Women Athletics

From wrestling to ice hockey to baseball, there are very few sports left in which women have not stepped up to participate, either competitively or recreationally. Major health benefits are accrued in women who participate in regular physical activity.

Chamique Holdsclaw, the most valuable player on Tennessee's national champion women's basketball team last March and a key member of the recent U.S. women's team that won the world championship, was named winner of the 22nd annual Honda-Broderick Cup on Sunday night. The cup is presented to the top women's collegiate athlete in the nation. The winner is selected by a national board from a field of 11 candidates from 11 sports.

Harvard-Westlake High, one of the most prestigious academic schools in the region and a growing athletic power, has received a commitment of $400,000 over the next four years to promote girls' sports at the Studio City campus. The Wilbur May Foundation donated $100,000 to the school last summer and has promised an identical donation each year through 2000 for girls' athletics. "Then we'll look at it and see if it's going well," said Anita May Rosenstein, president of the foundation.

The Simi Valley Thunder hockey players clambering onto the ice are all raw preteen energy and testosterone. Except for No. 5. She's the smallish one with long, black hair hanging halfway down her jersey. But don't judge 12-year-old Jessica Koizumi by her size or gender. Measure Jessica by her speed--by the way she chases pucks, plows through bigger opponents and fires slap shots at the goal.

Valley Girl Scouts will receive a crash course in sports Friday and Saturday as participants in a program highlighting women in sports at Cal State Northridge. About 200 Scouts of junior high school age are expected Friday at the kickoff of the two-day sports program. Following the CSUN versus Texas-Arlington women's basketball game Friday evening, the Scouts will attend sports clinics conducted by the CSUN women's soccer, tennis and softball teams.

Randy Rossi, 46, has been coach of the Irvine girls' cross-country team since 1981. He has taken the Vaqueros to seven league championships, three Orange County championships, two Southern Section titles and one state title. Rossi says female athletes are more complex than male athletes and need not only the proper coaching, but also proper guidance. In particular, eating disorders are something Rossi has always been concerned about and would like to see more coaches with the same concern.

Teresa, Kara and a man called "God." Those will be the most-watched individuals tonight in Hartford, Conn., when the war in women's professional basketball resumes after a six-week truce. In opening the American Basketball League's second season, former U.S. Olympian Teresa Edwards, player-coach of the Atlanta Glory, leads her team against arguably the women's game's greatest pure center, Kara Wolters, who answers to a coach at least one of her teammates calls God. That would be K.C.

Most studies and anecdotal accounts of the prevalence of disordered eating have focused on one sport at a time. Below are some findings and estimates of prevalence in some of the sports studied: * Diving: Approximately 25% to 30% of female college divers are either anorexic or bulimic, says Jennifer Magnum, former National Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion diver and recovering bulimic.

The trim woman waits at the ocean's edge, eager to join about 135 others in the one-mile Santa Monica Breakwater Ocean Swim. Dressed in a colorful one-piece bathing suit and flashy yellow swim cap, she blends into the exercise-toned crowd. It seems hardly possible that Kotoko Kawamura Kroesen is, at 73, the oldest swimmer here. "In Japan, at my age, most people would think I am crazy to be in swimming competitions," the Santa Monica woman says.