Elizabeth Lambert became something of a household name as the result of losing her head in a Mountain West Women's Soccer semi-final match.
Suspended indefinitely from her team (putting her scholarship at risk as well), Lambert has been looking to explain and reconcile her actions. According to this story, Lambert had received just two yellow cards in over 2,500 minutes of play (a game is 90 minutes long and doing the math, we are talking about almost 28 full matches, so clearly she is not necessarily the dirty player she looks like.
I do think that Lambert lost her mind and I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt based on the records. However, I do think she is trying to apologize as best she can. She does have a point though, soccer is a physical game and the girls are just as physical as the men. But here is a big difference between the women's game and the men's game: in the men's game, retaliations tend to be immediate and once the retaliation is done, the players tend to not think about it further.
Women, in my experience only, tend to let an affront simmer a while and retaliation can come much later in a match or even another game. Men have no memory, women will remember.
I think that is what makes the Lambert incident so different--the retaliation was largely immediate and that is what may be so schocking about it in addition to the rather violent nature of the foul.
I also agree with Lambert that the referee should have done more to control the match. Unlike Lambert, I am willing to throw the referee and his assistant referees and fourth official under the bus. Of no less than three incidents, Lambert could have been ejected from the game or at the very least cautioned, but was not until much later in an action that should have been a red card and was not. Referees have to have courage in these situations to issue the cards even if it means costing a team the game.
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