Athlete of the Year

I was recently diagnosed with a case of tennis elbow. "At paano yan nangyari?" was the unanimous and incredulous reaction. Understandable, because it has been decades since I picked up a tennis racket, even in my dreams.

Admittedly, I am a totally un-athletic person. My colleague Joanne was even surprised to catch me reading the sports page–which I do, every day, right after the front page, before even Ricky Lo and Max Soliven (sorry, Boss). I follow sports avidly–golf (local and foreign, men’s and women’s), Formula One (I’m preparing "race day food" this evening since the Dubai grand prix happens around dinnertime here: pasta in honor of Scuderia Ferrari, and schublig in honor of Schumacher), tennis (Federer forever, despite his humiliating straight sets loss at the Nasdaq), football (a.k.a. soccer), now even basketball (since I have friends who play in the league). But of course, it does not follow that I participate in sports.

In my younger days, a girl active in sports other than jackstones or jump rope was called a tomboy. If you excelled at a sport, particularly a psysically demanding one, your gender was seriously questioned. In adition to the whole issue about being a girl, I was too scrawny a kid to be any good at contact sports anyway (I was great at patintero; does that qualify as a sport?). Golf was allowed because it was a genteel sport, but because everyone in my family was into golf I rebelled and refused to learn. In high school I was on the volleyball team, but only because my barkada was the team. Fortunately–for the team and for me–I didn’t have to play a single minute throughout the tournament. The "sport" I chose for my P.E. credit in college was bowling–duck pins at that. One thing I can say for myself: I know my limitations.

For this generation though, sports like a lot of other fields is no longer a closed arena for women. For those with talent and natural ability, or those willing to train long and hard, the playing fields of the world are wide open (well almost, there being still a few chauvinist holdouts). And women athletes have set the level of play incredibly high. How can one not marvel at the skill and performance of Annika Sorenstam, the Asian teenagers Aree Song and Michelle Wie, the Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne, track stars Marion Jones, Jackie Joyner Kersee and Cathy Freeman?

I am thrilled that my niece is a competitive golfer, and that she can play with the guys as easily as with the girls (her partner in last weekend’s tournament was a guy, and she had the better score). That she rock climbs and coaches volleyball and wants to go on a river trek this Easter is cool too (what is not cool is that she thinks I should go on the trek with her). The respect accorded her by guys who’ve been playing the sport a lot longer than she has is not grudgingly given, and that’s great, because the success of more and more women in a particular sport only enriches, rather than diminishes, the sport.

Which is why I am thrilled to feature images from the traveling exhibition Game Face, which celebrates female athletes, their strength and achievements–not just physically, but more so the triumphs of spirit, mind and heart that lift up all our spirits, minds and hearts.

And as for my tennis elbow, it didn’t come from smashes and lobs but is the result of mundane things like carrying heavy bags, repetitive motions that strain the muscle, even turning a doorknob with the wrong motion. But I’m not letting it cramp my style, because even if my elbow hurts, I can still cheer my heart out when Schumi takes the checkered flag again.