Let me begin this article by saying that I know male athletes have killed people while driving drunk, beat their spouses, and done a lot of other unspeakable things. We know that this is a story that seems to rear its ugly head every day in professional sports. However, men who are not open-minded or thoughtful will use an incident about Alex Morgan to say that female athletes do not understand their stardom, how to handle it, or how to act in public. The simple fact is that some people have a little too much to drink every day at Epcot.
The story
The story is that Alex Morgan and a group of friends were being loud and obnoxious in the Epcot park at Disney World. Alex Morgan is a star player for the USWNT, and she plays for Orlando City the rest of the year. She is, of course, familiar with Disney World because it is in Orlando and a popular place for citizens of the city to come to have dinner or hang out. If you have ever been to Disney World before, you know that there a lot of people from around town who are walking among the tourists. So, it is not uncommon for someone like Alex Morgan to be in the park.
People get drunk there every night
If you have ever been to Epcot, you have seen people have a little too much to drink.
I have personally been within just a few feet of a very angry man who was screaming at the staff of a Chinese restaurant on the property. Alex Morgan would not be the first person to have too much to drink, and she will not be the last. We allow male athletes to issue statements and move on, and we should allow Alex to do the same thing.
We need to apply the same standards
We have seen professional athletes in the NBA, MLB, NFL, NASCAR, and NHL do stupid things, apologize, and then we forget. Do we remember how bad it looked when Michael Phelps was picked up for DUI? We still love him and laud him for being a great athlete. We wanted to watch him swim against a shark, and he is probably just as popular as he was when he started.
Alex Morgan is one of the best female soccer players in the world, and she should be able to move past this quickly.
Do not jump to conclusions
We cannot Jump To Conclusions about what Alex Morgan is or is not. She made a mistake, and hopefully, she can go back to the Disney World parks in the future. Getting kicked out of Disney World is a hard thing to do, but being an elite athlete with a lot of pressure on them is hard, too. Let us let this go, move on with our lives, and not assume that this one incident should impact all female athletes.
