RnR Hot Stove: Champions!

GOOD MONDAY MORNING EVERYONE!

Well this time I get to tell you about my wonderful experience of sitting beside a National Slo Pitch Champ on Saturday at the Summerfest Market in Sangudo, Alberta. Low and behold she has been on our dazzling book team for a few months now and I had no idea of her championship status until I had the privilege of meeting one of her teammates at our book signing table at the market!  Tracy Stark had been unable to join us on Saturday but had managed to sign 100 books before she left on an adventure to meet Rip from Yellowstone and hopefully, he did not take her to ‘the station’ as I have not yet heard how her adventure unfolded. I suggested she sell him a few books.  LOL!

However, that National Champ, was our amazing digital marketing manager Stacy Crossland, who stepped up to the plate and filled in for Tracy and…. hit a home run for the GROSS MISCONDUCT HITTING FROM BEHIND team by working with me in our continued quest of spreading our message of changing the culture of violence against women and children.  It was a great day to have a great day particularly because Stacy made a flying leap to capture our tent when a gust of wind grabbed it thereby preventing damage to my vehicle as the sharp end of the tent pole was aimed directly at the hood of my shiny red car!  Thank you, Stacy Crossland!!  You may have to come out of retirement and put on your cleats again! What a dive!

Nothing like playing on a team and bonding fiercely with your teammates and maintaining that bond even after years of not seeing one another! I had the privilege of playing Panda basketball at the University of Alberta and am now a member of the prestigious BLOCK A Society which honors U of A athletes who represented their school in intervarsity competition.  So, what does that have to do with anything?    Two things.  Firstly, two members of that Panada team attended our book launch in Edmonton in May of 2022 and gave me the biggest hugs imaginable!  Fifty years after our basketball connection they came to support me – WOW! What a surprise and a gift to their former teammate... aka ME!  Thanks to those teammates - Bev Spencer and Wendae Grover! The friendships one makes as a team player working together to achieve a common goal can be life changing. That year we too were Canadian Champs in the realm of Junior Women’s Basketball.  Of course, in typical Sandra fashion, I lost my championship ring but…my husband who played for the prestigious Edmonton Huskies – ‘Threepeat’ Champions  still has his City of Edmonton ring given to all Canadian Champs by the City of Edmonton and the bond he has with not only his Huskies colleagues but his high school football champions continue to be an important part of his social network.  Being on a well-coached team can be a tremendous experience! And even his St. Mary’s High School coach, the outstanding Aurell Royer, stopped by to buy a book and to give me a hug! Wow!

However, the second part of my story is also interesting.  Initially U of A female athletes were not allowed into the prestigious Block A Club.  It was reserved strictly for male athletes (BMOC-Big Men on Campus).  We witnessed the guys strutting around campus wearing the green and gold sweater they were awarded as members of the Golden Bears.  We Panda Bears and Cubs…well we did not rate such in the way of recognition- That Green sweater with the giant Gold A decorating its front.  After all we were…only women.  However, a group of dedicated women alumni athlete won a hard-fought victory in the past few years with the U of A’s Athletic Dept and opened the door for all women who had previously played intervarsity sport at the U of A to be inducted into the University’s Block A Club at a most elegant affair!  Amazing what a group of dedicated women can do!!

The USA enacted a legislation called Title Nine which gave female athletes greater opportunities that male athletes already had.  One such amazing athlete, tennis star Billie Jean King was one of the leaders of this movement as she began to openly question why women’s athletics did not have the same funding and opportunities as male athletics did. Women were not really regarded as ‘athletes’ deserving of the same opportunities as the male athletes.  It is interesting to note that my first job as a U of A graduate was at Mt. Holyoke College, one of the esteemed Seven Sisters Colleges in the US where I was hired to coach women to play five player basketball.  We in Canada had been playing such for years but not in the USA where Iowa may have been the only state where such was happening. Nationally, 1969 was the first year USA women were being introduced to the ‘men’s sport’ having been playing six player basketball previously where there were two guards who stayed in the back court and two forwards who only played in the front court and two ‘stronger’ players who were rovers who played full court.  The belief was that most women were not strong enough to play full court.  We have come a long way BABY!  We can even enter a bar these days…without an escort!  Through hard work and women speaking up gradually women began to receive recognition and regard for their strength and prowess in sport and beyond …the kitchen!  Yet although great progress has been made still today female athletes are battling together to be heard regarding disparities in the salaries of male and female athletes as is still the case with many other professions.

When I was a young girl, I loved playing hockey!  It was my sport! With my white figure skates, I could skate circles around the Cubs & Scouts that I played hockey with on the outdoor rinks every Saturday morning.   But then…when I developed boobs I was no longer allowed to play.  It was just the way it was back then. We as women just accepted that...  My sport became basketball because some association decided that was “OK” for young women to participate in such a sport.  I applaud the courageous women who began to speak up about the inequalities that existed for women and girls.  Thanks to their work and the work of those men who believed in their women, young girls can now aspire to play for Canada and Canadian women athletes are now playing the most exciting form of hockey ever - free of the legalized violence allowed in the men’s game.  

Women then began to speak up loudly and clearly about many issues regarding the equality of men and women. Which still needs work today for true equality to exist.   They marched in the streets.  They found their voices!  Times Up!  Me Too!  We as women and the men who love their wives and daughters, sisters, mothers and female friends must be ever vigilante and continue to speak out about the violence against women and children all too prevalent in our society.  Building more women’s shelters to protect women from violent men?  A short-term safe place important to rescue women and children from violence. YES!  However, our goal must go beyond that to change the culture of violence that allows not only physical, verbal, mental and emotional violence to occur unchecked in too many homes …and remain something we do not talk about as a society…except maybe a bit. In November!  We exist in a society that allows coercive control to exist without retribution in our legal system.  Bullying continues to be a major issue and …not just outside the home.  (More about that next week) We must find our voices about things that matter by discussing things necessary to change the culture of violence allowed to continue in our society because of inadequate laws, systems, attitudes and fear of speaking up.  Domestic violence can no longer be a secret.  It is real and needs our attention. Time to talk.  Time to educate young people about appropriate relational behaviours.  The CALM (Career and Life Management) Class must be more than a correspondence course credit in our high schools!   

Thank you to those who have approached us to ask for a sit down to discuss issues we bring forward in the book. We will follow up!   And please remember:  Children learn what they live.  As I say in the book “Worry not that your children do not listen to you.  Worry that they are always watching you!”  What are they seeing?  What are they learning from the behaviours they witness?  Let’s all be Champions and find our voices about things that truly matter to end the culture of violence in our society.  

                                                                                                                              Love, Sandra

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