Gender Inequality in Sports at GCDS?

The Mission of GCDS Athletics

Representatives of the GCDS Athletics Department described their efforts to equally promote all sports teams. GCDS provides the same number of boys and girls teams throughout every sports season, has qualified male and female coaches and support staff working with athletes, and a process to ensure practice spaces (i.e. turf and grass fields) are distributed evenly among all teams that need them. GCDS Athletics also highlighted boys and girls teams at major school events like Homecoming, Pack the Rink, and Hoops Night. 

Since journalists from the Stripe Chronicle began interviewing the Athletic Department for this article, there were noticeable changes to the promotion of girls’ teams. The Athletics Department promoted the girls’ lacrosse team through Instagram posts and emails about the team throughout their process of becoming FAA regular-season Champions. Mr. Helstein sent an email encouraging the student body to attend the girls lacrosse team’s Senior Day at home, which also ultimately decided the regular-season championship. Gabby, an 11th grader and member of the lacrosse and hockey teams, shares, “I’m glad Mr. Helstein sent out an email to come support our team in a big game, being that it was a hard team and Senior Day for Katherine. We ended up with a good turnout, spectators, and a win. I think it made Katherine’s Senior Day really special.” Mr. Helstein sent another email inviting students to watch the boys and girls lacrosse teams play in the first round of FAA playoffs. After the girls’ season ended, a highlight video of the girls was sent out to the entire GCDS community by Mr. Rohdie on May 18th, highlighting the successes of both the boys and girls lacrosse teams. 

Ms. Christy, the Visual Storyteller and Sports Information Manager, says she does her best to promote girls teams as much as possible. “It’s harder for female athletes to have as much representation, be taken as seriously, or have as much of a following. From a journalistic perspective, it’s probably my bias to promote female athletes, girls, and women, and have them be more [at the] forefront because we haven’t been for so long.”

A recent survey of the GCDS Athletics front pages showed a desire to represent female athletes.

Photo Credit: GCDS Website

Female Athletes’ Concerns

Despite the Athletic Department’s past efforts, many female athletes feel overlooked and unappreciated. During 15 “on the record” interviews with female athletes at GCDS, 12 interviewees felt that there is gender inequality in GCDS sports. Three female student-athletes had no complaints and believe that GCDS does a great job at promoting the boys and girls teams equally. Five different interviews with faculty showed that some faculty think that GCDS has done as much as possible to ensure fairness in Athletics, but others feel GCDS could make more of an effort to achieve equality. 

After being asked if she notices any discrepancies between the boys and girls teams at school, Gabby feels that “there is more excitement around boys’ sports than girls.”

Anna, a 10th grader and tri-sport athlete, wrote a public speaking piece for her English class on the lack of attention given to female athletes. In the piece, she declares, “I take a lot of pride in being a student-athlete. I just wish that the school would take more pride in me.”

Anna plays volleyball, basketball, and tennis and feels that there is inequality throughout all of them. Her volleyball team won the 2021 FAA JV Volleyball Championship, she shares, “This is the first championship we have won as an Upper School. We got one Instagram post. Undefeated champions with some pictures to celebrate our win. Frankly, I don’t even know where the trophy is.” 

Carmie, an 11th grader and a three-season athlete, felt that her team was especially overlooked on her basketball team’s Senior Day. On the day of the girls’ varsity basketball Senior Day, an email was sent out informing students of the boys’ varsity hockey  Senior Day that would be taking place the following evening. The email offered transportation to students interested in attending. No email was sent regarding the girl’s varsity basketball Senior Day. Carmie said, “Considering that it was our Senior Day when they sent out the email, I was kinda frustrated. When I saw that I was like, ‘what about us?’ I get hockey is a great sport and so much fun to watch, but I feel like basketball is too, even though we are girls. If it’s the school being like ‘more people will go to the guys’ game,’ where does that come from and why not want to go to the girls’ game?” Carmie’s statement that people should enjoy sports games “even though we are girls” resonates with a lot of female athletes at GCDS and shows the influence of underlying sexism.

Many female athletes believe that there is better attendance at boys’ games versus girls’ games. Ryan, a 9th grader shares, “I play field hockey and lacrosse and I would say it really depends. It depends on if another game is going on, but I would say it’s usually pretty full. I know a lot of people just like watching the boys play more because sometimes it’s a little more fast-paced… Usually, there are more people at their games.” Kylie, an 11th grader shares the same opinion, “For Hoops Night, there were a lot of people, but for every other game there was ‘eh’. The boys’ games had more because the boys’ games were more interesting than the girls’ games. The girls’ games are slow so nobody wants to go watch them. There is a difference.” Carmie,  expresses her opinions and states, “I play soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. Lacrosse had the most spectators, but it was mostly for the boys team… For soccer and basketball, there was barely any attendance. There was definitely a difference in attendance for girls and boys games.”

Jane, an 11th grader, featured on the school’s website.

Photo Credit: GCDS Website

The girls on the basketball team were unaware that the parents of members of the boys’ hockey team requested an email be sent due to the team’s off-campus location. Mr. Helstein explains, “What’s different about boys’ hockey than anyone else? They play off-campus, so [parents and players] were asking for one game, ‘would you mind sending something out to get a bus so people could actually come to see their game?’ I can see when it was sent on Basketball Senior Day, I can understand that maybe that timing could have been figured out better. Unfortunately, girls hockey doesn’t have seniors on it or else we would’ve tried to organize that as well.”

Paloma, a 10th grader who played on the basketball and lacrosse teams, believes that there is nothing “putting [the girls lacrosse team] on the map” despite emails sent out promoting the team. She comments, “It was really nice [to have an email be sent out about their game] and he talked to us about it before and I really really liked that, but the issue is that not a lot of people look at their emails. So, I wish it was an announcement. But it is a step closer.” 

When it comes to disrupting sexism in GCDS Athletics, Ms. McDonald comments, “One of the things that are really important is that our girls continue to rally around each other and go to each other’s games… How are we generating our own student movement to support each other?”