Gender Drama At The 1936 Berlin Olympics

Since this has come up repeatedly once again in the context of international sport, thought it was time to point out the history behind why Caster Semenya and other women throughout the 20th and early 21st century have undergone gender testing.

The watershed year for the paranoia behind men competing in women's international sporting events is 1936.

Nazi Germany wanted the Berlin Olympics to be a political showcase for the Third Reich. They set the goal of surpassing the 21 total medals Germany won in the 1932 Los Angeles Games, and one way they sought to do that was sneaking their 'supermen' into the women's events.

To accomplish that goal, the Nazis forced Hitler Youth member Hermann Ratjen to live and compete for three years as Dora Ratjen.

While Nazi Germany did lead all nations in winning 89 total medals and 33 golds at the Berlin Games, one medal they didn't get was in the women's Olympic high jump. Ratjen finished fourth in the event. At the 1938 European championships in Vienna Ratjen did set a then women's world record of 5 feet 5.75 inches in the high jump.

Dora was busted while traveling in Germany after the European championships. While wearing feminine attire Ratjen was spotted at a train station with five o'clock shadow on his face. A doctor was summoned, and the truth about Dora's actual genitalia was revealed. Ratjen was barred from competing in international athletics and went back to his life as Hermann.

Hermann Ratjen told his story in 1957, then faded from the spotlight until his death in April 2008

The 1936 Berlin Games also brought us the drama between bitter rivals Helen Stephens and Stella Walsh.

Walsh set the then 100m world record of 11.7 seconds in 1934 and was the defending Olympic champion. But starting in 1935 Stephens served noticed that she was the up and coming running phenom.

At Stephens' first meet, she not only beat the 'world's fastest woman' in the 50m dash, she tied the world record. Stephens also set a new world record for the 200 meters, a new world record in the standing broad jump, and won the shot put event.

When spectators congratulated her on being the new 'fastest woman in the world' and for beating Stella Walsh, she asked, "Who is Stella Walsh?" That comment got back to Stella Walsh, pissed her off and it was on like Donkey Kong between the two women after that.

In the 1936 Games Walsh chose to run for Poland just as she did at the 1932 Games. It didn't change the fact she was having trouble beating Stephens in the States.

During their careers, Stephens never lost to Walsh in their head to head matchups, and the 1936 100m Olympic final was no exception.

Stephens not only beat Walsh, but ran it in a 11.5 second time that broke Walsh's two year old world record.

Walsh, angry about being beaten by her rival, promptly threw 'that's a man' shade at Stephens which the Polish press amplified. She protested to officials that Stephens was really a man falsely running as a woman because no woman could run that fast.

German officials examined Stephens, pronounced her female, and the protest was disallowed.

This incident was ironic in light of Walsh's tragic December 4, 1980 death at age 69. She was struck by a stray bullet in the wake of a robbery attempt of a Cleveland, OH discount store while unloading her shopping cart to her car.

Her autopsy revealed she had mosaicism, which meant that, chromosomally, she was mostly, but not all, male but had androgynous looks to live her life as and be raised female.

So you can thank Nazi Germany, a bitter rivalry between two sprinters and subsequent eastern Bloc cheating for the current gender testing drama that's occurring now.

Welcome To 'Williams'-don 2009

It's late June, and that means to a tennis fan it's time to break out the strawberries and cream. The 2009 Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club have started.

Despite another frustrating trip to Paris last month for Venus and Serena, the Williams sisters are favorites to take another Venus (Williams) Rosewater Dish back to the States.

Wimbledon has been their personal playground over the last decade. Venus has won five Wimbledon titles since 2000, including the 2007 and 2008 ones.

The sisters have played each other in two previous Wimbledon finals besides the 2008 one. Little Sis won the two previous title matchups in 2002 and 2003.

The Williams sisters are on opposite sides of the ladies singles draw (hallelujah) and could potentially meet in the finals. They are the defending ladies doubles champions and will be heavily favored to repeat.

The tradition drenched All England Club will be the venue for the 2012 Olympics tennis competition. That's a fact which probably hasn't escaped the defending doubles gold medallists from the Beijing Games attention.

Centre Court will also be sporting a brand new retractable roof, so bye bye rain delays.

