Well, I’m very late posting today, obviously. It was a long day. Anyway, Elliott J. sent in an AP news story that ran on Yahoo news. The article about the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team — which was in the Final Four of the women’s tournament — focuses not on their physical prowess, skill, or competitive spirit, but rather on the fact that they’re super excited to cheer on the UConn men’s team: 
Of course, there’s nothing shocking about the fact that one team from a school might want other teams from the same school to win. But there’s a tendency to feminize female athletes and to highlight their relationships with and appreciation for men, to reassure audiences that they’re still appropriately feminine despite their interest in sports and amazing athletic abilities. In this case, we learn that these female athletes still support and cheer for their male colleagues…and though the women in the article say the teams support each other, only examples of the women rooting for the men are included, and despite my googling, I couldn’t find any stories about how much the UConn men’s team was pulling for the women’s team.
UPDATE: Reader twostatesystem was able to find an article about the men of UConn cheering on the women that I didn’t find in my quick googling (I tried variations on “UConn men cheer/support/pull for women” and couldn’t find anything at the time).
Comments 15
Juliana — April 6, 2011
Wow, this is really frustrating. It makes it seem almost as if the women's team is made up of cheerleaders, not athletes. I am so tired of watching women be the cheerers while men score the points!
Elizabeth — April 6, 2011
"I couldn’t find any stories about how much the UConn men’s team was pulling for the women’s team."
If I can find an article on it I'll share it, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a reverse situation happening in Germany recently where the German men's national soccer team was doing very active promotion of the German women's national team ahead of the Women's World Cup taking place in Germany this summer and with the German team being one of the strong favourites. I rarely even hear about women's soccer anywhere, period, and was kind of pleased to find that there was active support amongst men's teams (and of course it's sad that I have to find this surprising).
Marikt — April 6, 2011
Yeah, that is really dumb that thats what this article was focusing on...but I can tell you that as a Uconn student, even if attendance doesn't show it (while the men's games usually have more people, they're generally non-students), the women's team here are looked up to as royalty. A friend of mine was even talking to Kemba Walker and he said that he only wished the women could have been sharing the glory as well.
twostatesystem — April 6, 2011
But here's the same article in reverse; not an AP story, but it was linked to off the main NYT sports page when it was relevant.
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/uconn-gets-ready-to-cheer-on-uconn/?scp=5&sq=uconn&st=cse
Sam — April 6, 2011
Reminds me of when I was watching the winter olympics and there was quite a lengthy feature with a British athlete (can't remember which sport she was competing in) talking about how despite the fact she was an olympian, she still liked "girly" things and blah blah blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Because god forbid you intimidate men by being a good athlete.
The ‘apologetic’ lives | WMST 490 — April 6, 2011
[...] as this story from Sociological Images blog: Female athletes support the guys. This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← Conservative [...]
Molly W. — April 6, 2011
I went to an all-girls high school with a "brother" school, and for some time the varsity cheerleading squad at my school was responsible for cheering at the other school's football games.
It finally dawned on someone (in the mid-80s, I'd say?) that it was kinda ridiculous to give students varsity credit for cheering for -a different school-. (Sure, they were an affiliated school -- but it's not like the guys ever sent a squad to cheer at to our games.)
(Of course, the football games were more fun to cheer at -- they certainly got more spectators than the field hockey games -- so (IIRC) they ended up creating a cheerleading *club* that cheered at those games and included most of the girls from the cheerleading *team*, which now cheered only at girls games.)
Kobe — April 6, 2011
As a teacher in a jr-sr high school, I frequently see girls on teams supporting the boys' team in their sport by attending games, etc, and I rarely, if ever, see the same in reverse.
Kate — April 6, 2011
Am I the only one who initially read 'pulling' as a euphemism?