There’s a bigger picture to the Gold Pass

I’m a Division I athlete at Boston College.

Typically, each opponent I tip-off against is ranked nationally. Last year in conference, I played eight teams that got a bid to the NCAA tournament. I practice seven times a week—three hours apiece, lift three days, and I travel approximately three out of seven days a week across the country.

Unless you read my name at the beginning of this article, you probably would not have noticed I was describing a women’s basketball schedule.

I didn’t say I could dunk, or that my team would put up over 100 points on the scoreboard in Conte Forum, or that our athletic abilities are some of the best in the country.

I also didn’t say how you probably wouldn’t find any better team defense than what you see in women’s basketball. That for the most part we dedicate all four years of our playing time to our colleges, never leaving early for professional competition.

Or that we play some of the most fundamental, skilled basketball you can watch.

I didn’t say any of that because it doesn’t matter. We need to rewire our brains when it comes to female sports. We are not trying to replicate what the men’s game is, we are not trying to out-jump, out-dunk, out-run, out-score, or out-anything that the men do.

We are playing. We are competing. We are winning.

As soon as we stop using men’s sports as a yardstick for women’s, that is when we will be respected in our own right.

We need to all stop comparing women sports to the men’s game for superficial reasons. Respect the time, commitment, and skill that each side of the game requires.

I know what a lot of the responses are going to be about my stance on this matter: “Men’s games are worth more because of their higher attendance”, “More people want to watch men’s basketball”, “Why would anyone even want to go to a women’s game anyways?”

I’ve heard them all.

What needs to be the biggest take away from this petition is that we, women athletes, are not looking to be compared to the men’s game – just be respected in our own right.

When we start to break down the fundamental reasons as to WHY one version of the sport is valued more than the other, it is then that we will find very empty, simple-minded answers.

Answers that find their roots in history long before Title IX, which have continued due to tradition and ignorance. We will realize that most people don’t value men’s basketball because it’s “better.” In fact, the reasons they value it are all relative—relative to the systematic stigma that we all blindly fall into.

At the end of the day, an athlete is an athlete and a game is just a game—as far as points go, each should be valued as the same.