Award-winning Journalist and Social Change Advocate Maria Shriver Confirmed as Closing Speaker for The espnW: Women + Sports Summit
Maria Shriver, mother of four, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist, founder of “The Shriver Report” and activist for social change will speak at the fifth annual espnW: Women + Sports Summit presented by Toyota on Friday, Oct. 10. Her closing address will focus on her Architects of Change life philosophy and her family’s Special Olympics legacy.

Throughout her work, Shriver’s mission is to inform, inspire and ignite change in hearts and minds. She is driven by her belief that as individuals, we all have the ability to be “Architects of Change” — people who see a problem in their own life, or the community around them, and step out of their comfort zone to do what it takes to create the solution. This powerful idea will be at the heart of her talk at the espnW Summit.

“I’m extremely excited to be partnering with espnW to discuss my belief that we can all be Architects of Change in our own lives and the lives of others,” says Shriver. “My mother, Eunice Shriver, did that by founding the Special Olympics in 1968, which went on to transform the world of sports. I’m proud of ESPN for their work with Special Olympics Unified Sports and the Special Olympics World Games, taking place in LA in July 2015, where thousands of Architects of Change with intellectual disabilities will gather and transform not only the city, but also the sports community yet again.”

This year’s Summit, which will take place October 8-10, in Dana Point, Calif., is themed “Making an Impact” and will focus on the influence athletes and business leaders have on the women’s sports landscape. These influences will be examined through open conversations, compelling presentations, keynote speeches and expert panels. Throughout the multi-day event, ideas are turned into action items, aimed at driving greater opportunity for women in sports.

“Maria is a trailblazer who has worked diligently throughout her life to shed light on issues that are unique to women,” said Laura Gentile, vice president, espnW. “Her optimism and belief in the power of women to make real, enduring change will be explored with our guests. Maria is a wonderful addition to the Summit program and the many inspirational, accomplished speakers at this year’s event.”

Shriver is a Peabody and Emmy-winning journalist and producer, a six-time New York Times best-selling author, and an NBC News Special Anchor reporting on the shifting roles, emerging power and evolving needs of women in modern life. She is the founder of “The Shriver Report,” a nonpartisan initiative that raises awareness, ignites conversations and inspires impact around the defining issues and fundamental changes facing modern women and their families and is a project of A Woman’s Nation.

Among the other speakers at the Summit are former U.S. Ambassador Melanne Verveer, International Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz, Equinox President Sarah Robb O’Hagan, Women’s Tennis Association CEO Stacey Allaster, LPGA Commissioner Michael Whan, Olympians Hilary Knight and Gretchen Bleiler, Paralympian Amy Purdy and WNBA stars Brittney Griner and Elena Delle Donne.

About espnW
espnW serves women who love sports. espnW.com provides an engaging environment that offers total access to female athletes and the sports they play, takes fans inside the biggest events, and shares a unique point of view on the sports stories that matter most to women. Founded in July, 2010, espnW lives across television, films, events, digital and social platforms. The annual espnW: Women + Sports Summit is the leading event of its kind in the sports industry. The Women’s Sports Foundation is a charity of choice for espnW.

Oops. SELF magazine started quite the sh*t storm this week and it stems from their newest issue. Monika Allen received a phone call from SELF asking her permission to use a photo of her running in a tutu. She’s smiling and dressed as Wonder Woman in the photo. No biggie, right? Pretty sweet to have a magazine want to run a photo of you. Well by itself it’s a cute photo and a fun opportunity to be in a major fitness magazine but when you put it into the context which it was used… well that’s where things get ugly.

The photo runs in the magazine’s “+BS METER” which states the page is “Our SELF-y guide to what’s legit and what’s lame this month”.

NEW RUNNING TULLE
“A racing tutu epidemic has struck NYC’s Central Park, and it’s all because people think these froufrou skirts make you run faster. Now, if you told us they made people run away from you faster, maybe we would believe it.”

After seeing how her photo was used, Monika was understandably upset. She told a San Diego news station she wore the outfit during the marathon because it gave her motivation and came in the middle of chemotherapy. Yes, Monica is a cancer survivor and part of GLAM RUNNER. Glam Runner was founded in 2011 as a way to “bring more fun and GLAM to running while raising money for Girls on the Run of San Diego.”

Their website’s about us says, “Girls on the Run is a life-changing 12 week program for girls 8-13 years old that encourages positive emotional, social, mental, and physical development, all while training the girls for a 5K race.”

