Introducing Front and Center: A Women’s Sports Column

In the first edition of “Front and Center,” Columnist Melanie Schwimmer ’23 explains the rationale for the content she will cover going forward, and highlights the most important news stories in women’s sports from the past few weeks.

Squash’s Depth Across the Ladders Proves Essential for Opening Weekend Success

Highlighted by the women's team's 5-4 win against Stanford University, both squash teams went 2-1 in their first weekend of play.

Sky Soar Past Mercury, Chicago Wins WNBA Title

For the first time in franchise history, the Chicago Sky are WNBA Champions, beating the Phoenix Mercury 80-74 in Game 4 of the WNBA finals. Lead by stars Candace Parker and Stefanie Dolson, the team overcame adversity to achieve their title-winning goal.

Ashleigh Johnson: Stopping Goals and Sparking Change

Ashleigh Johnson, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner for U.S. water polo, has had to overcome numerous obstacles to become one of the few Black athletes in the overwhelmingly white world of water sports, Melanie Schwimmer ’23 writes.

Coaching Chaos Reveals NWSL's Growing Pains

After becoming the first professional league to return after Covid, the NWSL is starting to suffer from the same shortcomings that plagued its predecessors. With women's soccer on the rise, a culture change is needed to prevent it from meeting the same fate.

Margot Lurie: Championing Justice, One Question at a Time

For all of her accolades at Amherst, Lurie will be remembered not by what she won but the people she inspired. Photo courtesy of Margot Lurie ’21.As she walked the halls of her deeply segregated Colorado high school, Margot Lurie ’21 saw injustice everywhere she looked. The structural inequalities of American society were lived out each day in school, where only a few would go on to attend four-year colleges and the limited resources were filtered to the predominantly white International Baccala

North Carolina Beats Michigan, Captures Third Straight NCAA Field Hockey National Championship

Fall or spring, rain or shine, one constant remains in NCAA field hockey: North Carolina’s success. This Sunday, March 9, the No. 1 seed Tarheels downed the No. 2 Michigan Wolverines in overtime, 4-3, to claim their third straight championship. UNC completed this back-to-back-to-back feat once previously in 1995, 1996 and 1997. With their program’s ninth title, North Carolina has tied Old Dominion University for most field hockey championships. While UNC’s last two championships came comfortab

Following Andonovski: Where the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team Roster Stands Today

With fewer than 100 days before the Tokyo Olympics, Vlatko Andonovski, the new head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT), faces a dilemma every coach dreams of: selecting an 18-player roster from one of the deepest talent pools ever. But with that abundance of talent, putting together the limited roster is a hefty and critical task, especially after the team’s surprisingly early exit in the Rio 2016 Olympic quarterfinals. To avoid the same errors that caused that early exit f

In Razor-thin Finals, Stanford Women's Basketball Wins 2021 National Championship

On Sunday, April 4, the Stanford Cardinal held off the Arizona Wildcats to win the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball National Championship by a score of 54-53. For the first time in tournament history, two teams from the Pacific-12 (Pac-12) Conference battled to cut down the nets. From the start, it was obvious that the national championship would be a choppy game, with elite defense from both sides stifling offensive flow and forcing numerous turnovers. Stanford, led by the tournament’s Most

The Awe-Inspiring Excellence of Paige Bueckers

As the No. 1 high school basketball recruit in the nation from the class of 2020, Paige Bueckers entered her first season at UConn surrounded by sky-high expectations. As the regular season comes to a close and March Madness gets in full swing, one thing is certain: Bueckers lived up to every single one. On March 17, Bueckers earned a spot on The Associated Press women’s basketball All-American team and became only the third freshman to do so all-time, joining basketball legends Courtney Paris

Racist Speech Overshadows U.S. Soccer’s Repeal of Policy That Forbids Kneeling

On Feb. 27, U.S. Soccer’s National Council officially repealed Policy 604-1 which forbade players from kneeling during the national anthem. U.S. Soccer enacted the policy in 2017 in direct response to star forward Megan Rapinoe kneeling prior to a 2016 game against Cambodia in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, joining his fight to bring awareness to the systemic oppression of Black people in America. The policy stated [https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2021/02/28/u-s-soccer-repealed-p

A Grand Slam Start Down Under For Tennis Stars Osaka and Djokovic

The 2021 Grand Slam season commenced this February with the star-studded Australian Open. The tournament consisted of ten professional brackets and $62,952,000 of prize money. Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic highlighted the tournament taking home singles glory. Officials decided to postpone the event by three weeks due to Covid-19 and allowed a reduced 30,000 fans into Melbourne Park for in-person viewing. Players arrived fourteen days early to quarantine, including seven days sequestered to the

Kim Ng Hired as First Ever Female MLB General Manager

On Nov. 13, Derek Jeter, CEO of the Miami Marlins, announced the team had hired  Kim Ng to lead their club as general manager (GM). Ng became the first female and Asian American GM in baseball, and the first woman at the helm in any of the four major North American men’s sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL) and the National Hockey League (NHL). Ng began her storied baseball career over thirty years ago. She st

Los Angeles Dodgers Battle 3 Decades of Demons and 4 Months of the Pandemic to Capture 2020 World Series Championship

After 32 years, the Los Angeles Dodgers are back on top of the baseball world. The powerhouse team beat the Tampa Bay Rays in game six, 3-1, to win the World Series, four games to two. At the start of spring training, Dodgers president Andrew Friedman and the rest of the team’s front office showed they meant business, completing a trade with the Boston Red Sox to bring 2018 American League [AL] MVP Mookie Betts to L.A., adding to their already stacked offense led by 2019 National League [NL] M

National Women’s Soccer League Completes Second Successful Return to Play

This week, The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) wrapped up its second successful round of play during the coronavirus pandemic. After this summer’s Challenge Cup — an eight team, 23 game tournament in a Utah bubble that marked the first sports league to return to play in America—the NWSL kicked off a Fall Series. For the Fall Series, the league created three geographical pods that each consisted of three teams who played one another twice, each team  hosting one of the matchups. This set u

Lightning Outshine the Stars: Tampa Bay wins Stanley Cup

More than six months after the coronavirus brought their regular season to a grinding halt, and two months after the National Hockey League’s (NHL) return to play tournament, the Tampa Bay Lightning hoisted the Stanley Cup on Sept. 28, concluding one of the strangest paths to glory in the hockey world. The Lighting beat the Dallas Stars 2-0 to take Game 6 and win the best-of-seven series four games to two. After Covid-19 derailed the 2020 season, the NHL was determined to return to play, attemp

Court Rules Olympic Champion Semenya Must Lower Testosterone or Change Events

This past week, two time Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya of South Africa lost her appeal of a World Athletics (formerly the IAAF) rule that places a strict limit on natural testosterone levels in order to compete in certain track events. The ruling reignited the ongoing controversy over the ethics and science of sex-based classifications in athletic competition. The Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that, while the World Athletics regulation is discriminator

WNBA Combines Elite Basketball With Drive For Social Change

In the first week of July, 144 players and 72 staff members arrived in Bradenton, Florida for a shortened 22-game Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) regular season and an anticipated full playoff schedule. Much like the requirement for students coming back to Amherst, the players were tested for Covid-19 three times before they entered into a bubble at IMG Academy, an athletic college preparatory boarding school. Life in the Wubble, as the players affectionately dubbed it, has been