mike: so what advice would your mom give you; carnie or medical testing?

me: our coach was a bit of a prick, he didn't care at all about the female runners, all he cared about was you, your brother and ricardo. it wasn't until wispers of x and I getting scholarships did he pay any attention.
paul: you are right, I learnt for him and I'm the same way. I mean girl runners are cute and all but I don't take them seriously.

sometimes the things that come out of peoples mouths are just shocking. he went on from there to say that article 9 or something like that which requires equal funding of female and male sports has been so problimatic, how women don't nessisarily want to be athelets and so this article creates a lower level of uninterested athletes and the males suffer. he went on to talk about how football gets too much funding (true enough) but his complant here was since there isn't a girls football team they get so many other sports when the male ones are being cut.

I hadn't seen this guy since highschool, he got a full scholarship to the states. So did the other two top guy runners at our school. yet the top women runners got nada. In my forth year of highschool there was starting to be talk about scholarship, if I was able to do a certain time then I could get one to the states. York and UofT were inquiring aswell, not for scholarship of course, canada only gives academic money. For the first time in the four year our coach paid attention to me and started to ask myself and this girl I ran with on his sacret runs, that only his special boys went on. It was a much too little and much too late.

There were other problems in the track team that I didn't have to space to talk about. My final year I didn't go on the ontario champion trip since the year before while in a hotel this guy from the team had forced me to suck his dick. I was still going on the trip and I was scare. He came up to me when he found out I wasn't going and asked if it was because of him, that he would consider not going if I went if that was the reason but I was too messed up over it to go. Not to mention that I was not training that much that year since I was scared to run by myself due to the stocker in my neighbourhood.

The runner I ran with also had a few issues, they didn't stop her to the same extent by they did slow her down. She was dating one of the top runners and he raped her. then perhaps from that experience and perhaps because her dad who went to the olympics and put tons of pressure on her and perhaps because you can't just be a women athelet you still have be to a sexual object at the same time she developed bulimia.

These things that slowed us down seem to be things that mainly happen to women. with these issues and the fact that we didn't have support from our coaches or even anyone to talk to about these issues we stopped running and paid for our own education.

When paul said that girl runners are cute and thats about it, I wondered if he ever sat down and actually thought about the issues. they seem so clear to me. the only women I know in my year who got a scholarship when to a private all girl school. So you have the money that is helping you in terms of confidence, resources and expectation and you dont' have the coachs picking one gender over another to concentrate on.