After this news went viral SELF POSTED this on their Facebook page.

The messages of support for Allen on the Glam Runner Facebook page continue to pour in. The Glam Runner Facebook posted their response.

The folks on twitter haven’t been as forgiving and kind…

Screen capture via www.nbcsandiego.com.
Photos via Glam Runner.

Top IFBB Fitness Pro Tanji Johnson announced that she would will be switching divisions. Now before you get your workout shorts in a bunch, hold on. She’s not leaving the Fitness division for good. The Washington native is taking advantage of the wildly popular Emerald Cup adding a pro show this year. Tanji shared the news on her Facebook page.

Excited and happy to announce that I will be making my Debut in Women’s physique in the Pro Division at the 2014 Emerald Cup on 26 April. I am NOT retiring from Fitness, I just want to represent the NW as we bring back a Pro show to the northwest (which has been since 2005). This is also going to be a tribute for me to celebrate the heart of our sport…Bodybuilding! I love weight training and being fit for life and going to have a blast flexing and smiling and influencing others towards a life of health and fitness! Thank u in advance for ur love, support and encouragement!

What happens if she qualifies for the Olympia in Women’s Physique, will she choose WPD over Fitness? I asked her this in a brief interview and she assured me, “I will definately be doing Fitness at the Olympia.” The 2013 Fitness International Champ shared that her training for this competition will be different. She said, “I will be training more like a bodybuilder, heavier weights and less athletic performance training.” It will be interesting to see what her physique looks like compared to this year’s Fitness International. When it comes to the diet Tanji said she it will be stricter and will implement more cardio to complement the change in training. She went on to say, “My plan is to come in my best condition ever (glutes & back) and then bring THAT package to the Olympia with a physique that I’ve never shown on a fitness stage.”

Tanji making her announcement online. 

Along with training for next month’s Emerald Cup she is helping train over 50 competitors who will be in the NPC portion of the show. You can keep up with Tanji on Facebook, twitter and tanjijohnson.com.

Boulder, CO — Spyder Active Sports, Inc., the iconic ski and active lifestyle apparel brand, has introduced an all-new, female-specific brand identity for the Winter 2014/15 season and beyond. Make no mistake – this is Spyder’s clear indication of its ever-evolving expansion in women’s design. Spyder’s existing branding is iconic and powerful, and as the brand’s success inside and outside the snowsports marketplace continues to grow well outside its male-driven product selection, Spyder has researched and developed an all-new brand mark for its women’s product offerings.

The new brand mark, dubbed ‘Femme Fatale,’ is a studied exercise in femininity, power, and proportion, taking all the strongest aspects of the famed ‘bug’ and creating a strikingly beautiful variant for Spyder’s new Women’s collection. Femme Fatale is long and lean with twists and turns – reminiscent of the very carves fans of Spyder live to make on the mountain.

According to JJ Collier, Spyder’s SVP of Product and Design, “Femme Fatale is strong and sexy and a perfect way to showcase our new approach to Women’s Spyder for Winter 2014/15. It is one crucial part of the focus of our women’s collection to include ‘Perfect Storm’ merchandising, compelling product, and a simplified fit strategy.”

With regard to Femme Fatale, Collier further noted: “All the best aspects of the iconic Spyder ‘bug’ were reinvented in a beautiful, inherently feminine mark that is both instantly recognizable and very fresh … and we love her implication of freshly carved ski turns.”

About Spyder Active Sports
Spyder is one of the largest specialty ski brands in the world. It is an Official Supplier to the U.S. Alpine and Canadian Alpine Teams. Spyder products integrate high-technology fabrication, sport-specific function, and fashion conscious designs. Based in Boulder, CO, the company sells high performance outerwear and sportswear in the United States, Canada and more than 50 countries outside of North America. http://www.spyder.com

ESPN and ESPN Films release Nine for IX, a series of nine documentary films about women in sports. The films, directed by female filmmakers, are another way to celebrate Title IX’s 40th anniversary. The series will air on ESPN this summer.

On June 18, COACH kicked off the Nine for IX Film Series. Watch it here.

Director – Bess Kargman
Executive Producer – Whoopi Goldberg
Vivian Stringer is one of the most prolific coaches in the history of college basketball. She was the first to lead three different schools to the NCAA Final Four, has over 900 wins and received the highest honor of all in 2009 – a place alongside Michael Jordan, John Stockton, Jerry Sloan and David Robinson as an inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Stringer became well known to the non-sports world in 2007 when the words “nappy headed hoes” were used to describe the group of young women she led, in spite of tremendous odds, to the National Championship game that year. Perhaps because Stringer is also a mother whose career successes have been intertwined with personal tragedy, her response to the 2007 incident showed she wasn’t just a great coach, but the perfect example of grace under fire.

