No longer as truthful as should be deserved, some names, places and events deliberately vague to protect identities that aren't mine

Tuesday 28 March 2017

We, The Unwilling, Led by The Unqualified...

For those of you who haven't been following the USA Hockey/USWNT dispute, what's particularly despicable about this whole affair, is that rather than admit the failing, rather than pay for USWNT's equipment, or their disability insurance during the Olympics, rather than find equal sponsorship, or pay their athletes more, or hell, just on a yearly basis, USA Hockey have decided not to do any of this.

First when USWNT refused to play to secure equal rights as athletes, USA Hockey started asking all the women's hockey players in the NWHL. They refused.
Then, they started asking NCAA (Collegiate level) women's hockey players to go to the Winter Olympics, instead of the elite team that has been training constantly for the past 4 years. They refused.
Now USA Hockey are asking women's athletes from nonprofessional leagues including high schoolers to pit themselves against professional grade athletes from other countries, but they still wouldn't get disability insurance, and would still have to pay for their own kit.

The US Women's Hockey team is ABSOLUTELY SUPERB. They have medalled in EVERY SINGLE Winter Olympics since women's hockey was introduced as a sport and have won the World Championship SEVEN times since 2000.
They are paid $1000 a month for 6 months, every 4 years, during the Olympic season only. For this they are expected to train year-round, every year. When they travel to play, they are booked coach and have to share a room with a teammate. If they're lucky enough to have one of the very few NWHL spots available, salaries range between $10000-26000 a year, and these salaries were slashed to a 'we'll pay what we can' basis earlier this year due to league financial problems.

The men's team? Their initial pay from US Hockey is no higher, but they universally are pulled from the NHL,wherer MINIMUM salaries are $650k per year. They fly business class, get a room to themselves, and can take a guest, who also flies business. Their equipment is paid for at very top grade of what's available. The receive extensive and thorough insurances.
USA Hockey, which has a mandate to grow the game, spends $3.5million on male outreach and youth projects per year. There is NO comparable women's outreach effort.
The performance of the men's hockey team?
They've got Olympic silver twice and world championships silver twice too since 2000. The rest of the time they failed to medal at all.

This is so far beyond any discussion of 'unfair glass ceilings'. This is pure discrimination. US hockey refuses not only to provide the women's team with the same level of benefits and supports as the inferior men's team, but when challenged about it, have elected to try and REPLACE the women's team, even going far as to trying to recruit high school seniors in place of top level professional athletes. And it will continue to not offer any of those high school seniors the same benefits and support as the men's team.

Make no mistake, the women's team CONSTANTLY performs BETTER and achieves MORE, IN SPITE of not having anywhere the same advantages of a bunch of rich white men. The organisation that is supposed to help them have said its 'too expensive' to give those things to the team that is of a consistently higher, but ultimately female, standard.



As an addendum, US Hockey appears in somewhat of a panic today, as largely all professional sporting leagues in the US have come out against their position.

Worse will for US Hockey, they NHL Players Association has voiced its support of NHL players threatening to boycott the upcoming World Championships in solidarity with USWNT.

Sometimes the work isn't a cold dark place....


 However as a counterpoint to the above comment, A LOT of the comments I have seen re: the female athlete's position is: 'they should stop whining and do what theyre paid to do.'

Sometimes the world needs firebombing till humanity is wiped from the face of it.