The Mercury News published a piece that has been working its way around all of the women's sports blogs this week. The story is about Bianca Garza, a girl on the varsity football team at San Jose's Andrew Hill High School.

Girls playing football is not such a rare thing: there are around 1,000 girls on high school teams in the United States this year. What's unique is that Garza, who stands at 5' 5", plays on the defensive line.

Check out the video:

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Good news from ESPN: They will be televising 148 NCAA women's basketball games this season, including all of the NCAA tournament games. (Click here for a full schedule.)

The first on the list of games is the State Farm Tip-Off Classic, which happens this very weekend and signifies that women's basketball season has come again, at last.

Here are my predictions for this year's best regular-season headlines:

3) Courtney Paris diagnosed as actual rebounding machine.

Paris holds the record for double-doubles and is hot on the heels of the game's greatest rebounders. With 1,531 rebounds under her belt, she's already in the top five. She only needs three more rebounds — which, let's face it, she'll probably get in the first give minutes of the season — to shoot past Cheryl Taylor and Cheryl Miller, to secure a spot on the top three.

2) Geno Auriemma uncovers plan by NCAA coaches to build a time machine. … continue reading

They’re baaack: Connecticut won 44 of the 45 votes in the AP preseason women’s basketball poll, placing them firmly atop a pretty familiar list. Of course, these aren’t the Huskies of the Taurasi Era. This is a team that has spent years rebuilding, a team that was just thankful to make it to the Final Four last year. And Geno Auriemma knows it.

"For this team to have a preseason No. 1 ranking is special," he said. "They have battled through a lot. Finally making the Final Four last year and now earning this ranking means something to them."

UConn's arch rival (even though they don’t play each other anymore), Tennessee, is lucky to be sitting at number seven. They graduated all five starters last year, and the rumors from inside Knoxville are that Pat Summitt is changing her starting lineup every day. … continue reading

Imagine being so competitive that if you get beaten at Monopoly, you study so hard that you become a Wall Street mogul; or being beaten at Jenga, so you become an architect; or getting reamed at, say, Candy Land, so you study to become a world-famous baker. That's what happened to Perry Lee Barber — not with candy, but with baseball.

Once upon a time, Barber lost a game of trivia because she knew so little about baseball. So she started studying, and accidentally fell in love with the game.

Barber started umpiring in the little leagues 25 years ago, and worked her way all the way up to calling games for Major League Baseball spring training. … continue reading

When Cammi Granato was a child, her mom would drop her off at the ice-skating rink for figure-skating lessons, and as soon as her mom left the parking lot, Cammi would sneak to the adjoining rink to play hockey with the boys. Her refusal to wear sequins paid off: Last week Cammi Granato was the first woman to be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

Granato's story plays like an against-all-odds Disney movie. … continue reading

The line between being a sports fan and being in love with a team or player is so thin that it barely exists most days — which is why I never know how good former Tennessee Lady Vols basketball players are, really. I've obsessively followed the Lady Vols since I was a wee lass, I've played on the floor of Thompson-Boling arena, I've ridden shotgun in Pat Summitt's SUV, twice.

So, I guess what I need is some perspective about Candace Parker.

Take a look at the last six months of Parker's life, won't you? She won an NCAA championship at Tennessee, along with the Naismith Trophy and the AP Player of the Year Award. She won two ESPYs. She went first in the WNBA draft. She won WNBA Rookie of the Year unanimously, and she won WNBA MVP. Oh, and she also helped bring home a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.

Her jersey was the most popular in the NBA store all year, and once her jersey was available, sales rose 50 percent over last season. … continue reading

In September 1973, Time magazine wrote that the impending "Battle of the Sexes" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs could not have happened five years prior, and "five years from now [will] not mean anything."

In their post-match coverage, they wrote, "[It] was a performance full of tinsel and glamour, signifying nothing — except that the hustle is over."

Boy, did Time magazine ever have it wrong.

In fact, in 1973, almost everyone had it wrong. The Vegas odds were on Riggs, sports commentators favored Rigges, newspaper columnists predicted Riggs, and when Chris Evert was asked on prime time national television who she thought would win the match, she confidently answered, "Bobby Riggs."

In a recent documentary on HBO, Evert covers her face with her hands when she's shown that clip. Laughing, she says, "I was such an idiot."

