Janice Sansone Rick writes...
>The ladies classes suffered when they lost the some of these >great gals
who really could show them how to excel at this
>sport. Many of them still help and try to encourage, but
>they have left their ranks and are in fact no longer
>"one of them".
Janice and I have been having, I think, great off-line conversations about
this. I want to thank her for bringing up this topic in a fresh, new way,
giving us all a chance to think about this issue differently. She's the
first woman, I think, to come out and say that there should be separate
men's and women's classes, and I greatly respect where she's coming from.
But here is why I respectfully disagree. True, you can say Ladies classes
are suffering with more women switching to Open. However, there's another
way you can look at this. Look at how the Open classes have improved with
more women running in them. And look at how the women who DO run Open have
improved. I would have to say that women, on a whole, are driving faster now
than they ever have.
Yes, there is always that counter argument. You can say, for example, that
the ASP Ladies competition suffered when Shauna Marinus ran in ASP Open. I
wonder how much faster the other drivers in ASP L would have gone had Shauna
ran with them. I can't argue that at all.
But what about the other side: look at what a great race we saw in ASP! And
what if the other women also ran Open? Would they not drive faster, too?
Anyway, there's always that other way to look at things. But my opinion is,
I think that if women HAD to run Ladies, the competition in the Open classes
would, in the long run, suffer. That's my opinion, and I'm stickin' with it.
Open means men and women. Always has, since 1973.
Nonetheless, I can't fault anyone for running Ladies. That, too, has been
around since 1973. What my mom told me then, and still says now (she helped
start these parallel Ladies classes eons ago) was that things will change
with the times. And I believe they are. Naturally, just like she said.
Mothers always do know best. That's what she keeps telling me.
Can't we just leave things as they are, and go play in our cars now?
That's what I wish I had said yesterday when I was so grumpy (hungry).
Wait a minute. I thought I was going to unsubscribe from this thing.
Katie Kelly
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