The Championships begin play June 22 and run through July 5. Do my favorite tennis playing sisters have enough game to make it back to Centre Court for the ladies singles and doubles championship matches?

Well find out over the next two weeks.

It's Past Time For Women To Start Loving Sports

"No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid."

Ever since President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law on June 23, 1972 it has had a far reaching effect on the numbers of women earning postgraduate degrees.

Before Title IX, many schools refused to admit women or enforced strict quotas in postgraduate programs. That was reflected in the fact that in 1972, the year Title IX became law, women only received 9% of the medical degrees awarded, 7% of law degrees and 25% of the US citizens receiving doctorates being women.

By 1994, those numbers increased to 38% of medical degrees, 43% of law degrees and 44% of all doctoral degrees awarded to US citizens were women.

One of the prominent effects of Title IX besides the increase in the percentages of women receiving postgraduate degrees is in the world of sports.

Athletics has also created the most controversy regarding Title IX, but its gains have also been noteworthy.

It's not unusual on any given day to turn on the television and see women's intercollegiate sports on TV. There's infinitely more attention focused on women athletes during the Olympics and on high school level girls sports compared to when I was growing up in the late 70's.

But one thing that bothers me as a sports loving person is the dismissive attitude some women have toward all things athletic. It gets to the point when in some cases, women who love or participate in sports are greeted with less than complimentary verbal epithets or have their femininity questioned.

Last year Seventeen magazine in conjunction with the WNBA partnered for a comprehensive survey that was published in the magazine's September 2008 issue.

WNBA President Donna Orender stated, "We are pleased to partner with Seventeen magazine on this important survey as we know first hand how the role of sports can develop young girls into leaders.

"The women of the WNBA are strong, passionate and determined individuals who exhibit these traits both on and off the court. As a result, we are true believers in the significance of participation in sports for all girls and women."

The Seventeen/WNBA survey revealed that 83% of teen girls play sports with basketball ranked as the number one participatory sport.

Girls play sports for a variety of reasons, but the top reason found in this survey is to exercise (68.4%). Other top reasons included forming friendships, competing and representing their schools.

Challenges that young female sports enthusiasts endure include insecurities; 33% of girls who don't play sports say it's because they're worried that they wouldn't be good at it.

In addition, 35% of girls also say their teams don't get as much equipment or field time as the boys' teams and 35% of girls have heard their peers make homophobic remarks about female athletes.

The Seventeen/WNBA survey also revealed that 66% of teen girls believe that cheerleading is a sport, not some sideline event, and 71% think female cheerleaders should cheer at girls' sports events.

Despite these factors keeping some girls from playing sports, teens today are able to look to inspiring women professional athletes and Olympians such as Lisa Leslie, Mia Hamm, Diana Taurasi, Serena and Venus Williams, Candace Parker and Florence Griffith-Joyner.

As young teens hone their athletic skills, they look upon these women as they endeavor to take women's sports to a whole new level and dismiss outdated stereotypes about the women who play them.

You also have young women such as Brittney Griner who are following in their role models footsteps and preparing to exceed even their lofty performance standards.

But despite the overwhelming evidence of the benefits of sports participation for girls and women, you still have mind-numbing fluff coming from women's magazines such as Cosmo that spout erroneous, outdated stereotypes.

In addition, women athletes in addition to having to battle feminine gender policing also have to contend with the sexist attitudes of male sports fans.

Led by the male dominated sports journalism world, the dismissive attitudes of sports talk radio and sports journalists about the level of play filter down to the potential male fan base and male athletes.

We should insist upon and demand consistent, professional coverage of women's sports from the male dominated sorts journalism culture.

Why am I so adamant about it? Sports teaches important life lessons that non athletes often miss out on. You learn that even if you practice hard and execute your game plan flawlessly, sometimes you come up short. You learn how to work well with others as part of a team. You learn how to lose with grace and win with class.

It's a pride builder when you come from a zero skills base to a higher skills level in your chosen sport and you see it translated into better performance on the field.

It's also a major self esteem boost when you kick the winning goal, get the key hit that wins the game for your team or you dig deep, pull yourself out of a love-40 hole in a critical game in a tennis match and come back to win, or run your personal best time to win a medal.

