John Stevenson

Fall 2000

At game time, the sky grows cloudy and the wind noticeably increases . Players and fans alike know that a downpour is coming. A'ndrea Berry notices the change in the weather, but her mind is on one thing: the coming game with the University of Texas-Dallas. Sprinkles start to come down as the two team captains, Shawna Hudson and Laura Starzynski , talks with the officials. A'ndrea hit the goal post two times as she comes out onto the field, ready for the game.

U.T. Dallas starts off the game with shot after shot on the goal, all of which are smothered by the goalkeeper. Her silence is already noticeable and her teammates know that she dislikes conversation before the game. They all have kept their distance. The green team (University of Texas-Dallas) inflicts punishment after punishment on the the Pirates goalkeeper. She gets a knee in the head in the second half and is in a daze that most people can notice. As soon as she gets back to play, a rather large girl in the green uniform of the opposing team knees A'ndrea squarely in the mouth. She mutters an expletive and goes limp for a few moments. A rather large fat lip is growing by the second on her mouth. As the pouring rain comes down, one can not help but feel that she is thinking " Yeah, this game is like watching paint dry."

A'ndrea Berry is the starting goalie for the Lady Bucs. Soccer is her life. As with most other players, she plays it because it is fun, but to her"its just a lot of fun to hit people." While it is fun to be very physical during the game, it does come with a price. She has been taken by ambulance to the emergency room four times because of collisions. She has run head first into the goal post, dislocated her shoulder, received a number of concussions, and has been kicked squarely in the back by opposing players. Her injuries are not always sustained during games. Before the game with Centre College, one of the new freshman players kneed her in the leg exceedingly hard. The trainers thought that she had broken her leg

"I get stupid injuries," A'ndrea says. To me, though the injuries she sometimes gets seem more strange than they are stupid. One day while she was practicing, a gust of wind knocked the goal on top of her. "It nailed me in the back of the leg," she says this with a smile. "It could have been worse if it it had hit me in the head.

Each year she has been known to come down with strange illnesses and injuries. During her freshman year she came down with pleuritis and suffered from an uncontrollable twitching in her right arm. She was drugged up by a neurologist for three weeks. She has absolutely no memories of that time." During two-a days sophomore year, I got stung by a bee that flew up my nose." A'ndrea laughs about this injury, even though it had to be painful.

A'ndrea's injuries are common for goalies. Concussions abound since there is so much action taking place in the box. The goal keeper can easily be struck in the head. The most common injury on the Lady Bucs are ankles.

Libby Schrum , A'ndrea's predecessor, says of this type of injury :

" It's a foot sport and you are going to roll your ankle."

The Lady Bucs have been relatively lucky this last season when it comes down to injuries. There has not been a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in a teammate's knee in the three years that A'ndrea has played.

For almost all of history, women have been stereotyped as weak and babyish. This prejudice has hurt women's sports through the years since people think that they can not play tough. The Lady Bucs do not fit this stereotype. As with most other sports, team members will play on injuries that would send most other people home. During the warmup before the UT-Dallas game, A'ndrea dislocated her shoulder. The shoulder was put back into place and so the fans thought it odd that she kept rotating her arm in a circular motion the entire game. "I just knew that if I stopped it [rotating her shoulder], it would suck." Not all the players on the team have the same pain tolerance as she does. A'ndrea concedes that " we have some people who have no pain tolerance. We have three drama queens on the field."

People who have no pain tolerance do not reflect badly on this team. Most people have little tolerance for pain. What miffs her is that people baby them. The minute an opposing player knocks the defender down and sobs are heard. A few minutes later the player is back on the field playing like nothing was wrong. This is annoying to her.

Superstitions have always played an important role for athletes. Some baseball players cross themselves before batting and others will not step on the foul line. Other athletes have to eat the same meal before playing each game. A'ndrea has to be one of the most superstitious players on the team.

She goes through the same routine each game day. On game days, the team is supposed to get into the locker room at 12:30. "I get there at noon for a 2:00 o'clock game," A'ndrea says. "Typically I sit by myself in the locker room. I am already with cleats and everything when they all come in. I just sit there. For a Sunday game I watch cartoons on the big screen TV. I don't say much, I just think about the game." She does this to get intense for the game and to help her play better. As she admits, her superstitious actions do get stranger. "On game day I have to wear a Superman t-shirt and socks. I have to put the left sock, shin guard [on first] then the right sock and shin guard. I wear our practice shirt during warm up. I walk on the grass as much as possible." She hates the feel of cleats on pavement. When the team walks straight across the field, she walks in a diagonal direction to get to the bench. The bag she carries has to go behind the fence and she has to take two balls out to practice. Her backup will always get to warmup first, unless it is against Trinity because that is the most important game of the season. Also, she always says the exact thing each time the team scores "get back, get ready, stay tough defense." She always punches her fists after saying this.

