This story is syndicated from Tiger News, the newspaper of Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The original version of the story ran here.
In recent years, several women’s sports have seen a significant rise in viewership. Although I believe that it is good that women’s sports are receiving a level of attention closer to what they deserve, I have noticed that a lot of this attention has not been focused on the actual performances of the athletes. Oftentimes people only express interest in women’s sports when there is drama present rather than recognizing female athletes for their athletic achievement.
This problem starts, at the latest, in high school women’s sports. Girls’ sports in high school seem to be held in a lower regard than the boys’ sports. For example, at basketball games, which typically have a Varsity girls’ game before the Varsity boys play, the attendance of the girls’ games is almost always much lower than the boys’ games. The only exceptions to this, from what I have observed, have been the games in which entry is closed after a certain time before the varsity boys’ game.
Besides the general disregard for women’s sports at the school, the way in which women’s sports are viewed and talked about seem to rarely center on the athletes’ abilities. I noticed this particularly when I photographed last year’s games against North Little Rock. I understand that there is an intense rivalry between our school and NLR, however, the comments that I heard during the women’s game from both student sections were completely uncalled for. Instead of typical trash-talk that one would expect to hear at a game against a rival, I heard both our student section and that of NLR shouting remarks about the athletes’ physical appearances, including many sexually explicit comments. In contrast, the comments during the boys’ game were about things that I would expect to hear at a Central vs NLR basketball game. They were centered around the performance of the athletes (as perceived from each side). Although there were several inappropriate comments, they didn’t seem to directly insult any aspect of the player that didn’t have anything to do with their performance, and most comments were more directed at the opposing teams as a whole rather than one particular player.
This problem persists into the collegiate level. A prime example of this is the 2023 NCAA DI Women’s Basketball Championships. Although the rise of players such as Iowa University’s Caitlin Clark could be attributed to growing viewership levels in recent years, I noticed that people were all of a sudden paying attention to women’s basketball when Caitlin Clark made a hand gesture at Louisiana State University players and LSU’s Angel Reese mocked that gesture later in the final. The internet went wild over this, despite the fact rivalries like this are a regular occurrence in men’s sports. People especially demonized Reese for this, although Clark has said that Reese should not be criticized for this because, as she said in an interview with CNN, “Men have always had the trash talk.”
Like Clark, I don’t see why it is such a big deal that women engage in trash talk and play with the same intensity that men do. Passion is an essential part of sports, so why are situations in which women demonstrate it such a huge deal? Men do it all the time, oftentimes to a greater extent, and no one bats an eye. This whole situation was blown out of proportion, and I believe it detracted from the actual performances of the athletes in this game. It disappoints me that people were not talking about the athletic ability of the women who played in the game because that game was one of the most exciting games I have ever watched. It isn’t fair to these women, who have worked so hard to earn the accomplishments that they have earned, to have their achievements and athletic ability set aside in conversation for drama that is blown out of proportion.
This issue isn’t exclusive to basketball. Take, for example, the 2022 NCAA DI Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Reporters were flocking to the event, but most were not there with the intention of covering the actual meet. Instead, they were there to gain coverage on Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer representing UPenn. Thomas had previously competed collegiately on UPenn’s men’s team before socially transitioning and undergoing testosterone suppression treatments, rendering her eligible to compete in the women’s category for the 2021-2022 NCAA swimming season. This caused immense controversy across not only the swimming community but in the US and, to some extent, the world. However, this controversy was made into a political debate, and this political debate is arguably the sole reason that the viewing and attendance rates of this swim meet in particular were so high compared to previous years and the years after. The reasoning for this is clear: there were very few news outlets and people in general at the time discussing any aspect of the meet other than Lia Thomas and the events in which she raced. This I believe severely undermined the incredible performances of other swimmers in this meet, such as University of Virginia’s Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh, who each won all three of the individual events they swam. Even the performance of Stanford University’s Taylor Ruck, the winner of the 200 freestyle, an event in which Thomas swam after her first place finish in the 500 freestyle the previous day, was greatly undermined because the audience and the general public were focused on Thomas and her participation. In addition, this was not just a one-time occurrence of people deciding to target Thomas and disguise it as “caring about women’s sports.” I have followed both college and international swimming for several years before this situation, and I have noticed that ever since the controversy began, people have been commenting things such as “Where’s Lia?” (with some going as far as using her deadname) on YouTube videos of races in which Thomas is not swimming. To me, this indicates that these people don’t actually care about swimming, much less women’s swimming, and are only using this heightened viewership to disguise their hate as a genuine concern for women’s sports. This isn’t fair to Thomas, who was following the rules that the NCAA had in place at the time regarding her participation, but it also isn’t fair to all of the other incredible athletes whose accomplishments have been, and are still being, overshadowed by hate for one particular athlete.
As NCAA championships are approaching for winter sports, I feel that it is necessary to bring awareness to women’s sports and reevaluate the reasons we watch them. It isn’t fair to athletes in women’s sports to focus solely on the drama of the game; their performances and athletic ability should be acknowledged and celebrated, just like we do for male athletes. Therefore, I urge those who watch sports to appreciate women’s sports, and the athletes that compete in them, by focusing on the performances of the athletes, and giving them the recognition they deserve for their accomplishments.