These are lessons that the male population has had ample opportunities to absorb (and some peeps need to reabsorb) and enjoyed through sports competition. The Women's Sports Foundation seconds my thoughts on the matter as well.




We should not only enthusiastically support the young girls and women in our lives who participate in sports, we should also take it upon ourselves to support women's club, high school, intercollegiate and professional sports as well.

I was a proud Houston Comets season ticket holder back home for several years during their championship run and it was the best money I've ever spent.

I saw the money I spent on my season tickets it as my investment toward keeping the WNBA viable and alive for future generations of sports loving girls. Those young girls who marveled at the play of WNBA pioneers such as Cynthia Cooper are now grown up and getting their opportunity to play in the league.

Even though I'm still pissed about the WNBA leadership not doing enough to give a local group enough time to organize and keep my hometown franchise alive, I still support the league.

Far from being something that women should ignore, sports and participation in them by their daughters should be embraced and encouraged.

There They Go Again-RepubliKKKan Racism

It didn't take long for the right wingers to attack President Obama's pick of Judge Sotomayor.

The privileged white males of the GOP and their puppet ruler Michael Steele within hours of the nomination were merrily attacking her education, cherry picking rulings from her long judicial career, called her an 'affirmative action hire' and based on a snippet of a YouTube video were calling her 'racist'.

It takes one to know one.

I found it laughable that two GOP college dropouts in Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove would have the cojones to call a summa cum laude Princetnn grad and editor of the Yale Law Review 'stupid'.

You boys been chomping on those Hater tots again haven't you?

But these aren't the only white sheet wearing haters that have come out of the GOP woodpile.





Sen. James Imhofe (R-OK) stated, "Of primary concern to me is whether or not Judge Sotomayor follows the proper role of judges and refrains from legislating from the bench. Some of her recent comments on this matter have given me cause for great concern. In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.

Oh yeah, and the 110 other people who sat on the Court, especially the 107 past and present white males who occupied those seats all made rulings without their personal biases and upbringing coming into play.

The bottom line is that the GOP is hatin' on the fact that President Obama has once again put them in a political bind. They can't go overboard on attacking this historic choice or else they not only look like the intolerant bigots they are, they risk losing the support of Latinos for decades and cement their status as the 'rich white male party.'

Supreme Court Sistahs?

One of the reasons I definitely wanted President Obama in the Oval Office is because I recognized years ago the fact that we have several people old enough, especially on the liberal-progressive side who could retire and create Supreme Court vacancies.

If we got lucky one of those vacancies could open up on the conservative side and tip the balance back to the progressive side.

While I honestly believe that the Souter replacement nomination is going to go to a Latina and it's past time that a Latino/a get on the court, I think the nomination of an African-American woman to the Court is long overdue as well.

There are some well-qualified ones that should get that call, especially to counterbalance the self hatred of Uncle Thomas.

One who has been mentioned is current Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears. She became the first African-American woman to become a superior court judge in 1988. When she was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court by Governor Zell Miller in 1992, she was the youngest person to sit on the Georgia Supreme Court.

On June 28, 2005 she made history again when she became the first African-American female chief justice anywhere in the United States when she was sworn in as the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Interestingly enough she has decided to retire from the Georgia Supreme Court at the end of her term in June 2009.

There's also another trailblazing sistah that President Obama can consider in Vicki Miles-LaGrange, the chief US district justice for the Western District of Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma City native has the legislative experience he's looking for, having been the first African-American woman elected to the Oklahoma Senate and serving in that body from 1986-1993 while conducting a private law practice.

She's not only served in the Department of Justice as a criminal trial attorney in Washington DC, she also prosecuted sex crimes as an Assistant DA in Oklahoma County.

She was nominated in September 1994 by President Bill Clinton and became the first African-American federal judge in the 10th District.

Then there's my personal favorite in Constance L. Rice, the second cousin of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As the Co-Director of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Los Angeles Office, Rice has filed class action civil rights cases redressing police misconduct, race and sex discrimination and unfair public policy in transportation, probation and public housing. Rice has led multi-racial coalitions of lawyers and clients to win more than $4 billion of injunctive relief and damages.

Talk about someone who would be the antithesis of Clarence Thomas.

