For those who forgot Elizabeth Lambert is the New Mexico soccer player who literally went crazy during the Mountain West Conference semi-finals by attacking mostly defenseless BYU players. Since that incident she has been suspended indefinitely from all team activities. Now she has spoken to the New York Times to apologize:
"I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it. It's more expected for men to go out there and be rough. The female, we're still looked at as, Oh, we kick the ball around and score a goal. But it's not. We train very hard to reach the highest level we can get to. The physical aspect has maybe increased over the years. I'm not saying it's for the bad or it's been too overly aggressive. It's a game. Sports are physical."
She is correct that this has brought more attention because she is a girl, however there was a recent event with Oregon's LaGaratte Blount who punched out a Boise State player and went nuts after that and had to be restrained. She nearly did the same thing by kicking, punching, and that vicious pony tail grab.
"I look at it and I'm like, 'That is not me,'. I have so much regret. I can't believe I did that.
I think the way the video came out, it did make me look like a monster. That's not the type of player I am. I'm not just out there trying to hurt players. That's taking away from the beauty of the game. And I would never want to do that."
For her to say 'that is not me' and saying it's out of character is utterly and completely false. If there had been a punch or an aggressive slide then that excuse flies, but she did about five or six brutal actions in this game. We all saw what she did (or at least the six millions viewers on YouTube) and it was nasty. She did apologize but kept using qualifiers to attempt to justity what she did. For those who somehow missed it the video is below.