Ibrahimovic scored a 40-yard goal in his debut game with the Galaxy against LAFC. His team won 4-3. The team lost his first home game against Atlanta on April 21. Analysts have mixed feelings about his performance so far. The transfer, according to an MLSsoccer.com contributor, may result in lineup changes that create issues for the team as a whole. However, Charlie Davies predicts that teammate Giovani dos Santos, has the potential to work well with Ibrahimovic because of their similar styles of play.

The reporter in another article by The Guardian argued that the Galaxy’s recruitment of Ibrahimovic harkens back to the league’s former reputation as a “retirement home” for European soccer players past their prime. MLS teams now “use their money to scout South America for the best, young talent.” In contrast, all of Ibrahimovic’s appeal lies in his personality. The prime of his soccer career is behind him. The move is seen as similar to the hiring of David Beckham, who played for the same team from 2007 to 2012.

Besides starting on a new team for regular season play, Ibrahimovic has also expressed his interest in joining Sweden’s squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, starting June 14 in Russia. He had originally retired from international play after the 2016 Euro Cup but recently stated that a World Cup would not be the same without him. He has hinted at his desire to return to the Swedish National Team. Sweden’s national team manager, Janne Andersson, said in an official statement March 24 that Ibrahimovic is not currently included in Sweden’s World Cup plans.

“If you rejected the team, I do not think you should come back, I respect what he said and those who said ‘yes.’ [Ibrahimovic] has not called me, but he’s definitely not included in plans for the World Cup,” Andersson said in an interview with TYC.

Photo courtesy of LA Galaxy

The play tells the story of the Mirabal sisters, Patria (Kyra Little), Minerva (Hannah Fuhlhage), Maria Teresa (Victoria Smith) and Dedé (Sandra Adams and Caroline Seitz). The former three were murdered by members of the Dominican Secret Police in 1960 for their rebellion against the dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (Terrace Wyatt, Jr.). Dedé, who was not in the car with them on the day they were killed, survived. The show covers the lives of the sisters from 1938 to 1960, from the perspective of the survivor, Dedé, in 1994 as she recounts the story to an American writer (Kati Watts) who has come to visit the museum dedicated to the Mirabals.

The part of the narrative dealing with the present-day Dedé is much more fleshed out in the play than it is in the novel. The frame story, dealing with issues of authority and the role of storytelling in social justice, is the most productive section of the show. The power of writing to tell a lasting story after those who lived through it are gone is the show’s overarching message, and Seitz as the older Dedé really drives it home.

The earlier-set portions of the play have some powerful moments, as well. The sisters play off each other well. The opposition between the fiercely revolutionary Minerva and her more reluctant sisters is a strong portion of the play. In one of the play’s more dramatic scenes, Patria, Dedé and Minerva attend a party thrown by Trujillo, where the dictator attempts to violate Minerva. It’s well-done, and the emotion really comes through.

The play’s weakest point is in its use of the Spanish language. The program makes clear the reasons for culturally non-specific casting, and I appreciated what they were trying to do. However, the actors could have done with more practice in their pronunciation of Spanish words. It’s possible that this is just my issue as a Spanish major who knows how these words are supposed to be pronounced, but I think it would have lent to the authenticity of the piece.

Even though the play wasn’t particularly true to the novel in important ways, I didn’t mind the differences. Sometimes, it’s best to think of the movie (or play, as it may be) and the book as separate entities. This is useful here. Each medium has its strong points independent of the other. Overall, the show was a great tribute to the sisters and their history.   

Jewell Theatre Company’s production of “In the Time of the Butterflies” will run March 13 at 7 p.m. and March 14 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in Peters Theatre. English and Spanish copies of Julia Alvarez’s novel will be sold in the box office before the performance.

Photo courtesy of PopSugar.

My dislike of mainstream sports is also a result of the fact that I’m not personally that competitive. I don’t need my team to win in order to be happy; I appreciate skill regardless of who has it. So something about watching rabid University of Kansas (KU) fans insist on their superiority to every other team year after year is kind of a turn-off. I haven’t really formed allegiances to sports teams, and Jewell isn’t ever going to be in in the NCAA tournament (I don’t think that’s possible). There isn’t really any reason for me to be interested.

It might be important here to explain how the NCAA tournament works, since I’ll be using the lingo for the rest of the article (and also to prove my own credibility). The tournament starts with 64 teams: the voting process is complicated, but a panel selects 60 teams and eight teams play qualifying games for the remaining four spots. This process also determines seeds—how likely a team is to do well in the tournament. There are four regions (which have to do with where the game is played and not the teams’ actual locations on the map), and each region has 16 teams, seeded from 1-16. A 1-seed is thought to have the best chance based on regular season and conference tournament play—this year’s top seeds were The University of Virginia, KU, Xavier University in Ohio, and Villanova in Pennsylvania.

