Roisin Willis great essay

Genuine love for her and her love for the sport. But these kids have to stop buying into this milesplit crap.

Classic LetsRun. A thread about a girl starts up, and the first reply is about her looks. Cmon guys, try to do a bit better.

"Cute" can refer to someone's personality or sense of humor. It can be used to simply mean that the individual is generally endearing.

So what does it say about YOU that you see the word applied to a high school girl and you immediately interpret it to refer to her looks?

This is kind of the point.

Part of the sexist abuse is using ambiguous words so as to do it in plain sight. (“Interesting dress”, “cutie” etc)

If that’s not what is meant, the speaker/writer can choose their words better. But obviously that is what was meant.

waiting for the day that male runners on letsrun get referred to as "cute" in terms of their personality and sense of humor.

The best question to ask yourself is, "is this how we talk about men/boys?"

Ask yourself this the next time you talk about...

a female high school runner going to "burn out" (Puberty gets blamed a lot here for girls, but so many male phenoms burn out too. Take a look at Footlocker and Nike National Champions and ask yourselves where most of them are today.)

a female high school runner not showing "sportsmanship" because she didn't shake hands with everyone after a race, engage with the press the way you wanted them to etc. (Cade Flatt literally said he wanted to make his competitors regret signing up for the 800 and we all celebrated him and Katelyn Tuohy has been lambasted on this site because she walked off the track after a race without shaking every runner's hand).

When you downplay an up and coming female runner's successes because they will "probably burn out". The fawning over Newbury Park has been interesting since whenever a girls high school team has that level of success we assume they all have eating disorders and will burn out. And in terms of individuals, the Brojos have literally said they don't report as much on high school girls because they need to see where they are in a few years and when it comes to high school boys, they drool all over their successes, even though most high school male phenoms do not live up to their success either.

Girls getting described as cutie, comments on their looks--because comments on looks goes both ways. I've seen the ugly side of this too. The side where high school girls are torn apart for their looks too. Mary Cain describes logging into this site as a 12 year old and seeing horrible things written about her appearance.

I apologize for how my post was interpreted.

That's a sufficient apology for this situation, and I'm not being sarcastic. There are some ultrasensitive blowhards around here.

Of course I would only say that anonymously lest I be judged for not being sensitive enough

A classic non-apology. Like, "I'm sorry you feel that way."

A better one would be "I apologize for writing the post that way."

How foolish of a world we live in where describing her vibrant energy, high spirits, strong character and infectious smile is interpreted as creepy. She possesses all of those things.

I agree. Good read and well written. Very mature writing.

Has anyone tried to measure whether top male & female HS runners are equally likely to have successful post-HS running careers? You could do something like take the top 5 finishers at Footlocker & Nike for the years 2005-14 and see how many of them ever finished in the top 10 at NCAA XC or top 5 in any event at NCAA outdoors or top 3 at NCAA indoors, something like that. Or you could see how many do anything noteworthy as pros. I get the impression that most people on the board think that significantly more males than females would go on to be successful, but it looks like you don't think there would be much difference.

Fantastic essay. Thanks for sharing!

It was very well written and insightful.

Gavin Sherry's on the other hand was a load of pretentious claptrap, a catalogue of long words with little meaningful content

If you had the chance to "write" for Milesplit would you say 'no thanks' or 'please can I?'

I wouldnt respond at all. You should implement your own website and follow your state that way. Anyone who is gullible enough "to work" for milesplit didnt have much going themselves in the first place and will end up paying to work for it. They have to essentially live in their mom's basement in order to survive. That will be consistent after they leave milesplit too (because everyone does)

Happy now?