Elizabeth Lambert, the 20-year-old former University of New Mexico soccer player on scholarship, gave her first interview this week since the incident earlier this month when she pulled an opponent to the ground by her ponytail, and was permanently suspended from her team.
The New York Times reported that Lambert “watched the video a handful of times and does not recognize herself pulling down Brigham Young’s Kassidy Shumway.”
I recognize her. A former competitive soccer player myself, I played against plenty of Elizabeth Lamberts, and I played defense aggressively, like she did.
Pugnacious play is not uncommon in soccer, particularly at the highest levels, where it so often separates a winning team from a losing one. Does that make what Lambert did kosher? Of course not. Are forceful actions like hers more common than most people think? If I had 2010 World Cup tickets, I’d bet them that they are. The game-changer is that the incident was caught on tape. The video’s viral propagation has removed Lambert’s action from the context in which it occurred. It has been misappropriated in some pretty disgusting ways that are bad for women everywhere, whether you care about sports or not.
