Students and Athletics Staff Discuss Women’s Partcipation in Sports

For decades, female athletes across the nation have struggled in a hard-fought battle against gender-based inequalities in sports. The US Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) players’ fight for equal pay has shone a bright spotlight on how this struggle continues today. Despite being four-time winners of the World Cup and getting thousands more TV viewers than their equivalent men’s team for every game, they still were forced to sue the US Soccer Federation for equal pay. Similarly, many professional-level women’s sports teams and athletes still struggle with inequalities in pay and benefits, and other issues.

How has Athenian done in supporting and promoting its female student-athletes, from both the perspective of the student body and the school’s administration? Athenian’s Athletic Director, Darek Cliff, said that Athenian’s awareness and support towards preventing gender-based inequalities in athletics has historically been much better compared to neighboring private schools. There are three key areas that the school has worked to address: participation, game attendance, and school administration support.

Participation

For many years, there was a clear divide between the number of female-identifying students and the number of male-identifying students who participate in athletics. For the 2022-2023 school year, the most recent data available, class of ‘24 participation statistics showed that 72% of female students and 92% of male students participated in Athenian athletics programs. But, in the same year, more incoming ninth-grade girls (81%) participated than did boys (72%).

Darek and Assistant Director of Athletics Zach Holt both say that they continue to work towards increasing the participation numbers.

Audrey Shotland, an 11th-grade women’s soccer player, said, “I think if Athenian really wanted to keep improving, they would definitely just need to encourage more female athletes to sign up for sports instead of a PE class. To sign up for a team sport or a solo sport instead of getting independent PE credit. Maybe some girls are scared to start a new sport for various reasons. I think if we could improve that, then it would mean a lot.”

Darek remembers a time when getting anyone to participate was the issue: “When I first started out at Athenian, there was about 50 percent participation across the entire student body, and it was a lot of work to increase that number.”

As evidence of the benefit of participation in women’s sports programs, many of Athenian’s current female athletes say they have enjoyed their involvement in sports at the school.

Tenth-grader Izzy Kim said, “The women’s sports teams at Athenian have been a really good way to meet people and make new friends. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with the girls on the tennis team.”

Audrey said she has had a good experience in her three years playing sports at Athenian. She said, “The women’s soccer program has always had a very friendly, very positive environment, most likely because it is not super competitive.” 

Tenth-grade tri-sport athlete Grace Higgins said, “I really enjoyed playing on Athenian women’s sports teams and I felt like it has offered me a new form of leadership and team support.”

Kavi Reddy, Women’s Basketball and Lacrosse Coach, as well as a former Athenian student-athlete, provides a unique perspective on the benefits of participation.  She fondly remembers her time playing sports at Athenian: “Sports were an integral part of my experience as a student here. I have great memories of pep talks from my coaches, bus rides to and from games, hearing the Nest cheer for us, and taking pride in a game well played. Being able to create some of those moments for Owls today feels really meaningful and is why I keep coming back.”

Game Attendance

Over the years at Athenian, differences in attendance at sports events have been the clearest indicator of discrepancy between men’s and women’s sports. A significantly larger number of people go to the men’s teams’ games than those of women’s teams. This issue has not gone unnoticed by the athletics department or Athenian’s female athletes.

Darek said, “We have to ask ourselves: what is our goal as a community? We have to engage our community. We have to ask questions like: ‘Why are you going to the men’s sports games and not the women’s?’”

“Between men’s and women’s sports at Athenian,” Grace said, “I feel like the men’s sports teams get a lot more fans than the women’s sports so I’m hoping that in the future we can have more fans as well.”

Audrey acknowledged, “I mean, I'm part of this, I've never been to one of the girls' lacrosse games, but I don't know how many people go to those. Our women's volleyball team is kind of the exception to all of this. They have the most players, a full three teams and so many people go to those games, and I think that's great. But it would be awesome if we could expand our other sports to be more like the volleyball team.”

Support

The general consensus shared by both students and athletics staff is that equality in how the programs are run and how the budget is allocated among different genders and sports has not been considered a huge problem in recent years.

“From my understanding, all sports teams are allocated the same budget to spend over the course of their season. It is up to the players and coaches to utilize that budget,” Kavi said. “We recently spoke to coaches of other teams including the men’s & women’s soccer teams about pooling money together to get certain resources that would benefit all of us and all the coaches were happy to support each other however we can. Love that about Athenian Athletics!”

In Darek’s opinion, all sports programs at Athenian have undergone vast development and improvement, especially under the direction of the athletic directors and other connected athletics department programs like the Student Athletic Committee.

“I remember a time when our sports teams had to play in t-shirts because the school couldn’t afford to increase the athletics budget. We needed to increase the budget, the coaches then were not experts so we had to increase coaching stipends and get better coaches, and we had to get better uniforms. At one point they just decided to go for it and allocated an increased amount of money towards our school’s athletics: it was a big commitment,” said Darek.

While Athenian has made many strides in supporting its female student-athletes, there is still work to be done. Above all, it is clear that this is an ongoing issue that affects an entire nation of female athletes. As Darek said, “There is a huge culture shift that needs to happen, and that's nationwide.”