High School Basketball

Our cultural education continues, so after a long day at work, we headed to Platteville High School to watch the Girls Varsity Basketball Team take their opposition to pieces. Final score 63 to 28, and that included some quite ridiculous time wasting in the 3rd and 4th quarters. The first two were interesting to watch, but even the cheerleaders (who we were really there to support) were shouting to them to score after half time.

I decided to post this as it rather eloquently illustrates the lack of interest in women's sport! If this was a boys' match, the gym would have been packed out, and folk would have been paying proper attention. Hannah, who was cheering today, tells me that it was a particularly bad turnout and attention, but the first thing her dad told me when we arrived was that the hall wouldn't be nearly full because it was a girls' match. Sad, but true, and not just in the US. The turnout to a women's Six Nations match I attended in Stirling a few years ago compared to the numbers who go to the men's matches was frankly embarrassing.

As I post this from the living room in Heather's house, her daughter Hannah is giving my colleague TJ a cheering lesson. It's one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Photographic blackmail material exists, and will appear on Facebook at a later date!