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Boys Swimming on Girls Teams Find Success, Then Draw Jeers

Should sports be segregated by gender?

  • I feel there's no need to seperate genders, let them play co-ed

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • Boys should play with boys, and girls with girls

    Votes: 20 39.2%

  • It depends on the sport

    Votes: 22 43.1%

  • other

    Votes: 5 9.8%
  • Total voters
    51
It is tough to answer. It isn’t like there is a boy’s team and a girl’s team and the boy is joining the girl’s team so as to have an advantage. He wants to swim competitively and the girl’s team is all there is. Is it right to tell the boy he isn’t allowed to compete but the girls can?

Swimming isn’t a head-to-head sport like football or wrestling. I would think in sports that are against the clock the points could be weighted for gender.

In the Army we have to take the Army Physical Fitness Test. In order for me to be in good standing I have to score at least a 60% in the 2-mile-run, sit-ups, and push-ups. To get 60% an 18-year-old male must run his two miles in 15:54. For a female she must run it in 18:54. The requirement for sit-ups, however, is the same as they have decided there is no significant difference between the genders in that task

So I would think sports like swimming could be made co-ed by simply handicapping the boys. Add a few extra seconds to their clock or have two separate starting buzzers, the first for the girls and the second for the males. I have NO idea how many seconds, but it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a figure by comparing large sample sets of race results.
 
clownboy said:
I think there's room for both coed and gender specific. Just about every team and individual sport. What's insane is that we spend so much on gender specific male sports.
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Women's basketball is a good example of why this happens. It's not that it is bad or anything, just no where near as exciting to watch. Some sports like swimming it would not really mater. A women's baseball league mite rock. It worked during WWII, so I assume it was good.
 
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Sarcogito said:
It is tough to answer. It isn’t like there is a boy’s team and a girl’s team and the boy is joining the girl’s team so as to have an advantage. He wants to swim competitively and the girl’s team is all there is. Is it right to tell the boy he isn’t allowed to compete but the girls can?

Swimming isn’t a head-to-head sport like football or wrestling. I would think in sports that are against the clock the points could be weighted for gender.

In the Army we have to take the Army Physical Fitness Test. In order for me to be in good standing I have to score at least a 60% in the 2-mile-run, sit-ups, and push-ups. To get 60% an 18-year-old male must run his two miles in 15:54. For a female she must run it in 18:54. The requirement for sit-ups, however, is the same as they have decided there is no significant difference between the genders in that task

So I would think sports like swimming could be made co-ed by simply handicapping the boys. Add a few extra seconds to their clock or have two separate starting buzzers, the first for the girls and the second for the males. I have NO idea how many seconds, but it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a figure by comparing large sample sets of race results.
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Handicapping in a collegiate or professional sport would suck for the person being handicapped. Anytime they lose, or it's close, well you get the picture.

At a High school or lower level? I don't know. I mean if he wants to participate, I am sure he could live with it. Not like he is being paid, lol.
 
joko104 said:
Hmmm, as a boy you would be disgusted around girls in swimsuits? I hadn't figured you leaned that way.
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That's not what I was disgusted about, though having seen some of the female swimmers in my day, they were nothing to write home about. What I was commenting on being disgusted about was the idea of competing against inferior competition becuase you're not willing to seek out appropriate opponents.
 
Tigger said:
That's not what I was disgusted about, though having seen some of the female swimmers in my day, they were nothing to write home about. What I was commenting on being disgusted about was the idea of competing against inferior competition becuase you're not willing to seek out appropriate opponents.
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and i would have thought you would have approved of a guy beating a girl ... even if not in the physical sense
 
Blackdog said:
Women's basketball is a good example of why this happens. It's not that it is bad or anything, just no where near as exciting to watch. Some sports like swimming it would not really mater. A women's baseball league mite rock. It worked during WWII, so I assume it was good.
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It worked during WWII because those women had no issue in being made an object of while still playing a semi-serious game. Women now would expect to be taken seriously even though they suck at the sport. Or, the can go the other way to the extreme ie the Lingerie Football League. Look how popular the Lingerie Football League is now:lamo The novelty of chicks running around half naked gets old eventually and then viewers realize they are watching a horrible version of a good sport and turn an NFL or college game on.
 
The Mark said:
Interesting...

Personally, I think all competitions and placement tests should be based on merit, regardless of gender.

Instead of a gender-divided competition, have an ability-divided competition.


So in this case, the girls and boys that clocked the X:XX to X:XX 100m swim compete against other girls and boys of like ability.


And the slower swimmers compete against their like.

Of course the fastest will still be the fastest, and the most enduring the most enduring.

Apply the general idea as needed.
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That works great for swimming or any other individual sport. How are you going to measure football, baseball, basketball, etc? You can't.
 
OscarB63 said:
I just await the cries from the hypocrites.

when it's a girl wanting to compete on a boys team,, they are all squealing about equal rights and how it's not fair to keep a girl off the team. but when it's a guy wanting to compete on a girls team..equal rights seem to go right out the window and we hear the squeals of how it's not fair because the boys are bigger and stronger than the girls.

If you are going to champion the cause of equality and scream that girls be allowed on boy's teams, then you need to STFU when the tables get turned and some guy wants to play on the girl's team
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Why do you expect hypocrisy? The problem here is less that the boy is swimming on the "girls" team, it's that the team is labeled a "girls" team when it is the school's only swimming team. Schools need to have boys AND girls teams, or unisex teams. I don't see any justification for any other arrangement.