There are other Supreme court quality sisters at various levels of the federal and state judiciary that we'll probably get to hear about in the next few years.

When that historic moment finally does happen, Thurgood Marshall can rest easy in the fact that the next African-American to take the bench will be light-years more worthy of building on his giant legal legacy.

Cosmo's Tripping About Sports Loving Women

I began chuckling when I read a commentary about a recent Cosmo article that echoed one I wrote in 2004 about the transgender community.

In that column I skewered members of the transgender community who would echo that same tired meme of 'feminine women aren't sports fans'.

It mirrored a December issue of Cosmo in which the so called male guru tried to say that a woman who likes watching sports would be single the rest of her life.

Yo Cosmo, join the rest of us in the 21st Century. There are women who like watching sports and not just because their boyfriends or husbands are playing on the team. One of my exes before I transitioned used to win drinks in clubs from guys because they foolishly underestimated the depth of her sports trivia knowledge.

I used to have a CAL coworker named Lucy Schroeder who was a rabid sports fan. We spent break times and dead time on flights we worked together talking about various sports, the Comets and her beloved Dallas Cowboys.

In the interest of full journalistic disclosure, for the record, I can't stand the Irving, oops Arlington Cowchips.

When I read this BS I also thought about UK superfan Ashley Judd. She's got floor seats at Rupp Arena to watch her beloved Wildcats.

She's such a devoted University of Kentucky sports fan that when the hockey team made a promotional poster to raise money for the program, it included a picture of her in a UK hockey jersey. When Ashley isn't making a movie and it's college basketball season, you can bet she's watching her beloved Wildcats playing ball and screaming at the SEC refs at the top of her lungs whenever they make a boneheaded call.


And like many Texas women, Eva Longoria Parker not only loves football, she was a basketball fan before she met and married some point guard for the San Antonio Spurs.

Holly Robinson Peete not only is a huge NFL football fan, she wrote a book about it to help women understand and enjoy the game. Peeps who teach the courses to supposedly help women understand the game quickly discover that women football fans are far more savvy about it than they are given credit for being and ask some sophisticated questions far in excess of their male counterparts.

Don't even get me started about the legions of women who watch NASCAR events, collegiate sports on both the men's and women's sides, NBA and WNBA basketball, are baseball fans, et cetera.

Some of them not only are fashionably attired sometimes when they do attend these games, some even happen to be married.

But don't hate if some of these women know more about sports trivia or in game strategy than some of you red blooded males do.

Geno Auriemma To Coach USA Women's B-Ball Team

The Drive For Five starts September 23, 2010 in the Czech Republic.

The five I'm talking about is the quest for a fifth straight Olympic gold medal for the FIBA World Number One ranked Team USA women ballers.

While the final roster for the 2010 FIBA Worlds is yet to be determined, we already know who'll be coaching our lady hoopsters.

Earlier this month it was announced that UConn's Geno Auriemma will lead the USA Women's senior national team at the 2010 FIBA Women's World Basketball championships in the Czech Republic September 23-October 3 and the upcoming London Olympics in 2012.

"I don’t know if I can adequately describe my feelings and my emotions when I was asked to do this and how I felt ever since," said Auriemma. "It’s an opportunity that if you’re very fortunate comes once in your life and I never thought I would ever have this opportunity. It’s just overwhelming, the emotions that run through you. What an incredible honor it is to be selected."

"There is no better coach in America than Geno Auriemma and we are delighted to be able to have a coach of his caliber lead our women’s national team program through the 2012 Olympic Games," said USA Basketball Chairman Jerry Colangelo. "The USA Basketball women’s national team has achieved tremendous success over the years and as winners of the last four Olympic gold medals, the expectations remain very high. Geno’s success at UConn, both his win-loss record and the development of his players, speaks for itself and makes him a perfect choice to take hold of the reins."

The USA has already qualified for the 2010 FIBA Worlds due to their gold medal winning performance last summer in Beijing. The winner gets the automatic bid to the London Games which will take place July 27-August 12.

While Team USA has recently dominated international play posting a 63-1 record in the last 12 years, their success has been mixed at the FIBA world championship level. While Team USA is one of four nations to win the FIBA women's championship and is the most successful with 7 titles, the last one for the USA women came in 2002. The Australians took the 2006 gold and have every intention of keeping it away from their bitter rivals.