After the bracket is settled, the teams play each other in single-elimination matches, eventually whittling their way down to the final two teams who will play for the national championship. The various stages of the tournament are known as the Round of 64, the Round of 32, the Sweet 16, the Elite Eight, the Final Four, and the championship game (the numbers refer to the number of teams, e.g. the Round of 64 consists of 32 games). The Final Four is an important benchmark because teams who make it there are considered threats in the next tournament. This year’s Final Four teams were Villanova, KU, Loyola University in Chicago and the University of Michigan. Villanova won the championship game.

The mathematical quality to the determination of teams and the setup of a bracket means I probably wouldn’t dislike the NCAA tournament so much if it weren’t overplayed and overhyped. In 2015, more than 127,000 hours of sports were broadcast in the U.S., and the NCAA tournament represented about 157.5 of those hours, assuming that each game lasted about 2.5 hours. That doesn’t even consider the four qualifying games played before the Round of 64, or the individual conference tournaments. That may not seem like much airtime, but that’s excluding the hours of college basketball games broadcast before that. Combined, NFL, NBA, and MLB games have $9.2 billion in TV contracts. The National Hockey League was, surprisingly, not on Nielsen’s Top 10, but this list included the Olympics and World Cup, sporting events that have more international appeal.

The NCAA men’s Division I basketball tournament is, for me, just another incarnation of the American obsession with men who can play sports. I think my issues with March Madness can be neatly summed up in the story of my youth pastor, who my senior year of high school on a mission trip to Panama was concerned because the remote village we were staying in didn’t have Wi-Fi. He was upset that he couldn’t submit his bracket to Warren Buffet’s one-billion-dollar bracket competition. That year, if you submitted a perfect bracket, predicting every single game correctly (a feat whose odds are something like 1 in 9.2 quintillion), you won $1 billion.

Needless to say, no one won. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the pastor cared more about his bracket than the people we were there to help. I did question his priorities though. It was the first time I really understood just how big of a deal the tournament was. More importantly, I didn’t get it. It doesn’t help that the only NCAA sport I watch regularly is women’s gymnastics, whose broadcast was cancelled this year as they approach their post season in favor of showing conference basketball tournaments. It always feels like the sports I’d actually watch are less important to the general public, which is fine, but I’m a viewer, too. There is also the fact that men’s basketball gets this kind of publicity and women’s does not. Though, to be fair, The University of Connecticut (UConn), has won 11 out of 36 women’s tournaments, which makes the whole thing less interesting.

Despite my aversion to the ones that are shown on TV regularly, I have developed an interest in sports in the last few years. I love the Olympics, and I watch them pretty regularly when they’re on, and when I have time. I was sad I had to miss so much of them this year because of my other commitments. My favorite thing about the Olympics, besides the fact that the networks broadcast sports, like gymnastics, swimming and track and field, that don’t normally get exposure and are more exciting to me than the ones that do, is the potential for an athlete to come out of nowhere and win unexpectedly. Talent is not exclusive to Americans, or to a team with one player so dominant that it doesn’t matter if the rest of them are any good.

In this year’s Winter Olympics, Red Gerard, 17, of the U.S. won gold in men’s slope style snowboarding, despite having come into the final run in last place. Yun Sungbin, a 23-year-old from South Korea, won the skeleton competition, earning him South Korea’s first gold medal in a non-skating event. Shaun White, 33, also of the U.S. is not exactly an unknown, but it was so satisfying watching him win the snowboard half-pipe after his disappointing run in Sochi in 2014. The Olympics are full of stories like that. These athletes are just the ones I happened to catch this year. Every four years, I come away with a new appreciation for the unexpected and the magic of watching someone achieve at the highest level of their sport.

Sometimes, the NCAA tournament seems to be missing this air of excitement. There are always a few upsets: The University of Kansas’s 2015 loss to Wichita State in the Round of 32 is a prime example, as is number one seed University of Virginia’s historic loss to 16-seeded University of Maryland Baltimore County in this year’s tournament. However, one of a few teams predicted to have what it takes to do so comes out on top most of the time. In the past 10 tournaments (2008-2017), 7 of the winners have been number one seeds. This includes last year’s winner, the University of North Carolina. The lowest seed to win the tournament in the past 10 years was a number 7 (UConn, 2014). The lowest-ranked team ever to win a tournament (since seeding began) was Villanova in 1985. They were a number 8 seed. The lowest-ranked teams to make the Final Four were 11-seeds (Louisiana State University in 1986, George Mason in 2006, Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011, and Loyola Chicago this year).

So, of the 156 seeded teams who’ve made the final four (4 per year since 1979), only one-thirty-ninth of them have been 11-seeds, and none have been 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16 seeds. Statistically, March Madness is actually fairly predictable in the later rounds. Upsets tend to occur in earlier ones. There isn’t a lot of chance for the underdog to come out on top in the end. That’s part of what’s missing for me.

