Girl Gone Wild

The BYU-New Mexico Women's soccer game quickly turned into something else altogether...at least for Elizabeth Lambert.



Disgusting display from Lambert. Hard fouls are a part of the game, yes. But she could have ended someone's career with a couple of those tackles. She has since been suspended indefinitely from the team by her school, and has issued the terse "I'm sorry I got caught" response those who follow athletes know well. However, as bad as Lambert behaved on that pitch, she was failed herself as well.

First, the officiating crew for this game should be suspended. One of the jobs of a referee and his/her assistants is to not let the game get out of hand. This crew failed miserably. The only reason this game didn't get totally out of hand and end in a riot, is that the BYU players did not step up and protect their teammates. If there were 2 serious infractions and they missed one, okay, referees aren't perfect. But there are 6-7 instances of rough and dangerous play from Lambert, and at least half of those are on the ball, where the referee's eyes should be. You're telling me none of the 3 pairs of eyes officiating this game saw anything but the one trip that earned her a yellow? Quite frankly, the tackle before the hair pull on the video above should have been sufficient for a red card. There was no attempt to play the ball and full attempt to go after the player's knee.

If this were a men's soccer game, there's no way the defender would have gotten 6 or 7 shots like Lambert did. But there's a mindset among many that girls don't want to win at all costs like boys do. That's crap, and it does women a tremendous disservice.

Another failure was Lambert's coach. As a coach your first instinct is to back your players. And, as BYU was the better team, he might have told his players to get physical with them. But there's getting physical and there's assault. Once Lambert started to veer out of control, the coach had to do something to try and calm her down. He does have a responsibility to make sure his team isn't intentionally injuring theother team, yes. But he also has a responsibility to his team to protect them from the inevitable frustrated retaliation by the BYU players. It's hard to say the coach did nothing, as I've just seen the highlights, but he certainly never took Lambert off, so he didn't do enough. This makes the suspension look purely like CYA, and had the cameras not caught Lambert's behavior, I'm not convinced she would have suffered any punishment.

Finally, I was shocked by one other thing (though I won't call it a failure): BYU's players didn't seem to retaliate. This is why the referee has to maintain control, as soon as the players feel like you're not keeping others in line, they start taking actions to protect their teammates. Sure, maybe it results in a card or 2 and yes, this is the conference tournament, and BYU expected to move on (and was winning), but it got to the point where every interaction with Lambert was an injury risk for the BYU players. Sometimes, when the system fails, the only people who can look out for you and protect you are your teammates. To be fair to BYU, they never should have been put in this position.

Good luck to BYU for the remainder of the season, and hopefully New Mexico's team, the officials, and Lambert will take a long hard look at themselves for allowing this to happen.