Being an athlete is already hard enough, especially being one who wants to keep on playing for the love of the game after high school. But what is even harder is being a female athlete. The struggles that come with being a female and an athlete are already troublesome enough, but even with Title IX as a backdrop and support system, discrimination and clear discrepancies between male and female sports in all aspects are apparent. There is a hard truth happening around the world, one that hurts my heart, but anyone who loves their sport knows they have to fight though.
Title IX was set in 1972, but even though we are living in a time since then, girls and women alike are still struggling to get the same acknowledgement and treatment as their male counterparts. Recently, as many have seen and heard, the U.S. women’s soccer team, who won the world cup, brought in more revenue than their male team and are projected to keep on doing so, are being paid on average, less than the men’s team by a considerable gap. Even more, the men get paid if they win or lose, and the women have to win in order to get paid. That is what girls have to look up to, to see in the future, the gap between women and men still be a factor today. That is just a little peak into what being a female athlete is like and could be, but there is so much more going on, even from a young age, that people just dust off.
Anyone ever watch She’s The Man? Well, if you haven’t check out a basic snyopisis here. Anyways, the same thing is still happening today, sports get cut, especially female sports in middle and high school, leaving girls with their love taken away from them. They are given a choice, stop playing all together, go to a different school or leave it to be in a club. While this happens to some male teams as well, it happens more often to girls, especially when looking at revenue, coaching availability and getting enough players for a team. Do not get me started on attempting on females trying to get on the male equivalent of a team. Just because you think we are not strong mentally or physically, fast, or good enough to be on your team doesn’t mean we can’t keep up with the boys. But if even if we can’t, it doesn’t mean our sport should be demeaned. There are all around less opportunities for girls to play sports, with smaller teams or availability, many just don’t have faith in our abilities and take it away from us, whether it be money or opportunity.
I play lacrosse, and while the sport may be growing all around the country, and the male and female versions may be quite different, there are still disparities. Because we are female, seen as gentle and fearful of getting hurt, our game is adjusted. We are allowed little contact, we are not allowed the freedom the guys have to hit, we have adjusted pockets for our sticks and many are still fearful of just having the same game as the guys. But since that is seemingly unreasonable, we must settle, for now, to what we are given, which is basically a sport quite similar but still very different. However, even so, the female side to lacrosse is struggling to have the exposure the guys do. There are so many more male travel teams around, many with sponsors, a parade of coaches and supportive parents and fields to their disposals. The equivalents here are small, far away, with small amounts of funding along with scratching to find coaches and knowledge refs as a burden. We are not giving the same opportunity for girls to find something to love and be driven to achieve in, such as I did when I was younger. I barely could afford the travel teams, the tournaments and the equipment it takes to be a goalie in lacrosse, and to be surrounded by others who love it just as much as I do. I can barely even imagine how amazing it would be not to have to drive an hour every other day just to play the sport I loved, where my male counterparts drove down the road to practice on their travel teams. I was fortunate enough to have friends who made the same trek to the fields out where they could get coaches, and the opportunity to play for my school during the spring season. But still there were discrepancies with my school and with my sport. We didn’t have leagues or division trophies to root for because it didn’t really matter unless you won the state championship. The guys on the other hand had leagues, division, and conferences to win, with trophies to be handed out and medals. While my team and I did make it to the top of the ranking for a while, beating everyone who was in our conference, we were brushed to the side. Turf field times were preferred to the men’s sports going on, the crowds were small even though our games, in my opinion, were much more exciting, and the opportunities for colleges to come see you play were and still are small.
