Those 14 year old boys they play are better than varsity high school teams. The USWNT probably wouldn’t win HS championships in California or Texas, but they would compete for titles in some states, especially if you allowed them to play mid-size or small schools. And they would absolutely kick the shit out of a lot of bad varsity teams.
I can’t cite anything because the USWNT wouldn’t play random scrub HS teams. They tend to scrimmage youth national teams or top level club teams. But, the club I played for growing up produced professional men and women, and I started on my HS team. I’m broadly familiar with the skill level we’re talking about here.
And Rheaume, in particular (as that Wikipedia article notes), went on to play in men’s minor league hockey for several years (in the IHL, ECHL, and WCHL). She played in 24 games over that stretch, for a total record as a goalie of 7 wins, 6 losses, and 2 ties, so I think it’s fair to say that she was good enough to compete effectively at that “second-tier” level.
Julie Harshbarger played both football (as a placekicker) and soccer at Benedictine University (a Division III school in suburban Chicago), and went on to play five or six seasons with minor league indoor football teams in the Chicago area. She was named Special Teams Player of the Year in two different leagues (CIFL in 2014, AIF 2015), so she was good enough that she was more than a gimmick.
I was the scoreboard operator and assistant statistician for the Chicago Blitz, her team in 2015, and got to see her kick. She was noticeably more accurate than the kickers on the other teams they played that season.
It looks like you pulled those stats from her Wikpedia entry, for her first season in arena football (2010). Unfortunately, stats are hard to come by for a lot of those teams for which she played, but just for reference, here are her stats from 2017 and 2018: across those two seasons, she was 50% on field goals and 93% on XPs.
And, yes, she was playing for minor-league indoor football teams, which tend to be pretty ephemeral, operating on a shoestring budget, in front of tiny crowds. Most of the players on those teams were guys from small-college programs, who were never going to be good enough to get more than maybe a tryout with an NFL or CFL team, but wanted to keep playing football.
I’m under no delusions that Harshbarger is (or was) good enough to even have a chance at playing in the NFL (or even the XFL or USFL, for that matter). But, the fact that she did win two “player of the year” awards indicates that she wasn’t with those teams just as a curiosity.
On this note: top-level car racing isn’t just a “hop in the car and talent will show through” deal. F1 drivers are starting at seven or eight years old, and it costs MONEY to enter all the different leagues and training before reaching a major academy that can help with costs. Just a season in a Formula 3 car will run over a million bucks, just for the seat in a car. There’s a reason the number one indicator for current drivers in F1 is “rich or connected parents”. There’s currently a small push to increase the number of female competitors at the top levels, but it takes time for that to trickle up through the age brackets.
She won special teams player of the year because she kicked 5 field goals. That number tells me that kickers are basically irrelevant. Double checking intuition: her field goals were 4.7% of the team’s points that year. Looking at the Patriots that year, FGs were 21.3% of their points. I think you can have a curiosity of the roster when their ability doesn’t matter and if the curiosity gets 20 more people in the seats you double attendance.
No, they aren’t. If they were, they would be playing on the U18 team and not the U15 team. The same issue applies - you can be as “skilled” at soccer as you like, an adolescent boy or a woman isn’t going to be able to compete with a full-grown adult male who is a competitive athlete. Maybe the kids or the women could beat a bunch of adult male weekend public park schlubs (I imagine they could) but not 18-year-old males who are actually the result of a competitive selection process for a group that practices and trains as a soccer team. They’re just too fast and too strong. There’s no amount of “smarter tactics” or “better teamwork” that overcomes the fact that an adult male competitive athlete’s muscles and reaction time in goal will totally overwhelm any attempt by a woman or a 13-year-old to sneak a ball in by superior strategic play. And so on for every element on the rest of the field - when the opponent can simply run past or steamroll you, every single time, even in a matchup of their worst player and your best, and it just gets worse as the game goes on because they have more stamina and no need to exert maximum effort, there’s just no chance.
Here’s an article with some pictures of the lowest-ranked varsity boys’ soccer team in the least populous state: State soccer: Camels' season comes to end. Please let me know which women you think are physically competitive with them.