Watch COACH here.

FILM SCHEDULE
provided by espnmediazone.com

VENUS VS.
July 2 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Ava DuVernay
Cast – Venus Williams, Billie Jean King, John McEnroe

Everyone knows about the swing. Everyone knows about the swagger. But what most Americans don’t know about Venus Williams is how she changed the course of her sport. In a stunning case that captured the attention of the European public beginning in 2005, Williams challenged the long-held practice of paying women tennis players less money than their male counterparts at the French Open and Wimbledon. With a deep sense of obligation to the legacy of Billie Jean King, Williams lobbied Parliament, UNESCO and Fleet Street for financial parity. Indeed, it was her poignant op-ed piece in The London Times that convinced many people that the tournament organizers at Wimbledon were “on the wrong side of history.” The boys clubs at Roland Garros and Wimbledon finally relented in 2007. In fact, it was at Wimbledon that year that Venus became the first women’s champion to earn as much as the men’s (Roger Federer). So to her seven major championships, another victory can be added.

PAT XO
July 9 at 8:00PM ET
Directors – Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern
Producer – Robin Roberts
Cast – Pat Summitt, Tyler Summitt, Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings, Michelle Marciniak, Geno Auriemma, Peyton Manning, Kenny Chesney

On April 18, 2012, Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in the history of the NCAA basketball, did the unimaginable and announced her resignation from the University of Tennessee. On the very same day, her son Tyler was named assistant coach of the Marquette’s women’s basketball team, his first job out of college. While the sports world reeled from the news of Pat’s early on-set Alzheimer’s, the coach and her son quietly set out to beat this challenge just as they had every other – with grace, humor and most of all, each other. Pat XO tells the remarkable story of Pat Summitt as it’s never been told before. This raw, authentic portrait takes the camera from the filmmaker’s hands and places it into those who know her best. With Tyler as the lead storyteller, moving recollections are shared by assistant coaches, players like Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings and Michelle Marciniak, fellow coach Geno Auriemma, and such admirers as Peyton Manning and Kenny Chesney. The archival footage and statistical records woven into the film provide their own insights into a woman who cared about winning, but also about elevating her players and her university. If it’s possible to do justice to Pat Summitt, Pat XO does it.

LET THEM WEAR TOWELS
July 16 at 8:00PM ET
Directors – Anna Sundberg and Ricki Stern
Cast – Melissa Ludtke, Lesley Visser, Christine Brennan, Claire Smith, Robin Herman, Michelle Himmelberg, Lawrie Mifflin and Jane Gross

Lisa Olson was just trying to do her job as a reporter for the Boston Herald in 1990 when a group of New England Patriot players sexually harassed her in their locker room. Her lawsuit against the team ignited a storm of threats and she ultimately left her job and the U.S. to escape the torment. The story touched off a national debate about the presence of female journalists in the male sanctum of the clubhouse. That debate should have been settled 12 years earlier, when Melissa Ludtke of Sports Illustrated successfully challenged Major League Baseball after she was kept out of the New York Yankees locker room. Why had equal access for women reporters remained such a hot-button issue? That question is asked in Let Them Wear Towels, an examination of females working in the man’s world of the locker room. Through interviews with such pioneer women as Ludtke, Claire Smith, Lesley Visser and Jane Gross, you’ll hear stories of raw behavior and humorous retaliation, angry lawsuits and remarkable resolve.

NO LIMITS
July 23 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Alison Ellwood
Cast – Tanya Streeter

As a teenager, Audrey Mestre suffered from scoliosis, but in those formative years, she discovered a passion for the ocean. It offered her a sense of freedom, and the burdens she faced on dry land soon dissipated as she slipped below the surface. In the final stages of her PH.D., Mestre was drawn to Cabo San Lucas where she became infatuated with free-diver Pipin Ferreras, a Cuban defector whose dives had put him at the forefront of the sport. The two became a couple and Mestre followed the elusive, often raucous Pipin on his almost spiritual quest to push his limits underwater. Soon enough, Mestre moved from support team member to ardent free-diver and then to a world-class competitor who outshone her husband. In 2002, after news arrived that a rival female diver named Tanya Streeter had successfully gone to a record-breaking 525 feet, Pipin began preparations for Mestre to make a 561-foot dive off the coast of the Canary Island. Having completed practice dives even deeper in the weeks leading up to the record attempt, Mestre was prepared. But because of a fateful decision before the dive, Mestre never resurfaced alive.

