Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
If you’re enough of a sports fan to be reading this column, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Elizabeth Lambert. Just in case you haven’t, she is a female soccer player for the University of New Mexico whose actions in a recent game have been highly scrutinized. It was a Mountain West Conference playoff game against Brigham Young University, and Lambert’s emotions were on full display. She took cheap shots left and right, and her aggressive play looked like it was going to result in an injury to one of her opponents a number of times. Lambert punched one opponent in the back, flailed her arms wildly hitting another in the face while going after a ball and slammed yet another to the ground by yanking on her pony tail. The Internet celebrity for all the wrong reasons has since been suspended indefinitely for her actions.
Don’t be naïve, though, as this kind of thing is hardly uncommon in Division I athletics. Brandon Spikes, a well-known linebacker for the University of Florida football team, was just suspended for allegedly gouging an opponent’s eyes while he was on the ground.
And I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t stop there. I’d bet if you closely examined the film of most Division I football, basketball, hockey and soccer games, you would find cases like this all over the place. You don’t even want to know what goes on at the bottom of a big pile of football players when a play has just ended. Arms and legs getting twisted, hair getting pulled, jabs to the kidneys and things that could potentially harm your ability to have children.
But the fact that it happens all the time still doesn’t make it OK. My point is that it is a much bigger issue than people realize. I read an article from the “48 Hours Crimesider,” a popular crime blog on CBSNews.com, in which the author actually defends Lambert, saying she was provoked into doing the dirty things she did. Yes, it is true that a small elbow was thrown before she punched the girl in the back. The author also says the girl who gets pulled to the ground by her hair was grabbing Lambert’s crotch before it happened. He even says, “In most states if you were on the street or in a bar and you grabbed a woman by the crotch like this, you’d be charged with criminal sexual assault.” Unfortunately though, that’s just not true. If you watch the tape, you’ll see the girl was grabbing Lambert’s shorts, not her crotch. This is simply a way to jockey for position and is as common in the game of soccer (and basketball, for that matter) as a Brett Favre retirement in football.
I’m sorry, but there is no defending Elizabeth Lambert’s actions. Maybe she was provoked a little bit, but that’s what athletes do. It is her job as a representative of her program to maintain enough composure and play the game like it was meant to be played. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the biggest fan of a physically intimidating player in any sport, but I appreciate it to take place within the rules of the game.
Bangor Daily News