Last Tuesday was the 35th anniversary of "The Battle of the Sexes" — the epoch that has become the women's sports' world's equivalent of the BC/AD split. … continue reading

In case you missed the headlines on the front page of every major newspaper in America yesterday morning, let me sum up the news for you: Your money is still on fire, and if you are an American taxpayer, you're about to win $700 billion worth of private debt. Yet here's something to smile about: One of the few organizations experiencing growth in this plummeting economy is the WNBA.

WNBA.com traffic is up, attendance is up and TV ratings are up 20 percent. While everyone else is downsizing, the WNBA is actually growing.

Part of the league's success can be attributed to the fact that eight teams are now independent of the NBA. (And, in my opinion, the more the WNBA can do to distance itself from the NBA, the better.) The Olympics exposure boosted public interest, leading to a record 46 sellouts. And this rookie class (Candice Wiggins, Candace Parker, Sylvia Fowles) has certainly lived up to the hype.

The WNBA is even hoping to grow itself two more teams in the next five years.

Tonight, you can continue to boost the WNBA's numbers by tuning in to ESPN2 to watch the conclusion of the conference semifinals. It's the Fever and the Shock at 7 p.m. ET, and the Sparks and the Storm at 9 p.m. … continue reading

After the Olympic closing ceremonies, there was an exodus of reporters from China, even though the story was far from over. Before the women from the U.S. basketball team had even returned to their WNBA franchises, the Paralympics were underway in Beijing. Close to 4,200 athletes from 148 countries took part in this years games — among them Melissa Stockwell, a swimmer from Colorado Springs, Colo.

The Beijing Paralympic Games end tomorrow, and during their run, Stockwell failed to qualify for the 400-meter freestyle S9, her best event. But I have a feeling she'll be back in 2012, as making comebacks is Stockwell's specialty.

In April 2004, Second Lieutenant Stockwell of the U.S. Army found herself leading a convoy of supply vehicles in Iraq. It was her first mission, one she'd excitedly called her mom and dad about the night before. Ten minutes in, her truck hit an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), bounced off a guardrail and careened into a house. Stockwell remembers seeing her pants covered in blood, and then waking up in a hospital, her husband Dick right beside her.

"I think something happened to my leg," she said.

"It's gone," he said.

Fifteen surgeries and 20 blood transfusions later, Stockwell was left with what she calls her "Little Leg," six inches of bone and muscle where her left leg used to be. … continue reading

I’ll bet LPGA Tour Commissioner Carolyn Bivens can now spell “xenophobia” backward and forward and in her sleep. Last Monday, when Golfweek broke the news that in 2009 the LPGA would begin suspending players who were not proficient in English, the collective sports world dropped its jaw in unison.

By Friday, the outcry from professional golfers (male and female), sports reporters, sponsors and politicians had forced Bivens into hiding, leaving Deputy LPGA Commissioner Libba Galloway to clean up the mess.

Bivens did, however, release a statement:

The LPGA has received valuable feedback from a variety of constituents regarding the recently announced penalties attached to our effective communications policy. We have decided to rescind those penalty provisions.

That Bivens and Co. were shocked by public response is ridiculous.

There are 121 international players from 26 countries on this year’s LPGA tour. The LPGA’s top player, Lorena Ochoa, is from Mexico. The most dominant player of the last decade, Annika Sorenstam, is Swedish. And all of the majors this year were won by international players: Ochoa, Yani Tseng from Taiwan, and Inbee Park and Ji-Yai Shin from South Korea. … continue reading

"Keeping Score" is a new weekly sports blog we'll be running on AfterEllen.com, written by your favorite Lesbian Scientistics expert, Stuntdouble. Check back every Tuesday for her report on women in sports.

Just a few weeks ago in Beijing, Venus and Serena Williams stood hand-in-hand atop the gold medal platform, celebrating their Olympic doubles victory. Now it's back to opposite sides of the net for a quarterfinal showdown at the U.S. Open. Ah, the uniquely complex relationship between sisters.

Both Venus and Serena dismissed their fourth-round opponents easily in yesterday's U.S. Open matches. Seventh-seeded Venus trounced Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska 6-1, 6-3 in the afternoon, and fourth-seeded Serena toppled France's Severine Bremond 6-2, 6-2 in the night game.

"I just feel like, you know, we're both playing better and feeling better," Serena said. "We just had a turn in our careers. We're just playing the way we should play." … continue reading