Too lazy to do a Google search right now, but how do (or would) women compare at top levels with men in sports such as darts, billiards/snooker, bowling, or curling? Is the ability to throw a bowling ball or curling stone faster/harder a major factor?
I’m finding several articles, like the one below, which state that, likely thanks to greater upper-body strength and muscle mass, men, on average, are able to get greater speed and spin on their ball, and overall, typically achieve higher averages in bowling than women.
What are you talking about? the U18 team is better than the u15 team, but that’s not a high school team. You don’t know what a club team is let alone a professional development team is, do you?
Probably most of the USWNT players are faster and have better endurance. All would be significantly more skilled.
I don’t think you have a clue what high school soccer is like. Significant portions of the players on poor teams don’t have fundamental skills like trapping and passing. Forget tactics or correct marking.
There were a couple girls on boys teams in my division in high school, if the school couldn’t form a girls team in the Spring. They weren’t good. One started and wasn’t the worst player in the league. That the USWNT would beat bad HS teams isn’t controversial.
Absolutely no chance. Any 18-year-old male competitive athlete who has trained by running up and down a soccer field for a season’s worth of practice and games would put up 100m dash times comparable to national champions in women’s track and field. This is just reality.
That’s my whole point - there is a limit to how much superior “fundamentals” can overcome gross physical differences. If the goalie for the boys’ team is so much quicker compared to the maximum speed at which a woman can kick a soccer ball that he can jump in front of the shot every time, no matter how beautiful the women’s teamwork and strategy to set up the shot was and no matter how poor the boy’s technique in goal is, then the women will never score. And this situation is exactly the case when you’re talking about 18-year-old males who are competitive athletes to the point of “passing the tryout process and training with the soccer coach for a season.” So on for play on the field - all the wonderful “trapping and passing” that works against other women is just going to get the ball turned over on 90% of plays by men who are faster than these tactics were ever designed for and are just going to intercept the passes at will.
These are the sorts of problems that the “WNBA all-stars” are going to run into against UConn or against a high school team. Everything you’ve practiced to get shooters open means nothing because the opponent can always use raw quickness to catch up to you before the ball is in the air. None of your screens do anything because moving you out of the way is effortless. Your defensive strategies that force opponents to take low-percentage shots in traffic mean nothing when your opponents are a foot taller than you and shoot from above your head every time; every shot is essentially an open look.
Curling mixed doubles format is set up to account for the fact that men throw and sweep harder than women. It’s been long enough that I don’t remember the exact details of how the rules are different to affect strategy on the limiting of takeouts, but just men vs just women would not be equal
This story takes me back 10+ years ago, then in my late 40s, when I was kicking a soccer ball around with a female HS player friend on my front lawn. She was 18, a talented athlete, and cute as can be, but her really fancy footwork still couldn’t get the ball past me. I had never touched a soccer ball in my life, but had good speed, so I found blocking her advance very easy. She kept barking things like, “What’s going on?” and “I don’t get this!” She got very red-faced and frustrated. She thought I’d be a pushover and was surprised I wasn’t. Anyway, she soon left for college and made their soccer team. I’m sure a professional women’s soccer player would have cleaned my clock, but not that high school senior.
You’re just completely talking nonsense your entire post.
Women’s high school track 100m record is 10.94. That’s faster than the vast vast majority of male high school soccer players. Probably faster than 95% of them. It’s probably faster than most professional soccer players. Casey Kreuger is a USWNT soccer player that won 400m and 800m state championship in track. 800m in 2:18. That’s also faster than the majority of male high school soccer players and probably about what you would expect for a male D1 prospect.
And my point is 1) this physical difference probably wouldn’t exist at the low end of high school soccer (it would at the high end) and 2) the difference wouldn’t be enough to let the boys win at the low end. Bad high school soccer players might have never even played soccer before going out for the team. They are not phenomenal athletes. They don’t play or practice in the off-season.
Weird how the women put two in against the FC Dallas team. The team that you don’t understand is a professional academy team that had multiple future professional soccer players on it. A team that would dominate good high school boys teams and beat bad ones 15-0 or more.