Yes, it's a scandal.
When Oregon Duck Sedona Prince ( @sedonaprince )saw the "weight room" provided to the teams of the NCAA Women's Tournament, she had to speak out. The media listened.
Sally Jenkins / Washington Post
There are many more articles... and I suppose it's progress that so many journalists and coaches, from both the men's and women's tournament, are weighing in. If you only read one, read Sally Jenkins, who is just plain pissed off and holds nothing back. I'm right there with you, Sally.
What's most appalling to me is that initially it was a woman (Lynn Holzman, VP of NCAA Women's Basketball,) who threw out the lame, and false, excuse citing "limited space" as part of the problem. Sedona Prince immediately countered that with video showing a vast, empty space where a fully furnished weight room could exist.
There is absolutely NO excuse.
I'd like to point out here that it's women's history month, and a big part of our recent history is Title IX, which is enforced by the US Dept of Education Office for Civil Rights. A few years ago a Stone Soup fan, who worked in that department, encouraged me to file a complaint against my alma mater for their treatment of the Women's Softball team. Briefly, the University of Oregon built a baseball stadium for men's baseball before we even HAD a men's team. Meanwhile, our nationally ranked softball team was playing in a "stadium" that barely qualified as such. No lights, no bathrooms, no actual dugout. Middle Schools have better facilities.
I filed the complaint in 2012. In 2013 UO was notified that an investigation had been begun.
The process is described succinctly in the last paragraph of the letter shown. UO claimed they were already trying to remedy the problem. A major donor stepped forward. Would they have done it without the pressure? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. There had be previous pressure, with no results.
In 2017 the Title IX case against UO was closed after I attended a game, at the request of OCR, in the beautiful new stadium and reported to them that is was an enormous, and acceptable, improvement.
End of story?
Of course not. Sedona Prince shows us that just when you thought your sport had achieved respect and some level of equity, you can be slammed to the ground once again. You walk into a "weight room" at your national tournament and find a stack of free weights and some yoga mats. I'm surprised the weights weren't pink.
And so, at UO, where we thought all was happy in the land of softball, what do you think happens when our program, with an exceptional coach and beautiful new facility, achieves national recognition? What often happens in sports... our coach gets a better offer. He didn't want to go to Texas, really, but his own career was in play. He gave UO a chance to come close to the offer he'd received (he did not demand they match it) and they laughed at him. He left, and the replacement coach picked by the UO athletic dept., who wanted her players to be "ladies", drove away most of that year's most talented players.
Like Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, I'm tired. Tired of the men in suits, and the women who bow to them. But I will be watching every single game in the upcoming Women's tournament, happy that I can do so, happy that we have a great coach (UO Kelly Graves) and a wonderful team playing my favorite sport.
GO DUCKS.
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