A couple of years ago, when the serious sports fan was feeling a bit fed up with the avaricious egos that populate the professional-sports scene, he met a student who happened to play women’s lacrosse. He talked to her about the team, which was having a remarkable season, and became curious. One spring afternoon, purely on a whim, he decided to attend a game.
And was instantly impressed. Though he was entirely ignorant of lacrosse rules and strategy, he recognized great athletes when he saw them. The next thing I knew, he was slipping off to every home game he could fit into his schedule and then describing what Lisa or Erin or Abigail had done that day in awed and reverent tones. When autumn rolled around and many of the lacrosse players showed up on the field-hockey team, he, too, went to those games and eventually began driving some distance to attend play-offs. One Saturday he even played hooky from a scholarly symposium in order to catch a half.
My reaction to all this was mostly ironic amusement. In high school I played field hockey, and discussions of the sport conjure up nothing more in my mind than unpleasant memories of bruised shins and the hectoring voice of my phys-ed teacher. Listening to a description of a lacrosse match ranks right up there with picking lint off the carpet on my personal excitement scale. When Ben invited me to attend a match, I said, ““No thanks.’’ But I felt proud that he’d taken such an interest. How many male fans of pro baseball or football, I wondered, had room in the sports-loving part of their brains for a genuine appreciation of a group of collegiate women athletes who played a fairly obscure game?
But one evening, when we were visiting friends, Ben began extolling the lacrosse players, and our male host turned to me with concern. ““Don’t you think you should go to these games?’’ he asked seriously, ““so that everyone can see he’s married and won’t think he’s got some ulterior motive?''
At first I shrugged off the question. Then I glanced at his wife. What I saw on her face was not only agreement with her husband but also a poorly concealed suspicion that Ben might indeed have an ulterior motive. I suddenly realized she thought my husband’s enthusiastic interest in these young women athletes was a bit, well, strange. And she thought that our refusal to acknowledge its oddity might be some form of denial.
I felt a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t because I believed that this woman’s suspicions had any foundation, but in the back of my mind I had already guessed that other people might share them. The lacrosse and field-hockey games were attended primarily by parents and by athletes and coaches from other schools. What must they be thinking of this nonparent who was demonstrating such unusual interest and enthusiasm? Might they be concerned that his real interest was in ogling nubile young women running around a field in short skirts? In fact, I had once or twice cautioned Ben to keep his distance from the athletes for precisely this reason. It was one thing to cheer them on from the stands. Approaching them to discuss a game might well give the wrong impression.
But I was angered to hear these worries expressed by my host and angered, too, by the sexual and social climate that had caused them in the first place. Who assumes that when a woman enjoys men’s sports contests it’s because she’s lusting after the players? If I began appearing regularly at the young men’s soccer games, would people whisper and wonder? Would they think I was on the prowl for some muscular teenager to seduce?
Doubtful. They would probably think only that I enjoyed soccer, and the players might be delighted to gain a fan who wasn’t a parent or a friend. Yet our friends and my own inner voices were implying that a man can’t attend women’s sports contests without having to worry that others will wonder why he’s really there. Why would any ““normal’’ guy my husband’s age bother to watch women’s sports unless his daughter were on the team?
In Ben’s case, the answer is simple. After a lifetime of enjoying conventional sports, this normal guy accidentally discovered that great athletic contests were not confined to baseball, football and basketball games played by men. It was a revelation to other men during the recent Olympics, and one that, I have since realized, should be experienced by more of them. Like it or not, the reality is that future funding for women’s athletic programs will depend to a very great degree on the half of the population that has traditionally supported sports with the greatest enthusiasm. That half consists of men–““normal’’ guys, like my husband, in whom any interest in women’s sports should be encouraged, not regarded as ““odd.''
At Ben’s university, the annual prize for the top female athlete was endowed by a distinguished alumnus, who was appalled by coeducation. What changed his mind was watching the women who were newly gracing the playing fields–women whose skills so impressed him that he decided to honor them. Last year that prize was won by a lacrosse player, who was one of the young women my husband had most admired. He was delighted, and I have decided he doesn’t need me to accompany him when he goes off to cheer on other young women, who might benefit from his support. My ““chaperonage’’ would suggest that a man who likes women’s sports is abnormal. I am waiting for the day when nothing will seem more routine.