But now that I’ve talked about all the reasons I dislike the tournament, I want to talk about a game that showed me why so many people love it. I didn’t have very high hopes Saturday night March 18 when I found myself watching Loyola University in Chicago (11) take on the University of Tennessee (3) in the Round of 32. Tennessee is one of the South Eastern Conference’s better teams, and Loyola Chicago hadn’t been in the tournament in 33 years. The outcome seemed inevitable, but it wasn’t. Against the odds, Loyola triumphed, and in the flashiest way possible, making a two-point shot seconds from the buzzer to break the tie. Their chaplain, 98-year-old Sister Jean Dolores Smith, seemed thrilled, but not surprised. Tennessee fans were surprised and not thrilled. The kid who made the winning shot, freshman Clayton Custer, (who, to paraphrase my father, has any job he wants with a Loyola alum after he graduates), in contrast to his chaplain, looked shell-shocked. It was satisfying to watch Loyola celebrate a win they didn’t think they’d pull out.

The game didn’t change all my feelings about March Madness, though the team later making the Final Four is a pretty awesome feat considering the statistical likelihood (they lost to the University of Michigan in that game). But, for a moment, watching those men, their fans and my dad (the University of Iowa didn’t make the tournament this year, so he was only in it for the upsets) celebrate their Cinderella moment, I understood the hype.

Photo courtesy of Thebasketballnetwork.com

A country that would elect him after hearing those comments scared me. I am concerned, as the protesters seem to be, with the unacknowledged social problems that disadvantage women in the workplace and in the world at large. All this is to say that despite my social conservatism, I wasn’t opposed to the Women’s March. I reasoned that at its core, the march was fighting for women to feel safe in expressing themselves. Even if the approach was different, the aim was the same thing I wanted.

My feelings about the march became more ambivalent when I learned about their decision to exclude pro-life group New Wave Feminists from its list of partners. This move makes sense, considering the host organization states access to abortion as one of its major ideals. However, according to its own site, the main purpose of the Women’s March is “to harness the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change.” And though ending abortion as a practice (not necessarily by making it illegal) is a large part of the statement New Wave Feminists wants to make, it is also “anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-torture.” It’s surprisingly liberal in a lot of its views. To put such a divisive political issue on the table undermines the Women’s March’s ability to create unity and transformative social change. It does a disservice to the diverse group of women who call themselves feminists.

It is not as if the point of view was excluded from the march entirely. Individual pro-life women were allowed to participate in the march. But the statement made by removing a group from the sponsorship list because of its belief is a significant one, especially for me. It about more than just abortion rights; it says that conservative views in general will be viewed with suspicion. Beyond a simple disagreement about the morality of abortion, it says that an organization will not be accepted if it doesn’t adhere exactly to the ideals of the hosts. A commitment to diversity of ideas, it seems, only goes so far.  

I identify as pro-life, and for me, life begins at conception. However, I was not opposed to supporting a march that would inevitably skew pro-choice because I felt like the greater picture was more important than that single issue. The message that I got was that while I may have room in my “narrow” mind to support the Women’s March, the Women’s March has no room for me as a pro-life woman.

Now, before you decide to discount anything else I have to say, I have no desire to go around chaining myself to Planned Parenthood. I’d never donate to one, but I understand that most of the services they and clinics like them provide aren’t related to abortion. I’m also aware that with the decision to be pro-life comes the responsibility to care for the children (and single mothers, for that matter) brought into less-than-ideal situations as the result of unplanned pregnancies. For the record, my conservative church donates a lot of time and effort to foster care and adoptive families. I don’t condone rape or see a resulting pregnancy as some kind of just consequence for the victim. Extenuating circumstances exist, and pregnancy sometimes results or is the result of heartbreaking decisions and trauma.

Finally, and most importantly, I know that my opposition has views as varied and nuanced as my own side. It seems that the Women’s March is unable to see the same. They cannot look past a few zealots to see that there is a fairly significant segment of the pro-life movement who are not opposed to the majority of what they would call “women’s reproductive rights.” I, and most of the conservative women I know, are in favor of access to birth control and the right to quality prenatal care. We believe in the importance of quality sex education, even if it’s not abstinence-only. I don’t even think of myself as anti-choice, I just believe that the woman’s choice is made before she conceives a child and not afterwards. The point of view of the right cannot be put into a box any more than that of the left.

It is situations like these that have always made me reluctant to call myself a feminist. My mother likes to say she’d be more willing to accept mainstream feminism if mainstream feminism didn’t scoff at everything she believes. I know that feminists cannot be grouped so easily. There were women of diverse faiths and political alignments at that rally, and not all of them laugh at my belief in God or the values that go along with it. However, the general view of liberal feminists seems to be that one cannot be conservative, especially socially, without sacrificing some of the tenets that are essential to feminism. So, though I continue to support the spirit of the Women’s March as a place where women can gather and protest the blatant and subtle sexism that society so often ignores, I have deep reservations about the discrimination within the organization itself. As long as one specific political view unrelated to the main cause is marginalized, I find it hard to believe that the march has resulted in much progress at all.

Photo Courtesy of Slate