Contact Sports

The usual crowd had begun to assemble on the court of my local Y to play lunch-time basketball. We men, between the ages of 35 and 45, loosened up, shared news, talked about our latest injury, joked - what we have been doing for years, so that these gatherings have acquired, for me, the feel of ritual. As I turned from a chat with one of the guys, I saw a woman in her late 20s and about my height on the court taking practice shots. This was no large surprise. Women playing basketball in the gym is nothing new. However, they usually play among themselves and seem to prefer it that way. But this woman, casually shooting up with the rest of the guys, apparently intended to play with us today, and that was something out of the ordinary.

The setting was almost serene: a low-profile women's soccer tournament at Haverford College during Labor Day weekend. No one was expecting what would happen during the Drexel-West Chester game. Midway in the first half, as Drexel goalkeeper Kelly Schimmel bent over to scoop up the ball, a West Chester player collided with her. Schimmel crumpled to the ground screaming. "We all thought she had had the wind knocked out of her," Drexel coach George Griffin said. After trainers rushed onto the field and treated her, Schimmel was taken by ambulance to Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Colleen Purdy stands on the sidelines of a dimly lit field watching Colleen Purdy play women's flag football. No, she is not hallucinating. Just keeping an eye on her mom, who is playing defense for a team sponsored by Pat's Cafe. On the next series of downs their roles will be reversed as Col "Mama Col" Purdy watches Col "Little Col" Purdy play offense. It is 7 o'clock on a Wednesday night at the Bridesburg Recreation Center at Richmond and Ash streets. In one corner, a bunch of little kids run up and down a miniaturized field playing midget soccer.

It was the grand finale to an unusual calisthenics session in the school gymnasium. Students standing shoulder to shoulder, arms stretched above their heads, passed a six-foot-tall inflated globe down the line. For the youngsters at Willingboro's Martin Luther King Elementary School, it was a chance to display something unusual in a phys-ed class: a grasp of geography. On this day, students learned that Long Island is part of New York state, and not one of the four states smaller than New Jersey.

Tomorrow night, the Personnel and Internal Matters Committee of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District will decide whether to recommend spending $20,000 for a ninth-grade sports program. While many parents say the money is a small price to pay to give ninth graders a chance to compete with ninth graders from other school districts, others say that intramural sports might be a better way for the district to spend its money in tight economic times. "I am in favor of any program that encourages more student participation in school programs," said John Maher, principal of Unionville High School, where ninth graders attend.

French Open tennis champion Michael Chang could be sidelined up to two months after suffering a small fracture of a bone in his left hip. Chang yesterday said he heard his left hip breaking when he hit a tennis ball during practice in Florida on Wednesday. X-rays have revealed a small crack about two millimeters wide in Chang's hip socket. "I went for a backhand deep in the corner and when I made contact, my hip cracked," Chang said. "I heard it crack. "It's just bad luck," said Chang, 17. Chang's injury requires neither surgery nor a cast, although he expects to be on crutches for a month and inactive for at least eight weeks.

DIET-PILL ORDERS SEIZED. If you've sent away for the "Fat Magnet," don't expect it anytime soon. Pending a hearing, postal inspectors are impounding mail orders for the pill, nationally advertised as the "lazy way" to lose weight. A federal prosecutor says the company may be fraudulently promoting the pill, which it claims absorbs and flushes fat out of the body. The pill doesn't have Federal Drug Administration approval, but the company, which insists the pill is legitimate, says no approval is needed.

Women have been screaming for equal rights for a long time. They want to do everything that their male counterparts do. They no longer want to be considered the weaker sex. They fought and protested to gain access to the man's world. Well they finally made it. We now have women in the police and fire departments, they are driving trucks and bulldozers, they are in the military, and they are even playing contact sports. I think this is all well and fine. If a woman is qualified to do any of the above, good for her. But remember, equality is a whole lot more than doing the same work and playing the same sports as a man. It means accepting the bad with the good.