Conclusion

This class (SM 3950) was definitely worth taking. When deciding on what classes to take for this semester, I wasn’t sure because I didn’t need to take this class. I talked to Dr. Spencer about it and she encouraged me to take the course, so I did. I really did learn a lot though, and I think doing the blogs enhanced the entire experience of the class for me. I had never done a blog before, so doing something new like that was definitely beneficial. I also liked commenting on other blogs and having people comment on mine.

I enjoyed talking about and learning about unfamiliar topics such as cricket and Latin Americans in MLB. The subjects that were new to me and that I didn’t know a lot about, made the class beneficial and interesting. After all of the previous sport management classes I have taken, I was unsure of how much more will be beneficial for me. Then, after this class, I realized that there is so much that I don’t know in the field of sport management and that there is a whole world out there that is always changing.

What I also really enjoyed about this class was all of the guest speakers that we had. Listening to their stories was a lot of fun and they really helped the class discussions. I wish more classes had guest speakers to share their knowledge and views.

I think the most interesting topic that we talked about was the Olympics and the bidding process. Mr. Meeson’s presentation was great because it showed the many aspects of what is involved in bidding for major events. Seeing a real life example of a possible career is always beneficial because it helps determine what you might like to do and what opportunities are out there.

I will take a lot away from this class. I think it helped me look at a lot of different aspects of our major and will help me in my internship and future career. I observed other people’s viewpoints and opinions and they help broaden my own perspective on things, because of their diverse backgrounds and experiences.

The Gender Trap

After reading “The Gender Trap” by Emine Saner, it was amazing to learn about some of the more famous occurrences when female athletes were caught in the gender trap. I couldn’t believe all of the tests they make many female athlete go through. I can’t imagine how degrading it must be for those athletes to have to do all of those gender-determination tests in front of the doctors. In the case of Soundarajan, it must have been heartbreaking and humiliating to have to give back her medal from the 2006 Asian games after failing a gender test. In the case of Dora Ratjen, I was not surprised when I read that Hitler had his ways of cheating, trying to show the supremacy of the Aryan race. Hermann Ratjen, who was part of the Hitler Youth, was forced by Nazis to enter the 1936 Olympic Games as a woman. According to Saner (2008), “It is believed that as many as 10,000 East German athletes were caught up in a nightmarish state-sponsored attempt to build a race of superhuman communist sports heroes and force-fed cocktails of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.” It was terrible to learn that Heidi Krieger was treated and used like that. From Saner (2008), it was pretty crazy to read about Stella Walsh, and how “in 1980, Walsh was killed by mistake during an armed robbery at a shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio. The postmortem revealed she had male genitalia, although this did not prove that she was a man as she was also found to have both male and female chromosomes, a genetic condition known as mosaicism.”