The Best American Sports Writing 2011 (19 page)

"Who needs the bodyguard here?" Coakley asks incredulously. "What is the role of bodyguard? It's not to maintain male hegemony and privilege. It's to maintain order."

The charge of third-degree rape against Taylor prompts another question. Police allege that a 16-year-old runaway was beaten by a sex trafficker and brought to Taylor's hotel room, where, according to the police report, instead of protecting her, he allegedly protected himself with a condom. If Taylor is guilty, how could he have acted in such a depersonalizing way—unless he viewed her as more object than person?

According to Coakley, the data is clear: certain types of all-male groups generally have higher rates of assault against women than the average, and their profile is unmistakable. They tend to include sports teams, fraternities, and military units, and they stress the physical subordination of others—and exclusiveness.

Common sense tells me that "sport" in general is not the culprit in all of this so much as excessive celebration and rewarding of it: binge drinking, women-as-trophies, the hubris resulting from exaggerated entitlement and years of being let off the hook. We are hatching physically gifted young men in incubators of besotted excess and a vocabulary of "bitches and hos."

What has happened to kindness, to the cordial pleasures of friendship between men and women in the sports world? Above all, what has happened to sexuality? When did the most sublime human exchange become more about power and status than romance? When did it become so pornographic and transactional, so implacably cold?

The truth is, women can't do anything about this problem. Men are the only ones who can change it—by taking responsibility for their locker room culture, and the behavior and language of their teammates. Nothing will change until the biggest stars in the clubhouse are mortally offended, until their grief and remorse over an assault trumps their solidarity.

FROM SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

T
HE FIRST LINK
you see on the Silsbee (Texas) High School web page, right under a photo of its main building with a proud
S
on the facade and a sign that proclaims
TIGER COUNTRY,
sends you to the Spectator Rules of Conduct, which prohibit insults, ridicule, and chants that taunt. It's an antibullying code for athletic events. But does it protect anyone from offensive behavior off the gym floor—in, say, the foyer next to a concession stand? And what if the "mean girls" are school administrators?

On February 27, 2009, in a
Glee
moment with a few real-life Sue Sylvesters, a Tigers cheerleader—one of the popular people—found herself surrounded at halftime of a basketball playoff game. "It was the administrators against me," she recalls. As fans walked by, the cheerleader, dressed in her maroon-and-white uniform, was reduced to tears by a powerful posse: Silsbee superintendent Richard Bain, principal Gaye Lokey, and cheerleading coach Sissy McInnis. Voices raised, they issued an ultimatum to the 16-year-old: cheer for Rakheem Bolton or go home. "It wasn't right," she says.

Four months earlier the cheerleader, known in court documents as H.S., had told police that at a house party where beer flowed to minors, she had been cornered in a room by three young men—Bolton, 17; another athlete, Christian Rountree, 18; and a 16-year-old uniden tified in legal records—who locked the door and sexually assaulted her. Her screams were heard; the police were called; charges were filed. In a town whose population is 7,341 and whose high school football stadium seats 7,000, the tale of that October night spread from Avenue B to Avenue R along the main drag of Silsbee. The alleged assault prompted two questions: How would it affect the girl? And how would it affect the team? H.S. saw a therapist, who urged her to resume her routine to help deal with the trauma. The alleged assailants were barred from campus, and she chose to cheer again. Then, in January 2009, a Hardin County grand jury decided there was not enough evidence to pursue charges.

Bolton, a football and basketball star, was back on the court by February, but the wheels ofjustice would continue to turn. In November 2009 another grand jury, convened because of renewed interest in the case, would indict Bolton and Rountree on charges of sexual assault of a minor. (Bolton would plead guilty to a lesser offense, simple assault, in September; Rountree is awaiting his arraignment.) But in the meantime Silsbee officials had to heed the decision of the first grand jury. Bolton could play. While school officials did not return
SI
's calls, Tanner Hunt Jr., the attorney for the district, notes, "They followed the law." Fair enough. But the law wasn't in question during the basketball game that winter night. It was kindness and common sense that were on the line.

