view raw text
SPORTS CLOSEUPS By Ira Seebacher NEW YORK N Y May 13 The team of girls sent to Russia from this country did very well in winning four of six games played The reasons for hot sweeping the boards are sundry and varied but perhaps the major reason is that our girls were sub ¬ jected to different playing conditions a different type of ball and different rules than which they play under here It took them awhile to make the adjustment On the other hand similar disparities existed for the mens team we sent over but evi ¬ dently not even these could stop our team although several games they won were close closeObviously Obviously there are several things to be gleaned from this Basketball is no longer an American game exclusively It isnt American in the sense that we will make the rules by which the rest of the world will be content to play The rest of the world will make other rules and we can either alter ours to conform or risk play ¬ ing under unfamiliar rules once we step from our own terra firma Nor is basket ¬ ball American in the sense that we will dominate play no matter where we go goIt It is true the best basketball in the world is played here but the rest of the countries are rapidly catching up Still they are deeper in the experimental stage than we They are still learning many of the things we know now by past errors In fact we can almost be said to know instinctively what they are actually experimenting to learn learnThere There will come a time as it did in tennis and other sports when we will have to work very much harder to win in fact go all out to win Russia will be one of our main foes Look how she came along in hockey So much so her teams were beating the Canadians who boasted hockey to be their own in the same degree we think of bas ¬ ketball as being our game gameThose Those Russians provide stiff competition in all sports and theyre going to be tough er The have the incentives to excel that the Government of the USSR encourages in so many ways and what few people ack ¬ nowledge or realize is that they also like sports perhaps more than we since even the Russian women are sportsminded Surely the Russian men stay active in sports far beyond the number of years most Americans hack away actively at their various sports sportsIt It is our mode of life most probably that makes it difficult if not impossible for young adults to stay with sports once their college days are over This is not the case in Ivans backyard Even the oldsters are in some sort of competitive setup setupThe The Russians however have far out ¬ stripped the rest of the world in womens sports Their mass calisthenics may be the answer Their women do not remain strictly calisthenic drillers They branch out into the active sports swimming basketball volleyball and others And being often on the somewhat beefy side they win more than their share of events eventsOur Our girl basketeers were amazed at the rough handling they got from the Russian girls But then Russian women do mens work in Russia and seem to grow stronger and more masculine as a result Eventu ¬ ally there will be no country able to com ¬ pete with the Russian women at their level in any of the more popular sports sportsThe The trip also proves pretty clearly that no matter how good a girl may be basket ¬ ball is just not a natural game for girls any more than would 3be polo or lacrosse That women play it means nothing Wom ¬ en drive racing carst but that doesnt make them good racing drivers Women do many things in this a mans world for sports surely yet you cant name a single sport where they arent hampered from beating men by virtue of being shorter weaker and d feminine