When I captured the bug to play in college, not much could stop me, except for the money. Getting my name out there was hard, getting good footage and adequate coaching was even harder. I looked to the men’s side of the sport to get more shots and advice, but there is still a lot differing the men’s and women’s lacrosse. The position of goalie may be universal, but the shots are different, the angle, the speed, the finesse, and many things the men didn’t know. While it all did help me, I had to travel pretty far to get this instruction. To go to camps for colleges with goalie specifics was even harder, but I trekked on. In fact, going out to these camps and tournaments that were farther than usual, playing with my team and any other that needed a goalie were the main factors I got noticed. But these tournaments had so many guy’s teams, so many men’s coaches from colleges, so many men’s outfitters and opportunities that I really felt the sex discrepancy. I played in tournaments where the turf fields were for the guys and we got the small, pothole ridden grass, the unfavorable field times and the tacky nets with barely visible or even correct lines. I saw this not just here, but in my basketball career, getting the crap gym, the old uniforms, the short stick. But you go on, if you truly love the sport, you do anything to keep playing, which I did. I found help in my high school and travel coaches who are now my friends, and still play with my teammates from high school who went to play at their own respective colleges and even come back to help out with my old high school team and coaching a travel team that is still pretty far away. Everyone always asking, ‘how is college lacrosse?’ but the answer is the same, filled with smiles, but the sad knowledge of what it is really like.
Being an athlete in college, you fight for spots, for the game, for achieving respect by the other teams and coaching staff. It’s hard to do that when it almost feels like you were set to fail. This is especially felt when you play a sport that is still growing and fluctuating. Being a part of a new program does suck, especially when you struggle to get numbers, who are not strong enough to tough it out, who do not have faith in the program. But that is on me for choosing the school I did. Coming into my program, being a freshmen with a rich lacrosse background and strong drive, I had high hopes that my teammates would as well. But we struggled, we lost many girls who transferred, who left because of grades or other discrepancies, and we only won one game. This crashed on me. I had to grow up as an athlete and leader very fast, but what kept me going is the opportunity to play the sport I loved. I came from a great program, with amazing coaches and a great school, all to come to a program that was struggling. But that summer I took that season, the 400+ shots taken on me in a single season and decided to use it as a fire to be better. My college coach, my friends back home, all reassured me to keep my faith, to remember it’s just a game, just a sport, just a season. We came back, full of fresh faces, a very young team to play against seasoned veterans and we came out a little better. But that is what it is, we are young, we have a lot to grow, but it still feels like something is holding us back.
It is our sex. It is because we are females in a sport that is not well known, especially in the south. The men’s team seems to get more and more recruits to sign on, finding more scholarships, money to fund equipment, and a desirable time to practice and get what they want. We don’t get as many parents and fans to our games, we do have less girls and sometimes struggle to field enough people to have a good practice where everyone gets the attention they deserve. We are growing, but we will always be held back by our sex, by our youth. Is this because our future isn’t as bright, our results aren’t conclusive or our appeal isn’t as great? But this can all be solved by equality. If women’s athletic accomplishments were as celebrated as their male counterparts, funded as well and respected as much, girls across the world might have more opportunities to have great role models and attainable dreams. Little steps have been taken for equality all across the nation, but still we are held back by our sex in almost all aspects of jobs, dreams and hobbies.
I love playing for my school, for my coaches and with my teammates, I love lacrosse and am thankful for everything I have accomplished. The future is bright and full of opportunities, but I still find myself wondering what life could have been like if I had the step up of being born with a Y chromosome; the male privilege to have the opportunity to play many different sports, with various amounts training, coaches, and foundations to get better. I am thankful for getting to where I am today and excited to see where I will end up after my college days are done. I work every day to get better for my school, my team, and myself, but I still get the looks when I go to the gym and lift weights, go to the local school and play wall-ball, go to my nearby field and work on sprints and foot speed. I just wish to inspire a future of girls who will fall madly in love with a sport just like I did, but have the opportunities to get where they want to go without their sex hanging over their head, weighing them down and diminishing their future. Little things will always fall through the cracks, but sometimes, you have to let your actions speak for you, which comes through commitment and never losing faith or the love for the game that was created when you were young. That is exactly what the U.S. Women’s Soccer team is doing today and it is what we should all strive to do.