By custom Tigers cheerleaders support any player at the foul line by shouting his name. In the first half Bolton was fouled twice. H.S. had been cheering as usual, but each time Bolton went to the line, in a peaceful protest, she folded her arms, stepped back, and remained silent while her squad cheered, "Go, Rakheem!" After the halftime buzzer, H.S. was scolded "in front of God and everybody," says her father. H.S. had not "abided by the Cheerleader Constitution," according to Hunt. The code requires cheerleaders to shout equally for all. Rather than cheer for Bolton, she chose to go home.

The violation was apparently so egregious that as H.S. walked into cheerleading class the following Monday, McInnis met her with this hello: go to the principal's office. H.S. was kicked off the squad. Within an hour her father was in Bain's office. "I asked him, 'Are you telling me that my daughter had to cheer for her [attacker]?'" recalls the father. "He told me that if it means she had to cheer for Bolton or be removed, then that's what I'm telling you."

Though H.S. was later permitted to rejoin the cheerleading squad if she would follow its rules, the family filed a civil suit against the school district, and on September 16 the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that H.S.'s silent protest was not protected speech under the First Amendment. However, the court wrangling distracts from the bottom line: a school is supposed to be an emotional safe haven for all students, and educators should help, not harass, students in vulnerable positions. Why force H.S. to do something that made her uncomfortable? Why not err on the side of compassion? "For all anyone knew," Hunt says of the protest, "it was a girl mad at a boy." By this rationale a rape charge is no different from a text-message breakup.

"They chose to support the athlete," says Larry Watts, H.S.'s attorney, who last week asked the court to rehear the constitutional case. "They chose to support the male. It's just good ol' testosteronic East Texas."

The students involved in the controversy are gone now. H.S. graduated and has college plans. She vows to keep pressing ahead legally to "make it easier for other girls if they have to go through this." Bolton is on probation and entering an anger management program as part of his plea deal. He is also trying to enroll in college. However, lessons remain to be learned—by the educators. "If there was something to apologize for, we would," Hunt says. This is not
Glee.
This is sad.

FROM TEXAS MONTHLY

T
HE MUSTANG HAS EYES
that are large and dark and betray his mood. His coat is bright bay, which is to say he's a rich red, with black running down his knees and hocks. He has a white star the size of a silver dollar on his forehead and a freeze mark on his neck. He cranks his head high as a rider approaches, shaking out a rope from a large gray gelding. The mustang does not know what is to come. His name is Cheatgrass, and he's six years old. In May he was as wild as a songbird.

The little horse belongs to Teryn Lee Muench, a 27-year-old son of the Big Bend who grew up in Brewster and Presidio Counties. Teryn Lee is tall, blue-eyed, and long-limbed. He wears his shirts buttoned all the way to the neck and custom spurs that bear his name. He never rolls up his sleeves. A turkey feather is jammed in his hatband, and he's prone to saying things like "I was out yesterday and it came a downpour," or, speaking of a hardheaded horse, "He's a sorry, counterfeit son of a gun." Horse training is the only job he has ever had.

Teryn Lee was among 130 people who signed up this spring for the Supreme Extreme Mustang Makeover, a contest in which trainers are given 100 days to take feral horses from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), gentle these creatures, and teach them to accept grooming, leading, saddling, and riding. Don't let the silliness of the contest's name distract from the difficulty of the challenge. Domestic horses can be taught to walk, trot, and lope under saddle in 100 days; it's called being green-broke. But domestic horses are usually familiar with people. The mustangs in the Makeover have lived on the range for years without human interaction, surviving drought, brutal winters, and trolling mountain lions. The only connection they have to people is fear. Age presents another challenge. A domestic horse is broke to saddle at about age two, when it's a gawky teenager. The contest mustangs are opinionated and mature. The culmination of the contest is a two-day event in Fort Worth in August, where the horses are judged on their level of training and responsiveness. The top 20 teams make the finals. The winner takes home $50,000.