Should Team USA's women ballers not finish with the gold medal in 2010, it would have two additional chances to qualify for the Olympics at the 2011 FIBA Americas Olympic Qualifying Tournament with the dates and site TBD or the 2012 FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament with the dates and site TBD.

But I think they would rather take care of business next year and have the luxury of time in choosing the twelve women who will attempt to continue the current US dominance of women's international basketball.

Angel Taking Wings To The ATL

Angel McCoughtry may have been the best player on the second best team in the nation behind the unbeaten UConn Huskies, but she's number one in the hearts of the Atlanta Dream.

Despite my still simmering pissivity over the madness that led to my beloved Houston Comets not playing this summer, I took a few moments Thursday to check out the 2009 WNBA Draft. The Atlanta Dream after a 4-30 expansion season used their number one overall pick in the 2009 WNBA draft to take Angel. She averaged 23.1 points this season for the Lady Cardinals and is Louisville’s career scoring leader among women and men ballers at Da Ville..

“I feel on top of the world right now,” said McCoughtry,

“I’m on cloud nine. After I get off cloud nine, it’s time to work and get things started for Atlanta.

I enjoyed watching Angel play for the Cards. Best of luck with the Atlanta Dream.

2009 NCAA Women's Championship Game

I'll have to DVR it, but tonight's NCAA women's title game in St; Louis is an all Big East affair between the surprising (to the rest of y'all) 34-4 Louisville Lady Cardinals and the unbeaten 38-0 UConn Huskies.

This is the third meeting between the two teams. They met in the regular season and the Big East women's tournament title game and the Lady Cards have been on the short end of both of them.

But as I know painfully well from my college days, just because you have a dominant team doesn't mean that you can't be beaten or you can't have a bad night. It's also hard to beat a team three consecutive times in the same season.

Talk about what a historic upset that would be. Here's a UConn team that beat them badly twice by 28 and 39 points, is playing for perfection for the third time, their seventh NCAA title and is chock full of high school All-Americans versus a Louisville team with none.

If you check my 2009 women's NCAA bracket, I have UConn picked to win the title and actually had the Cards losing to Oklahoma Sunday.

The Lady Cards have a chance to elevate this program to an elite level and shocking the world like a loquacious boxer from the West End once did over 40 years ago.

And here's hoping they do. Go Lady Cards!

Michelle O Ain't Trying To Be Jackie O

One of the things that's become a regular pattern that I'm getting sick of is the right wingers veiled (and not so veiled) racist attacks against her such as Tammy Bruce or Michelle Malkin have done and the deafening silence of the feminist movement about them.

We also see the First Lady as the subject of breathtakingly ignorant stories about her hair and curves that try to be hip but fall flat, or ones that nitpick about certain things like her penchant for sleeveless dresses and tops.

Still can't get over the fact you got blown out last November by an intelligent Black man despite all your time tested racist campaign tactics and tacking Caribou Barbie on your presidential ticket, huh?

Too bad. Go sip on more GOP Red Kool Aid and sulk in the corner for the next four years while President Obama and the Democratic congress cleans up the fiscal and societal mess y'all conservatives made.

Ann Coulter made the ignorant assertion recently that Michelle Robinson Obama was trying to pattern herself after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and she's wrong as usual.

The major difference is that Jackie O grew up with wealth and privilege in a divorced family traveling between palatial estates, while Michelle grew up with two working class parents on Chicago's South Side in a one bedroom apartment.

Another note to the haters. Jackie O liked sleveless wear as well.

While there are some superficial similarities between the two women in terms of their intelligence, charm, beauty, devotion to their families and wanting to do meaningful work in society, Michelle Obama is being Michelle Obama.

While many people try to compare her to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and like Michelle I grew up in the 60-70's era in which I had until the time I graduated from high school knew and still know legions of girls named Jacqueline, Michelle is different from the women who previously served as First Lady.

In addition to the obvious being the first African-American First Lady, she just has that combination of beauty, off the charts intelligence, charm and regal presence in addition to her modelesque height that makes even Queen Elizabeth II breach royal protocol and hug her.

