Despite having created a great forum for girls interested in sports to interact and discuss the game, Nelson displays some old school gender bias in an interview with NPR. After spending 17 years covering the NBA as a sportswriter for the Seattle Times, Nelson became bitter and jaded about the sport, so he quit to focus on the more "innocent" world of girls basketball. "I kind of fled away from that, looking for what I thought was the last innocent corner of the sports world - a bunch of girls playing basketball, ponytails bobbing," he says.

Although there's nothing wrong with claiming that high schoolers are more innocent than professional sports players, Nelson's assertion that girls basketball has certain feminine qualities to it is kind of obnoxious. He says that he uses his knowledge about the feminine traits of the game to make the website more successful. "Female is a lot more communal, so this sport is not just a sport. It's a happening—it's a community. I know how to play to that."

However, Nelson says he has seen a change in the last five years, with bigger, stronger, tougher players, which leads him to conclude that they are being influenced by boys basketball. NPR recalls an anecdote in which a player from Berkeley, CA, went down with a bad twisted ankle. Instead of crying (and they all but add, like a girl), the player waved away her coaches and walked off the court without help. Ron Beard, a club coach, "watched and smiled." He said, "Basically what she's doing is she's showing the gym that, 'I'm still tough.' It's a personal thing. That's boys' stuff."

The most frustrating thing about this NPR piece is that these are men involved in girls sports, men who are supportive of their game, but they still display the same old gender stereotypes. Girls can't be tough, girls are innocent, sweeter, more community-oriented. It seems like female athletes can't win. They are either sexualized to the point where their skills no longer matter, or they are viewed as the innocent, weaker sex. Even among those involved—maybe especially among those involved—girls sports are still seen as other, different from the regular game, separate, but not quite equal.

Web Site Gives Girls Basketball Stars Major Play [NPR]

Like any prodigy, Jaime is in some ways isolated from her peers, as a story in the NY Times' "Play" magazine outlined this past weekend. She's taller than all the boys at school, for one — she says the tallest comes up to her chest. (Her classmates sometimes call her names like Godzilla.) And her skills on the court can inspire sexism. When Jaime fouled a boy, her mother remembers a parent yelling, "Get that girl away from him!" But playing with girls her age isn't an option, says her dad: “To be quite honest with you, it just wouldn’t be fair.” Her mom concurs, asking, "Particularly before puberty, why do we separate boys only, girls only? We say boys are stronger, faster, but that’s a generalization." Jaime's skills — she may turn out to be the next Candace Parker, the first woman to dunk in a NCAA tournament — certainly show this to be true. So should all kids' sports be co-ed? Or is there value in separating the boys from the girls?

Scary, Isn’t She? [NY Times]
Girl To Rejoin Boy's Basketball Team [UPI]

Earlier: Awesome Oregon Girl Barred From B-Ball With The Boys