Coach sees both sides of rough tactics by women's soccer player

Kit Vela, the head coach of the University of New Mexico women's soccer team, left the field after last week's Mountain West Conference semifinal thinking her team had just lost a well-played, hard-fought, rather routine college match — nothing more, nothing less.

She watched her players congratulate their opponents from Brigham Young, which had won 1-0. In particular, she said she noticed starting junior defender Elizabeth Lambert walking from one BYU player to the next, congratulating them, wishing them well. Lambert had received a yellow card near the end of the game for a questionable tackle, just the third yellow card of her career, but from Vela's vantage point, she thought the card "really wasn't for much of anything."

Other than that, Vela thought Lambert had done nothing out of the ordinary, making tackles and plays that were part of "the flow of the game."

Hours later, when watching sports highlights on television, Vela said she was "stunned" to see a very different portrait of Lambert. It was the first time Vela saw the video that millions around the world have now seen, the awful highlight reel showing Lambert kicking, punching and slapping opponents and, worst of all, violently yanking a BYU player's ponytail, causing that player's head to snap back as she fell to the ground.

The seven incidents paint a dreadful picture, the kind of visual compilation that makes one stop and watch, over and over again, as if it's the metaphoric train wreck.

"I wish I had seen it," Vela said Wednesday afternoon, in her first interview since the video of Lambert went viral on the Internet. "If I had seen the hair pull, I would have pulled her off the field, and we wouldn't be sitting here today. … But nobody saw the hair pull in the run of play."

Unfortunately, that includes the referee, the two assistant referees and the alternate referee, all of whom missed what has become the most-watched uncalled red card in the history of women's soccer. For their mistake, perhaps they should be forced to miss something else — a few games by way of suspension.

How did all of these people in positions of authority miss what the cameras so easily caught?

The ponytail play, like several others in the Lambert "highlight" reel, occurred off the ball, away from the game's immediate action. By the time Vela said her eyes went to that spot, the BYU player was on the ground, and the game was moving on.

"We didn't see it," she said. "The refs didn't see it. Believe me, I wish I had."

She also said she missed the other especially offensive hit, Lambert's punch to an opponent's back after that player elbowed Lambert in the sternum.

As for the rest of the fouls, Vela says that Lambert's jousting and sparring looked like the action from just about any other women's college or pro soccer game.

"We could take any game from any school in the country, and take everything … the tackles, the arms in the back … and you'd find much of the same thing, some worse, some not as bad," said Vela, 41, in her ninth season at New Mexico. "But those things happen all the time. It's a 90-minute match, but you're looking at 45 seconds of what they wanted to show on TV. Soccer is a contact sport, and there's a lot of stuff that happens."

This sounds quite brazen, but in some ways, it's the harsh reality of the development of girls and women in sports. Because of Title IX, we've created a generation or two of female athletes who are as tough and fearless as their brothers, with the grass stains and black eyes to prove it. But they, like their brothers, need to know when toughness crosses the line to reckless, outright dangerous play.

The day after the game, Lambert was suspended specifically for the ponytail pull, Vela said. She said she has seen Lambert every day since, and while she won't say when the player's suspension will end, she does hope she comes back to the team.

Just like the guys, she wants her player to have a second chance.

"This is the first time she's done anything even close to this," Vela said. "She lost control in the heat of the moment. Even Liz says, 'In hindsight, I wish (the referee) would have seen this and thrown me out.' It would have been better for all concerned."