For Teryn Lee, however, there's more at stake than money. Most of his clients bring him horses that buck or bully, horses that have developed bad habits that stymie or even frighten their owners. Teryn Lee enjoys this work, but his goal is to become a well-known trainer and clinician who rides in top reined cow horse and cutting horse competitions. To step up to that level, he'll have to do something dramatic. Transforming a scruffy, feral mustang that no one wanted into a handsome, gentle, willing riding horse would make people take notice. Winning would get his name out there, he says.

How does that work, gentling a wild thing? How do you convince a nomad that a different life is possible? Teryn Lee picked up Cheatgrass on May 8 from a BLM facility in Oklahoma and hauled him to his training operation near Marfa, a 50,000-acre ranch leased by his father and managed by Teryn Lee and his wife, Holly. Two days later, standing in a round pen, Cheatgrass looks runty and ribby, like a cayuse from a Frederic Remington painting, still wearing the BLM halter.

Teryn Lee rides a gelding called Big Gray. The mustang eyes them. Horses are prey animals that are vulnerable by themselves; as social beings, they seek out friendship. They feel safe with another horse, even if it's a stranger. Cheatgrass allows Big Gray to step close. Teryn Lee leans down from his saddle and drops the halter off the mustang's head.

"There," he says. "Now he's a wild mustang."

Teryn Lee begins swinging a rope behind the mustang, who zips frantically around the perimeter of the round pen at a dead run, mane streaming. As Cheatgrass flies past, Teryn Lee occasionally flicks the tail of the rope into the horse's path to make the mustang change direction. Cheatgrass nimbly tucks his knees and wheels away, deft as a cat, fleet as a thought.

"I want him to move around," Teryn Lee explains. "Breaking a horse is all about controlling his feet. If I can control his feet, I've got him. Later I'll try to touch him all over, but we'll see. You can't hurry a horse."

Cheatgrass's adrenaline slows down a tick as he considers his options. Thousands of generations of flight instinct course through a mustang, but he is also a survivor who comes loaded with a keen ability to adapt. Running away isn't working, so Cheatgrass slows to a fast trot. He is small but spring-loaded, muscles bunching and jumping under his coat. His inside ear and white-ringed eye never leave the man deciding where he can go and how fast. With a swing or two of the rope over his head, Teryn Lee sends a loop and catches the horse around the neck. As the loop tightens, the mustang roars and rears, his hooves momentarily striking the sky. He faces Teryn Lee, sides heaving and nostrils flaring. They stare at each other. There is the sound of the horse's breathing and the wind sliding by. Moments pass. Teryn Lee asks the gray gelding to step forward, his hand moving up the rope until the two horses are neck to neck. The loop loosens. Neither slow nor fast, Teryn Lee's hand reaches forward and lightly rubs the star on Cheatgrass's forehead. The first touch. The mustang is canted backward, every muscle straining, but he stands. His world has just changed.

 

The ranch where Cheatgrass lived this summer is high and remote, an hour from Marfa and deep within Presidio County. Great treeless hills roll and fold to the mountains on the horizon: Chinati Peak, humped and blue, not far from the ranch house; Mount Livermore and the Davis Mountains in the north; Haystack, Paisano Peak, Twin Sisters, Goat Mountain, Santiago to the east. Summer monsoons carpet the desert with grama. From most points on the ranch, no homes or roads are visible. No power lines, no vehicles, no buildings for mile upon mile—just grass, rocks, and the impassive, tenantless sky. On a high hill, with the chorus of mountains and wind all around, it's possible to imagine these unsettled plains as they were 200 or 400 or even 1,000 years ago: open, ancient, and achingly beautiful.

Bountiful land like this nurtured the mustang. Horses were native to North America until about 11,000 years ago, when evidence of them tapers out. They didn't return to the main continent until 1519, when Hernán Cortés famously flummoxed the Aztecs with 16 horses that landed with his men on the Mexican coast. More Spanish explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and settlers came, and they all brought horses. Animals that escaped or were loosed onto the prairies multiplied and changed the lives of Plains Indians, whose culture would become as fully integrated with horses as it was with bison. During World War I, ranchers responded to wartime's increased need for horses by turning their well-bred stallions onto the range to better the native herds, which were later gathered and exported to the European front. It's from this array of purebreds and mongrels that mustangs are descended.