Oh yeah, and like Eleanor Roosevelt, can't forget that she's a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

She's not only redefining the way in which we look at the position of First Lady, she's redefining how we look at African-Americans as well. The First Lady demonstrates the saying in the African-American community that Black women have curves. Even her daughters Malia and Sasha are redefining and generating long needed discussion focused on Black girls.

What you are being introduced to is a sistah that has flava. She's got it going on in many areas of her life. Some of you wingnuts can't stand it that once again, it is a progressive Black woman who exudes all of these qualities and then some that the entire world just loves, and the Black women you hold up as examples on the conservative side for us to admire don't.

Your failure is compounded when already accomplished Black women pose for photographs emulating our First Lady or lovingly speak about the immense pride they have in someone like Michelle representing them.

So no, Michelle O ain't trying to be Jackie O. She's one of the best and brightest of our community working on being the best First Lady she can be in her own way.

Too bad you're hatin' on her so much that you refuse to understand or acknowledge it

Congrats Lady Cards!

Y'all knew I was gonna show some love for the lady hoopsters from U of L.

The 33-4 Lady Cards next game will be 200 miles west of Da Ville in St. Louis. As I predicted, Angel and the gang beat down number one seed Maryland 77-60 for the Raleigh Region Championship and helped earn the Lady Cards first trip to the NCAA Women's Final Four.

Angel McCoughtry is the woman. She scored 21 points and grabbed 13 rebounds as the Lady Cards never trailed in the game. There was also the added drama of Louisville women's coach Jeff Walz facing his old boss, Maryland coach Brenda Frese.

Warm up the bus. We'll be rolling on I-64 west to play either Oklahoma or Purdue on Sunday.

Moni's 2009 NCAA Women's B-Ball Brackets

In honor of Women's History Month last year, since the basketball feast we call March Madness was upon us and I'm a serious women's basketball fan, I began a new TransGriot tradition of filling out a bracket for the women's NCAA tournament as well.

It was also in response to me getting pissed about the lack of coverage that male-centric sports broadcasting networks give to women's sports and the dismissive comments that male sportswriters and fans utter at times about it.

While I correctly picked all four teams that ended up in Tampa for the 2008 Women's Final Four, I missed on the eventual women's champion as Stanford upset UConn and set up a Candice vs Candace rematch for the title.

There are some questions that will be answered as this year's tournament progresses.

Can Number One overall tournament seed Connecticut go undefeated and win it all? Will Pat Summitt's Fab Freshman go on a tournament run that will take them to a third straight title? Will Oklahoma win their first NCAA title as Courtney Paris guaranteed or will her dad, NFL great Bubba Paris be refunding her full four year OU tuition as she promised if they didn't? Will Louisville's women, led by Angel McCoughtry join the men's team in making a long tournament run toward destiny?

It's time to get to it and determine who will not only end up in St. Louis for the Women's Final Four, but win the 2009 NCAA women's basketball title.


Trenton Region

1st Round
Connecticut, Florida, Virginia, California, Georgia, Florida St., Texas A&M

Sweet 16
Connecticut, California, Georgia, Texas A&M

Elite 8
Connecticut,Texas A&M

Trenton Region Champion
Connecticut

Berkeley Region

1st Round
Duke, Michigan St., Tennessee, Iowa St., Texas, Ohio St., DePaul, Stanford

Sweet 16
Duke, Tennessee, Texas, Stanford

Elite 8
Duke, Stanford

Berkeley Region Champion
Stanford

Raleigh Region

1st Round
Maryland, Utah, Kansas State, Vanderbilt, LSU, Louisville, TCU, Baylor

Sweet 16
Maryland, Vanderbilt, Louisville, Baylor

Elite 8
Maryland, Louisville

Raleigh Region Champion
Louisville


Oklahoma City Regional

1st Round
Oklahoma, Iowa, Xavier, Pittsburgh, Purdue, North Carolina, Rutgers, Auburn

Sweet 16
Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Auburn

Elite 8
Oklahoma, Auburn

Oklahoma City Region Champion
Oklahoma


Final Four Teams
Connecticut, Stanford, Louisville, Oklahoma

Championship Game
Connecticut, Oklahoma

2009 NCAA Champion
Connecticut