Sykora was world-class at defense. One of my favorite players who grew up during the the SOS era when you still had to have all-around skill. And one of the most genuine personalities in a sport where many NT teammates and competitors could be a bit prima donna.FTAG 2000 said:wannaggie said:When I was younger I played a lot. I have seen National Teams and current pro/Olympic players in person, and I have even been on the same court with a female Olympic medalist. She was in incredible shape, highly talented, highly skilled, highly efficient in her technique, and disciplined in strategic positioning.FTAG 2000 said:
An upcoming opponent needs to swap in their entire men's volleyball team (D1 or club) for the women's team for that game.
And hit every ball at the kid. A few strays in warmups directed at the coach too.
Bet that would stop.
...she also was merely an average player among men age 25-45 who play the game for fun on weekends and learned their skills from other weekend warriors and some Internet videos. I can't speak to every sport out there, but in volleyball there are some varsity high school boys teams in the midwest and the west coast who would utterly wreck a team of the best female players in the nation.
It's not even close. Most co-ed adult leagues even have gender rules, like requiring that a female player be one of the three touches on a ball before it's returned over the net. That rule exists because otherwise co-ed teams wouldn't exist -- every co-ed team in the country would become 5 males, and 1 token female who would then step back off the court out of the way during every play so the men could win the game.
Man I went through college as a friend and summer beach volleyball teammate of Stacy Sykora. She's amazing. She'd break it off in this poser.
But still. Only way to destroy the woke trans mind is a team of men to spike every ball at this clowns face. And his coach and the mountain west commish's face.
Defense and setting are the only two areas women with strong fundamentals and excellent technical control could still be decent in a co-ed setting. Which, again, was more important in the SOS era when you couldn't afford to stack your team with explosive attackers/blockers who had poor ball-control. After the advent of Rally, the sport changed, and building a successful team became all about specialists. I like both formats for different reasons.
But the change to Rally further widens the gap between male and female abilities. Serving, attacking, blocking... Plenty of teams of 30something weekend warrior dudes who would steamroll past gold-medal women's NTs in a tournament. Obviously the NT as a unit has better discipline and efficiency for things like kps/kpa/bps. They would make far fewer errors than the dudes and could keep plays alive for a while, but their pps would plummet as the match drags on. The dudes would overwhelm them both with ace jump-serves and complete dominance at the net. There is no equal comparison between men and women for metrics like block touch, attack jump touch, attack angle, velocity, net penetration, etc. And because of the relatively smaller muscle mass/density, taller women only rarely have the speed and flexibility to react fast enough to match the velocity of male attacks. (Definitely something Sykora excelled at above every other female American during her NT time (except maybe Logan) -- Stacy had BOTH the extraordinary reflexes to lay it all out for a saving dive when the blockers got beaten AND the court vision to anticipate exactly where she needed to be in every moment.) So yeah, the exceptional tall players like Gamova could dominate other women on attacking/blocking, but in a mixed environment you'd have to set up your entire rotation to hide her on every S-R or defensive play because men would target her, knowing she can't get all 6'8" under the ball fast enough and still recover fast enough to make a high-efficiency attack approach. Men's volleyball is a blocker's game and a server's game. Jump-serve power and standing (or swing-block) jump-touch for men is a whole level or two beyond women. Average men can smother the best team of women at the net.