On Monday, for the third straight time, a men’s junior A hockey team defeated Canada’s women’s hockey team, which is preparing for the Olympics.
The latest defeat for Canada’s women’s hockey team came at the hands of the Drumheller Dragons, who shut out the women’s team 8-0.
“Adam Raesler scored a hat trick for the Alberta Junior Hockey League side, while Luke Fennig added a pair of goals. Ty Daneault, Grayson Dietrich and Ty Whitford all scored singles for the men’s junior A club,” CBC reported. “Canada’s Kristen Campbell stopped 19 of 22 shots in two periods of work and Emerance Maschmeyer six saves in relief. Eric Ward saved all five shots he faced in 29 minutes of play for the Dragons and Garrett Fuller finished out the game, making six stops.”
It is not the first time that star female athletes have lost to lower ranked men.
In 2017, legendary tennis champion John McEnroe was pilloried after suggesting that if Serena Willams, whom he acknowledged was the “best female player ever,” “played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.”
In an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro the exchange went like this:
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: We’re talking about male players but there is of course wonderful female players. Let’s talk about Serena Williams. You say she is the best female player in the world in the book.
McEnroe: Best female player ever — no question.
Garcia-Navarro: Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world. Why qualify it?
McEnroe: Oh! Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?
Garcia-Navarro: Yeah, the best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player?
McEnroe: Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.
Garcia-Navarro: You think so?
McEnroe: Yeah. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it’d be a little higher, perhaps it’d be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she’s so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke ’cause she’s been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, The U.S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit — the men’s circuit — that would be an entirely different story.
Amid the storm of criticism of McEnroe, GQ reported, “Serena duly Tweeted a response, asking McEnroe to ‘please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based’ and ‘Respect me and my privacy.’”
USA Today recalled in 2017 what happened when Serena Williams and her sister Venus boasted as teens in 1998 to the men’s ATP office they could defeat any tour player ranked around the top 200.
It just so happened that Karsten Braasch of Germany, once a top-40 player, but at the time ranked 203rd, was in ear shot. He thought it would be fun so stepped up to say he’d be happy to take them on.
The date was set and the day arrived. Braasch played a warmup round of golf in the morning, then came to Melbourne Park. The threesome went out to a back court where each sister would have a one-set shot at Braasch. Word had spread around the grounds that the event was taking place, which caused tournament officials to restrict admittance to the area to only those with badges.
Braasch would smoke cigarettes and sip beer during the changeovers, and to be honest no longer looked the part of a fit professional athlete. It made no matter. Braasch led 5-0 over Serena before winning the set 6-1, and then posted a 6-2 set victory over Venus.
A previous version of this article misspelled the name of the journalist. She is Lulu Garcia-Navarro, not Garica-Navarro.