A'ndrea's superstitions are unique. Her predecessor did not have any. "Making sure the warm up was consistent and things like that" were important to Libby when she was the keeper.

"I always put just little things, like making sure, for keepers [in particular], to look pretty. That was what a keeper is about. You gotta look cool out there. You gotta make sure your shirt is tucked in perfectly, but its gonna be messed up on the first play. You gotta look pretty before you start. Making sure your stripes match up with your socks , just things like that. But I didn't have any superstitious things that I ever did. My roommate used to wear one of my jerseys the night before the game hoping we would win it. I kind of figure superstitions are no good."

Some may see a strong difference between the two goal keepers by their views on superstitions, but Libby does not fall into the stereotype about women athletes. She is not afraid to be aggressive. She has had her share of injuries, including a broken leg that ended her senior season.

Equality of all sexes and races has been something that has been fought for by civil rights advocates for years. Gender equality is one of the most important fights because the majority of the nation are women and they have been discriminated against throughout history. Title IX is a civil rights law that barred all gender discrimination when it was signed by Richard Nixon. This law applies to all areas of education, but it is best known for expanding women's athletics. Each institution has to give equal funding to teams of both sexes. Some universities, like Brown, have sued because they would have to cut men's programs in order to get total equality. Money is the key for making Title IX work and some schools, such as the University of Maryland have had great success without cutting funding for the men's teams.

Women's college teams have risen from 5.6 teams per school in 1977 to 7.5 in 1996. The soccer programs at Southwestern are equal. On road trips, the Lady Bucs participate in the same activities as the men. They don't always attract the same crowds, but they do have a lot of fans. The ladies attract more of a frat crowd than the guys do, but the guys usually have a much larger crowd watching them. One explanation for the size of the crowd is that the team that plays later will get the largest group of fans. The ladies usually play at two hours earlier than the men, so they will have a small crowd until the second half.

A'ndrea has had relatively little experience with sexism. The referees are the ones who would openly show it when it occurs. During one game when the Bucs were yelling for a opposing player to be carded, the ref said "This is womens' division three soccer!" and did not pull the card. He could have said that their game was not important but the Lady Bucs got his point. A'ndrea is almost positive that he would have pulled the card out during a guys' game. He probably did so since both teams use the same officials. The coaches, which are all male, sometimes make the players angry. " We have guy coaches and they occasionally don't say things the tactful way for women. But, you expect that."

Some players think this head coach should coach mens' soccer because of the way he says things, but overall a majority of the players think that he is a good coach. The coach may not be very sensitive in the way he talks to the players, but you can not say that he does not care to work with them.

A'ndrea and the rest of the team have soccer controlling their lives throughout the season. Monday is the busiest day for A'ndrea even though it is the off day for the rest of the team. She goes to class through the day and when she is done she trains little kids to be goal keepers. She then has to supervise the Robertson Center that night. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays they practice from four to six, with Tuesdays being the major running day. If the team will be home that weekend they will practice for an hour and a half. On the road they just do a light practice that works on passing skills. They then go to game day and do the same thing.

It is the second half against the University of Texas at Dallas. A'ndrea puts a towel to her lip and looks at the blood as she pulls it off. Her lip is noticeably bigger to me because I am standing behind the fence looking at her. A shot comes her way and she dives on it only to get a kick in the ribs. What little is left of the crowd cheers as she gets up with a fat lip, dislocated shoulder, and newly bruised ribs. Mud is everywhere on her. The nay sayers of womens' soccer say that the men are more aggressive. The men have more injuries in their games and they are just more exciting. Womens' soccer is like watching paint dry.

From the moment that this paper was assigned, I knew I had to do an

article on the womens’ soccer team. Earlier this semester, I had a very

part time job as a ball boy for both soccer teams. Since women’s sports

have been a hot topic, I thought one of the women’s teams at school

would be a good subject for a story.

As I started to plan, I wanted to profile most of the team. However, I

decided on their goalie, A’ndrea Berry. I stood behind her goal most of

the game catching missed shots that went over the fence. She had some

interesting actions she did before and during each game. Being a

goalie, she would catch the most grief from fans.

She agreed to my request for a story and interview. The interviews

went well. When asked about whether she watched womens’ or mens’ soccer

games, she said that she liked to watch the men’s. She said women’s

soccer is like watching paint dry. I knew I had my story after she said

this to me.