What Kind of Name Is 'Lady Horizon,' Anyway?

Yesterday we took the girls to see the Harrisburg Lady Horizon basketball team. I was shocked to see that there actually was professional women's basketball in Harrisburg -- apparently they're part of something called the Eastern Basketball Alliance, which as near as I can tell is about a sixth-string minor league. The teams play a double-header, women first followed by the men's game. The men's league seems a bit more substantial than the womens' -- the women's page on the EBA website lists seven teams, but one of them has no roster and two others apparently only play road games.

The game was played at the Harrisburg High gym, and kids got in free with an adult, so it was a cheap afternoon out. Zosia really got in to watching the game for about the first 15 minutes we were there, remarking that the players were doing "cool stuff" like jumping and running and shooting the ball. After a brief conversation about how "shooting" and "time outs" were good things in basketball but bad things in life, her attention drifted and she found herself much more interested in the snacks at the concession stand and the mascot than the game, so we decided not to push our luck and stay for the men's game.

She has been playing soccer at pre-school (Soccer Shots) and I think she is just starting to think about the concept of a team sport. We've talked a little bit about what it means to "win," and just about every time we go up the stairs, when we get to the top she says, "I beat you." Of course, that's often followed by "What does 'I beat you' mean?"

The Horizon looks like a good (and cheap!) way to introduce her to these sorts of sports -- certainly cheaper than my original idea, which was a Hershey Bears game -- and I expect we'll be going to quite a few games over the rest of the season.

(And an aside about the title of this post -- today in the Patriot News there was a picture of a player on the Penn State women's basketball team. Across the front of her jersey it said LADY LIONS. I'm pretty sick of the practice of naming the women's team the Lady Whatevers -- it's extremely patronizing, and brings to mind antiquated phrases like "lady doctor" -- but in this case it's beyond ridiculous. There is a word in the English language that means "lady lion": LIONESS. If the men's teams are the Nittany Lions, why not name the women's teams the Lionesses? This would have the added bonus of being extra fierce since it's the lionesses that go out and do all the hunting while the male lions laze around and try to decide which of their cubs to kill.

Anyway, Lady Horizon. Feh.)