Athletic Sexism

The only people who can relate to this are all my girls out there✋🏻 So sorry boys, you're probably not going to like or agree with this post. It may not be true everywhere, but at my school, there is HUGE athletic sexism. The boys always get everything. Whether it's school issued money, uniforms, equipment, or gym space, the guys have it better. 

I don't know if there is a formula to figure out how much money each athlete gets when they go to state or Drake (this is for track), but the guys always seem to have more. This year for Drake, the girls only sent five people, and the boys sent seventeen (it's been rough for us girls lately). We got seventeen dollars, and the boys got more (not sure how much). Now if there's a formula, how does that make sense? If you send more people, it should be less money, right? 

Another thing that is unfair are the uniforms. Now some of the boys teams could be fundraising for some extra money to get these uniforms, but I don't see how a girls team should have any problems with uniforms. For softball, we wore old baseball jerseys.. Why is that okay, they were REALLY long (went past my knees and the sleeves went to my elbows). Finally we're getting our own, new jerseys, but we had to fundraise so much for them. Also, in track, we've had the same, black jerseys my entire high school career. We don't even have enough of those jerseys to let everyone in our team have one. And this is sad because we have maybe fifty girls out. The boys team has gotten new, really nice jerseys two times since I've been in high school. Enough for EVERYONE. And they have at least 100 boys out for track. I can't even explain that! 

I bet the equipment a team has deals with the amount of money you raise, but I still don't see how a guys team can have better equipment than a girls team. We fundraise a whole lot too! Baseball these past few years have gotten so much. They got a new scoreboard (not necessary), new speakers (not necessary), and a new backstop (WAY not necessary). For softball, we've needed a new scoreboard for 3 years. The numbers flicker, and at times it just shuts off. We need new speakers, ours hardly works. It's just annoying how we've repeatedly asked our athletic director to help us fix these things, but he doesn't. 

I GET ANGRY ABOUT THIS NEXT POINT. Gym space. I have a specific story for this. It was the beginning of track season, so it was like negative 15 degrees outside. Our practice was at 10, and the boys practice started at 9. When we got there, the boys were in both gyms. We asked them if we could use one (the smaller one) and they said "no, we were here first". We asked our athletic director to let us have a gym, and he said, "no, they were here first". That's just stupid right there😑 So because we are good people, we ran around the halls in our school and OUTSIDE IN NEGATIVE 15 DEGREE WEATHER. We told the boys to come get us when they were done with the small gym, and when they finally were, we went down to find baseball practicing. THEY ARENT EVEN IN SEASON! And we didn't get to have a productive practice that day because there is TERRIBLE sexism in our school. 

Another minor thing that happens is our principal only goes to certain events. I can tell you he was at every football game and every boys basketball game, but I only saw him like one or two times for softball. I've seen him one time for track, and that's because he had to work at the meet. The other night, he was late for the girls soccer game and went and sat at the very top of the bleachers, and then when the boys game started, he went down onto the field and cheered for them. Please, don't be so blatant when you do all of this stuff. It's not hard to pick up on! Our last principal we had was the best person on the planet. She made it to EVERYTHING. And she still makes it to EVERYTHING. Bless her heart. 

All I'm saying is my school is way too sexist about their athletics and it's really unfortunate for the girls. These are just examples from the three sports I play! I can guarantee that there are several other examples to choose from.

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