that the complaints would include the possibility of sexual abuse from the coach.

    But my knowledge of women coaching men’s teams is pretty well limited to Wildcats. I’m not aware of any women who coach college teams — and other than Pat Summitt, I don’t know that any have been asked to.

  7. Yeah, that (Wildcats) was a pretty decent movie (and I’m not an especially big Goldie Hahn fan, either).

    Sexual abuse can go both ways although the majority of it certainly is supplied by men. And there is a dearth of women coaches, even in women’s sports. I don’t believe it’s because of a lack of talent either. I’m sure there’s plenty of qualified women coaches out there who are not presented with the proper opportunity.

    My sport — auto racing — is even more male dominated than the “ball and stick” sports. AndI’ve seen first-hand (through my daughter, who competes) what some (but definitely not all) men will do and say to keep it that way.

    Change is slow but it is coming…even to motorsports!

  8. zuzu – the only mean thing I can say about Geno (which is wholly unrelated to his coaching of a women’s team) is that, in my limited experince with him, he really isn’t a very nice person. That opinion would not change if he was coaching the mens team however.

  9. I seem to recall a female head coach of an NBA Developmental League team a couple of years back, but I can’t remember the team or the coach’s name, and I’m too lazy to look it up. I’m not sure if she’s still coaching or not.

  10. the only mean thing I can say about Geno (which is wholly unrelated to his coaching of a women’s team) is that, in my limited experince with him, he really isn’t a very nice person. That opinion would not change if he was coaching the mens team however.

    Calhoun’s not the nicest guy, either. 😉

    Some women’s players lived on my floor, and they really liked Geno (though they were the ones who told me about the nose-picking). My only real experience with him came from a) taking a tennis class from him to fulfill a sports requirement (and it was quite apparent that he was not happy about having to teach it) and b) finding out that he made one of the players take out the braids I had so carefully put into her hair before a game because he was superstitious about the players changing their hairstyles.

  11. As a current UConn student, I haven’t had much interaction with the coaches. When I worked in dining halls, I had several interaction with male basketball stars trying to break rules, and an obnoxious encounter with a very drunk female rugby team. Other than that, nothing to say but a plea to read the Uconn Free Press.

  12. UConn Free Press? When did that start?

    I wrote for the Daily Campus back when it was in a crappy 1920s Sears catalogue house on the site where the new, nice building is.

  13. As a storrs native, I remember that place. The Uconn free press was started in the 60s, then revived in the 80s, and again in the late 90s. We started it again last semester. We print 5000 copies once a week, with USG money.

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