Those darn gurlz

 Yesterday was National Girls and Women In Sports Day, an occasion for celebration in most quarters but something altogether different in the precincts of the perpetually aggrieved. This is America in 2023, sadly. We can't have nice things without some jackass trying to ruin them.

And so certain politicos of a certain vile stripe used the occasion to once again attack transgender Americans, saying by gosh-and-golly we're not gonna to let THOSE weirdos take over women's sports -- and never mind there's absolutely zero evidence transgender athletes actually are doing so.

There are, you see, only a handful of transgender athletes participating in women's sports nationally. And none of them are exactly "taking over." So this is all just another made-up outrage batty politicos use to keep the perpetually aggrieved pulling the right levers in the voting booth.

Did I say "perpetually aggrieved"?

Let's move on, then, to the troglodyte corner of the Magic Twitter Thingy, which chose yesterday to indulge more No Gurlz Allowed nonsense. This time the trogs got all exercised because ESPN's website flagged a breaking news item about WNBA star Breanna Stewart jumping from the Seattle Storm to the New York Liberty. Gurlz basketball over Tom Brady! How despicably "woke" of them!

Except ...

Except, as usual, it was a whole lot of bull pucky.

The Stewart item, see, had been proceeded by a Brady breaking news item. By their very nature, those items only stay at the top of the site for a short period of time. Then they go into the site's Top Headlines file.

And so not long after the Stewart breaking news item, the lead stories on the site were all about Brady. That they weren't earlier is because, well, someone had to write those stories. They don't just instantly appear out of the ether.

You'd think the troglodytes, some of whom claim to be journalists, would understand that. But acknowledging as much would have ruined their narrative, which is that Woke ESPN keeps trying to shove Gurlz Sports down America's throat even though they suck and America doesn't care about them.

Let me tell you something about that, from the perspective of someone who remembers when there were no Gurlz Sports.

This goes back to 1977, when the Indiana girls high school basketball tournament was in its infancy. It goes back to a certain winter's afternoon in a high school gym in Lapel, In., a go-to-market town halfway between Anderson and Noblesville. And it goes back to the Lapel girls and the Frankton girls playing in the local sectional.

My memory isn't what it used to be, honestly. But it seems to me there were approximately 47 jump balls and as many fouls in what could be only be described as a parody of basketball.

I was 22 years old then.

When I got out of the sportswriting biz for good, I was 65 and had covered dozens of girls basketball games in the interim. And what I covered in 2010 or 2014 or 2017 bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I saw in that gym at Lapel in 1977.

What I covered later was skill and passion and by-God basketball. What I saw was a bunch of athletes for whom Title IX opened the door when their grandmothers were playing, and who had learned how to play the game at a high level in the decades since.

Which tends to happen once you provide people with opportunity.

And what National Girls and Women In Sports Day was actually celebrating, no matter how much the jackasses tried to ruin it.