NCAA officials have apologized for “dropping the ball” after providing women’s basketball players with inferior training facilities than men during Division 1 tournaments.
“We have not been successful this year in what we have done to prepare over the last 60 days for the 64 teams that will be here in San Antonio, and we recognize that,” said Lynn Holzman, vice president of basketball. NCAA women’s ball. a press briefing Friday, after images and videos surfaced on social media showing the stark differences between women’s and men’s weight rooms in Texas and Indiana, respectively.
The apology comes after University of Oregon forward Sedona Prince posted a video Thursday night from the weight room at the women’s tournament, which consisted of a single set of dumbbells. The video then showed what it said was the weight room at the men’s tournament, which was filled with rows of weights and workout equipment.
“If this issue doesn’t bother you, then you are,” Prince said.
Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors retweeted the viral video: saying“Come on then!”
Ali Kershner, a sports performance coach at Stanford University, also posted images on Instagram Thursday, comparing the sparse women’s weight room to the more lavish men’s gym in Indianapolis.
“This needs to be addressed. These women want and deserve the same opportunities,” Kershner said. “In a year marked by the fight for equality, this is an opportunity to have a conversation and improve.”
In a initial declaration On Thursday evening, Holzman said limited space in the tournament bubble was a factor in the amenities available.
On Friday, Holzman said the NCAA was “actively working” to improve women’s facilities, promising that improvements would be in place by Saturday morning.
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, took responsibility for the weight room controversy and said it would be resolved “as soon as possible.”
“I apologize to the women’s basketball student-athletes, to the coaches and the women’s basketball committee for letting it slide, frankly, on the weight room issue in San Antonio,” said Gavitt during Friday’s press briefing.
Holzman said the NCAA became aware of concerns about the training facility through social media on Thursday. Hours later, the NCAA held a conference call with coaches and administrators to solicit their feedback.
“We’re trying to do the right thing,” Holzman said.
The weight room isn’t the only area the NCAA is addressing. Athletes have also expressed concerns about the quality of food at the women’s tournament while they are in quarantine. Holzman said Friday they are working to give athletes more options that can be offered in the controlled environment.
The disparity in weight rooms touched on larger issues of inequality in women’s college basketball.
“The women’s basketball tournament should be an NCAA marquee event, but it continues to be treated like some kind of cheap, subsidized junior college by the crooks who cook the books,” wrote the Washington columnist Post, Sally Jenkins, in a statement. column Friday. “All these women do is raise their performance levels, gain an ever-increasing audience, and graduate at an exorbitant rate of 93%. For this, they receive petty insults and cheap treatment.”
In a video statement On Friday, in response to Prince’s video, tennis pioneer Billie Jean King criticized the NCAA’s use of the “Final Four” on social media to highlight only the men’s tournament.
“We’re always supposed to be very happy about anything, crumbs, whatever, we’re not happy anymore,” King said. “We want fairness. We want equality. We want the same thing.”
Asked by Doug Feinberg of the Associated Press about broader inequities in the NCAA, including the fact that the men’s tournament has 68 teams competing while the women’s tournament has 64, Gavitt said they discussed it in the past and that this presented a “very good opportunity”. ” to answer it again.
“We will commit to doing that,” he said. “I think it’s time to raise these issues again.”