SWOOPES
July 30 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Hannah Storm
Cast – Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper, Phil Knight, David Stern, Tina Thompson

Sheryl Swoopes has famously been labeled as the female Michael Jordan. Actually, she’s far more interesting. On the court, she was nearly as dominant as Michael: a national championship with Texas Tech, three Olympic gold medals, three MVP awards and four consecutive championships with the Houston Comets of the WNBA, the league she helped start. She even had a Nike shoe named after her, the Air Swoopes. Off the court, she gave birth in the middle of her first WNBA championship season, divorced her high school sweetheart, and became the highest-profile athlete in her sport to declare she was gay. She has struggled with love, family, money and lack of recognition, but she has never lost her spirit. In this portrait, viewers will meet someone who’s not the everyday superstar, a woman who has defied a multitude of labels, including “old” – in August 2011, Swoopes, at 40, hit a buzzer-beater to end the Tulsa Shock’s 20-game losing streak.

THE DIPLOMAT
August 6 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Jennifer Arnold and Senain Kheshgi
Cast – Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano

At the height of the Cold War, Katarina Witt became one of East Germany’s most famous athletes. Trained in an ice rink that gave rise to socialist heroes, Witt dominated her field by winning six European skating titles, four world championships and back-to-back Olympic gold medals to become arguably the world’s best figure skater. Known as “the most beautiful face of socialism” her success gave her a unique status in East Germany. It also triggered constant surveillance by the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police force. This film chronicles how Witt, one of the greatest skaters of all time, fought for her future in socialist East Germany, how she faced the great changes that occurred after the fall of The Berlin Wall and, ultimately, how she ended up both a beneficiary and victim of the East German regime.

RUNNER
August 13 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Shola Lynch
Cast – Mary Decker, Zola Budd

Mary Decker obliterated opponents and records with blazing speed and a starving hunger to win. She dominated her sport, holding U.S. records in every distance from 800 to 10,000 meters, and she did it all without the Olympics. She was too young in ’72, hurt in ’76 and shut out by the U.S. boycott in ’80. As Sports Illustrated’s cover “Sportswoman of the Year” in 1983, she was ready: 1984 was the target, with the Olympics in Los Angeles and her skills at their 25 year-old peak. The world was buzzing about Decker’s shot at gold and her match-up against the young, barefooted new star, Zola Budd. But the story leads to a single shocking moment in the 1984 Games, with Mary writhing on the ground in physical pain and emotional heartbreak, with the whole world watching.

THE ’99ERS
August 20 at 8:00PM ET
Director – Erin Leyden
Producer – Julie Foudy
Cast – Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, Kristine Lily

The world of women’s sports was kicked upside down on July 10, 1999. Before a sold-out crowd of more than 90,000 at the Rose Bowl and an estimated 40 million Americans watching on television, the women’s soccer team reached a cultural and athletic pinnacle with its penalty-kick shoot-out victory over China to win the Women’s World Cup. These players were more than the ponytailed poster girls celebrated by mainstream media. As told through the voice of longtime team captain, Julie Foudy, viewers get an inside look at the strong team ethic and rare “do for each other” mentality that propelled them to victory that day and turned the team into a cultural touchstone. With unprecedented access, the film uses candid, behind-the-scenes footage shot by the players themselves during the tournament to present a unique portrait of the women who irrevocably changed the face of women’s athletics. Reuniting key players from the 1999 squad and talking with current U.S. players as well, the film examines how women’s soccer – and women’s sports as a whole – has changed since that epic day at the Rose Bowl.

BRANDED
August 27 at 8:00PM ET
Directors – Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Cast – Lolo Jones, Lisa Leslie, Chris Evert, Mary Lou Retton, Gabrielle Reece, Hope Solo, Laila Ali, Brandi Chastain

Sports is supposed to be the ultimate level playing field, but in the media and on Madison Avenue sometimes looks matter more than accomplishments. This film explores the double standard placed on women athletes to be the best players on the field and the sexiest off them. Through stories of the women who have faced and tackled this question in very different ways, Branded explores the question: can women’s sports ever gain an equal footing with their male counterparts or will sex always override achievement?

More information on Nine for IX can be viewed at espnW.com/NineForIX.