Columnist Steve Carp: U.S. women make good role models

Steve Carp is a Las Vegas Sun sportswriter. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4087

They've captured America's fancy, and rightly so. And there's a lot of pride in what they've accomplished so far.

But what the U.S. women's national soccer team has done goes beyond the field. They've been goodwill ambassadors for sports in general and they've established themselves as solid role models for girls and boys alike.

That may be overlooked at the moment, what with the USA going for the championship Saturday in the Women's World Cup against China at the sold-out Rose Bowl. But when they've taken down the nets after the final, a new set of athletes that youngsters can look up to will be one of the legacies.

And there are indeed some fine role models. Mia Hamm, thanks to her Jordanesque exposure through commercials, is the most widely known women's soccer player. The fact she's a great player and a fine spokesperson for the sport only adds to why kids want to "Be Like Mia."

But many of Hamm's teammates exude fine qualities, whether it's soccer moms Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck, who juggle parenthood as adeptly as a ball, or Michelle Akers, who plays on despite battling chronic fatigue syndrome, or goalie Briana Scurry, whose exploits between the pipes is a source of pride, not just for blacks, but all races.

Yet, there's more to this than just a group of women who we can genuinely like, regardless of how we feel about soccer. Women have made great strides in sports since Title IX came into effect in 1972. And in doing so, they've given future generations something to shoot for -- both on and off the field.

The role models are not restricted to the soccer pitch. If you're a softball player, you have a great person to emulate in Dot Richardson, who was a member of the gold medal-winning USA squad from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Dr. Dot was stellar on the field, and she's greater today, practicing medicine in Southern California.

If you're a golfer, you have to admire what Juli Inkster has accomplished. Not only has Inkster won all four LPGA majors and is going to one day be in her sport's hall of fame, she has handled raising her two daughters with the same expertise she does a sliding six-foot putt.

On the basketball court, the WNBA has a number of women doing the same thing -- raising a family while performing at the sport's highest level. Sheryl Swoopes is someone you've probably heard of. She even has her own brand of shoe.

Nobody thought Lindsay Davenport would ever be a great tennis player. Good, yes. Great? She didn't have the necessary components, or so they thought. No life outside the game. No meddling parents. No instant success.

All she did was grow as a person, live a relatively normal life, win an Olympic gold medal at Atlanta, then, last Sunday, win Wimbledon, the biggest tournament in the world. It gives hope to all those young girls toting racquets that they can be a star without taking the Mary Pierce-Jennifer Capriati-Martina Hingis route.

Women have been doing great things on the field of competition for a long time. We just didn't notice it. Or we chose to ignore it.

Not anymore. We're seeing that there are options to being like Mike Tyson, Albert Belle and Latrell Sprewell. So what if those options wear a skirt or a sport bra? It's good for our daughters to have someone to look up to. And it wouldn't be bad for our sons, either.

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