I generally think that if there is some compelling reason for boys and girls to be separated, it's fine. Boys and girls swim teams are fine with me, so long as there are indeed teams for both. Another way to do it might to be to have two teams, varsity and junior varsity, and have the qualifications be based exclusively on finishing times in tryouts. The latter option might get a school into a bit of PR trouble, but I don't think there would be anything legally wrong with it.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
No - I don't approve of gender-blending for personal sports like that . . . only for team sports. I wouldn't want a girl to hold a record in a boy's category. She should compete against girls. It makes no sense that the boys can do it in the girl category :shrug: Now: training together. . .ok - no big deal there.
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Wrestling is an individual AND a Team Sport.

The individual efforts go to the teams complete score...but individuals can move onto regionals and states even if the team doesn't, individuals can get records in weight classes, etc.

Just as a heads up in regards to that specific sport (Actually had two females on my team in High School)
 
justabubba said:
and i would have thought you would have approved of a guy beating a girl ... even if not in the physical sense
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If she wants to come up and get her beatings from the boys on the boys team. that's fine. I don't really approve of it, but it's her decision to get her ass whipped time after time. On the other hand, if a guy has to go down to the girl's level to feel like they are capable of competing, or because they can't keep up with the guys, that's a totally different thing.

As I say/do in the medieval combat activities I'm involved in..... "When you have a chance to pick your opponent in a tournament you pick the BEST/HIGHEST RANKED opponent available. Even when you know it's going to mean you lose the fight. There is no honor in beating an inferior opponent when a superior opponent was available to fight."
 
JohnWOlin said:
In general and biologically even women and men are far better at certain things than the other. Taking care of children for example comes naturally to most women and men can do it, it just usually takes more work.
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:lamo:rofl.................
 
Aunt Spiker said:
Yeah - I'm siding with her. . . when you're in a sport that measures your personal abilities against other people's abilities - this just gives the boys a cutting edge that girls will never be able to beat purely based on their natural physical strength.

It's not like football, wrestling or soccer where the nature of gender is less of a factor.
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So double standard then.
 
Ikari said:
So double standard then.
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I know this is an old topic - but that's just not fair. . . It's not fair to ensure someone has an unfair advantage regardless of adjustments to requirement times and everything else and to sequester everyone else to having no chance.

I don't see why it's so offensive to just separate sometimes - do we need everything co-ed?
 
Aunt Spiker said:
do we need everything co-ed?
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If you swing that door open, you must understand that it goes both ways. Don't open the can of worms if you don't want them slithering out. If girls can play on boys teams for whatever reason for their school, such as there is no girl's team or blah, then the opposite is also true.

Maybe everything should be co-ed and then we can drive participation on pure competition of performance.
 
Ikari said:
If you swing that door open, you must understand that it goes both ways. Don't open the can of worms if you don't want them slithering out. If girls can play on boys teams for whatever reason for their school, such as there is no girl's team or blah, then the opposite is also true.

Maybe everything should be co-ed and then we can drive participation on pure competition of performance.
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And then no girls would ever win **** when it comes to anything. :roll: Yeah - that's a solution.
Sports use to be only acceptable for boys - girls use to be discouraged and negated for wanting to participate in any of it. Why you want to reverse any sort of social acceptance and that move forward in society is beyond me but that's what will happen.

I support balanced requirements in the military because it's a heavy duty career that relies on strengths and equality - not imbalance.

But when it comes to sports I don't agree - there are physical differences and sometimes that means they have the advantage - this is one such situation.

Anyway - this is old, I'm just restating everything I've said on it - my view still stands.
 
I voted it depends on the sport and it does. If each team has the same proportion of sexes then I think it would be ok, but this is not likely to be the case, so it depends.
 
Tigger said:
As I say/do in the medieval combat activities I'm involved in.....
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WHAT? :lamo :confused::lol:. Is there an underground medieval combat league we don't know about? Shouldn't the first rule of said league be not to talk about said league?
 
MarineTpartier said:
WHAT? :lamo :confused::lol:. Is there an underground medieval combat league we don't know about? Shouldn't the first rule of said league be not to talk about said league?
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There are a few. I was a member of SCA or The society for creative anachronism SCA, Inc. | Arts of Combat and Chivalry I was in the Midrealm. Participated in medieval army combat as well every year during the Pensic war when I was younger. Others exist, it is no different the Civil War or WWII reenactments.
 
MarineTpartier said:
WHAT? :lamo :confused::lol:. Is there an underground medieval combat league we don't know about? Shouldn't the first rule of said league be not to talk about said league?
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Nothing underground about it. The Society for Creative Anachronism is a 35000+ member medieval recreation society with members in the US, Canada and more than a dozen other countries around the world. Combat is not our only interest but our combat system is what we are most well known for.

Check out SCA Combat on YouTube and you'll get an idea of what we do.
 
Blackdog said:
There are a few. I was a member of SCA or The society for creative anachronism SCA, Inc. | Arts of Combat and Chivalry I was in the Midrealm. Participated in medieval army combat as well every year during the Pensic war when I was younger. Others exist, it is no different the Civil War or WWII reenactments.
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Greetings M'Lord. I trust today finds you well in body and spirit.

YIS,
Lord Haraldr Orn AOA, OSC
 
Blackdog said:
There are a few. I was a member of SCA or The society for creative anachronism SCA, Inc. | Arts of Combat and Chivalry I was in the Midrealm. Participated in medieval army combat as well every year during the Pensic war when I was younger. Others exist, it is no different the Civil War or WWII reenactments.
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Tigger said:
Nothing underground about it. The Society for Creative Anachronism is a 35000+ member medieval recreation society with members in the US, Canada and more than a dozen other countries around the world. Combat is not our only interest but our combat system is what we are most well known for.

Check out SCA Combat on YouTube and you'll get an idea of what we do.
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Wow........just wow.:shock:
 
So Tigger basically wishes we were living in medieval times?
 
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